Body Count
By admin | April 7, 2008
The Greek word to s o ma ,“body,” functioned as a synonym for ho doulos ,“slave.” Wills
and other listings of property frequently designated slaves as bodies.As part of the settle-
ment of an estate in Egypt in 47 C.E.,three sons agreed to a division of four slaves or,
literally,four slave bodies,ta doulika s o mata .In its specification that the brothers who
received female slaves as their portion of the inheritance also inherited the future off-
spring of those slaves,the settlement attests to the pervasive use of female slaves for
breeding the next generation of human chattel.6 In this context the designation of female slaves as (reproductive)bodies has particular resonance.Some ancient testators
stipulated which slave(s)each heir inherited.Other testators allowed their heirs to di-
vide the enslaved bodies,often constituting a significant portion of an estate,imperson-
ally.The appearance of slave bodies in census returns is a curiosity that underscores the
ambivalent legal status of slaves:classified as things,classified as persons.A household
lists two enslaved bodies in its 202 –203 C.E.census declaration:“Elpis …aged 26,
having a scar on the left shin,and half of a slave Sarapammon born in the house of Isis
also called Memphis,20 years old,whose other half belongs to Kroniaine and Taorsis
in the Syrian quarter.”7 Counted as a person,Sarapammon merits inclusion in the census.
Counted as a thing,Sarapammon appears as jointly owned property.
In a wide variety of contexts,slaveholders relied on slaves as body doubles.We
see one such instance memorialized in the bylaws of a fraternal society.The purpose
of the society was to help members set aside funds,which would be used to pay the
head tax levied on all adult males.In specifying the penalty for members who fell
behind in payment of dues,the bylaws indicated that a slave could stand in to receive
the owner ’s punishment.The bylaws referred to slaves who absorbed their owners ’
penalties as s o mata ,bodies.“If anyone is in default and fails in any respect to pay the
dues …Kronion shall have authority to seize him in the main street,or in his house,
and hand over him or his slaves [bodies ].”8 While imprisonment of a slave deprived
the slaveholder of the slave ’s personal services and productive labor,the slave,not
the slaveholder,endured the actual privations of prison.Prison conditions could be
severe.Writing in 7 C.E.to Athenodoros,a wealthy but feckless citizen,a woman
named Tryphas,in a position to address him bluntly,insinuated that because Atheno-
doros had neglected to pay some fines,two of his slaves had been imprisoned and
were in danger of death.9 Tryphas referred to the slaves imprisoned in Athenodoros ’s
stead as bodies,ta s o mata .
Although I have been translating to s o ma literally,as “body,” I am not certain that
ancient audiences would have heard the expressions ta s o mata and ta s o mata doulika as
references to bodies or slave bodies.If the metaphor were no longer live,those who
used the expression ta s o mata simply intended to say “slaves.” Many contemporary schol–
ars take this position and routinely translate to s o ma as “slave ” rather than “body.”10 A
diminutive of to s o ma ,to s o mation ,is the term regularly used in the papyri to refer to the
exposed infants so often raised as slaves.Again,I am not certain that ancient audiences
would have heard the expression to s o mation literally as “little body.” If the metaphor
were no longer live,those who used the expression to s o mation simply intended to say
“foundling.” It may be relevant,,however,that slaves are referred to literally as bodies in
some contexts but not in others:when they are listed as property,for example,but not
when their actions are described.In grammatical terms,to s o ma is more likely to serve
as an object than a subject.Moreover,references to plural slave bodies are more fre-
quent than references to a single slave body.We cannot know whether such word choices
distanced ancient speakers and writers from the humanity of their property.To twenty-
first-century readers,allusions to human beings as bodies underscore the coldness of
ancient calculations involving human property.The author of the Apocalypse may be
emphasizing the bitterness of the slave trade when he lists the luxury products sold by
the merchants of the earth:fine linen,olive oil,horses and chariots,bodies (s o mat o n ),
and human souls.
Topics: Slavery In Early Christianity | No Comments »
The Rhetoric Of Slavery
By admin | June 5, 2007
Sometime in the fourth or fifth century,a Christian man ordered a bronze collar to
encircle the neck of one of his slaves.The inscription on the collar reads:“I am the
slave of the archdeacon Felix.Hold me so that I do not flee.”1 Although the collar purports
to speak in the first person for a nameless slave,the voice we hear is not that of the
slave but that of the slaveholder.Felix,enraged by a slave ’s previous attempts to escape,
ordered the collar both to humiliate and to restrain another human being,whom the
law classified as his property.The chance survival of this artifact of the early church
recalls the overwhelming element of compulsion that operated within the system of slavery,
with its use of brute paraphernalia for corporal control.Contemporary sensibilities re-
coil from such tangible evidence for the inherent violence of ancient slavery.We are
likely to consider Christian slaveholders to be hypocrites and to find the notion of
Christian slavery oxymoronic.Felix exhibited no awareness of such contradiction:the
slave collar he ordered even bears an incised cross.Centuries after Paul wrote to an-
other Christian slaveholder,Philemon,counseling him to act in love toward the run-
away slave Onesimus,the otherwise unknown archdeacon,Felix,apparently saw no
incongruity in proclaiming simultaneously his status as a leader in the church and his
identity as a slaveholder.
