The Roman Guide to Slave Management: A Treatise by Nobleman Marcus Sidonius Falx

by Jerry Toner

  Be very careful about buying slaves who have been snatched in raids by pirates. I once bought one by mistake – the dealer misled me as to how he had acquired him – and once he had learnt some Latin, the fellow insisted to me that he was in reality a free man. He claimed that he came from the town of Mothone on the Adriatic Sea, where one day a number of ships had put in pretending to be traders from the east. They agreed to buy wine from the town at the price which the Mothonians had asked for, and even sold them some of their own merchandise of spices. The following day, more people came into the town from the surrounding area since they had heard that there were opportunities for trade and for buying exotic oriental items. Eventually, the quayside was brimming with men and women trying to sell them wine and barter goods from them in return. But as the wine was being carted down to the harbour, the pirates, for that in truth is what they were, suddenly grabbed as many of the men and women as they could and forcibly drove them on to their ships, before sailing off and leaving the town denuded of people. Naturally, I assumed he was telling a lie to win his freedom falsely but he persisted and even persuaded a magistrate to hear his case, although it was kicked out for lack of evidence. In the end I was forced to sell him at a significant loss so that I would not have to put up with his incessant grumbling.

  The price you should be prepared to pay for a slave will obviously vary according to the quality of the merchandise. Be aware that slaves are not cheap. On average you should expect to pay 1,000 sesterces for a healthy adult male, who is somewhere between fifteen and forty years of age. A comparable woman will cost a little less, say 800. Given that a poor man can probably feed a family of four for little more than 500 sesterces a year, it will be clear to you what a considerable investment slaves represent. Older and younger slaves will be a similar price, with the over-forties fetching about 800, and a youth between the ages of eight and fifteen the same. Those of extreme old age or youth, the over-sixties and children below the age of eight, will be cheaper, costing perhaps 400 sesterces. Bear in mind that prices will be far higher if the slave has been trained in a skill, such as reading, accounting or barbering.

  Of course, the sky is the limit if your funds allow. There have been many examples of the wealthy paying colossal sums for exceptional specimens, who might reflect favourably on the status of their owner. Mark Antony, for example, was sold two particularly attractive twin slaves by the dealer Toranius. He is reputed to have paid 200,000 sesterces. But it turned out to be a con because one had actually been born in Asia and the other north of the Alps, a fact that emerged because they spoke with such different accents. When a furious Mark Antony confronted Toranius, the quick-witted dealer replied that this was the real reason he had demanded such a high price: that there was nothing special about twin brothers looking alike, but to find such similarity in two boys from different races was unique and priceless. Mark Antony was so surprised that, even though he had been in a rage, he now believed that these ‘twins’ were the finest possessions he owned and duly reflected his great status as co-ruler of Rome with Octavian.

  I might add that the highest ‘normal’ price I have been able to discover that has been paid for a slave was when Marcus Scaurus offered 750,000 sesterces for the grammarian Daphnis, who was being sold by Attius of Pisaurum. Naturally, this figure has been greatly exceeded by famous slave-actors buying their freedom out of their colossal earnings. Long ago, the actor Roscius supposedly earnt 500,000 a year, so he must have paid much more to get himself freed. There have also been some special cases. One of Nero’s slaves, who ran his military campaign against Tiridates in Armenia, was sold his freedom in return for the plunder, which amounted to some 13 million sesterces. And so, too, when Lutorius Priscus bought the eunuch Paezon from the emperor Tiberius’s henchman Sejanus for 50 million sesterces. The price was given to gratify his lust and to advertise his wealth not because the slave was somehow worth it. It is a sign of how terrible and anxious that period was, under Sejanus’s wicked influence, that the people were too preoccupied to put a stop to a bargain of so scandalous a nature.

  It is worth giving some thought as to the type of character that a slave you are thinking of buying possesses. Does he seem weak-willed or reckless? The types best suited for work are those who are neither extremely cowardly nor extremely brave, since both of these are likely to cause trouble. Those who are too easily cowed will not persevere with their work, while those who have too much courage are difficult to control. On the other hand, in some positions, particularly when it comes to choosing domestic servants, it is useful to seek out those who are deferential and unassertive. Household slaves should be like mice – quiet, timid, but always scurrying busily around. Of course, you should beware those who are merely putting on such attributes for the sake of a quiet life. Many slaves act tamely in order to be entrusted with some gentle household occupation, such as being a waiter at table, which gives them opportunities for relaxation between meals and for eating the fine leftovers from our plates.

  When it comes to buying slaves, let the buyer beware! If you perchance see a slave in whom you are interested you must be sure to examine him or her closely. Just as you would take the cover from a horse you intended to buy so that you might better be able to look at its physique and spot any existing or potential weaknesses, so you should have the slave dealer make the slave undress. Dealers are the most untrustworthy sort and often they will seek to conceal defects with clothing. They will use a long tunic to hide knock knees. Or brightly coloured clothes to distract from weak and puny arms. Check that male slaves have both their testicles intact, since you will likely want to breed from them. In other words, you must be sure to prod and poke to make sure you reveal the truth of the physical specimen in front of you.

