The Most Silent Women of Greece and Rome: Rural Labour and Women's Life in the Ancient World

(II) Author(s): Walter Scheidel Source: Greece & Rome, Second Series, Vol. 43, No. 1 (Apr., 1996), pp. 1-10 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/643080 Accessed: 16/02/2010 17:42
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Greece& Rome, Vol. xliii, No. 1, April 1996

THE MOST SILENT WOMEN OF GREECE AND ROME: RURAL LABOUR AND WOMEN'S LIFE IN THE ANCIENT WORLD (II)1
By
WALTER SCHEIDEL

The Evidence: Field Labour How can these ideas be linked to the ancient sources? Focusing first of all on women's contribution to arable cultivation and arboriculture, we immediatelyface the first of many blanks.To the best of my knowledge,we do not have any explicit evidence of ploughing by women in the GrecoRoman world. Only two lines from Hesiod's Worksand Days seem to establish a connection between women and ploughing: according to Hesiod, a proper head of a household would need 'first of all a house, and then a woman and oxen for ploughing - a slave woman, not a wife, to follow the oxen [or: to care for the oxen]' (405 f.). In the fourth century B.C.,however, the second line that specifies the status and the function of the desired woman was apparentlynot yet part of the received text, since Aristotle could still regard her as a free woman (Pol. 1252a 11ff.). Not until the first century B.C.did Philodemos of Gadara quote and defend the reading that defined Hesiod's woman as a slave labourer.2Even so, the wording does not make it clear whether this woman was meant to follow the harnessed oxen, that is, to do the ploughing, or to care for the oxen in the stable.3 The participation of women in the harvest is somewhat better documented.Here we have to rely mainly on the testimonies of the ancient lexicographerswho preservedsome terms that denoted female agricultural labourers.Accordingto Pollux, Aristophanesmentioned a female reaper, a gynaika theristrian,in one of his lost plays. A synonymous term known to Pollux was ametris, the female mower.4 Furthermore, there are several references to the poastria, a working woman who probably engaged in gleaning, the cutting of stubble, and the removal of weeds.5It is interesting to note that there even existed (at least) two different Attic comedies that bore the title hai poastriai, which will have turned these women into stage characters.6We also hear about the kalametris, a woman who collected corn-ears and stubble. Plutarch lumps this category of women together with male harvesters, apparentlyregarding them as hired labourers.7 The

RURAL LABOUR AND WOMEN'S LIFE

bucolic poet Theocritus describesone such woman as she follows the male reapers to pick up corn-ears (Idyll. 3. 32 and scholion). A more vivid portrayal of this kind of agricultural work performed by women is contained in a poem of the AnthologiaPalatina (9. 89): Nico, describedas a very old woman, is forced to glean corn-earstogether with her daughtersin order to escape starvation;the heat, however, is too great for her to bear and so she dies in the blazing sun; whereupon she is incinerated on a pyre made of stalks.The Roman comic poet Terence has one master warninghis female slave that she will have to reap corn-ears in the midday heat until she becomes as black and parched as charcoal (Ad. 846-9). In general, the gleaning of single corn-earsthat had been left behind by the harvesters and the cutting of stubble to make straw are to be seen as a prerogative of the poor and the old. The most detailed description of this procedure is in the Book Ruth of the Old Testament that refers to female servants who harvest wheat and barley as well as to the poor woman stranger who gets permission to glean for free the remaining stalks. It has to be noted, however, that Varro in his agronomic treatise takes a less philanthropicstance when he recommends that 'when the harvest is over the gleaning should be let, or the loose stalks gatheredwith your own force, or, if the ears left are few and the cost of labourhigh, it should be pastured' (R.R. 1. 53). Even in this case, however, we may suspect that women made up at least part of the labourersto whom the gleaning of such fields was to be let. Women also took part in the threshing of the harvestedgrain.According to Athenaios, two authors of Athenian comedy reportedspecial songs sung by women when they treaded barley under their feet. Work songs of women for this particular activity are indeed known from many other cultures as well.8 There are also a very few remarks about women's labour in winegrowing and olive-growing.Longos, in Daphnis and Chloe (2. 1. 3; 2. 2. 1), speaks of lots of women who had gathered to participate in the vintage. This is corroboratedby evidence from modern Greece where the gathering of grapes is a task joined in by men, women, and children alike.9We move on to much less firm ground with the reference of the late antique agronomist Palladius to an alleged precept of the Greeks that because of the olive's preference for chastity, only impubescent boys and virgins should be allowed to plant olive-trees and to pick the olives (Op. agr. 1. 6. 14). Homer alreadydescribeswomen who carry away in baskets the grapes that had just been gathered (//. 18. 567f.). This may be compared with a papyrusfrom Hellenistic Egypt that contains a contract of women who had

