BMCR 2008.12.08, Antonio Gonzales, La fin du statut servile?

Antonio Gonzales (ed.), La fin du statut servile? (affranchissement,
libe/ration, abolition) (2 vols.).  Franche-Comte/:  Presses
universitaires de Franche-Comte/, 2008.  Pp. x, 563.  ISBN
9782848672250.  EUR 45.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Deborah Kamen, University of Washington
([email protected])
Word count:  2626 words
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[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.]

This two-volume work, provocatively titled "The End of Servile
Status?," represents the proceedings of the 30th colloquium of the
Groupe International de Recherches sur l'Esclavage dans l'Antiquite/
(GIREA), held in Besanc,on in December 2005. Edited by Antonio
Gonzales, the work contains a brief dedication (in French) to Jacques
Annequin, a lengthy bibliography of Annequin's work on slavery, and 42
articles (31 in French, 7 in Spanish, 3 in Italian, 1 in English).[[1]]
The two volumes are divided into three parts, entitled "becoming free"
(vol. I), "being a freedman" (vols. I-II), and "the limits of
manumission" (vol. II); within each part, the chapters are arranged
roughly chronologically. Owing to the large number of articles, I will
summarize each one only briefly and then offer some comments on the
work as a whole.

Part I -- "becoming free" -- begins with an article by Bouvier that
poses the question whether we can properly speak of "manumission" in
Homeric poetry. Through a study of Odysseus's slave Eumaeus, he
concludes that in the world of Homer the focus is on "adopting" a slave
into the oikos, rather than on his or her manumission and incorporation
into a citizen body.  Ndoye's article, also on manumission in Homer, is
a nice complement to Bouvier's, although there is no cross-referencing
between the two.  Employing the theory of "social death," Ndoye argues
that Eumaeus, like other Homeric slaves, is desocialized and
deracinated: while manumission ameliorates a given slave's situation,
it represents only partial freedom, as it usually entails maintaining
connections with one's former master. Gualerzi's quite long article
surveys various Greek and Latin literary representations of the end of
Andromache's slavery to Neoptolemus. Tamiolaki's excellent piece
investigates the chorus's controversial line in Aristophanes (Frogs
694) that "slaves have become Plataians." She explains that
Aristophanes' choice of the word "Plataians," as opposed to politai,
served at least two purposes: to dissociate the slaves newly freed at
Arginusae from the citizen body, and to give freedmen their own
corporate identity. Paradiso discusses the politics of Helot
manumission in Thucydides, arguing that the Spartans, at least as
represented by Thucydides, offered the Helots manumission not as a
means of social integration but instead as a means of control and
repression. Valde/s Gui/a demonstrates that the cult of Zeus
Eleutherios was consolidated in the fourth century with the civic cult
of Zeus Soter in Peloponnesian cities that had "liberated" themselves
from the Spartan yoke.

In a short piece on Artemidorus's Oneiricritica, Annequin argues that
manumission was fundamentally conceptualized as the dissolution of a
relationship of belonging to one's master. Peyras explores the
scriptural basis for Aristaeus's demand that the Jews be liberated, as
well as the ways in which Josephus and Eusebius, readers of Aristaeus's
letter, approached the same question. McClintock shows how, at least in
the Roman imperial period, death sentences were thought to terminate a
slave's relationship with his former dominus, since the slave was now
subservient only to his penalty (servus poenae). Rodri/guez Gerva/s and
Pe/rez Sa/nchez demonstrate the ideological tension in the late Roman
Empire between the dehumanization of barbarians and the necessity of
their integration (framed as dependence rather than servitude) into the
Roman world. El Bouzidi's chapter examines manumission in Muslim
doctrine, revealing that the practice of liberating one's slaves was
justified by the Koran and the Hadith (oral tradition about Mohammed)
and further concretized by the Fikh (Islamic jurisprudence). Bazemo
investigates the conception of manumission among the Peul in the
Sahelian region of Burkina Faso in West Africa. In this culture, freed
slaves called Rimai+mbe/ had only partial freedom, remaining, in a
sense, tethered to their former masters.

Part II -- "being a freedman" -- opens with Youni's chapter tracing the
juridical status of the Greek freedman from the archaic period to the
Roman era.[[2]] Serghidou examines the ways in which Herodotus evokes
the emotional experience of deliverance from captivity to talk about
eleutheria on a community or national level. Demaille studies the
Publii Anthestii, a prominent freedman family in the Roman colony of
Dion, and argues that their exceptional social mobility was facilitated
by the cultural complexity of their colonial society; the chapter ends
with a short appendix of inscriptions mentioning the P. Anthestii.
Garci/a Mac Gaw investigates what CJ.4.43.2 -- a law of Constantine
allowing parents in extreme poverty to sell their children, and also
establishing means by which these children could be returned to
citizenship -- can tell us about the construction of symbolic spaces of
"slavery" and "freedom." In a short piece that ends somewhat abruptly,
Reduzzi Merola discusses the representation of slaves and freedmen in
Plautus and Terence. Lo/pez Barja de Quiroga examines the Augustan laws
on manumission, especially the lex Aelia Sentia, which he argues did
not decrease the rate of manumission but only the number of freedmen
who acquired citizenship.

