Speaking up for the Slave in Quintilian, Minor Declamations 340 and 342
By Matthew Leigh
Quintilian, Minor Declamations 340 and 342 both address cases brought under the same declamatory statute: QUI VOLUNTATE DOMINI IN LIBERTATE FUERIT, LIBER SIT. In the first instance a boy-slave is sent past the customs officers dressed in the toga praetextata of a free citizen child. In the second a maid is sent out to the pirate chief dressed as a Roman matron and playing the part of the sister of a captured youth.
The Official and Hidden Transcripts of Callirhoe’s Enslavement
By William Owens
This paper applies James Scott’s concept of official and hidden transcripts of asymmetric power relationships to a reading of the events in Chariton’s Callirhoe that lead up to the enslaved heroine Callirhoe’s decision to marry her owner in exchange for the freedom of her unborn child. A reading of these events as an official transcript, that is, a product of the slave owner, contrasts the nobility of Dionysius, the owner, and Callirhoe (who is not a “real” slave) with the servile qualities of “real” slaves in Dionysius’ household.
Don’t Consult the hariolus: Slave Religions in the Rome of Plautus and Cato the Elder
By Dan-el Padilla Peralta
“Dey would come in [to our religious meetings] and start whippin’ an’ beatin’ the slaves unmerciful. All dis wuz done to keep yo’ from servin’ God …” (Mrs. Minnie Fulkes, former slave, 1937 interview). Testimonies of this kind enabled Albert Raboteau to undertake his pioneering reconstruction of the religious world of African-American slaves (Raboteau 1978/2004).
Political Culture from Below in the 200s BCE
By Amy Richlin
Who belonged to the populus in the city of Rome in the 200s BCE, and what did they think of the men at the top? Low-class speakers in the extant palliata express scorn and dislike for those whom they label the summi viri. Balancing the perspective of the chief analysts of Roman political culture (Rosenstein 2006, Hölkeskamp 2010), this paper will argue that comedy offers voices that do not "acquiesce" in the rule of the elite, but critique it.
Libertas plebis: The Metaphor of Slavery in Popular Protest
By Ellen O'Gorman
This paper explores how the slave operates as both paradigm and point of differentiation in Livy’s account of the struggles between patricians and plebeians in the early books of his history. It draws on recent debates in Classical scholarship about the possibility of recovering the discourses of the oppressed in elite literary texts (McCarthy; Richlin), and on work which maps how public narratives of domination (including poetic literature) both shape and are shaped by the “offstage responses” of subordinates (Scott; Fitzgerald).