This book by Sarah Bond is an account of the social conflicts in the city of Rome and across the Empire that punctuated its history from 509 b.c. to a.d. 565. Proceeding in chronological order, B. reviews first the struggle between plebeians and patricians in Rome, then the great slave revolts in Sicily and the revolt of Spartacus in 73–71 b.c. After examining in the very interesting ch. 3 the proliferation of associations (collegia) in the ‘broader context of dissent’ (D. Machado) at the end of the Republic, and Caesar’s law banning them after 49 b.c., B. returns several times to the situation of associations in the Empire (including an examination of synagogues and early Christian assemblies) and their relationship to labour (chs 4, 5 and 6, the last of which examines the ‘compulsory associations’ — those linked to state services, membership of which was compulsory for those working in this area). B. narrates also in ch. 4 the various moments of tension, brawls or pogroms in Roman cities, and, in ch. 7, the Nika riot in a.d. 532 at the hippodrome of Constantinople, which allows her to return to the circus factions and the economy of entertainment in Late Antiquity.
In her introduction, B. claims to deploy ‘strategic anachronism’ and ‘calculated analogy’, in order to ‘capture both the continuities and functional differences of occupational groups’; she acknowledges rightly that ‘most Roman associations did not function as modern labour unions’, but then prefers to stress ‘the similarities between modern labor unions and Roman associations’ (9–11). Without really saying so, she reconnects then with the modernist historiography of the early twentieth century. This is an interesting ‘challenge’, but I’m afraid that this collection of the best-known conflicts of the Roman world does not quite succeed in proving the author’s thesis. Some revolts may indeed have had work or labour income at the heart of their demands, but almost none was driven by free, united workers. Apart from slave revolts, the best-known examples were mainly led by entrepreneurs: the silversmiths of Ephesus in a.d. 52 (Acts 19, 23-40), who acted in order to protect their niche market, and perhaps also the builders of Sardis in a.d. 459 (for which see the fundamental article by A. Giardina in Opus 1 (1982) 115–46, not cited by B.). In all the cases reviewed, it is exceptional to see requests for higher wages, and there are no cases of requests concerning working hours or risks at work; obviously the absence of evidence does not mean that those requests certainly did not exist, but this is clearly a problem for B.’s thesis. Many cases reported by B. are further off topic: the fight between the Pompeians and the Nucerians during a show at the amphitheatre in a.d. 59, the pogrom in a.d. 38 against the Jews of Alexandria, or the circus factions. Contrary to what B. says (175–80), the factions were not an informal gathering of slave and free people, but the most integrated part of the civic population (on this topic, see C. Zuckerman in RÉByz 58 (2000) 69–96, not cited). The author’s project to embrace Roman society over such a long time-span thus forces her to describe social groups who have little in common.
One of the points at the heart of the problem is the fact that strikes and modern trade unions are the collective action of workers against employers, as Giardina rightly pointed out. However, many of the conflicts reported here are not of this nature. For example, the conflict at the end of the second century a.d. between the shipowners (navicularii) of Arles and the Roman annona services was not a strike, and the navicularii were not ‘artisans’ (8) — B. describes them later more accurately (127–8) as a powerful corporation of shipowners. Wishing to challenge the idea that the labour union is an invention of the eighteenth century (10–11, and ch. 3), B. says nonetheless: ‘sometimes, [ancient] associations consisted of a mixture of lower-level workers and their employers’ (79), mostly employers I should say, which is clearly not a feature of modern unions. To find an unquestionable strike in the sense that we understand it today, B. has to refer several times (1–3, 7, 111) to the labour dispute led by the privileged workers of the Ramesside pharaohs’ tombs in Deir el Medinah, more than a thousand years before Augustus. For the Roman period, by contrast, we find very few examples. Even the P.Brem. 63 (Hermopolis, a.d. 116) that opens ch. 5 as an example of a Roman strike is in fact very difficult to understand; we do not know if it really concerns a textile workers’ strike for better wages (cf. C. Freu, Les salariés de l’Égypte romano-byzantine. Essai d’histoire économique (2022) 283–4, for the references to this old debate). Importantly, B. refers to the phenomenon of anachoresis (the ‘withdrawal’), which in Egypt (but also in Africa and perhaps elsewhere) is central to the issue of absenteeism from work (111–13). She cites examples from Ptolemaic Egypt, but none from the Roman period. These did exist, but all the cases recorded in legal petitions show that they were not collective flights but individual ones (Freu, op. cit, 312–14).
To sum up, although I am not averse to using modern lenses to view ancient realities, I am still not convinced that the case of the strike can be used to illustrate the similarities between ancient and modern times.
