Today my post focuses on a lengthy quote from McCarthy’s book Slaves, Masters and the Art of Authority in Plautine Comedy. I really like this quote because it articulates how the very presence of manumission has the potential to change the relationship between masters and slaves into one that more recognizable to a supposedly free contract between a worker and an employer while at the same time pointing out how Romans owners could take advantage of this potential for their benefit, rather than for the benefit of the slaves.
“Scholars of slavery at Rome and in other cultures have recognized the importance of manumission and other rewards as instruments by which the master could motivate and control a slave. A prominent and strongly stated version of this argument in regard to Roman slavery has been made by Keith Bradley (see esp. [1987: 81-112], [1994: 154-65]). He argues that Roman masters held out the promise of eventual manumission and other rewards in exchange for loyal, obedient, and trouble free service. Certainly this must be right. But even when masters could get slaves to accept the deal, they opened themselves to the possible interpretation that the slaves’ obligations were owed only in exchange for these rewards, thus undermining the essential point of slavery that differentiates it from wage labor: the absoluteness of the slave’s obligation. For this reason, the promise of manumission, or even the actual giving of other smaller rewards, is not an end to the master’s problems but always opens a new round of negotiations, starting with new offers and counter-offers that each party will in turn try to redefine in its own favor.” (McCarthy 2000: 24-5)
Part of what McCarthy is doing in this book is describing the culture of ownership at Rome, that is, the tactics and strategies that Roman slaves owners used to manipulate their slaves for their advantage. What we have to keep in mind is that as a pre-modern state, Roman slave owners did not have easy recourse to abstract and bureaucratic violence that contemporary property owners have in the police. Instead, Roman slave owners had to create and establish authority over their slaves through personal relationships. The other thing that McCarthy is very good on is pointing out that even though the Romans tended to conceptualize slavery as absolute in their metaphors and philosophy, their own descriptions of their society suggests that slavery was just one more identity men and women had to juggle in the larger competition for rank and status in Rome.
“Scholars of slavery at Rome and in other cultures have recognized the importance of manumission and other rewards as instruments by which the master could motivate and control a slave. A prominent and strongly stated version of this argument in regard to Roman slavery has been made by Keith Bradley (see esp. [1987: 81-112], [1994: 154-65]). He argues that Roman masters held out the promise of eventual manumission and other rewards in exchange for loyal, obedient, and trouble free service. Certainly this must be right. But even when masters could get slaves to accept the deal, they opened themselves to the possible interpretation that the slaves’ obligations were owed only in exchange for these rewards, thus undermining the essential point of slavery that differentiates it from wage labor: the absoluteness of the slave’s obligation. For this reason, the promise of manumission, or even the actual giving of other smaller rewards, is not an end to the master’s problems but always opens a new round of negotiations, starting with new offers and counter-offers that each party will in turn try to redefine in its own favor.” (McCarthy 2000: 24-5)
Part of what McCarthy is doing in this book is describing the culture of ownership at Rome, that is, the tactics and strategies that Roman slaves owners used to manipulate their slaves for their advantage. What we have to keep in mind is that as a pre-modern state, Roman slave owners did not have easy recourse to abstract and bureaucratic violence that contemporary property owners have in the police. Instead, Roman slave owners had to create and establish authority over their slaves through personal relationships. The other thing that McCarthy is very good on is pointing out that even though the Romans tended to conceptualize slavery as absolute in their metaphors and philosophy, their own descriptions of their society suggests that slavery was just one more identity men and women had to juggle in the larger competition for rank and status in Rome.