The world written by Sugo's pen
Editor|The world written by Sugo's pen
Among privately owned slaves, the first were domestic slaves. Compared with other slaves, they had two distinctive characteristics: First, because they lived in the slave owner's house for a long time, they naturally found it easy to establish a closer relationship with the master, so "in the surviving evidence of the Roman world, domestic slaves were more common than non-domestic slaves." ”
But it was this kind of acquaintance that sometimes brought them fatal disasters, because Roman law said: "If a slave owner is killed in his own home and the murderer is not found, all his slaves in the house shall be put to death." Second, some domestic work has certain requirements for the cultural level and special skills of slaves, and not all people are competent.
It is a large and complex group of people who work in a variety of domestic jobs. It is a basic duty to take care of the master's food, clothing, housing and transportation, they tailor cloth to make clothes and hats, carefully cook gastronomic feasts, saddle the horse with the host, and carefully groom the hostess. Meeting the spiritual and cultural needs of the owner is a high-level responsibility, and they can serve as tutors to educate the master's children, senior clerks who manage and read books, and musicians for guests to relax.
As the wealthiest of the Romans, "Crassus had many able slaves, including attendants, clerical assistants, silversmiths, butlers, and caterers, who personally directed their education and served as their teachers. In short, he felt that his master's first responsibility was to look after his slaves, and he saw them as living tools for managing the household. ”
After Chana and Malleus came to power, Crassus fled to Spain with ten slaves to escape persecution, where he "intended to befriend Vibius Pacaus, so he sent a slave to report the message."
Cicero was a famous politician and writer of the late Republican period, and he also had a typical slave family, and his slaves also performed a wide variety of work. "His family teachers, clerks, librarians, and reference clerks were slaves. Some slaves could even read historical and philosophical texts for him, gather relevant information, and correct errors in the manuscripts. ”
Tiro, the slave of Cicero, was a famous figure. "Tiro wrote a biography of Cicero, edited and compiled Cicero's oratories, and he also wrote articles on grammar and developed the method of shorthand."
Female slaves deserved special attention, as they were mainly engaged in domestic work, the most onerous of which were two: baking bread and weaving wool. In addition to these manual labors, sometimes they had to sacrifice their flesh for the pleasure of their masters.
Roman slave women were often the object of sexual assault by their masters or their masters' 'lovers'. And female slaves were often helpless in the face of the brutality of their masters, because "in Rome there was no question of rape of a slave, unless she was someone else's slave." People are a matter of 'use' of slaves. "Vibius Pakaius, knowing that Crassus was hiding in the cave, sent two beautiful slave girls to accompany him.
As mentioned earlier, the identity of a child is determined by the identity of its mother, so that the offspring of female slaves and masters still cannot escape the status of slaves.
Even more cruelly, the child is almost difficult to be recognized by the owner, and in the vast majority of cases they are mercilessly drowned.
Of course, it cannot be ruled out that the master and the slave girl are genuinely in love, and if this is the case, the master can announce her release and then form a legal relationship with her, but when the words on the tombstone are engraved, they will call their husbands "master and husband", "as if this lowly birth can never be erased, and even the affection between husband and wife can not cancel the stain of this slave status." ”
Agricultural slaves
Rome's great conquest of the Mediterranean region caused a violent economic shock within the Republic, and the rich people of Rome, who had made a fortune through war, invested heavily in the cultivation of grain, olives and grapes, and the Roman government encouraged them to manage fields that had been barren due to the destruction of the war, but the Roman civilians who died nine times faced bankruptcy due to the long war, and they gradually lost their land.
At the same time, the massive influx of slaves provided cheap human resources for agricultural production. The use of slave labor had obvious advantages over hiring freemen. Such an important economic phenomenon arose, that is, the rapid rise of large estates with slaves as the main labor force, while the small estates of homesteaders gradually declined.
The idyllic mood of men and women was swept away by the wind of land annexation, replaced by the busy figures of slaves in the large farms under the scorching sun.
The size of the manor does not have a certain number, the medium size is about one or two hundred yogurt in size, and the large scale may even be as high as tens of thousands of yogurts. Large estates required thousands of slaves, and small ones had only a few dozen" At the end of the republic, the senators needed more and more slaves to run their large estates. ”
Regarding the choice of slaves, "Cassius suggested that the slaves chosen should be able to do heavy work, be more than twenty-two years old, and be quickly adapted to the work on the farm, and you can judge it by watching how they do other work and asking their original masters what they are accustomed to doing."
