Parker and Tacitus
On May 29, 1850, Theodore Parker addressed the New England Anti-Slavery Convention in Boston. While in this speech Parker has some good things to say about the Free Soil party, for the most part the speech condemns American complicity with the evils of slavery. Parker was especially disappointed by how the American Senate debated slavery, as there men spoke of the costs and benefits of slavery, rather than viewing it through a moral lens like he does. Indeed, Parker is so disappointed in the American Senate’s discussion of slavery, that he makes the following comparison:
Some of the discussions remind one of the spirit which prevailed in the Roman Senate, A.D. 62, when about four hundred slaves were crucified, because their master, Pedanius Secundus, a man of consular dignity, was found murdered in his bed. I mean to say, the same disregard of the welfare of the slaves, the same willingness to sacrifice them – if not their lives, which are not now in peril, at least their welfare, to the convenience of their masters. Anybody can read the story in Tacitus [Annales 14.42], and it is worth reading, and instructive, too, at these times. (In Slave Power 1969: 252)
Below is what Tacitus has to say about the murder of Pedanius Secundus. Even though Yardley’s translation came out in 2008, he nonetheless uses the archaic, and in this situation anachronistic, term ‘catamite’ for the Latin word exoletus, which means “grown man”. Unsurprisingly, Parker makes no mention of what Tacitus terms amore exoleti; in other writings Parker expresses disgust at Greek and Roman sexuality.
Not much later the city praefect Pedanius Secundus was murdered by his own slave. Either Secundus had refused him his freedom, after negotiating the price for it, or the man, fired with passion for a catamite, could not bear having his master as a rival. In any case, in accordance with long-standing custom, all the household slaves that had been lodged under the same roof were required to face execution; but the plebs gathered together in their to safeguard so many innocents, and matters reached the point of a riot. The Senate then came under siege, and in the house support came from some who opposed such extreme severity, though most were for not breaking with tradition. Annales 14.42. trans. J.C. Yardley
Some of the discussions remind one of the spirit which prevailed in the Roman Senate, A.D. 62, when about four hundred slaves were crucified, because their master, Pedanius Secundus, a man of consular dignity, was found murdered in his bed. I mean to say, the same disregard of the welfare of the slaves, the same willingness to sacrifice them – if not their lives, which are not now in peril, at least their welfare, to the convenience of their masters. Anybody can read the story in Tacitus [Annales 14.42], and it is worth reading, and instructive, too, at these times. (In Slave Power 1969: 252)
Below is what Tacitus has to say about the murder of Pedanius Secundus. Even though Yardley’s translation came out in 2008, he nonetheless uses the archaic, and in this situation anachronistic, term ‘catamite’ for the Latin word exoletus, which means “grown man”. Unsurprisingly, Parker makes no mention of what Tacitus terms amore exoleti; in other writings Parker expresses disgust at Greek and Roman sexuality.
Not much later the city praefect Pedanius Secundus was murdered by his own slave. Either Secundus had refused him his freedom, after negotiating the price for it, or the man, fired with passion for a catamite, could not bear having his master as a rival. In any case, in accordance with long-standing custom, all the household slaves that had been lodged under the same roof were required to face execution; but the plebs gathered together in their to safeguard so many innocents, and matters reached the point of a riot. The Senate then came under siege, and in the house support came from some who opposed such extreme severity, though most were for not breaking with tradition. Annales 14.42. trans. J.C. Yardley