There then follow six articles on Petronius. Hidalgo de la Vega
contends, through a study of Trimalchio, that Roman manumission was an
ideological mirage, bolstering the institution of slavery more than it
benefited the slaves themselves. Grosdemouge argues that Petronius's
critique of wealthy freedman such as Trimalchio is actually part of a
broader critique of the acquisition of wealth as a transgression of
societal values. The next two articles, by Brunet and Garrido-Hory,
stem from a research project conducted at ISTA (Institut des Sciences
et Techniques de l'Antiquite/), namely the Index the/matique des
re/fe/rences a\ l'esclavage et a\ la de/pendance chez Pe/trone. Brunet
presents some of the data from the Index, including the terminology
used for servile and dependent statuses, in order to access Petronius's
"vision" of the freedman and freedman values. Garrido-Hory argues that
in tracing the behaviors of freed slaves, Petronius stresses the
dangers of social mobility and its potential to threaten the society of
free men.  In the next article, Gonzales demonstrates that freedmen in
Petronius occupy a precarious status, living in fear of losing their
wealth and lacking the protection they had as slaves. The last piece on
Petronius is by Prieto Arciniega, who compares the presentation of
slaves and freedmen in Petronius's and Fellini's versions of the
Satyricon; the differences between the two versions, he says,
illuminate the fact that Roman society has always been observed from a
variety of angles.

Next, Amiri reads the epithets used in the funerary inscriptions of
freedmen in the Germanic provinces as a reflection of the values freed
slaves were expected to embody in accordance with their social class.
In order to understand the trajectory of the freed slave in Rome,
Corbier argues that we need to compare similar historical phenomena
(e.g., the integration of immigrants into modern societies, the paths
taken by ex-slaves in the 19th and 20th centuries, etc.) and
contextualize the freedman within his or legal framework (namely, the
Roman household). Hernandez Guerra analyzes the epigraphic evidence for
the legal, social, and economic standing of freedwomen in the province
Terraconensis, and concludes with a 20-page catalogue of these
inscriptions. Primarily through a toponymic study of the ager
Barcinonensis, Olesti Vila shows the ways in which the freedmen of this
port city both demonstrated and legitimized their new status by
purchasing land. Finally, Chaulet examines the enslavement, and
subsequent liberation, of Spanish Christians in North Africa in the
16th century.

Part III -- "the limits of manumission" -- begins with L'Homme We/ry's
reinterpretation of Solon's "liberation." She argues that the horoi
Solon tore up were actually Megarian boundary stones on the Thriasian
plain; in this way, he liberated not only the plain but also various
groups of men, both Eleusinians and Athenians, who had been affected by
Megara's actions.  Gallego argues that the Messenians underwent subject
formation, and thus in a sense liberation, through their subjection to
Sparta. According to a compelling argument by Buis, Aristophanes
depicts Xanthias in the Frogs as a "freedman," and in doing so conveys,
in comedic fashion, his audience's anxieties about contemporary status
upheaval.  Buis also suggests that this "theatrical apeleutheria"
explains a line of the Peace (743) stating that Aristophanes, uniquely,
tous doulous parelusen, "freed the slaves." Mactoux analyzes the
practice of proclaiming manumissions at the Great Dionysia in Athens,
arguing that the proclamation served both as a performative utterance
facilitating the slave's transition into freedom and as a way of
communicating to the audience the fundamental difference between free
and slave. Gaertner's article looks at the differences between the way
Lysias represents freedmen and the way he represents metics: whereas
manumission is depicted as stemming from and causing further civic
distress, metics are unproblematically integrated into the civic body
as a group of near-citizens.

