Food, status, and the peculium of agricultural slaves

Journal of Roman Archaeology

Volumn 18, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 278-292

  Roth, Ulrike ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 60949978242     PISSN: 10477594     EISSN: 10634304     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S1047759400007364     Document Type: Article

References (64)

1. See W. W. Buckland, The Roman law of slavery (Cambridge 1908) 196-98,
2. W. v. Uxkull, "Peculium," in RE 19.1 (1937) 13-16.
3. For a treatment of the development of the concept of peculium in Roman times, seel. Zeber, A study of the peculium of a slave in pre-Classical and Classical Roman law (Wroclaw 1981) chapt. 3.
4. E.g., W. L. Westermann, The slave systems of Greek and Roman antiquity (Philadelphia 1955) 83;
5. J. Crook, Law and life of Rome (London 1967) 188-91;
6. A. Kirschenbaum, Sons, slaves and freedmen in Roman commerce (Jerusalem 1987) 31-88;
7. A. Watson, Roman slave law (London 1987) 90-101;
8. Johnston, "Peculiar questions," in P. McKechnie (ed.), Thinking like a lawyer (Leiden 2002) 5-13.
9. U. Roth, "Food rations in Cato's De Agricultura and female slave labour," Ostraka 11.1 (2002) 195-213.
10. M. Weber, "Social causes of decline of ancient civilizations," in R. I. Frank (transl.), The agrarian sociology of ancient civilizations (Bristol 1976) 398
11. (the original article appeared as "Die sozialen Gründe des Untergangs der antiken Zivilisation," Die Wahrheit 6 [1896] 57-77).
12. Cf. R. G. Barrow, Slavery in the Roman Empire (London 1928) 77 f. and 88;
13. N. Brockmeyer, Antike Sklaverei (Darmstadt 1979) 84;
14. M. L. Ryder, Sheep and man (London 1983) 712.
15. Cf. J. M. Frayn, Sheep-rearing and the wool trade in Italy during the Roman period (Liverpool 1984) chapt. 8,
16. E.g., R. Étienne, "Les rations alimentaires des esclaves de la "familia rustica" d'après Caton," Index 10 (1981) 66-77;
17. Foxhall and H. A. Forbes, "Σιτομε τρειáα : the role of grain as a staple food in classical antiquity," Chiron 12 (1982) 62-65;
18. F. de Martino, "Sull' alimentazione degli schiavi," ParPass 48 (1993) 401-27;
19. Prell, Sozialökonomische Untersuchungen zur Armut im antiken Rom. Von den Gracchen bis Kaiser Diokletian (Stuttgart 1997) 98-105.
20. G. Woolf, "Food, poverty and patronage: the significance of the epigraphy of the Roman alimentary schemes in Early Imperial Italy," PBSR 58 (1990) 215.
21. K. R. Bradley, Slavery and rebellion in the Roman world, 140 BC-70 BC (Bloomington, IN 1998) 51 f.;
22. P. Garnsey, Food and society in classical antiquity (Cambridge 1999) 110.
23. Cf. Cato, Agr. 143. This point is elaborated in my "Inscribed meaning: the vilica and the villa economy," PBSR 72 (2004) 101-24.
24. E.g., A. Carandini, Schiavi in Italia (Rome 1988) 33, who maintains, on the basis of evidence provided by the agricultural writers, that the managerial slaves "possono vivere accoppiati (con una conserva), avere figli e anche un peculio" (my emphasis).
25. On this theme see also O. Hiltbrunner, "Der Gutsverwalter des Horaz (epist. 1.14)," Gymnasium 74 (1967) 314.
26. On (property) rewards and incentives, see generally K. R. Bradley, Slaves and masters in the Roman Empire (Oxford 1985) esp. 21-45.
27. K. Hopkins, Conquerors and slaves (Cambridge 1978) 106.
28. For the modern discussion on natural reproduction, see W. Scheidel, "Quantifying the sources of slaves in the Early Roman Empire," JRS 87 (1997) 156-69.
29. For the Antebellum South, see J. O. Breeden (ed.), Advice amongst masters. The ideal in slave management in the Old South (Westport, CT 1980) chapt. 17;
30. for Brazil, see C. F. S. Cardoso, "Escravismo e dinâmica da população escrava nas Américas," Revista de Estudos Econômicos 13.1 (1983) 41-54;
31. A. Barros de Castro, "A economia política, o capitalismo e a escravidão," in J. R. de Amaral Lapa (ed.), Modos de produção e realidade brasileira (Petrópolis 1980) 67-108;
32. for the Caribbean, see the compilation "Subaltern autonomy: social and economic culture," in V. Shepherd and H. McD. Beckles (edd.), Caribbean slavery in the Atlantic world (Kingston 2000) 712-83.
33. The difficulties in the study of faunal remains are elaborated by M. R. MacKinnon, Production and consumption of animals in Roman Italy (JRA Suppl. 54, 2004) 21-24.
34. I rely on the site survey by A. King, "Diet in the Roman world: a regional inter-site comparison of the mammal bones," JRA 12 (1999) 192.
