The Roman Guide to Slave Management (13 page)

The evidence is that many, perhaps most, slaves resented or even hated their social position and so faced intensely powerful stresses in their lives, some of it in the form of sexual abuse. Modern mental health research, and perhaps even common sense, tells us that such conditions will have had a detrimental impact on their psychological well-being and resulted in a generally poor level of mental health in the overall servile population. In that case, slaves probably had a high incidence of mental disorders, even if the form that those disorders took might have been very different to those of the modern world.

   
CHAPTER IV
   

I
AM A PRACTICAL MAN AND
this is a practical book. I have little time for the fancy philosophies of the Greeks and even less for those who like to tie themselves up with the sophistries of logic. But I do think that it will help you manage your slaves better if you properly understand how best to think about them. To know what makes a slave a slave is to know what makes a master a master. So I hope you will bear with me while I explain to you what might be termed the philosophy of slavery.

We Romans all know that free is to slave as good is to bad. But there have been Greeks who questioned whether the fact that slaves are social inferiors means that they are necessarily also moral inferiors. And if slaves are not less moral than their masters they wondered whether slavery itself could ever be justified. The philosopher Aristotle, as I mentioned earlier, was of the view that it was natural for slaves to be slaves, since barbarians were inherently inferior to Greeks and so were naturally suited to be the slaves of the superior Greeks.
I’m not sure if anyone ever actually believed this, but it is certainly true to say that the Greeks did see slavery in black-and-white terms. So if a free man became a slave he remained, at heart, naturally free, whereas any barbarian who was enslaved merely got his just deserts.

I once heard two Greeks arguing vociferously about something (I don’t recall what it was). As it happened one of the men was a slave and, in the end, the free man, who seemed to be losing the argument to his clever opponent, threw up his arms in despair and said, ‘What would you know anyway? You’re just a slave!’ At which the slave responded by smiling sweetly and saying: ‘But can you really tell the difference between a free man and a slave?’ The free citizen insisted that he knew that he was free but that the slave was not. But this merely goaded the slave into arguing more, in the same way that fighting-cocks get increasingly aggressive when they are struck. So he asked the citizen what the basis was of his knowledge about their status in society. How did he know for certain that his mother hadn’t secretly been having sex with her slaves and that one of them was his father? He claimed that there were many famous Athenians who were later revealed to have been smuggled in as infants and raised by Athenian parents when in fact they were outsiders – how did he know for sure he was not one of them?

As you can see, he was one of those too-clever-by-half slaves. In the end his opponent simply said that whatever smart arguments the slave made about not being able to be 100 per cent certain that a slave is actually a slave, or a citizen is really a free man, one thing was for sure and
that was that the slave was being held in a condition of slavery. But the slave was having none of it.

‘Oh, come on!’ he said, ‘Do you think that everyone who is being held in slavery is a real slave? There are plenty of free men who are being held unjustly as slaves. You often see them appealing in the law courts and producing evidence to prove that they are free. Tens of thousands of people have suffered this misfortune. And when a free Athenian is taken prisoner in war and is shipped off to Persia or Sicily and sold there, we don’t say that he is now a slave. We say he is still, in truth, free. But if a Persian or Sicilian is brought here we certainly don’t say that he is still free.’

So the citizen said that it was the way in which he was treated that made him a slave. But the slave was too clever for that.

‘So what,’ he said, ‘if I am fed by my master, do what he says, and get punished if I don’t – that would make his sons his slaves too. They have to do whatever their father tells them and are beaten if they don’t.’

He added that it would also make schoolboys the slaves of their teachers. The free man countered that teachers and fathers don’t chain up their sons and pupils, or sell them or send them to work in the treadmill. Only masters do that to slaves. But the slave replied that there are many places where fathers do behave like that towards their sons. He himself knew several people who had sold children into slavery because they needed the money. But that did not make their remaining sons slaves.

The point the slave was making was that no matter how obvious it might seem that slaves are naturally servile
and worthless, it is possible for them to become free and for their children to be as free as anyone. And in the same way, if a free man suffers the misfortune of being captured and sold off as a slave then he is to all intents and purposes a slave and cannot be distinguished from any other slave. There is nothing natural about slavery.

