The Roman Guide to Slave Management (16 page)

W
HEN YOU OWN A STUBBORN MULE
, there is no point in using the fine art of rhetoric to try to persuade it to carry out your wishes. Likewise with your slaves: whatever high ideals of ownership you might strive to maintain, you will often find the philosophy of slavery of little practical benefit. However noble and diligent, inspired by your fine example, you might hope that your slaves will be, you will in reality find that you are sometimes obliged to give them forceful reminders of their low status in order to compel them to work hard on your behalf. There is no point thinking you would be better off treating them gently. Recalcitrant slaves do not understand logic. Such slaves are like animals and they respond best to the touch of the whip. In fact, you will find that the average slave’s mind is constantly preoccupied with the risk of physical punishment. They even dream about it, and it is known that it is bad for a slave to dream of beef, because both straps and whips are made of ox hide. But this ever-present
anxiety of theirs about corporal punishment should not worry you, their owner. Rather, you should understand that it helps to reinforce the dominance of the figure of the master in their life. A slave who always has the master at the back of his mind, whatever task he is carrying out, will be a more attentive, diligent and productive slave.

Slaves sometimes need to be punished but you should be careful not to do so excessively. Where possible, and within the constraints of maintaining discipline and authority, you should refrain from flogging a slave just because he gives you a cheeky or disrespectful answer. They are, after all, items of your property and if you harm them you are, in effect, damaging your own goods. If someone else were to injure you, you would naturally seek financial compensation from the courts. So it is also with your slaves, even if damage to a slave is worth only half that of damage to a free man.

Sadly, though, we all know people who have gone too far in their punishments. One friend of mine insists, as many do, that his slaves serve him and his family at meals in complete silence. I dined there recently and a muffled sneeze from a waiter brought a savage whipping. Another coughed when serving the soup, for which he was dragged out and beaten with rods. It was hardly relaxing, I have to say. I suspect that the moment we guests left, things really started to hot up and I’m told that any slaves who had failed to carry out their tasks perfectly, or any cook that had prepared a less than sumptuous dish, were all made to dance. Then there is that famous story about Vedius Pollio, who invited his friend the divine emperor Augustus around for dinner. One of
the host’s slaves broke a valuable crystal cup, whereupon Vedius ordered the slave to be taken and thrown to the huge lampreys which he kept in his fish pond. Obviously he was just showing off to the emperor by letting him see how hard he could be. But this was savagery, not toughness. The boy escaped and ran to Augustus’s feet for refuge. He begged that he be allowed to die by some other means than as fishmeal. Augustus was outraged at this novel form of cruelty. He ordered Vedius to free the slave. He then told the other slaves to bring all the crystal cups they could find and smash them in their master’s presence. Vedius was instructed to fill in the fish pond and get rid of the lampreys.

We’ve all done it, of course. What master has not occasionally lashed out at his slaves from sheer exasperation at their uselessness? I heard of one local owner who became so mentally unbalanced that he threw his slave out of a first-floor window. And a friend of mine who got so fed up with an old slave who never did anything that he severed his hams so he would never move anywhere again. Even the emperor Hadrian once poked out a slave’s eye with his pen when he was annoyed by him in some way. But allowances for anger aside, we should not be over zealous or invent new kinds of punishment to impress our guests. Are a man’s bowels to be ripped apart just because one of your cups has been broken? You should try to control your moods if you can. For one thing, this is the kind of behaviour you find from freedmen who have gone on to own their own slaves. They are infamous for their brutality and are always calling for floggings and thrashings as if to compensate for their own servile origins.

I am of course talking here about domestic and privately owned slaves. Slaves who have been justly condemned by the courts to the mines as punishment for some heinous crime cannot expect to be so leniently treated. These slaves are destroyed physically and are forced to endure the most dreadful hardships. In the end, they often pray for death because of the magnitude of their suffering. These criminals deserve their fates. But one can’t help feeling some sympathy for slaves who are being used by contractors to work the mines in hardly less dreadful circumstances. These men generate unbelievable wealth for their owners, but are ruined by their constant, day-and-night underground excavations. The conditions are bad, and they are not allowed to rest and are instead forced by the beatings given out by their overseers to keep working. Still, there are plenty of freeborn men who have to earn a living by working the mines. And these mines are no longer the routes to easy fortunes they once were. The silver- and gold-bearing seams have dried up and considerably more work is required in more dangerous circumstances to produce the same amount of bullion.

Nor am I talking about slaves who have been rightly sentenced by the courts to be thrown to the wild beasts in the arena for the entertainment of our citizens. None of these slaves have been sent to suffer such a fate simply on their owners’ whims, since owners may not sell their slaves for such a purpose. When we see them being torn limb from limb, or we hear the crunching and grinding of bones, we may therefore relax and be certain that we are witnessing the suitable punishment of a deserving
criminal. A friend of mine has recently had some most delicate and graceful mosaics showing these executions put up in his dining room, and they look splendid!

There are also certain situations when a privately owned, domestic slave should suffer the ultimate penalty. I am thinking, above all, of the occasions when a slave is able to come to their master’s help, but fails to do so. For when a slave’s master is in danger, the slave should have more regard for his master’s safety than his own. I remember once that a slave girl was sleeping in the same bedroom as her mistress when a murderer broke in. He threatened to kill the girl if she cried out and so she kept quiet, when she could definitely have come to her mistress’s assistance, either by putting her own body in the way, or by shouting loudly to alert other slaves in the household. It was only right that the girl was executed, so that other slaves did not get the idea that they could think about their own safety when their owners were in danger.

