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The idea of resistance

A Roman senator named Pupius Piso once ordered his slaves not to speak unless spoken to. He had no time for idle talk. He also arranged an elegant dinner-party at which the guest of honour was to be a dignitary named Clodius

At the appropriate time all the guests arrived except Clodius. So Piso sent the slave responsible for having invited the guest of honour to see where he was - several times - but still Clodius did not appear. In despair Piso finally questioned the slave: 'Did you send Clodius an invitation?' 'Yes.' 'So why hasn't he come?' 'Because he declined'. 'Then why didn't you tell me earlier? 'Because you didn't ask.'

This anecdote was recorded, about AD 100, by the Greek moralist Plutarch. It is a story that presupposes a constant tension between slave and master in the ancient Roman world, and is a striking illustration of how a lowly Roman slave could outwit his superior master.

Technically Roman slaves were the property, the chattels, of their owners, held in a state of total subjection. But to outwit an owner as Piso's slave did was to win a victory in the game of psychological warfare that always existed between master and slave.

For unlike other forms of property, slaves were human beings with minds of their own, and they didn't always obey their owners as unthinkingly as they were supposed to. They had the capacity to resist the absolute authority their owners formally exercised, and when Piso's slave crushingly embarrassed his master by obeying his instructions to the letter, for a moment (at least) he placed Piso in the inferior position that he normally occupied himself.

He found, in other words, a way to assert himself, to exert power against the powerful, so that the asymmetrical roles of master and slave were suddenly inverted.

The realities of slavery

In Plutarch's day Rome had been the predominant political power in the ancient Mediterranean world for roughly 500 years, and was to remain so for three centuries more. Throughout this span of time Rome was a slave-owning society, acquiring its slaves through its wars of conquest and through trade beyond the borders of its empire.

In Rome and Italy, in the four centuries between 200 BC and 200 AD, perhaps a quarter or even a third of the population was made up of slaves. Over time millions of men, women, and children lived their lives in a state of legal and social non-existence with no rights of any kind. They were non-persons - notice that in Plutarch's story the slave does not even have a name - and they couldn't own anything, marry, or have legitimate families.

Their role was to provide labour, or to add to their owners' social standing as visible symbols of wealth, or both. Some slaves were treated well, but there were few restraints on their owners' powers, and physical punishment and sexual abuse were common. Owners thought of their slaves as enemies. By definition slavery was a brutal, violent and dehumanising institution, where slaves were seen as akin to animals.

Few records have survived from Roman slaves to allow modern historians to deduce from them a slave's perception of his or her life of servitude. Rome produced no slaves-turned-abolitionist such as the African-Americans Frederick Douglass or Harriet Jacobs.

Instead the evidence available comes overwhelmingly from people such as Plutarch, who represented the slave-owning classes. But that evidence does show that Roman slaves managed to demonstrate their opposition to slavery in various ways.

Slave rebellions

The most obvious way was through open rebellion. In 73-71 BC the gladiator Spartacus famously led an uprising of thousands of slaves in central Italy, formed an army that defeated several Roman legions, and at one point threatened Rome itself.

Earlier there had been similar large-scale rebellions on the island of Sicily. But open rebellion was also the most dangerous form of resistance, because the stakes were enormously high. The greater the size of the rebellion, the greater the likelihood was of betrayal from within, and the greater the threat was of serious retaliation, re-enslavement or death.

Spartacus himself died in battle, and thousands of his captured followers were crucified. The slave rebels in Sicily were likewise thoroughly suppressed. It isn't surprising that they had no successors, or that their rebellions achieved nothing of lasting value for Roman slaves.

Still, the Romans always feared another Spartacus. The philosopher Seneca tells of a proposal that was once made in the Roman senate requiring slaves to wear distinctive clothing so that they could be easily recognised. But once the senators realised that the slaves might then become conscious of their strength, and make common cause against their masters, they abandoned the idea.

Alternatives to rebellion

Roman relief of a scene showing a slave rebuked by his master  © Many slaves probably internalised their social inferiority, and accommodated themselves to servitude without thinking in terms of resistance. Others responded more violently, and sometimes tragically.

Those who fought against Rome knew that they could be sent to the slave-market if taken as a prisoner-of-war. They are often said to have killed themselves rather than face the prospect of enslavement - a clear indictment of the horrors involved in the sudden transition from freedom to slavery. Images of the vanquished committing suicide are still visible on the Column of Trajan in Rome.

At other times, slaves who were unable to tolerate their conditions assaulted their owners. In the mid-first century AD an anonymous slave murdered his master, a high official in the imperial administration, either because the master had reneged on a promise to set the slave free or because the two were rivals in a sexual intrigue.