And Varro believed that "too many slaves of the same nationality should be avoided, because this is a breeding ground for internal strife".
So what was the organizational structure within these slave estates? In general, the larger the farm, the more complex the staffing arrangement.
The medium estate can be divided into two levels: a farmer with the status of a slave and a large number of ordinary slaves under his control. Large estates can be divided into four levels: at the top is a big housekeeper who controls the overall situation, below there are the heads of various departments and personnel responsible for a specific work, and at the bottom are slaves engaged in heavy manual labor such as farming, grazing, and cooking.
The masters often did not assume specific responsibilities for the management of the estate, because "these landowners never intended to live on the farm and cultivate the land themselves", so they had to retreat to the second place, and they would appoint a slave as the head of the estate to administer it. Perhaps because of the peculiarities of this role, the agronomists of ancient Rome had a very detailed discussion of its selection and specific responsibilities.
Columera believed that "do not appoint good-looking slaves as heads, and certainly not those who are accustomed to the luxurious life in the city".
The master should choose a tested slave who has worked since childhood to fill this position. If not, find someone who has been moderately exercised.
Cato believes that the head "must be well managed". He hoped that the head of the estate would become a solid arm of the owner and assume the core responsibility of running the estate. The first rule is that one must be unswervingly faithful to his master, "He cannot think that he knows more than his master." He should consider the master's friend as his own. The head of the estate must obey the master's command to obey whoever he wants".
Without the permission of the owner, the head of the estate cannot lend to others. Nor can he buy anything without the owner's knowledge.
He also had to report his accounts to his master frequently. In short, Zhuangtou cannot hide anything from his master. Second, the head of the estate had to lead by example and win the imitation of other slaves.
First of all, she is responsible for cleaning the farm. "She has to keep herself tidy and also make the manor tidy. Every night before going to bed, she should tidy up and clean the stove. "Secondly, she has to go to religious activities on a regular basis." On the first and third (or fifteenth), thirteenth (or fifteenth) days of the first and fifteenth days of the first and fifteenth days of the first and fifth days of the first year of the first year of the first year (or the fifth day of the first month), as well as the holy holidays, she should put a garland on the stove, and on these days she prays to the patron saint of the family. ”
Last and most important, she will prepare food for the slaves. In addition to her work as a cook, she also had to store various ingredients herself. "She has to have a lot of chickens and have a lot of eggs. She had to stock up on dried pears, pears, figs, citrus and raisins. "She needs to hide a lot of ingredients in a tank and then bury them in the ground. In addition, she had to be good at grinding flour, and could grind high-quality flour for the slaves to feed themselves.
State owned slaves
Slaves in the Republic can be broadly divided into two categories, depending on who they serve: state slaves and private slaves, "for the former, they are the property of the state or all citizens".
"After conquering New Carthage in Spain in 210 BC, Scipio sent 2,000 of his artisans as public slaves to produce war materials."
Second-class slaves would be pulled onto the decks of naval warships to serve as oarsmen or take on tasks such as paving roads and repairing pipelines. They sweat on the land beneath their feet, which is someone else's homeland.
The proverb "All roads lead to Rome" is undoubtedly a high praise for Roman civilization, but under the road lies the bitterness and blood and tears of slaves.
Well-qualified state slaves could take up more advanced occupations, but only "menial jobs dealing with trivial matters of government."
They could serve as policemen, jailers, swordsmen, and government officials, but "it was clear that state-owned slaves could not take even the slightest coercive measure against citizens." "Serving the officials of Rome was an extremely important duty." Under the builders and treasurers, a large number of slaves gathered."
"Managers in state-owned mines are generally slaves" and the state can also join the fire brigade, serve as priests in temples, and play some role in holding triumphal ceremonies. They could even travel with high-ranking Roman officials as executive officers, so in 38 BC the Senate issued a special decree to prohibit this phenomenon.
In addition, there were cases of state-owned slaves joining the army as combatants, for example, after the serious defeat at the Battle of Cannae, the Republican government gathered two legions of slaves to fight against Hannibal's army.
But this situation only occurs when the country is facing a very urgent situation, and in normal times it is strictly prohibited. This is easy to understand, as joining the army will give the slaves weapons and will gain training in battle.
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