Domination and Dependence

Class and status are not mutually exclusive ways of understanding society; they emphasize different aspects of multifaceted social behavior, and so offer different perspectives on social structure. It is a matter of the historian’s personal and ideological preferences which concept is believed to yield the greatest insight; whether ‘‘status’’ seems to obscure (perhaps intentionally) class divisions and conflict, or ‘‘class’’ is felt to privilege economic factors over individuals’ own sense of social identity. When considering slavery, however, both ideas seem somewhat inadequate. To treat slavery merely as a status category seems to play down its often brutal reality, while class analysis suggests that slaves should not be considered as a category at all: the fundamental identity of slaves’ experiences is ignored, simply because they did different jobs (see also Chapters 27 and 28).

An alternative approach is to focus not on slaves as a kind of group but on slavery as a particular sort of social relationship; the nature of this relationship shaped the behavior of both masters and slaves. Slavery was an extreme form of dependence, with the slave expected to be absolutely submissive and regarded as absolutely inferior.18 Slaves had no status; they were stripped of kinship connections, ancestry, reputation, and any other source of an independent social identity when they became slaves, and were left wholly dependent on their owner. They could thus be treated as tools, or objects, with impunity; employed in degrading occupations, beaten to make them work harder, sexually abused, thrown away when worn out or broken. Slaves had no right to companionship, or family life, or food and shelter, let alone security or hope; they might succeed in obtaining these things, but all depended on the whim of the master, and such ‘‘privileges’’ could just as easily be taken away. Every slave, however faithful or industrious, lived under the threat of violence and torture; it was simply assumed that, because of their inferiority, they would require such discipline. In a trial, the evidence of slaves was admissible only if it had been obtained under torture.

The actual practice of slavery was inevitably complicated by the fact that owners could not necessarily count on the absolute submission of their slaves. The stripping of personal identity, the threat of violence, the selective offering and withholding of privileges, and the hope of manumission can all be seen not just as expressions of the slave owner’s power over the slave but also as means for maintaining that power. The slave’s spirit had to be broken, the slave had to be persuaded to cooperate, and to focus his or her energies on competing with other slaves for their owner’s approval. The slave owners’ tactics were not always wholly successful. There were relatively few large-scale slave revolts; those that did occur, in Sicily in 136-132 and 104-101 and in Italy under Spartacus from 73 to 71, seem to have been prompted by a particular combination of excessive brutality, opportunity, and the presence of a charismatic leader.19 However, there is evidence of constant resistance on an individual basis: shirking, vandalism, petty theft, and running away (Cicero’s letters, for example, include a record of his efforts to recover one of his escaped slaves). A constant concern in the manuals of the Roman agronomists is the unreliability and untrustworthiness of slaves, which threatened the landowner’s profits; the proposed solution to this problem is the careful selection of a suitable vilicus, the slave who would manage the estate and supervise the other slaves, but then the landowner was left worrying about how to supervise the supervisor. The master - slave relationship was asymmetrical but not wholly one-sided; the slave owners’ need for the profits and status that could be obtained from slavery left them in a sense dependent on their slaves. A slave’s loyalty and faithfulness was taken to reflect the virtue not of the slave but of the master; conversely, however, slaves who misbehaved or absconded could affect their master’s reputation.

Slavery, then, involved a struggle for advantage between two unequal but not completely mismatched parties. This does not exclude the possibility that some master - slave relationships could become genuinely affectionate, given that they lived in such close intimacy in the household - though the portrayal of slaves in literature tends to exemplify anxiety that even the loyal attendant is basically motivated by self-interest, and is in a position to manipulate a less cunning master (see also Chapter 25).20 Equally, the self-interest of master and slave might coincide. The cooperative slave might gain alleviation of some of the harsher conditions of slavery, a measure of security compared with a poor free man, some independence of action and power over other slaves, and eventually manumission. At this point they gained citizenship as well as freedom, and might hope to benefit from continuing association with their former owner, or from a legacy to set themselves up in business - at the expense of continuing, if reduced, dependence, as a freedman was constrained to support and do some work for his former master.21 It is impossible to say how frequent manumission was in practice - certainly not all slaves were in a position to gain the trust and affection of their master, and Roman law set limits on the proportion of slaves which could be manumitted - but it was always there as a possibility, an incentive to cooperate.