Thankfully, the people who were listening to this argument were getting bored by the slave’s refusal to accept any evidence, and by his clever arguments. So they asked him what a slave actually is. Someone said that if a person has full rights of ownership over another, meaning that he is able to do whatever he wants with him, just as he could with any other piece of his property, then that person is correctly described as being the slave of the man who owns him. But the slave asked what ‘full rights of ownership’ meant. After all, there were many people who appeared to own a house or a horse or something when it actually transpired that they had no legal right to them. In the same way, a man or woman might be owned unjustly. The first slaves must have been captured in war because they could not have been born to slaves. In other words, they had been free, and were then forced into servitude, which hardly seems very moral and is hard to defend at all. It certainly isn’t possible to say that such people were naturally slaves to start with because they weren’t – they were free. And if they had managed to run away they would have been free again so would have returned to their former status.

Someone who was watching the argument suggested that although these people were clearly not slaves, their children and grandchildren were because they were born
slaves. ‘But how?’ replied the slave. ‘If it is being captured that makes a man a slave, then shouldn’t the term be applied to those who are captured themselves much more than to the descendants? If it is not that but birth which is the criterion, then it is clear that since those who were captured were free men, their children could not be slaves either.’

Perhaps, the slave went on, the word ‘slave’ originally just meant someone with a servile character. For we all know free men who have the traits of slaves and slaves who have a noble disposition. It’s like the terms ‘noble’ and ‘well born’: people first used them to refer to those who were well born in terms of virtue and their behaviour, not in reference to who their parents were. Slaves are not naturally bad or worthless any more than free men are naturally good. People have simply stopped thinking about what they are saying and use the terms wrongly. In fact it is those who behave in a morally worthless way who are the true slaves, whether they are actually slaves or have been born free.

The Greeks could have argued all night. What
we
have to realise is that while free is to slave as good is to bad, that does not necessarily imply that all slaves are bad – they can only be so regarded when they behave slavishly. The moral status of a person is a reflection of the quality of their soul. Their social status is irrelevant to this question. For it is vital that
we
understand this one fact: that slaves are human beings and should be treated as such.

Those masters who have both wisdom and learning realise that they must live on close terms with their slaves. They are, after all, the people with whom you share your
roof. The vagaries of chance are so great that you should remember that it could easily have been you who ended up enslaved instead of being the master. That is why it is ridiculous when people say they would be ashamed to have dinner with a slave. Why? What reason is there to be so arrogant other than the dreadful practice of most masters nowadays, that they must be surrounded by a whole crowd of slaves. The master today stuffs his face until his stomach is so bloated and distended that it can barely digest the vast quantities of rich delicacies which have been crammed into it. Then in a great effort of straining he vomits it all back out again.

While he does this, his wretched slaves aren’t allowed to so much as utter a sound but have to stand silently or else get thrashed. Not even an unintentional hiccough is permitted in case it distracts the master from his huge feat of gormandising. Any noise from the slaves will bring the most severe punishment. All evening, while the master repeatedly fills and empties his stomach, they stand there, silently shivering in hunger and fear lest their grumbling stomachs disturb their master from his table.

When masters treat their slaves like this, is it any surprise that they go round gossiping about him behind his back? By contrast, those slaves who were allowed to speak not just in front of their master but actually with him, were prepared to die for him so great was their loyalty. They would willingly stand between him and any danger that threatened him. They might talk when they served him his dinner, but they kept silent when they were being tortured by his enemies for information that might harm him.

If you think slaves are our enemies then you should remember that they are enemies only because we make them so. There are so many ways in which people treat them cruelly and inhumanely, as if they were no more than dumb animals rather than human beings. When, for example, we recline on our couches to dine, while they have to stand around and wait to clear up the vomit from those who have either eaten or drunk too much, or more likely both. Or when some poor slave has the job of carving expensive pheasants and fowl. He skilfully guides his well-trained hand around the bird’s breast and rump as he carves it up. But he won’t get any of the meat, poor man. He lives for no other purpose than to skilfully carve up roast chicken. The master who feels he has to teach a slave this skill is more to be pitied than the slave who has no choice but to learn it.

Another slave pours the wine. The young man is dressed like a woman and struggles to look as youthful as he can, although signs of his manhood are starting to appear. Another slave’s job is to measure how the guests behave. He stands there nervously and makes a note of those who behave so outrageously that they are worth inviting back tomorrow. There are slaves who prepare the menu and know every detail of their master’s taste. They know exactly what will perk up his taste buds and
amuse
his
bouche
, as it were. They know what kinds of presentation please him, what kind of novel cuisine will liven him up when he feels sick. They understand what bores him and when he will crave certain things. Needless to say, the master wouldn’t dream of eating with these cooks because he thinks it would be beneath him to share a table with a slave.