Pla/cido-Suarez then traces, from classical Greece to the Roman era,
the development of thoughts about equality and the move toward
non-servile forms of dependence, including that of freedman-clients.
Guelfucci demonstrates the ways in which Polybius uses the
relationships between slaves, freedmen, and clients and free men to
think about and characterize political relationships. Alexianu presents
and analyzes our evidence for halo^netai, who, he concludes, were a
category of Thracian slaves obtained by barter in exchange for salt.
Mihailescu-Bi^liba demonstrates through epigraphic evidence that,
despite the lex Aelia Sentia, many slaves under the age of 30 continued
to be manumitted -- in part, it seems, because of the close
relationships these slaves had with their masters. Sastre and Pla/cido
Suarez discuss the phenomenon of voluntary surrender (deditio) in the
Roman provinces, especially Northwest Iberia, demonstrating that
although dediticii paid tribute to Rome, they were peregrini who in
essence regained their freedom. In a very long piece treating slavery
over time and space, Pe/tre/-Grenouilleau distinguishes three main
modes of departing from slavery: systematic departures of slaves
(through manumission, resistance, or revolt), the slow "decline" of a
slave system, and abolitionism. Katsari and Dal Lago argue that the key
difference between the slave systems of the antebellum American South
and ancient Rome -- namely, exploitation based on racism -- accounts
for the fact that whereas the South was a "closed" slave society (with
rare manumission and frequent rebellion), Rome was "open" (with
frequent manumission and rarer rebellion). Finally, Mignot argues that
the Roman revocatio in servitutum, the reversal of manumission and the
annulling of its effects, was used in 17th-century Antilles for similar
reasons.

The organizational principle behind these two volumes -- grouping
papers in a way that, in a sense, mirrors the life cycle of the
freedman (becoming free, being free, and facing limits to one's
freedom) -- is in theory an excellent idea, but the majority of the
papers do not neatly fit in one of these categories to the exclusion of
the others. The conference itself appears to have been organized into
panels sharing a geographic, temporal, or generic focus: thus, e.g.,
there were panels on manumission in Greek literature, Roman law, the
Roman provinces, and post-classical societies.[[3]] Maintaining a
similar type of categorization for the published proceedings might have
been more effective. In addition, this work would have benefited
greatly from a conclusion drawing together common themes and
significant differences that arise over the course of the volumes.

This work displays a trait characteristic of many conference
proceedings, namely that no attempt seems to have been made to
standardize style: some papers are much longer than others; some read
like polished articles whereas others read more like talks; some papers
have bibliography appended to the end whereas others do not. More
distracting is the abundance of typographic errors: there are on
average a few typos per article; five contributors' names are spelled
differently in the table of contents and in their respective
chapters;[[4]] there are many typographic problems with the Greek
(especially in Peyras'  chapter); and the one English-language
contribution contains a number of spelling and capitalization errors.
Money was clearly spent on the production of this work -- three
chapters have full-color graphs or maps, something that does not seem
entirely necessary -- but more care ought to have been taken in
copy-editing. Despite these quibbles, however, I recommend this work
for any scholars of ancient slavery. Far too little scholarship has
been done on the liberation of slaves in the ancient world, and these
volumes, covering an impressively wide geographic and temporal range,
open up productive avenues for further inquiry.

Antonio Gonzales, Avant-propos

Bibliographie de Jacques Annequin sur l'esclavage

I. Devenir libre

David Bouvier, Formes de "retours a\ la liberte/" et statut de
l'"affranchi" dans la poe/sie home/rique

Malick Ndoye, L'affranchissement dans les poe\mes home/riques: de la
parente/ illusoire a\ l'adoption

Saverio Gualzeri, La fine della schiavitu\ di Andromaca

He/le\ne-Melina Tamiolaki, La libe/ration et la citoyennete/ des
esclaves aux Arginuses: Plate/ens ou Athe/niens? Un vers controverse/
d'Aristophane (Gren. 694) et l'ide/ologie de la socie/te/ athe/nienne

Annalisa Paradiso, Politiques de l'affranchissement chez Thucydide

Miriam Valde/s Gui/a, Zeus Eleutherios/Zeus Soter y la liberacio/n de
esclavos-dependientes en el Peloponeso

Jacques Annequin, Les esclaves et les signes oniriques de la liberte/:
l'Onirocriticon d'Arte/midore

Jean Peyras, Autour de la lettre d'Ariste/e: Recherche sur la
libe/ration des esclaves juifs, de la Bible des Septante a\ Euse\be de
Ce/saree/e

Aglaia McClintock, Libera\ti dalla morte

Manuel Rodriguez Gervas and Di/onisio Pe/rez Sa/nchez, Integracio/n
ideolo/gica y transformacio/n del ba/rbaro: de servus a colonus

Sai+d El Bouzidi, L'affranchissement des de/pendants en Islam:
L'institutionnalisation du Tahrir Rakaba

Maurice Bazemo, L'affranchissement chez les Peul de la re/gion
sahe/lienne du Burkina Faso: la re/alite/

II. E^tre affranchi

Maria Youni, Sur le statut juridique de l'affranchi grec dans le monde
gre/co-romain

