The purpose of this work is to ‘see the un-seen’, to locate the movements and lives of slaves in the Roman archaeological record from better preserved sites in Pompeii, Herculaneum and Ostia. J. and P. work to correct a previous trend in scholarship that was satisfied with rarely locating the experience of slaves within the context of Roman material culture. The authors apply new techniques to reading previously examined sites to determine how slaves might have existed in the spaces of houses, workshops, streets and villas. Specifically, they examine the strategies that could have been used by masters in controlling slave movements in these spaces through architecture, surveillance and even decoration, and alternately, the tactics developed by slaves to choreograph their own movements and resist the masterly conscription. These slave tactics often took the form of performing tasks slowly and poorly, making noise at inopportune moments, hiding and escape, or even simple disruption. More than merely re-examining maps and plans of buildings and streets, J. and P. make use of personal experience of these spaces to draw conclusions on their use, rather than analysis drawn from ‘looking from above’ onto a plan or layout. The goal of this work is not only to develop new methods for mapping the movements of slaves otherwise overlooked in modern readings of sites, but it is also, through understanding these movements, an attempt at reconstructing something of the social and lived experience of slaves in the Roman world.
Chapter 1, ‘Introduction’, provides background to the text, focusing on the gap in scholarship that the authors aim to fill and a very useful discussion of the definitions of ‘strategy’ and ‘tactics’ used by masters and slaves in the Roman social environment borrowed from the work of Michel de Certeau (1988). Here, the authors lay out the strategies and tactics (discussed above) that feature throughout the book deployed by master and slave alike and offer an outline of the argument that is wrapped up succinctly in the final chapter.
Chapter 2, ‘Slaves in the House’, works to map the choreography of slaves within rooms and houses and to determine the tactics they might employ in these urban domestic settings. J. and P. take as their case studies, among others, the House of Menander (I.10.4, 14–16), the House of Julius Polybius (IX.13.1–3) and the House of Sutoria Primigenia (I.13.2). Through plans and images, the authors argue convincingly for the use of architectural design such as door heights, hallways and stairwells to script the movements of slaves within Roman households. A substantial part of the chapter is focused on the opportunities for enacting slave tactics at the banquet, determining what these tactics may have been by re-reading literary accounts that discuss slave behaviour, and attempting to map these onto the layout of houses. Beyond the banquet, the authors discuss ways in which slaves might appropriate masterly space for their own use, something they also did in the villas, and attempt to find the spaces of slave life within the household in the kitchen, hallways and gardens.
Chapter 3, ‘Slaves in the City Streets’, perhaps the most fascinating and original discussion in the book, uses literary, legal and iconographic evidence of the presence of slaves in Roman streets to uncover spaces and places for slave activities at Pompeii. This chapter looks at the aptly described ‘backdoor culture’ of Roman houses to the fountain areas and bars where slaves could enact their tactics by shirking responsibilities, and also importantly for this study, places for socialising and hubs for lived experience. The authors examine the streets of Pompeii, mapping out the movements of slaves from large households whose backdoors, they argue, acted as the main exit and entrance for slaves that were, for the most part, away from the master's gaze. Branching out from these doors, the authors examine the streets and the areas available for slaves to congregate and socialise, focusing on the numerous fountain areas where slaves from the majority of neighbourhood houses would have collected water. Bars and their doorways are also given attention, their locations along streets leading to fountains and near the large houses providing opportunities for household slaves to linger and grab a drink, as the authors attempt to locate slaves as ‘mobile consumers’ within the city.
Chapter 4, ‘Slaves in the Workshop’, is indebted to the recent work of M. Flohr (2009; 2013) on the interactions of slaves, masters and customers inside the fullonicae of Pompeii. J. and P. focus their analysis on the space of bakeries and the scripted movement of slaves within them as well as their possibilities for enacting tactics. The authors make use of iconographic evidence from the friezes of the tomb of Eurysaces and literary discussions of bakeries to try to reconstruct the types of jobs that would have been performed within the workshop, mapping these jobs onto the archaeological record (House of the Baker [VI.3.3, 27]), to find evidence for the physical management of slave movements in these spaces through surveillance, locked doors, violence and even shackles. J. and P. use this evidence to discuss the impact of owners' spatial strategies on the working conditions of slaves within these workshops.
Chapter 5, ‘Slaves in the Villa’, examines the architecture and spatial arrangements of large villas in the scripting of slave movements and places for slave tactics. Here the authors look at both the villa urbana and the villa rustica (Villa A at Aplontis, Villa of the Mysteries, Villa at Settefinestre, Villa Regina) and compare the plans of these villas with the agricultural handbook of Columella as well as legal sources that discuss the control of slave movement and labour as part of villa life and production. These features include door height, methods of containment including locked doors, decoration, placement of service areas and even the geographic location of the villa itself. In contrast to this, J. and P. map the opportunities for slave tactics looking at areas for gatherings and socialising, places for hiding or even fleeing and ways in which slaves might seize upon their expert knowledge of the villa's layout to avoid the masterly gaze.
This work is convincingly argued, well structured and illustrated. The authors have done an excellent job at making the detailed architectural discussions accessible to even the most uninformed reader and in sixteen colour plates map out the movements of slaves as described in the text. The chapters provide a fair amount of background discussion, laying out the problems and place of the authors' argument in recent scholarship, ensuring that this work will be of interest not only to scholars specialising in the field but also to a wider academic audience.
Throughout, J. and P. take great pains to point out the fact that much of their analysis is, to a large extent, informed speculation, an unavoidable problem when studying a population that is silenced in contemporary sources and ignored by modern. Nevertheless, the aim of this work is not to provide definitive evidence for the lives of slaves within Roman social environments, nor is it an exhaustive catalogue of all places where slaves might be found. Rather, what this work does is to develop a new strategy for reading the archaeological evidence from houses, workshops and streets that can lend a better understanding of the lives of slaves whose experience is often overlooked and deemed impossible to recover from the record. This new method will be sure to open up further avenues for discussion and will no doubt occupy an important place in the continuing scholarly debates on the archaeology of Roman slavery.