RURAL LABOUR AND WOMEN'S LIFE

been hired as porters duringthe gatheringof olives.10 Several authorsmake mention of trygetriai,female harvesters or pickers, if only in an unspecific manner. 1 In Roman Italy of the Early Empire, the agronomist Columella notes in passing that when 'on rainy days, or because of frost, slave women could not perform agriculturallabour out of doors', they should be put to woolwork inside the house (R.R. 12. 3. 6). The casual characterof this remark gives the impression that to all appearances, Columella did not regard women's labour in the fields as something unusual. Since this impression would be in perfect keeping with, and receive ample confirmation from, comparative evidence on plantation farming from better-documented slave-societies, we have to conclude that agriculture labour played an essential role in the lives of many slave-women of the Romans.'2Furthermore, occasional references to the presence and the tasks of slave children on Roman estates also point to the existence of a considerablenumber of unfree women on these holdings who had to be kept busy.13 Apart from these slave-women,little is heard about the legal status of the women who engaged in field labour.The startlingfact that, although many of them would have worked in the smallholdereconomy, we simply do not have any evidence about them, will probablybe due to the profoundlack of interest of the ancient authors in the daily life of the free rural populace. Bucolic lyrics and novels provide but little compensation. Hired workingwomen attracted somewhat more attention because they provided services to the members of the upper classes from which both the authors and the readersof the works of ancient literaturewere drawn.Apparently,this fact alone evoked an occasional if superficial interest in this group of people. While some of them will have been peasant women who hired out at times of high demand for additional labour on larger, market-orientedestates, others may have belonged to a social stratum of impoverishedwomen who had to eke out a living from all sorts of wage labour. The Evidence: Animal Husbandry As to the contributionof women to animal husbandry,the ancient authors usually content themselves with unspecific remarks about women who tended sheeps or lambs, goats, cattle, or unspecified livestock.14 There is no information on concrete tasks, such as the shearing of sheep which in the Middle Ages often fell to women. By and large, the same holds good for the milking of sheep or cattle.15

RURAL LABOUR AND WOMEN'S LIFE

A little more can be said about the legal status and the social and economic position of women concerned with animal husbandry. Apart from fictional characterssuch as Chloe, free herdswomenare by and large missing from our sources. Thus we are left with a few ambiguous references:Dio Chrysostom,for instance, recalls a stout, elderly woman he met in the Peloponnese who was the mother of a herdsman and often also tended the sheep herself (1. 53 f.). Yet she might equally have been a slave woman. Horace briefly portrays the work of Italian peasant women who locked livestock in a pen and milked the cows, while the daughters drove
goats back from the mountain pasture (Epod. 2. 39-46).16

Again, slave women take up considerablymore room in the sources.The most detailed account is given by Varro in the second book of his agricultural treatise. In general, he makes a distinction between animal husbandry on farms on the one hand and the tending of animals on mountain pastures and the practice of transhumance on the other. 'Thus on the range you may see young men, usually armed,while on the farm not only boys but even girls tend the flocks.... As to the breedingof herdsmen, it is a simple matter in the case of those who stay all the time on the farm, as they have a female fellow-slave in the steading, and the Venus of herdsmen looks no farther than this. But in the case of those who tend the herds in mountain valleys and wooded lands, and keep off the rains not by the roof of the steading but by makeshift huts, many have thought that it was advisableto send along women to follow the herds, to preparefood for the herdsmen, and make them more diligent.Such women should, however, be strong and not ill-looking.In many places they are not inferior to the men at work, as may be seen here and there in Illyricum, being able either to tend the herd, or carry firewood and cook the food, or to keep things in order in their huts' (R.R. 2. 10. 1 and 6f.). Once again, we may refer to the customs of the Sarakatsani, where the women and children at a certain time of the year join the shepherdsand their flocks to milk the animals and to make cheese. Their women also do heavy work in building sheep-folds and moving them to new sites.17 On farms, too, the tending of animals could be regarded as a suitable task for slave women. The Hellenistic poet Herondashas a master orderhis female slave to get up and drive the sow to the pasture (8. 6f.). In Plautus' play Mercator,a newly bought slave-woman launches a prophylacticprotest that she never carried large parcels, tended cattle or nursed babies, thereby clearly touching on common activities of her like (Merc. 507f.).18 Concerningthe female companions of transhumantslave herdsmen,not only their physical fitness but also their ethnic origin would have played a

