Conclusion

Nothing is more elusive than the psychology of the slave.

(Finley 1959, 158)

Chattel slavery was deeply embedded in Roman Republican society at the

time of Plautus in the law, in religious practice, in the political definition
of the citizen, in the self-promotion of the Roman elite, and in the theater.
The self-interest of the slave-owners repeatedly dictated government
action, as slave-owners used and developed the institutions of the state to
protect their interests. The curule aediles promulgated rules regulating slave
sale in the interests of buyers as well as sellers, and the praetors developed
legal remedies to protect the masters human property and to guarantee
business activities transacted by slaves (Chapters 1, 4). During the crisis
years of the Hannibalic invasion (218216), the Senate, the corporate politi-
cal institution of the Roman elite slave-holders, voted to allow an arbitrary
end to slavery for those who would fight for Rome. There is no clearer
expression that Roman manumission, like Roman slavery, reflected the
absolute and arbitrary power of the master. After the war, in the context
of a conservative reassertion of traditional values, the Roman censors in
179 restricted the vote of freed slaves to one urban tribe and thereby again
denied freed slaves the opportunity for military service (Chapter 4). When
slaves resisted the terms of their enslavement, the Senate deployed Roman
armies in Italy in the 190s and 180s, and then in Sicily in the 130s, in order
to protect individual communities and the system itself from rebellious
slaves (Chapters 3, 5). The Senate, military commanders, and public offi-
cials began to punish slaves who resisted the terms of their enslavement in

Plautus and Roman Slavery, First Edition. Roberta Stewart.

2012 Roberta Stewart. Published 2012 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
 Conclusion 191

ways that defined them as less than human and to categorize them as a
group deserving such punishments. Thus the sources for the first Sicilian
slave war describe slaves as animals against whom the institutions of the
state offered protection. The punishment of slaves in ways that defined them
as other than human and the frequency of Roman manumission underscore
the character of Republican manumission as the arbitrary gift of the gener-
ous master, not the reward for service of a deserving slave. Republican
manumission, like the definition of the relationship in slavery, in the time
of Plautus was ultimately about the master, not about the slave. The slave
society was not only a historical product in its origins (so Finley), but in
its continued evolution. It was embedded in history.
But what about the slaves themselves? We see them resisting their
enforced subordination, in the edict of the curule aediles defining conditions
for their resale and in the slave rebellion in Sicily in the 130s. During the
Hannibalic invasion, we see them opting for freedom through military
service, acquitting themselves well, and having the memory of their service
and assimilation (via the aristocratic ritual of the banquet) inscribed in a
temple of Liberty on the Aventine. But because of the nature of slavery as
a private relationship of master and slave, the kind of evidence we have for
slavery reflects the power of the slave society that effectively subordinated
the individual identity of slaves to the interests of the masters. The slaves
remain largely invisible and anonymous.
Hence the value of Plautus, who stages the private relationships of
slavery and the quotidian interactions of masters, slaves, and community.
Plautus shows us a world deeply aware of the problems created by the
system of slavery. The master needed to control his anger, given his absolute
control over the body of the slave (Chapters 2, 5), he lived with the knowl-
edge that the deferential behavior of slaves was a performance of deference
(Chapter 5), he lived with the social expectations that he intervene on behalf
of slaves belonging to another and himself act upon such entreaties when
he received them from others (Chapters 3, 4). The plays show how com-
pletely the role of master formed part of the self-conception and public
representation of the Roman elite as a person of honor.
Plautus window into the world of Roman slavery shows awareness of
the problems of slavery for the slaves and suggests the responses of the
slaves themselves. The complete commodification of the slave made all
responses to enforced subordination an indicator of value, including the
tears that indicated a female slaves prior experience of freedom (Virgo,
Chapter 1). The commodification of the bodies of slave women engendered
fantasies of maleness in owners who dressed up rape as romance; but slave
women colluded in the fantasies and the vertical hierarchy of slave mistress
and slave attendant seemed to preclude the formation of an identity of
experience or interest among slaves (Pasicompsa, Chapter 1). Enslavement
192 Conclusion

represented a contest for the slaves own cognitive framework (Chapter 2):
the obedient slave lived with cognitive dissonance; the resistant slave ran
away and ultimately faced physical coercion; the trickster slave represented
a solution of outward acquiescence and inner self-definition, analogous to
what Bontemps has called being and becoming Negro while remaining
other than Negro (2001, 137153). The plays revealed the slaves lack
of corporal integrity as a social fact that identified the slave as dishonored
and, more importantly, dishonorable to the larger Roman audience (Chapter
3). Slavery marked the body of the slave, and both violence against the slave
was communal and the slaves incapacity for reciprocal action was com-
munal. The slave responded with desire for vengeance, terror, and an ideol-
ogy of survival that did not challenge the legitimacy of the system. The idea
of surviving the whip reappropriated violence as a self-affirmation within
the codes of honor of the Roman world (namely virtus), without challenging
the system of subordination (cf. Frederick Douglass). But it prefigures the
Christian thought of St. Paul (Glancy 2004). The self-narratives of slaves
(Chapter 4), who believe that work and service will produce manumission,
show the beginnings of the slave culture of work studied by Joshel (1992b).
Finally, we see the slave deploying words and strategic silence to create a
space for an independent self within slavery (Chapter 5). The slave trickster
figures out how to live successfully in slavery by cloaking his/her subjective
self. The successful slave makes the slave self as a category of historical
analysis disappear into a strategic silence that Plautus comedies allow us
to apprehend as the historical action of a dominated subject.