Enslavement and Literary Work in the Roman Mediterranean

Illegible Transcripts: Greek Shorthand and Enslaved Secretarial Technology

By Candida Moss (University of Birmingham)

Recent scholarship on writing and literacy in the Roman world has attended to the role of enslaved literate workers in the production of texts (Winsbury, Habinek). Ancient book culture, like much of  ancient society, was made possible by the exploited labor of enslaved workers whose voices and contributions are actively erased and silenced (Howley). Much ancient writing involved dictating to secretarial workers who would record what was spoken in shorthand before subsequently expanding the text into a longform draft (Blake).

A Slip of the Tongue: An Exploration of Enslaved Visibility in Roman Book Work

By Brett L. Stine (Columbia University)

Recent scholarship surrounding Roman enslavement practices has foregrounded the lived experiences of Roman enslaved persons through analyses of the material and literary production and consumption of Roman elites (Lenski 2013; Joshel and Petersen 2014; Blake 2016). This paper attempts to further this work by bringing into relationship legal (the Digest), literary (Galen, Pliny, Martial), and para-literary texts (P.Oxy. 4.724), and argues that attention to skilled labor and gradations of skilled labor found in documentary and legal sources can provide momenta

Micro-Conflation and Invisible Labor in Roman Compositional Practices

By Jeremiah Coogan (University of Oxford)

How did enslaved labor influence the composition of literary texts in the Roman Mediterranean? This paper attends to the role of enslaved labor in order to reimagine what compositional practices we imagine as possible and, thereby, to enable a better reading of how ancient texts employ their sources. Conventional wisdom has long held that authors of Greek and Latin prose narratives used only one source at a time (Luce 1978 on Livy; Pelling 1979 and 1980 on Plutarch).

Tiro Beyond the Ciceros: The Social Standing of a Freed Literary Worker

By Nicole Giannella (Cornell University)

(Marcus Tullius) Tiro, Cicero’s enslaved, and later freed, literary worker, has been the subject of much study. Scholars have looked at the way Tiro is represented in Book 16 of Cicero’s Ad Familiares and his possible role in editing that book of letters (e.g., Beard) as well as considering the relationship between enslaved and enslaver (e.g., McDermott, Gunderson). This paper instead looks at Tiro’s relationship and social standing with people beyond Cicero and his immediate family.

Enslavement and the Reader(s) in Seneca’s Moral Epistles

By Cat Lambert (Columbia University)

Scholars have long observed the centrality of enslavement in the works of Seneca the Younger (e.g., Bradley 1986, Edwards 2009). As Catharine Edwards notes, Seneca begins his Moral Epistles with an injunction to the reader to “liberate” himself from an ethical state of enslavement. Less accounted for, however, is the role played by enslaved literary workers within the Epistles, and in the collection’s production and circulation in antiquity.