Clearly the owner gained from having a cooperative, industrious slave; and, for all their anxieties about trusting slaves, the Roman elite showed a clear preference for managing business through their slaves and freedmen, rather than employing free men. The wealthy made use of the institution of the peculium, the sum of money that might be given to slaves to manage themselves, to set up their dependents as ship owners, traders, bankers, and moneylenders, as well as managers of farms and workshops. They were thus able to spread their investments over a vast geographical area, to reduce their exposure to risk (since the owner was liable only to the value of the sum originally granted to the slave, not for any greater losses) and to avoid contamination of their status by direct involvement in disreputable activities, while still reaping profits.22 The legal limits on the owner’s liability for the actions of his slave made this an economically rational approach to business, especially given the elite’s general aversion to risk. However, the reactive nature of Roman lawmaking suggests that the law simply reflected an elite preference for personalized, dependent relationships over impersonal dealings based on money.

Indeed, one might think of Roman society as a whole as being structured around the principles of dependence and dominance. Slavery was the most extreme expression of this, but the relationships between former owner and freedman, patron and client, husband and wife, father and children, and even Rome and her allies and subjects were also based on these principles. Such relationships, it has been suggested, were the prime mechanism for the allocation of scarce resources and the dominant means of legitimizing the social order; they can also be seen as the main influence on the behavior of individuals toward one another.23 The Election Manual assumes that Italy is covered by a network of dependent relationships, so that the aspiring politician in Rome must aim to win the support of the men in the towns who will then mobilize their supporters in his cause. The conventions of elite discourse insisted that relations between members of the elite were to be described in terms of friendship, not dependence; but in many cases the asymmetry of power, influence, and status is obvious, and it is difficult not to think of such ‘‘friendship’’ as another form of patronage (see also Chapter 19). Even the nature of the self was understood in terms of dominance and submission: the mind rules over lust as a master rules slaves, while the master restrains his slaves as reason restrains the evil and weak elements of the mind (Cic. Rep. 3.37).

Like slavery, patronage largely but not entirely served the interests of the more powerful party. The elite patron gained support, votes, status, and deference to further his own ambitions, and the acquiescence and cooperation of his clients in the existing political system, enshrining the dominance of the elite as a whole. The client was forced to submit in the hope of gaining access to key resources; sometimes material assistance (food, land, money), sometimes advice and influence in dealing with the law or other authority. The relationship was reinforced by the law - it was an offense to give evidence against one’s patron or to vote against him - by the tradition of military discipline and ingrained obedience to the officer class, and by the myths and traditions that emphasized the special qualities of the Roman elite, giving them an aura of authority. But of course the benefits of having a patron could be real; patrons might not in fact be able to assist all their clients, but assistance was unlikely from any other quarter. The law forbade a patron from defrauding his client, and in practice the individual patron could never be wholly dominant or exploit the client’s dependence too severely, since the client was generally free to choose another patron (see also Chapter 19).25

Vertical relationships between members of different social groups tend to weaken horizontal relationships within those groups; hence, perhaps, the distinct lack of class solidarity or collective action from the poor masses of the Roman Republic. Patronage can be seen as one of the most important forces for cohesion in Roman society, and for ensuring the dominance of the political elite (see Chapter 19). However, by the last century BC this seems increasingly to be an ideal more than a reality; there is a clear sense that many of the discussions of patronage and social relationships in the sources are self-consciously looking back to an earlier time when the system was believed to have worked properly. Just as the enormous expansion of slave numbers had depersonalized relations between masters and most of their slaves, so the city of Rome had grown to such a size that personalized patron - client relationships of the traditional kind can have involved only a small proportion of its population; it was increasingly a city of migrants and their descendants, disconnected from their old social relationships and alienated from the society in which they now lived. Descriptions of urban life in the succeeding century express anxiety about the decline of deference and status distinctions, and the pervasive influence of money in social intercourse; this clearly threatened the dominance of the elite. In the late Republic, the greatest concern for many was the rise of effective but impersonal relationships between mass and elite, as wealthy individuals sought to mobilize the support of the entire plebs through mass benefaction and the cultivation of their image as defenders of the People - a practice in due course to be monopolized by the emperors. Personal ties of dependence continued to be the preferred mode of social and economic behavior for the elite under the Principate - a classic later example is the way that the younger Pliny sought to develop such relationships with the wine dealers who had purchased his grape harvest (Pliny Ep. 8.2) - but Roman society was now organized around a different relationship of dominance and dependence, between the emperor and his People.