35. On the two sites generally, see A. Carandini et al., Settefinestre. Una villa schiavistica nell'Etruria romana (3 vols., Modena 1985),
36. A. M. Small (ed.), Gravina. An Iron Age and Republican settlement in Apulia (2 vols., London 1992).
37. Carandini ibid. vol. 2, 182-88.
38. id., "Villas and animal bones," in K. Branigan and D. Miles (edd.), The economies of Romano-British villas (Sheffield 1988) 52 f.;
39. On the site, see A. M. Small et al., "Excavations on Botromagno, Gravina di Puglia, 1992," Echos du Monde Classique 37 (1993) 339-47.
40. The site is now generally identified with Silvium: A. M. Small, "Apulia before and after the Roman conquest: recent evidence from Botromagno," JRA 15 (2002) 375 f.
41. A. M. Small et al., 'Excavations at Botromagno, Gravina di Puglia, 1993," Echos du Monde Classique 38 (1994) 254 f.
42. On the notion of servile and dependant labour arrangements that are 'non-Roman', see N. Terrenato, 'Tam firmum municipium: the Romanization of Volaterrae and its cultural implications," JRS 88 (1998) 94-114.
43. On the mammal bones at Botromagno, see generally J. Watson, "The mammals," in Small (supra n.50) chapt. 8.
44. M. R. MacKinnon, "The faunal remains," in A. Small et al., "A pit group of c.80-70 BC from Gravina di Puglia," PBSR 62 (1994) 248,
45. So D. W. Rathbone, "The slave mode of production," JRS 73 (1983) 162.
46. For an example of the use of material remains to rewrite the story of slavery in the Antebellum South, see B. J. Heath, Hidden lives: the archaeology of slave life at Thomas Jefferson's Poplar Forest (Charlottesville, VA 1999).
47. See E. Dench, From barbarians to new men (Oxford 1995) 116-25. As with peasant farming, and in light of Italy's physical and geological diversity, a more complete picture depends on a more respectable sample.
48. On the subject of regional differences that may be discerned only through widespread regional archaeological excavation, see J. K. Evans, "Plebs rustica. The peasantry of Classical Italy I," AJAH 5 (1980) 35 f.
49. E.g., N. Baba, 'Slave-owning slaves and the structure of slavery in the Early Roman Empire," Kodai 1 (1990) 24-35;
50. E. Hermann-Otto, Ex ancilla natus. Untersuchungen zu den "hausgeborenen" Sklaven und Sklavinnen im Westen des römischen Kaiserreiches (Stuttgart 1994) 221-25, esp. n.49.
51. On the duties of vilica and vilicus, see J.-J. Aubert, Business managers in ancient Rome (Leiden 1994) esp. chapt. 3;
52. id., "Workshop managers," in W. V. Harris (ed.), The inscribed economy (JRA Suppl. 6, 1993) 178, n.50;
53. J. Carlsen, Vilici and Roman estate managers until AD 284 (Rome 1995) chapts. II-III.
54. J. Carlsen, "The vilica and Roman estate management," in H. Sancisi-Weerdenburg et al. (edd.), De agricultura: in memoriam Pieter Willem de Neeve (Amsterdam 1993) 202.
55. See H. Erman, Servus vicarius. L'esclave de l'esclave romain (Lausanne 1896) 433.
56. This is recognised in principle by Y.-G. Cha, "The function of peculium in Roman slavery during the first two centuries A.D.," in T. Yuge and M. Doi (edd.), Forms of control and subordination in antiquity (Leiden 1988) 435 f.
57. Cf. E. M. Schtajerman, Die Krise der Sklavenhalterordnung im Westen des römischen Reiches (transl. W. Seyfarth; Berlin 1964) 107.
58. On the significance of villas as centres of trade and economic activity, see also the argument by C. R. Whittaker, "The consumer city revisited: the vicus and the city," JRA 3 (1990) 115 ff.
59. O. Patterson, Slavery and social death (Cambridge, MA 1982) 182-86.
60. Cf. K. D. White, Roman farming (London 1970) 377-83.
61. S. B. Schwartz, Slaves, peasants, and rebels. Reconsidering Brazilian slavery (Urbana, IL 1996) 83, providing also an overview of trends in the study of Brazilian slavery.
62. (transi. B. D. Shaw, Spartacus and the slave wars [Boston 2001] 81).
63. So recently Shaw (supra n.96) 9 f.: "a large proportion of the slaves acquired by the owners of the farms and ranches in Sicily in the first half of the second century B.C. came from the eastern Mediterranean. [They] shared common linguistic, cultural, and religious backgrounds. Moreover, since many of them had not been born into slavery, they also shared the memory of freedom. These factors contributed to their willingness to communicate with each other and to entertain the possibility of armed resistance to enslavement." Cf. also M. I. Finley, Ancient Sicily to the Arab conquest (London 1968) esp. 138,
64. F. H. Thompson, The archaeology of Greek and Roman slavery (London 2003) chapt. 8.