The aftermath was disastrous. Roman law required a man's slaves to come to his aid if he were attacked, under penalty of death. The law was enforced against those slaves who had not come to the victim's aid in this case, and all the slaves in the household - allegedly 400 of them - were executed, even though most of them could not possibly have known anything about the murder.

There were other ways to alleviate the burdens of slavery. One was to try to escape, either to return to an original homeland or simply to find safe refuge somewhere. Romans labelled runaway slaves 'fugitives', and as the greatest modern historian of ancient slavery, Moses Finley, has remarked, 'fugitive slaves are almost an obsession in the sources'. This suggests that the incidence of running away was always high.

To deal with the problem, the Romans hired professional slave-catchers to hunt down runaways, and posted advertisements in public places giving precise descriptions of fugitives and offering rewards for their capture. Around the necks of slaves who were recovered they also attached iron collars, giving instructions on what to do with the slaves who wore them if they happened to escape again. Examples can still be seen in museums.

There is no way of knowing how many Roman slaves successfully escaped slavery by running away. But it was possible. And it helped that skin colour was no impediment.

The great orator Cicero can be heard grumbling in his correspondence about a slave named Dionysius, who was well-educated enough to have supervised Cicero's personal library and who must have been relatively well-treated. He ran away anyway. Cicero used all his considerable influence to find the man, but to no avail: Dionysius slipped away across the Adriatic and is last heard of well out of Cicero's reach - somewhere in the Balkans.

Day-to day resistance

Running away was less dangerous than rebellion, but it was still a hazardous enterprise. Slave-catchers apart, Roman law forbade the harbouring of fugitives, so slaves on the run were always in danger and if caught could be savagely punished. To many therefore it must have made sense not to risk life and limb by running away, but to carry out acts of wilful obstruction or sabotage that harmed slave-owners' interests at minimal risk to themselves.

Slaves, for example, might steal food or other supplies from the household. Those in positions of responsibility might falsify record books, and embezzle money from their owners, or arrange for their own manumission (setting free). Ordinary farm labourers might deliberately go slow on the job, or injure the animals they worked with to avoid work - or they might pretend to be ill, destroy equipment, or damage buildings. If your job was to make wine and you had to produce a certain quota, why not add in some sea-water to help things along? Almost any slave could play truant or simply waste time.

All these petty forms of day-to-day resistance appealed to Roman slaves. They allowed slaves to frustrate and annoy their owners, and offered the satisfaction of knowing that their owners' powers were not absolute - that even the most humble of human beings could take action to empower themselves.

Owners complained that their slaves were lazy and troublesome - instead of working they were always pilfering food or clothing or valuables (even the silverware), setting fire to property (villas included), or wandering around the city's art galleries and public entertainments.

But it was in the decisions they made to cause vexation that slaves most forcefully expressed their humanity, and their opposition to the institution that oppressed them. Their sporadic acts of defiance created a permanent undercurrent of low-level resistance to slavery that was deeply embedded in Roman society.

The slaves were motivated not by a sense of class solidarity - Rome's slave population was far too heterogeneous for that - but by the desire to find ways in which, as individuals, they could find relief from their subject status, if only temporarily.

The relationship between slaves and masters at Rome was a contest fought in the arena of the mind. Masters could draw on all the weapons of law, status and established authority - there was never in Roman history any movement to abolish slavery - whereas slaves had little more to fight with than their wits.

But as Plutarch's story symbolically shows, the lines of battle had to be constantly redrawn, as slaves matched their will against the will of those who owned them. And it was not always the masters who won.

Find out more

Books

Slavery in the Roman Empre by RH Barrow (Barnes & Noble, 1998)

Suetonius' Life of Nero: An Historical Commentary edited by KR Bradley (Collection Latomus, Brussels, 1978)

Slaves and Masters in the Roman Empire: A Study in Social Control by KR Bradley (Oxford University Press, 1987)

Slavery and Rebellion in the Roman World, 140 BC - 70 BC by KR Bradley (Batsford, 1989; reprint 1998)

Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology by MI Finley (Chatto and Windus, 1980)

Slavery and Society at Rome by KR Bradley (Cambridge University Press, 1994; Spanish translation 1998)

Suetonius edited and translated by JC Rolfe; revised edition with a new introduction by KR Bradley (Harvard University Press, 1998)

Conquerors and Slaves by K Hopkins (Cambridge, 1978)

Spartacus and the Slave Wars by BD Shaw (Boston, 2001)

About the author

Keith Bradley is the Eli J Shaheen Professor of Classics, Concurrent Professor of History, and Chair of the Department of Classics at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. His special interests are in Roman social and cultural history, particularly the history of slavery and of the family.