Until relatively recently, slavery in late antiquity was considered through the lens of a powerful metanarrative of crisis and transition. Late antique slavery was seen as a marginal phenomenon in comparison to earlier periods of Greek and Roman history, and in the process of being transformed into medieval serfdom. Over the last fifteen years, this traditional metanarrative has been dismantled by a number of very important studies.[1] These studies have made two major arguments. First, that slavery in late antiquity is not a marginal phenomenon, but that in many areas and periods it maintained its structural significance for late antique societies, economies and cultures. Second, that late antique slavery cannot be perceived as a transitional phenomenon to medieval serfdom. Instead, late antique slavery has to be examined as a phenomenon on its own, separately from both slavery in the early empire and from slavery and serfdom in the central and late Middle Ages.
This volume, consisting of an introduction and fourteen chapters, offers the first collective effort to re-examine late antique slavery in the aftermath of the watershed of the last fifteen years. As the introduction by Chris de Wet makes clear (1-12), it does not attempt to offer a new synthesis of or theoretical framework for slavery in late antiquity. This is rightly considered premature; instead, and in line with the above developments, the volume aims to illustrate the polyphony of late antique slavery. This polyphony requires expanding the temporal, spatial, linguistic, and evidentiary limits of late antique slavery. The temporal frame chosen (150-700 CE) enables the examination of links and transformations in comparison with early imperial slavery, but also allows the incorporation of early Islam into this history. This is an extremely important and valuable move. Equally important is the extension of the spatial framework: the volume makes an excellent effort to present a panorama of slaveholding societies across Western Eurasia: from Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and the Islamic world in the East to Gaul, Visigothic Spain, and Ireland in the West. This is undoubtedly a significant contribution of the volume: only by examining systematically the diversity of local slaveholding societies will it gradually become possible to offer a new metanarrative of late antique slavery.
Furthermore, the volume expands the study of documents in Greek and Latin, which tends to dominate the study of ancient slavery, with the examination of less known sources in other linguistic corpora, including Syriac, Coptic, Hebrew, and Arabic. Finally, the study of late antique slavery continuously reveals the wealth of sources that have never been examined systematically or have never been examined in connection with the study of slavery. The study of the relationship between Christianity and slavery was long dominated by the continuous re-examination of a set number of key texts. Over the last decade, a stream of studies has brought to light fascinating texts that raise new issues. This trend is continued in this volume: the fascinating Syriac text of Euphemia and the Goth has the primary place, but it is accompanied by the examination of Greek homilies and hymns from the fifth and sixth centuries, the monastic works of Paul of Tamma and Shenoute, and the exegetical commentaries of the Quran.
The individual chapters can be described on the basis of five major axes. The first explores slavery in the discursive world of early Christianity and Islam. Pieter Botha examines the role of slavery and of relations between masters and slaves in early Christian discourse (15-42). Botha attempts to answer the traditional question of why Christian discourse accepted slavery as a given, notwithstanding the Christian preaching of spiritual equality before God. Employing Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, cultural capital, and symbolic violence, he argues that the constitutive role of symbolic violence in Christian ‘orthoposture’ habituated early Christians in accepting the master’s point of view in regards to slavery. Ilaria Ramelli examines the connection between asceticism, justice and the renunciation of slavery in Judaism and early Christianity (43-65). She claims that an ascetic strand of Judaism and Christianity considered slavery as injustice, and that as a result, asceticism was not simply a form of frugality, but an early form of abolitionism. Unfortunately, the evidence for this conceptual link is effectively non-existent, and Ramelli relies continuously on mistranslations and misinterpretations of ancient texts. Arkadiy Avdokhin discusses the role of Christ as liberator in Greek homilies and hymns from late antiquity (66-86). He illustrates the complex web of linkages between the contemporary world of slavery, debt bondage, patronage, and Roman bureaucracy and the discourses and symbols employed by the writers of hymns and homilies. Finally, Ilkka Lindstedt offers a general introduction to slavery in late antique Arabia and in the literary context of the Quran, while engaging in a detailed discussion of how early Islamic exegetes and commentaries interpreted a Quranic verse concerning the servants of the faithful in paradise (298-315). While some of these exegetes considered the verse to refer to children or youths, many medieval interpreters thought that it referred to slaves, thus inscribing slavery in the divine heaven.
