Human Trafficking in the Roman World? Re-Framing a Modern Concept in Roman Terms.

Some troubling conclusions emerge when one examines Roman-era kidnapping and enslavement through the modern prism of human trafficking. The Forschungen zur antiken Sklaverei project has addressed certain aspects of these issues (e.g. Heinz 2008), while other recent works cover subtopics such as sex-trafficking terms in Latin literature (Richlin 2021, Witzke 2015). This paper represents an initial attempt to approach the question of human trafficking in the Roman world, in a broader, more historical, and more system(at)ic analysis, parallel to recent studies of other eras (e.g. Paolella 2020 for medieval Europe). While these previous studies concentrated on sex workers, I am focusing on the Roman state’s attitudes towards its free subjects becoming enslaved through infant exposure, international raids, and kidnapping from ca. 80 BCE to 235 CE.

Starting with modern concepts of human trafficking, and then testing its applicability to imperial rhetoric and administration in the Roman Empire, I argue that clarifying the dichotomy between “free” and “enslaved” was a central justification for Augustus’ regime, as several sources describing his rise and rule indicate (RGDA 25.1, Dio 49.12; App. BC 5.132; Suet. Aug. 32.1, Tib. 8). Augustan status-enforcement prompted ambitious security arrangements and remained a persistent legal and administrative ethos throughout the principate (Fuhrmann 2012): note, for example, the remarkable Pliny-Trajan letters on the status of foundlings (10.65f; cf. 10.74), and that the first substantive point in Gaius’ Institutes is that all humans are either free or servi (1.3.9 = Dig. 1.5.3; cf. CTh. 10.10.33).

Having recontextualized ample material on kidnapping and flight, and returning to the modern conception of human trafficking, I conclude that yes, the term “human trafficking” can be carefully used in the Roman imperial context, but only by (perversely) abandoning modern feelings of innate human rights and altruism; instead, we must recognize that safeguarding the slave system itself was Roman potentes’ prime motive, which concomitantly legitimized the Roman imperial state along with it. From a Roman view, then, heroines like Harriet Tubman and her network would represent the most dangerous type of criminal (as borne out in legal sources such as Dig. 11.4), as sickening to them as a modern trafficker is to us.

Finally, we turn away from the cold level of state systems, to a human-level appreciation of typical situations in which enslaved people might reclaim their freedom, especially by their efforts to

1. cross international frontiers (the fourth century offers two rare oral histories: Jerome Vita Malchi monachi captivi and Patrick Confessio 1, 16-19);
2. disappear into “bandit” highlands and other geographically-difficult areas (cf. Scott 2009); and
3. possibly finding refuge among peripheral minority Jewish or Christian sects that took seriously the Mosaic law, “Slaves who have escaped to you from their owners shall not be given back … They shall reside with you, in your midst, in any place they choose … wherever they please; you shall not oppress them.” (Deut. 23:15f, cf. Glancy 2002).

Time permitting, we will end with the emotional impact of slave-raiding upon a community, via Augustine’s Epistula *10.