Slavery and Social Death in the Ancient Roman World

Abstract

The institution of slavery has been entrenched in human society for centuries from early Babylonia in 600 BCE to the American South in 1800 CE. In 1982, historian Orlando Patterson proposed a new rather contentious definition of slavery from a sociological view (as compared to the previous legal ones), emphasizing the condition of those in slavery. This paper attempts to contextualize slave systems with Patterson’s description of slaves as ”socially dead” (i.e. unable to form meaningful socialties). While hundreds of slave systems have existed across the globe, they differ in the level of autonomy given to slaves and opportunities for social advancement. One particularly interesting system is that of Ancient Rome from 200 BCE to 200 CE–a time period marked by an influx of slaves from across the Mediterranean and debates over their position in Roman society. This paper examines the opportunities available to both urbana (urban) and rustica (rural) slaves in Rome to form meaningful social ties with one another with emphasis on the lives of female slaves to determine the extent to which these slaves may be called ”socially dead”.