This volume is the latest in a series of studies that undermine the narrative that has dominated scholarship of late antiquity and slavery for many years, to wit that slavery gradually declined and was transformed into medieval serfdom (to the studies mentioned in the introduction we may add: Y. Rotman, Slaveries of the First Millennium [2012]). These studies confirm that slavery was alive and significant even after the fall of the Roman empire.
The volume, originating in a 2016 seminar in Helsinki, comprises an introduction and fourteen chapters divided between four sections, with some overlap of themes and methods. It investigates various aspects of slavery in late antiquity in Europe and the Mediterranean, including areas on the eastern, northern and southern ‘margins’ of the Roman empire, from 150 to 700 ce. As de Wet writes in the introduction, the book aims to present the polymorphous and complex picture of slavery – indeed, slaveries – in late antiquity. In addition to Greek and Latin sources it adduces Syriac, Coptic and Arabic literary texts – some of which have never been studied before. Thus, the volume exhibits not an overall appraisal of late antique slavery but a polyphony of regions, periods, ideological backgrounds, symbolic and moral values, cultures, and social and religious contexts of slavery.
Part 1 illustrates the moral and symbolic values of slavery in Christianity, Judaism and Islam. P. Botha's premise is that early Christian discourse and practices were complicit in preserving slavery despite preaching freedom and equality. Taking P. Bourdieu's theories as an interpretative tool, Botha emphasises the performative role of symbolic violence in generating a rhetoric of suffering, punishments and bodily discipline, which constituted an element of cultural capital. This culture, adapting traditional Roman habitus and manifested in Christian orthoposture, required submission from Christian slaves and punitive behaviour from masters. The Roman impact is also apparent in the use by Christian writers of the metaphor of internal enslavement to passions as more dangerous than chattel slavery.
Conversely, I. Ramelli's chapter examines the link between asceticism and a concept of justice in Judaism and early Christianity that led to the emancipation of slaves. She bases her investigation on the writings of fourth-century ce Christian authors and practitioners of ascetic life and explores sources that attest to the liberation by individuals, couples and monastic groups of their slaves and the renunciation of their possessions. Similarly, Ramelli argues that the philosophical ascetics of Hellenistic Judaism related the progress of the soul to justice, solidarity and objection to the oppression of fellow human beings and to excessive wealth. Philo and Josephus ascribed these ideas to the Essenes and the Therapeutae – the only ones in pre-Christian antiquity who disavowed slavery. However, ascetics, both Jewish and Christian, were a minority. Moreover, as Ramelli points out, not all the strands of asceticism rejected slavery.
A. Avdokhin examines the symbolic aspect of slavery in late antique Greek homilies and hymns from Asia Minor. Avdokhin highlights the role of metaphors of sin and debt that lead to enslavement to Satan (metaphors also discussed in Botha's chapter), and of Christ as the liberator. The metaphors of payment of debt and salvation from sin shared identical vocabulary. In the reality of the fifth and sixth centuries ce poor people in danger of debt-bondage would sometimes be rescued by private patrons who paid their debts or emperors who annulled tax arrears. Hence, Christ was presented in homilies and hymns as a system of celestial bureaucracy that granted salvation by tearing down the legal certificates of satanic debt while binding the believers to servitude to Christ.
Kahlos's chapter analyses fourth- to sixth-century ce authors’ views on the enslavement of ‘barbarians’, that is, non-Romans and non-Greeks, often mentioned in connection with the slave trade in frontier zones. These texts reveal the continuation of Graeco-Roman ideas of ethnicity that judged certain people as more suitable to be enslaved, of enslavement as a social condition brought about by mere chance or of viewing slavery as hereditary – as in the case of Ham and Esau, used as exempla by late antique Christian writers. Thus, slavery came to be justified as beneficial to slaves.
Part 2 discusses cultural discourses and identity – themes also examined by Botha and Kahlos. De Wet offers an engaging analysis of a (possibly) fifth-century ce story, the Life of Euphemia and the Goth, located ‘somewhere between ancient fiction and Christian hagiography’ (p. 107). It relates the story of Euphemia, a free girl from Edessa, whose mother is manipulated into giving her in marriage to a Gothic soldier. Taken away to the Goth's homeland, Euphemia finds out that he is already married. He gives her as a slave to his wife, but she is miraculously rescued and returned to Edessa. This chapter fits in with a trend of reading ‘Lives’ of enslaved people and novels featuring the abduction and enslavement of young men and women as an important source of information about slavery and displacement in the societies that produced these texts (see, e.g., K. Hopkins, ‘Novel Evidence for Roman Slavery’, Past and Present 138 [1993], 3–27; W.M. Owens, The Representation of Slavery in the Greek Novel [2020]). As de Wet shows, Euphemia's story also teaches us about ascetic discourse in late antique Christian Syria and Mesopotamia.
