Slavery and Sexuality in Antiquity

To rightly understand conflicting ancient Mediterranean strategies to control female household slave sexuality, we should reexamine what motivated the proverbial anger of freeborn mistress-wives (despoinai) toward master-husbands (despotai) who coerced sexual services from their domestic female slaves.

I read the Cupid and Psyche tale in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses as a narrative of Psyche’s slavery. What Psyche endures aligns with the experiences of historical slaves: enslavement through exposure, sexual exploitation, psychological abuse, beatings, and hard labor. Focalizing the narrative through Psyche as slave also allows access to the psychological effect of this degradation.

In their discussion of Rome’s mythical origins, modern Roman social histories often highlight the rapes of legendary women like Lucretia and Verginia and the political revolutions caused by their assaults (Joshel 1992). However, several parallel stories of male slave rape victims are generally ignored or restricted to discussions of same-sex sexual activity. In 313 BCE, Gaius Publilius, a young and handsome debt-slave, supposedly complained publicly in the street about his master’s attempted rape and assault upon him.

The sexual abuse of slaves in the Roman world was pervasive; as noted by Craig Williams, a catalog of references to the sexual use of slaves would be enormous. In contrast, only a handful of sources describe slaves as the perpetrators, rather than the victims, of sexual violence. Though few in number, I assert that these sources can be equally revealing of the intersection between sex and slavery.

This paper looks at sex and slavery within the context of sexual violence more broadly. While there has been recent scholarly interest in sexual violence, there is a tendency to view such violence as a single category, without attention as to how sexual violence might differ for different groups. In order to examine the question of such violence more fully, I explore and compare the construction of sexual violence in the case of domestic slaves in relation to free citizen women, and also sex slaves in classical Athens.

My paper will examine the restriction by Athenian slave-owners of the sexual relationships of and between their slaves, and the reasons for which, in various circumstances, they found it advantageous to allow or facilitate them. Primarily, my paper will emphasise the provision of sex as a privilege withheld or awarded to slaves by their masters to ensure their loyalty.