Slaves in the Roman Empire were vulnerable to physical control,coercion,and abuse
in settings as public as the auction block and as private as the bedroom.Since slavery
was identified with the body,it is not surprising that the experience of slavery was con-
ditioned by gender and sexuality.At the same time,a person ’s experience of what it
meant to be male or female was conditioned by the accident of slavery.A male slave,for
example,had no legal connection to his own offspring,thus excluding him from the
cultural status of fatherhood.Slaveholders had unrestricted sexual access to their slaves.
This dimension of slave life was most likely to affect female slaves and young male slaves.
Moreover,slaveholders valued female slaves for their biological capacities of reproduc-
tion and lactation.Problems emanating from the sexual and gender-specific use of slaves
are central to the understanding of slavery in the early Christian era.
In the late second century,an Ephesian native named Artemidorus wrote a treatise
on the interpretation of dreams,the Oneirocritica .Artemidorus proposed interpretations
for seemingly every image that might arise in the course of a night ’s sleep.In Artemidorus ’s
dream logic,slaves and bodies dissolve into one another.In dreams,he claims,slaves
represent the bodies of their owners:“The very man who dreamt that he saw his house-
hold slave sick with a fever became ill himself,as one might expect.For the household
slave has the same relationship to the dreamer that the body has to the soul.”2 According to this logic,the slave serves as surrogate body for the slaveholder,the experiences
of the slaveholder played out in the very body of the slave.3 This equation between slaves
and bodies actually begins with the lexicon of slavery.The Greek word for body,to
s o ma ,serves as a euphemism for the person of a slave.As we will see,wills and prop-
erty registers were particularly likely to refer to the slaves of a household as “the bod-
ies,”ta s o mata .
By the first century C.E.,Stoic philosophers had appropriated the trope of slavery to
represent what we would describe as spiritual or moral postures,for example,in the
struggle to avoid enslavement to the passions.Similarly,in a wide variety of Christian
sources,the rhetoric of slavery represents the negative relationship of the human per-
son to sin or the positive relationship of the Christian to God or to Christ.4 Perhaps
because of this theological displacement,scholars have been slow to interrogate the
ideology of slavery in early Christian sources.Following the lead of the primary texts,
we may be tempted to identify true slavery as spiritual bondage.Christian authors none-
theless employ conventions and cliches that construct an image of the slave body as
vulnerable to invasion and abuse,reinforcing a range of other evidence from the early
Empire.Ironically,even as Christian sources downplay the impact of the brutal physi-
cal realities of ancient slavery,they rely on corporal metaphors of slavery to depict spiri-
tual identity.In the gnostic Exegesis of the Soul ,the embattled heroine is in fact the Soul,
whose trials parallel those of an enslaved prostitute:“But even when she turns her face
from those adulterers,she runs to others and they compel her to live with them and
render service to them upon their bed,as if they were her masters.”5 Although Exegesis
of the Soul emphasizes the bondage of the soul,the passage is persuasive only to the
extent that the reader recognizes the dangers that slavery poses to the body.
In this chapter I move from physical slavery to spiritual slavery,from bodies to souls,
in order to expose the dependence of Stoic and Christian discourses of spiritual slavery
on bodily metaphors.I begin with a body count,pointing to the characterization of
slaves as bodies in accounting records and other documents.I argue that slaveholders
rely on the bodies of slaves,themselves unprotected,as surrogate bodies to buffer their
own persons.Since slaves ’ bodies mediated their experiences of bondage,,I explore the
implications of gendered identity for slaves.I conclude the chapter with readings of
selected passages from the Discourses of the Stoic freedman philosopher Epictetus and
from Paul ’s letter to the Galatians.Both Epictetus and Paul attempt to minimize the
importance of physical slavery.The arguments of both,however,turn on the recurring
equation between slaves and bodies.
Topics: Slavery In Early Christianity | 1 Comment »
Gospel
By admin | May 7, 2007
Shining above his head with a thousand rays brighter than those of the sun and
moon put together is a placard in Roman letters proclaiming him king of the Jews,
surrounded by a wounding crown of thorns like that worn,without their even
knowing and with no visible sign of blood,by all who are not allowed to be
sovereigns of their own bodies.
—José Saramago,The Gospel
according to Jesus Christ
Everybody knew what she was called,but nobody anywhere knew her name.
Disremembered and unaccounted for,she cannot be lost because no one is looking
for her,and even if they were,how can they call her if they don ’t know her name?
—Toni Morrison,Beloved
Topics: Slavery In Early Christianity | No Comments »