For myself, when it comes to punishing my slaves, I often rely on the services of an outside contractor. The local council here offers a service by which they will administer beatings for a set fee. The terms are very modest, about four sesterces per flogging if I remember rightly. For that they come and set up a gibbet on to which they bind the offending slave after they have solemnly led him out from the room in which he is being held. They think of everything, even supplying the ropes to tie the slave. It provides a salutary warning to the rest of the slaves to behave properly and saves you from getting your own hands dirty. In the past, when it was
permissible for a master to execute his own slaves, these contractors provided a crucifixion service too, supplying both cross and nails. Hot pitch was also available where torture was required. Most masters back then would try any slave in their household who was accused of a serious crime in the presence of all the other dependants, and have the offender killed if he was found guilty.

In my country estates I keep a dingy, underground prison to punish errant slaves with a period of solitude. It has only a few slits for light at the top, which cannot be reached by hand, and the slaves are fed minimally. While this is not strictly legal these days, I find it useful to have something that can strike fear into even the most awkward and stubborn of country slaves. Or I sentence slaves to work in the mill and take the place of the mules in turning the millstones. Such hard labour can quickly sort out miscreants. They soon make a sorrowful picture: covered in rags, their heads shaved, irons clamped on their feet, sallow faces, all covered with flour from the mill, like wrestlers who get covered with fine sand when they fight. Mind you, I don’t keep them at it for long, as such effort can soon become demoralising instead of inspiring the slave to work harder in his proper tasks.

You must never feel guilty at meting out such punishments. Slaves are ruined by their own wickedness, not by a master’s cruelty. Incidentally, if you do suffer any pangs of conscience after hitting a slave unjustly, either with your hand or an object, I have heard it on good authority that if you immediately spit into the palm of the hand that inflicted the wound then the resentment of the victim is immediately softened. The emperor Hadrian
went so far as to apologise directly to the slave whose eye he had poked out with his pen. He asked the slave what he wanted by way of recompense. But the slave just grew bold and had the temerity to say that there was nothing the emperor could do as nothing could compensate for the loss of an eye. It just goes to show that if you treat slaves too gently they will soon take advantage of your softness and grow difficult.

Be careful not to hurt your hand when striking a slave. This is especially true if you do it in anger. Some have even been known to use not just their fists but their feet on their servants, or to stab them with a knife that they happened to be holding. I know several friends who have wounded their hands by hitting their slaves in the teeth. A medical friend of mine, a worthy man in every respect, has such a temper he regularly uses his hands on his servants, and sometimes his legs too. Most of the time, though, he attacks them with a leather strap, or with any wooden object that comes to hand. He is always bruising himself and pulling muscles from his exertions, inflicting injury on the very man who should be doling it out.

We should also remember that owning slaves provides an opportunity for the owner’s personal improvement. It teaches us how to control our base instincts. That is another reason why I choose not to strike slaves with my own hands. It is far better to restrain your rage for a few moments and, instead of rupturing yourself in a fit of anger, consider carefully exactly how many strokes of the rod or the whip the slave deserves to receive. This can then be carried out by another servant trained in such a task or by contractors brought in.

Pausing before punishing your slaves also gives a chance for your moral superiority to assert itself. We have, after all, forgiven the Gauls and the Britons for resisting us – why should we not show the same spirit of forgiveness to those who are even more worthless? Should we never show mercy to some miserable slave who has been lazy or talkative? If he’s a child, his age should excuse him, if female, her sex. Just as we should have too much respect to grow angry with our superiors, we should have too much self-respect to grow angry with our slaves. It is hardly an act of heroism to send some wretched slave off to the prison house to cool off for a few days.

Such outbursts of uncontrolled rage can, in any case, lead to legal complications. There was once a lady called Statilia, who asked the emperor whether she had to fulfil a clause in her late husband’s will, a clause that had clearly been written while he was furious with two of his slaves. The will stated that one of the slaves was to be kept chained up for ever, and the other was to be sold overseas. The emperor replied that Statilia’s husband had been alive long enough after he had made the will that, if he had wanted to, he could have had it rewritten to exclude these clauses inserted in anger. So unless there was some evidence that the master’s anger had in fact been assuaged by the slaves – they might perhaps have carried out some particularly meritorious act which it would be reasonable to assume would have softened their master’s ire – then his last wishes should be respected. And the emperor made it clear that it would take some proper written evidence to prove this, not something like the word of another slave.

There has been a growing tendency for the emperor
to intervene in relations between masters and slaves. It is only natural that the father of the state, who is patron and head of the household to us all, should provide us with guidance on how best to manage our domestic affairs. Several emperors have decreed that a slave who appealed to the gods or to a statue of the divine emperor himself had the right to have his complaints investigated. This resulted from the fact that several provincial governors asked the emperor what they should do with slaves who took refuge in a temple or at the statues of emperors. The emperor declared that if it was the master’s intolerable cruelty that had driven the slave to run away and seek refuge, then the slaves should be sold to new masters, with the proceeds of the sale going to the original owner. This was a sensible decision, since it is in the public interest that people should not use their property badly. For although the power of the master over a slave must be absolute, it is in the interests of owners in general that protection against brutality or starvation or intolerable injustice should not be denied to those who rightly appeal against them.

In the old days of the republic, the head of the household could punish their slaves as they saw fit, just as they could their sons, and could even execute them. Now such power over life has been transferred to the magistrates. No master now can act against their slaves with excessive cruelty or brutality, unless they have some legal grounds for doing so. Indeed, in accordance with a law of the divine emperor Antoninus Pius, anyone who kills his own slave without proper cause is to be punished just as severely as someone who kills another’s slave.