The toughest job

Readers will recall that I am making my way through the surprisingly enjoyable book "Life and Leisure in Ancient Rome". This weekend, it was the chapter about slavery, and I have to say that I did not realise that things could be as tough as this:

"They were bound to promote their master's welfare at every turn, because there was no limit to the punishment which he could inflict on them if he was dissatisfied; and they were encouraged to preserve his life by the strongest of all imaginable deterrents; if he was murdered, the whole of his slave-household were put to death without even the formality of a trial, on the grounds that, since they had not prevented the murder as they should have done, they were all accessories after the crime. ...

In AD 61, stung by a personal grievance, a slave of the City Prefect Pedanius Secundus killed his master; the whole vast slave household of four hundred slaves was executed..."

The book points out that this prompted a riot in Rome (people were by this time starting to think the law was - literally, I suppose - a bit of an overkill), and that:

"...despite C. Cassius' eloquent protest that society would collapse if the slaves were not killed, a number of senators had doubts and troops had to be fetched in before the executions could take place."

Talk about your hard nosed conservatives!

Things did improve later for slaves, with Hadrian restricting those who could be killed to those slaves near their murdered master at the time of his death.

But the book also makes the point that well treated slaves were often very loyal to their master.

By the time of Christianity, despite the church institutionally accepting slavery, individual Christians often, at the moment of their conversion, freed their slaves. A good way to mark a conversion, I think.