The second axis focuses on how the religious communities and imperial states of late antiquity attempted to interpret and shape slavery. Maijastina Kahlos discusses late antique ideas of ethnicity and enslavement (87-104). The chapter shows evident continuities with earlier ideas about the enslavement of barbarians, natural slavery, and slavery as an extreme form of bad luck. At the same time, it examines the emergence during late antiquity of new ways of exploring the origins and justification of slavery, through discussion of the Biblical story of Ham and Esau. Catherine Hezser examines what was specifically Jewish about the ideas and practices of slavery in the rabbinic sources of late antiquity (129-48). Hezser identifies both changes in regards to earlier periods of Jewish slavery, as well as convergences and divergences with Roman slavery and the legislation of the Christian emperors. Particularly interesting is the rabbinic disavowal of masters begetting legitimate children from their slave concubines, as was the case in Biblical slavery. On the other hand, while slaves of Jewish masters had to undertake a series of ritual acts in order to be able to operate in Jewish households, they were not considered proper Jews, but only ‘slaves of Israel’, an interesting difference with Christianity and Islam. The interest in ransoming enslaved Jews could be limited to those of evident religious knowledge and within the price limits established by the market. Finally, Christine Luckritz Marquis discusses the role of slaves and slavery in the Coptic monastic texts of Paul of Tamma and Shenoute of Atripe (149-169). The chapter examines both the possible presence of real slaves in the monastic communities of Paul and Shenoute and the communities with which they interacted, as well as the employment of slave metaphors in their respective discourses.
A third axis examines references to slaves and slavery in different literary and documentary corpora. Uiran Gebara da Silva explores references to agricultural slavery in a series of poetic works from late antique Gaul, examining the texts of Ausonius, Salvian, Paulinus of Pella, and the comedy Querolus (170-87). These various references are set in their respective literary and conceptual contexts; as a result, it is possible to argue that agricultural slavery was still considered by these authors an important element of the agricultural economy of late antique Gaul. Marja Vierros examines references to slaves in the sixth-century corpora of papyri from Petra and Nessana (191-209). As she shows, one out of six papyri from Petra mentions slaves, while references in Nessana are appreciably rarer, thus documenting the diverse significance of slavery in the area. Most of the documents register transactions involving various forms of property, including slaves. The chapter offers an interesting analysis of the onomastics of the recorded slaves, while also discussing the ambiguities of the term oiketēs that appears in some of these texts. Mariana Bodnaruk offers a fascinating exploration of slaves and freedmen in the diminished epigraphic corpora of late antiquity (224-48). She discusses references to slaves in the important census inscriptions; the role of slaves and freedmen in dedications, honorary inscriptions, and funerary monuments; as well as a new form of late antique epigraphic corpus, that of slave collars. Finally, the chapter offers a review of the diverse roles of slaves as they appear in the epigraphic corpora and the various terms employed to identify them.
A fourth axis illustrates one of the most promising recent trends in ancient slavery studies: the biographical perspective. De Wet’s chapter is an exemplary discussion of a Syriac hagiographical text titled Euphemia and the Goth (107-28). The text narrates the enslavement of a free girl from Syrian Edessa by a Gothic soldier in the Roman army, her abduction to the Goth’s fatherland, and her miraculous liberation and return to her homeland. De Wet provides an excellent discussion of the role of slavery in the discourses of Syriac Christianity; but this impressive story of the gendered experiences of enslavement offers fascinating food for thought for reconstructing the biographical perspective of ancient enslaved persons and their diverse self-perceptions. Equally fascinating is Judith Evans Grubbs’ discussion of the only ancient slave autobiography, St Patrick’s Confessio and the related Epistle to Coroticus (281-97). It is another example of the experiences of enslavement and liberation and the multiple identities of enslaved persons. The slave identity that was imposed on Patrick during his enslavement co-existed with the religious identity from his life before captivity. At the same time, these texts enable us to explore how Christianity shaped Patrick’s interpretation of his experiences in enslavement. April Pudsey and Ville Vuolanto examine the experiences of enslaved children through the corpus of papyri from imperial and late antique Egypt, with a particular focus on Oxhyrynchus (210-23). They rightly focus on the lived experience of slavery, by narrating individual stories of enslaved children and discussing the variety of factors that shaped their lives in both convergent and divergent ways.
The final axis consists of a single impressive chapter by Noel Lenski, which examines slavery in the Visigothic kingdom (251-80). This is the only chapter in the volume that offers an overview of a specific late antique slaveholding society and explores both continuities with the Roman past as well as novel and peculiar late antique phenomena. Lenski documents the constitutive role of slavery in most sectors of the Visigothic society and economy. This is an important argument for the significance of slavery in the late antique world. At the same time, Lenski emphasises the particular local inflections of Visigothic slavery: the common use of penal enslavement for native subjects, the early recognition of slave unions by Visigothic law, and the regular employment of slaves in Visigothic armies. Other studies along these lines will be essential for the future study of late antique slaveries.
In conclusion: this is a very stimulating volume, which offers a highly needed set of new temporal, spatial, and conceptual directions for the study of slavery in the late antique world. It should be read widely, both by scholars interested in late antiquity as well as by specialists in other periods of slavery.
Notes
[1] Y. Rotman, Byzantine Slavery and the Mediterranean World, Cambridge MA and London, 2009; K. Harper, Slavery in the Late Roman World, AD 275-425, Cambridge, 2011; A. Rio, Slavery after Rome, 500-1100, Oxford, 2017.