  Slave dealers are a most unscrupulous bunch and are to be guarded against at all costs. Their only interest is in generating as large a profit as possible, which they will seek to achieve by all kinds of trickery. Dealers in eunuchs are the worst since they will even mutilate their possessions in contravention of nature’s intentions to increase their value. Many slaves are damaged in transit to the marketplace, suffering weight-loss or injury from the chafing of chains. Beware some of the dealers’ tricks to conceal these defects. For emaciated slaves they apply resin from the terebinth tree to relax the skin so that they can be easily fattened up again. Or they will apply depilatories made of blood, gall and tuna liver to remove adolescent males’ hair and make them look younger. Or they mix root of hyacinth with sweet wine and feed it to adolescents to slow the signs of puberty and the onset of sexual development. Other frauds include using dye to add colour to the pale cheeks of an ailing slave, or dressing them with finery to cover barely healed old wounds and scars.

  Ask questions. Do not take anything the dealer says at face value. Quiz him about the slave’s character. If the slave is female make sure he declares whether she is incapable of bearing children. Find out if she has ever given birth to stillborn infants, or whether she menstruates regularly. Discover whether the slave has ever committed a capital offence, tried to run away, or been condemned to fight the beasts in the arena. All of these facts display the sort of character that you could well do without in your household. Beware the clever slave, unless you are looking to train them as a letter-writer or reader. For the clever slave is a troublesome slave in any other position. But enquire also about moral defects: does the slave have a gambling habit, is he prone to drink too much if given the opportunity, does he prefer the company of other male slaves?

  Avoid slaves who appear melancholy. Being a slave is hardly the most enviable job and those with a depressive disposition will find it turns their mood black. Indeed, it is one of the bugbears of slave-ownership that we have to rely on individuals who frequently break down in tears or even attempt suicide. The law states that sellers are obliged to reveal to prospective buyers if a slave has tried to kill himself but we cannot always be sure that the truth is being told so would do well to tru
st our instincts. This is a more common problem than you might realise. For, as the proverbs say, ‘It is beautiful to die instead of being degraded as a slave’; and ‘If you don’t like being a slave, you will be miserable; but you won’t stop being a slave.’

  Once you have carefully selected your slave and agreed a price, make sure you get a contract. In accordance with our contract law, the vendor should put up a guarantor to stand surety for him should the buyer be dissatisfied in some justifiable way. The contract will state your name and position, the name of the slave, or any other name he may have, his race, the price, the name of the vendor, the name of his guarantor, the date, and the place where the contract has been drawn up. Note that in the purchase of slaves, it is customary for the slave’s own possessions, including any money he has managed to save, to go with the slave, unless it is expressly stated otherwise.

  Make sure you have a written guarantee from the dealer as to the slave’s healthiness. Be sure to understand what the guarantee is protection against: matters such as disease, a tendency to run away and gambling habits must be declared; defects such as laziness and having bad breath need not be. It is not always clear what healthy means. Is a slave whose tongue has been cut out healthy? In fact there are as many possible minor defects in slaves as there are slaves. I’ve had them all: bed-wetters, epileptics, missing toes, stammerers, thieves. We all know what a bad slave is: he is fickle, lazy, slow, late, greedy, obstinate, ugly, pot-bellied and squint-eyed, he slouches and shrugs his shoulders as he speaks. By contrast we all know what a good slave is: loyal, hard-working and vigilant. The problem is that it is often very difficult to tell them apart when they have been brushed up by the slave dealers.

  Once purchased you will also have to consider what work you are going to put your slave to doing. There is a multitude of possible tasks that can await him. Slaves divide broadly into two types: rural and urban. Those employed in the countryside can be taught the crafts of the ploughman, the pruner, the water-carrier, the potter, the sweeper and so on. The slave women can be assigned to such roles as clothes-folder, furniture-polisher, wool-weigher or masseuse. Those who are set to work in the urban household also need to be matched to particular tasks. Beauty, for example, is best suited for serving at table. If you are wealthy, you will expect to have a retinue of slaves, all filling different positions within the household. There must be litter-bearers, a secretary to read your letters to you aloud, and write your replies. Others should be set to provide gentle musical accompaniment at mealtimes, or employed as doorkeepers, concubines, timekeepers and messengers.

  Female slaves can be kept for household tasks and breeding. The disreputable, of course, buy them to work as prostitutes in brothels. These days many Roman mothers do not wish to perform the difficult task of nursing their own children and prefer to leave it to slave wet-nurses. Here, choosing the right nurse is especially important, since this is often the woman whom your child will first call ‘mummy’. When it comes to babysitting my children, then, I like to employ slave children whom I have fathered with my own slave women. The slaves who are closest to you, as their master, are those who looked after you when you were young. My old childhood-tutor, Felix, used to take me to school every morning, kept me safe from any trouble and helped in everything from getting dressed to playing at gladiators. Of course he had been given the job because he was useless for anything else. As the great Athenian statesman Pericles said when he saw a slave fall from a tree and break his leg: ‘He’s just become a tutor.’