C. Hezser's chapter asks whether there was something specifically Jewish about Jewish slaveholding in late antique Palestine, compared with contemporary attitudes towards and practices of slaveholding among non-Jewish Romans. The only existing evidence is rabbinic literature. Hence, the views presented are mainly those of a religious and intellectual elite in the context of a Roman-Byzantine society, and the chapter examines and compares rules and moral recommendations but not actual practices. It appears that some practices also existed among non-Jews, such as self-sale and sale of children, which the rabbis permitted under certain circumstances and persisted among poor Romans despite its abolition; the ‘conversion’ of slaves to their owners’ religion (although circumcised and immersed slaves were not considered Israelites as long as they were slaves); the fact that both rabbis and church fathers encouraged slave owners to avoid violence and treat slaves as human beings; and the principle that redemption of enslaved people was restricted to Jewish-born slaves who observed the Jewish religion. On the other hand, to uphold the composition and property of the family and contrary to Biblical practices, late antique rabbis discouraged male slave owners from begetting children from their female slaves.
C. Luckritz Marquis too strives to reconstruct the presence and role of slavery in late antique Egypt from brief references in papyrological documents, whose vocabulary is often ambiguous in distinguishing enslaved from free individuals. She also focuses on the spaces that we know slaves must have occupied and on the use of slavery metaphors in the monastic texts of Paul of Tamma and Shenoute of Atripe.
Moving from east to west, U. Gebara da Silva explores Gallo-Roman literary texts for the presence of rural slavery in late Roman Gaul. Addressing the ideological and methodological challenges these texts present (Ausonius, the Latin comedy Querolus, Salvian of Marseilles, and Eucharisticus – attributed to Paulinus of Pella), Gebara da Silva contextualises the instances of slavery in the literature and society of the Gallo-Roman countryside, ‘treating the literary structures as linguistic mediations of ideology and of social relations’ (p. 185). His conclusion is that rural slavery was a normal feature, deeply rooted in the literary and the social reality.
Part 3 discusses late antique slavery as reflected by papyrological and epigraphical sources. M. Vierros's analysis of the Petra and Nessana papyri demonstrates, on the one hand, the importance of papyri as a source of knowledge of slavery in sixth-century ce Palestine (absent for earlier periods, as shown by Hezser) and, on the other hand, the limitations posed by these sources, especially concerning terminology. Vierros offers a valuable review of the evidence of slaves’ names, prices and roles.
Whereas Luckritz Marquis studies monastic texts for the presence and role of slavery in late antique Egypt, A. Pudsey and Vuolanto examine first- to sixth-century ce papyri from Roman Egypt, aiming to reconstruct the backgrounds and experiences of enslaved children and young people, also connecting their study to childhood studies. The authors focus on documents from Oxyrhynchus, thus ‘zooming in’ on one city. One obstacle is the uncertainty arising from the terminology used in the papyri, especially the term oiketēs. The chapter shows that the position of enslaved children in the household, their mobility and roles did not change significantly from the earlier Roman Empire.
M. Bodnaruk examines the epigraphic representation of slavery from the late third- to the sixth-century ce Roman Empire. She surveys mentions of slaves in imperial edicts, census lists, honorific, votive and funerary inscriptions, and slave collars. These inscriptions also provide information on different categories of slaves and freedmen, and thus about late antique slavery. Using an intersectional approach, Bodnaruk outlines the intersection of gender, class and ethnicity as an analytic tool for understanding relations of exploitation and oppression in late Roman society.
Part 4 examines slaveries beyond the Roman Empire. Based on the relatively substantial evidence, N. Lenski demonstrates the importance and intensiveness of the slave system in the Visigothic kingdom in the sixth to seventh centuries: slaves played a significant role in the economy and even in the army. Lenski's analysis shows the peculiar features of Visigothic slaveholding that set it apart from the Roman system while adapting some Roman practices. Most importantly, Lenski convincingly argues that the Visigothic legal structures that enforced slaveholding laid down the fundaments of slave culture in the Iberian Peninsula, which were eventually imported to the New World.
Similarly to de Wet's discussion of hagiography, J. Evans Grubbs analyses the writings of the Romano-British missionary and bishop St Patrick, who was enslaved at sixteen and taken to Ireland. Evans Grubbs uses the Confession, ‘the closest thing we have to a slave narrative from antiquity’ (p. 281), and the Letter to the soldiers of Coroticus to explore how St Patrick's experience and Christianity shaped his views on slavery. While he baptised many people and encouraged them to become monastics, he strongly argued against the enslavement of Christians, especially women, and acted to redeem Christians enslaved by barbarians.
The final chapter, by I. Lindstedt, discusses slaves and ex-slaves in the Quran and the social reality of late antique Arabia. Lindstedt focuses on later Muslim interpretations of Quran 52:24, which depicts believers as served in heaven by ghilmān – which in most cases means ‘boy’, ‘youth’, but understood by late medieval interpreters as referring to slaves. Lindstedt suggests that the latter interpretation may be linked to the revival of the slave trade and the prevalence of slavery in the military and other spheres of life in the thirteenth century.
Like many volumes originating from a conference, this one is eclectic and displays diverse methods, sources and regions. This book is not about ‘late antique slavery’ but about ‘slaveries in late antiquity’ or, rather, a series of test cases of slavery and concepts of slavery. Notwithstanding these comments, the volume is invaluable in panoramically expanding our view on slavery to less explored areas and texts and hopefully will inaugurate further studies.
