The volume is divided into three parts, with each part containing three chapters. Part I: “Action, Initiative et Autorité des Esclaves dans la Sphère Religieuse.” Part II: “Participation Religieuse et Sociabilités Serviles,” and Part III: “Subordination et Autonomie Religieuses de l’Esclave.” The end of the monograph is an immensely helpful summary and concluding chapter, which shows the importance of understanding how the religious practices of the slaves and their participation in public rituals played a fundamental role in their lives in the ancient Roman world.
Amiri’s thesis is that we need to understand the enslaved, not as a stakeholder of a homogeneous entity and stereotyped element on the margins of society, but as having an identity projected onto them by others, and an identity they themselves represented. Amiri is interested in the religious experiences of slaves in ancient Rome, Latium, and Campania, from the first century BCE to the third century CE. To do a systematic exploration of the religious practices of the slaves in these contexts, he considers the modalities by which slaves were invested into religious spaces, whether public or private and, inter alia, what it meant to the slaves who were navigating various religious spaces. He aims to open the archives and break the silences regarding the place of the slaves in various spaces and cultic practices. For Amiri, the challenge is to understand the place of slaves in religious spaces and in their cultic practices by demonstrating how the religious functions of slaves were subject to constant negotiations.
One important element that Amiri stresses in this study is that the slave was not excluded from public worship. Their presence was not considered to distort the progress of religious ceremonies nor to prevent the establishment of a relationship with the protective deities of the city. Rather, their active participation should be regarded as an essential component of their integration into the wider society. By retaining religious or cultic knowledge, the slave was enabled to participate in ritual activities. In this way, they could be used to guard temples and be at the service of priests to facilitate religious rituals and cultic activities. However, although they may have possessed a relative degree of autonomy in matters related to cultic practices, they needed to be prudent in the ways in which they navigated and negotiated their various responsibilities as slaves. This positionality, that of being inside and outside of a very complex social and economic system, is important to highlight, as it leads us to recognize the religious gestures, acts, and practices that were present in the lives of the slaves acting as ritual specialists. But that recognition should not prompt us to think, as Amiri insists, that their fundamental status, as slaves, was modified. They were slaves while in possession of certain technical abilities that gave them access to specific spaces and privileges. Thus, it is important to properly understand the religious practices of the slave according to the situation(s) in which they found themselves. They had to navigate a multitude of social factors, and these factors contributed to constructing their place, albeit always prudently, within various religious and civic spheres.
The special knowledge in cultic rituals, and the mastering of the technical gestures they possessed, allowed them to establish links with the gods, thereby becoming privileged actors in society. This is why speaking of the passivity of the slave must be nuanced, because the picture of passivity does not take into consideration the reality of the ritual expertise a slave may have possessed and the importance of the religious activities they were actively participating in, where such performances were at the heart of Roman society. To the extent that the slave’s participation made them responsible for public order, the slave can be perceived as an integral component of the city, which their participation in worship highlights.
Furthermore, in terms of socialization, identity formation, and networking, Amiri shows that the collegium or association appears to be the space where the relationship of the slave to Roman religion was intended, not exclusively but integratively. The collegium thus allowed the slave to practice religion like the Roman citizen, even if this experience did not necessarily take place within the same setting. The slave also benefited from the advantages that collegial association confered on its members. The registration of a slave in a collegial network benefitted the enslaver as well, and the enslaver was likely to benefit from the repercussions of this insertion and, through this relationship, form a path of access to this network.
In terms of the slave’s relationship with their enslaver in ritual acts, the slave performed religious duties in lieu of their enslaver. However, the slave officiating in place of his absent enslaver did not act in his own name. The religious activity that he exercised on this occasion did not presuppose that he had specific religious prerogatives; it was always the enslaver who acted through him. The enslaver also displayed the importance of his family through the participation of his slaves in religious activities and associations. Amiri also notes that even if the slaves wished to worship one or more deities that were distinct from those their enslavers had chosen to honor, this did not mean that they were breaking with the official cult of the household. This simply means that the slaves found meaning in the additional devotion to other cults, for this or that divinity, at a given moment in their journey. And nothing could prevent a slave from practicing the religion of their enslavers within the framework of the family, while belonging to a religious practice or professional association dedicated to a different, or foreign, deity. Sometimes, when the opportunity arose for slaves to act on their own, they maintained the practices they were accustomed to with their enslavers.
As Amiri clearly demonstrates, the religion of the slave was indeed the religion of the social world to which they belonged. The religious practices of slaves were varied and integrative. Their practices and cultic knowledge allowed them proximity to their enslavers, entry into associative structures, and capacity to eventually integrate into civic life when (or if) the time of emancipation would come. Religious practices constituted a field of action capable of allowing the slave to build a positive identity.
Amiri builds on a lot of previous scholarships to make his central arguments. His study, however, shows how analyzing data from specific sites, and understanding the nuances and the dynamics of identity and social connections, are key to our understanding of Roman religion and slavery in context. Combing through dense epigraphic materials, archaeological evidence, various literary sources, and presenting very nuanced observation and analysis, Amiri makes a formidable case for the complicated realities of the slave in Rome, Latium, and Campania. The author needs to be congratulated for such fine scholarship.