  Many of these tutors are actually highly educated. You should decide whether you want a thoroughly uneducated helper for your boys, like Felix, or a properly educated slave who can help them develop into the great orators you would like them to be. The worst thing is to use a slave who has a little learning but becomes convinced of his own genius. They constantly interfere with the child’s proper education and sometimes even brutally impose their own stupidity on the children. This is particularly important because these tutors can easily infect their charges with their own vices. Even Alexander the Great is reputed to have been permanently afflicted with the vices of his tutor Leonidas.

  Beware of ostentation. There is nothing more vulgar than some social parvenu employing a whole host of completely unnecessary slaves to carry out the most worthless tasks simply as a means to advertise their master’s excessive wealth. One wealthy freedman I know had a nomenclator, a name-caller, whose function was to remind their master of the names of the people he met. How insulting for his guests to have their name prompted by some slave. What is even worse is when people give this job to some old retainer who is good for no kind of productive work and whose brain is addled by age. They make constant mistakes and cause great embarrassment to all. Perhaps the most ridiculous use of slaves in this manner was made by a very rich man called Calvisius Sabinus. He inherited a huge estate, but was uneducated and his memory was so bad that he could not even remember the names of the heroes in Homer’s epics. Wanting to appear as an educated man, and somehow therefore deserving of his fortune, he bought some clever slaves at great expense and set them to memorising the great works of literature. One was to memorise the whole of Homer off by heart, another Hesiod, and nine others were to learn by rote the nine lyric poets. It took great training for them to be able to read well enough to achieve this. But once he had this literary slave gang in place he started to pester his dinner guests, continually asking them for some lines of poetry for his crew to quote. Sabinus claimed that these slaves had cost him a fortune. The same number of bookcases would have been cheaper.

  Of course, not all slaves are owned by such silly private individuals. The state also employs many public slaves to do such things as keep reliable accounts and maintain the roads. These can make a sound investment if you are looking to acquire second-hand slaves since they have not been worked overly hard and are often delighted to be given the chance to work in the dynamic atmosphere of the private household, even if this means a decline in status. But even with the state’s slaves great care does need to be exercised. When the emperor Trajan sent Pliny to Bithynia as governor to investigate alleged corruption, he discovered that convicted criminals who had evaded their punishment were being employed as public slaves. They were even being paid an annual stipend, like most public slaves, and had been in post for long periods of time. Indeed many were by then quite old and were, by all accounts, now leading virtuous lives. Naturally the emperor demanded that these criminals should suffer their proper punishment, unless it was long in the past, in which case they should be allocated to those jobs which were as good as punishments, such as working in the public baths or cleaning the sewers.

  With regard to the number of slaves you might have to buy, the great Cato says we should, in the matter of rural slaves, base the calculation on the size of the estate and the type of crops to be grown. Writing about olive groves and vineyards, he gives two formulae. The first is one in which he shows how an olive grove of 60 hectares should be equipped. For a farm of this size, he says that the following thirteen slaves should be kept: an overseer, a housekeeper, five labourers, three teamsters, one muleteer, one swineherd and one shepherd. The second formula he gives is for a vineyard of 25 hectares, on which he says should be kept the following fifteen slaves: an overseer, a housekeeper, ten labourers, a teamster, a muleteer and a swineherd. Others state that one man is enough for 2 hectares, and that he should be able to dig over that area in forty-five days, when allowing for the usual inconveniences such as illness, bad weather and idleness. But personally I think these rules are too vague. Cato should have stated his formula in such a way that we can add or subtract from the number proportionately according to whether the farm is larger or smaller. Further, he should have kept the overseer and the housekeeper outside of the number of slaves that is required. For if you cultivate less than 60 hectares of olives you cannot get along with less than one overseer.

  The number of herdsmen is determined differently, with var
ious calculations being popular. My own practice is to have a herdsman to every 80 to 100 wool-bearing sheep. If flocks of sheep are very large (and some people have as many as 1,000) you can decrease the number of shepherds more easily than you can in smaller flocks. My own flocks contain 700. Two men are needed for a herd of 50 mares, and each of these should certainly have for his use a mare that has been broken in. Rich landlords generally entrust all these functions of a great estate to members of their own household. If towns or villages are too far from their farm, they make sure that they have some blacksmiths on the estate as well as other essential craftsmen, so that the slaves on the farm won’t have to leave off working and idle about on work days as if they were on holiday, instead of making the farm more profitable by getting on with their tasks.

  Oh how different were things in the great days of our forefathers! There was none of this discussion of how best to employ our great swathes of slaves. Back then they lived simply, with perhaps a single slave who took their meals in common with the master. Now we even have to lock up our pantries to protect the household’s food and wine from being stolen by the legions of household slaves, that great crowd of outsiders we have let inside our homes. Indeed there are so many of them that we even need a slave just to remind us of the names of our slaves!