Anastasia Serghidou, Aspects culturels de la liberte/ personnelle chez
He/rodote

Julien Demaille, Les P. Anthestii: une famille d'affranchis dans
l'e/lite municipale de la colonie romaine de Dion

Carlos Garci/a Mac Gaw, CJ.4.43.2: Esclavitud y Libertad,
Representaciones Simbo/licas y Pra/cticas Sociales

Francesca Reduzzi Merola, La fin de l'esclavage chez les comiques
latins

Pedro Lopez Barja de Quiroga, Las leyes augusteas sobre manumisio/n

Mari/a Jose/ Hidalgo de la Vega, El liberto Trimalcio/n en el
Satirico/n de Petronio. Entre la libertad y la dependencia

Franc,ois Grosdemouge, L'accession a\ la richesse chez Pe/trone

Claude Brunet, La vision de l'affranchi chez Pe/trone: terminologie et
discours

Marguerite Garrido-Hory, Les affranchis chez Pe/trone: comportements et
mentalite/s

Antonio Gonzales, Quid faciant leges, ubi sola pecunia regnat.
Affranchis contre pauvres dans le Satiricon de Pe/trone?

Alberto Prieto Arciniega, Esclaves et affranchis dans Fellini -
Satyricon

Bassir Amiri, De la diffe/renciation a\ l'inte/gration: bene merens
dans les epitaphs des Germanies

Mireille Corbier, Famille et inte/gration sociale: la trajectoire des
affranchi(e)s

Liborio Hernandez Guerra, La liberta en Hispanie. Manifestations
e/pigraphiques de la province tarraconense

Oriol Olesti Vila, Libertos y propiedad de la tierra en el ager
barcinonensis

Rudy Chaulet, La re/demption des captifs espagnols d'Afrique du Nord
dans les Descargos de Carlos Quinto (1559-1560)

III. Limites d'affranchissement

Louise-Marie L'Homme-We/ry, Perdre sa liberte/ et la retrouver dans
l'Athe\nes de Solon

Julia/n Gallego, Convirtie/ndose en griegos. La liberacio/n de los
mesenios

Emiliano J. Buis, Les (en)jeux d'un 'affranchissement' dramatique: la
subjectivite/ le/gale de Xanthias dans les Grenouilles d'Aristophane

Marie-Madeleine Mactoux, Regards sur la proclamation de
l'affranchissement au the/a^tre a\ Athe\nes

Martine Gaertner, L'affranchissement dans le corpus lysiaque: une
pratique conteste/e. Le regard d'un me/te\que sur l'affranchissement

Domingo Placido Suarez, La the/orie de l'e/galite/ des e^tres humains
et l'e/volution des formes de de/pendance

Marie-Rose Guelfucci, Conque+te des liberte/s et formes de de/pendance
sociale et politique dans les Histoires de Polybe

Marius-Tiberius Alexianu, Une cate/gorie d'esclaves thraces: les
halo^netoi

Lucretiu Mihailescu Bi^rliba, Les a^ges d'affranchissement dans les
provinces balkano-danubiennes

Ine/s Sastre and Domingo Pla/cido Suarez, Deditio in fidem and peasant
forms of dependence in the Roman provincial system: the case of
Northwestern Iberia

Olivier Pe/tre/-Grenouilleau, Modes de sortie de l'esclavage

Constantina Katsari and Enrico Dal Lago, Manumissio e ribellione
nell'Impero romano e nel Sud degli Stati Uniti prima della Guerra
Civile

Dominique Aime/ Mignot, In servitutem reverteris... Exceptions a\ la
sortie de l'esclavage aux Antilles

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Notes:


1.   This work omits 11 papers presented at the conference and includes
1 paper that was not presented (Guelfucci).

2.   For further reading on this topic, not cited by Youni, see A.
Calderini, La manomissione e la condizione dei liberti in Grecia (Milan
1908); H. Raedle's dissertation Untersuchungen zum griechischen
Freilassungswesen (Munich 1969); R. Zelnick-Abramovitz, Not Wholly
Free: The Concept of Manumission and the Status of Manumitted Slaves in
the Ancient Greek World. Mnemosyne Suppl. 266 (Leiden 2005).

3.   The program for the conference can be found here
(http://ista.univ-fcomte.fr/programme_GIREA2005.html) .

4.   Thus the table of contents has Analisa Paradiso (cf. Annalisa in
her chapter); Malik N'doye (cf. Malick Ndoye in his chapter);
Louise-Marie L'Homme-Wery (cf. L'Homme-We/ry in her chapter); Marius
Tiberiu Alexinanu (cf. Marius-Tiberius in his chapter); and Olivier
Pe/tre/-Grenouilleau's (cf. Pe/tre/ Grenouilleau in his chapter). I
have corrected these inconsistencies in the list of authors and titles.