RURAL LABOUR AND WOMEN'S LIFE

role. It is likely that many of the slave-women who were put to such tasks had been raised in cultures that had a reputationfor hard labourof women. Varro's remark that slave families from Epirus were considered especially reliable, for example, might be an indication that, because of their familiarity with pasturage, they were also used to look after the transhumantherds of the Roman plutocrats.19 additionto sharingin the In work, these slave-women would have fulfilled an importantfunction as the sexual partners and quasi-wivesof the male slaves. Indeed, several sources allude to the danger of unmarriedherdsmenresortingto sexual intercourse with their animals (Phaedr. 3. 3. 17; Plut. Mor. 149c-d). Moreover, the presence of women and their eventual offspring provided a much-nedeed means of social control of the highly mobile, armed, and largely unsupervisedslave herdsmen.2" The Poor and the Barbarian: Women and Agricultural Labour in Literature and Art That the propertied classes of Greece and Rome would only take a detached view of women who worked in the fields or in animal husbandry can be most clearly demonstrated by the marked tendency of ancient authors to relegate this experience to social or geographical peripheries. While it was not fashionable to scorn the contribution of rustic women to the economy of peasant households (though unnecessaryto dwell on them in any detail), and unwise to be prudish about the work-loads of slave women, it was above all agricultural wage labour by those who were regardedas respectablewomen that was frowned upon. This reservationis best brought out by the complaint of Demosthenes that due to current crisis, 'poverty compels our free citizens to perform slavish and degrading services. I am aware of Athenian women who are forced by the present circumstancesto hire out as nurses, servants, and harvesters' (57. 45).21In general, poverty figures prominentlyas the underlyingcause of the manual work of women in antiquity.22 Needless to say, wage labour was held in disregard at least by the upper classes of Athens and Rome.23Even so, in the case of women - and especially in the case of female harvesters another factor may have militated against their employment as wagelabourers:apparently, the worst fate of all (short of enslavement) was a form of employment that exposed the wife, or the daughter or unmarried sister, to the attentions of unrelated men.24 This concern is most emphatically voiced in the Book Ruth of the Old Testament: 'Boas said to

RURAL LABOUR AND WOMEN'S LIFE

Ruth: "Listen, my daughter, don't go on any other field to glean; do not leave this field, but hold on to my farm-girls;stick to the field where they are reaping, and follow them!I will ordermy farm-handsnot to touch you." ... "Well,my daughter",Noomi said to Ruth, "if you accompany his farmgirls, you cannot be molested on another field"' (VTRuth 2. 8f., 22). A parallel, albeit a parabolic one, can be found in the novel of Daphnis and Chloe: during the vintage, 'the men around the wine-presses called after Chloe, leaping like satyrs in pursuit of a maenad, and would have wished to be sheep in order to be tended by her' (2. 2. 2). Comparableappraisalsin more recent times frequently resulted in discriminationagainst agricultural labour of women performed outside the family circle.25 The authors of Hellenistic novels were eager to draw a bleak picture of women in the rural labour force. Achilles Tatius, in his novel Leucippeand Clitophon, introduces a woman who was kept as a slave on a suburban farm with the words: 'suddenly a woman bound with thick ropes and holding a pitchfork threw herself at our feet; her hair had been cut off, her body was unkempt and the tunic she was wearing was filthy' (5. 17). When the novelists Chariton and Xenophon of Ephesus seek to instil particular horror in their audience, both of them have their respective heroines handed over as wives to herdsmen (Char. 2. 3. 2; Xen. Eph. 2. 9. 2). In this case, the transfer of these women from the 'civilized' urban sphere to a menacing rustic setting is deployed as a literary motif that is meant to emphasize their plight.26Other authors are more specific about the dark side of women's work in agriculture.Above all, the fact that they were likely to develop a sun-tan was representedin an unfavourablelight as if it stigmatized them.27When we look at the woman who died in the blazing sun while gleaning corn-ears from the poem in the Anthologia Palatina which I quoted earlier (9.89), we have in a nutshell the three major prejudices concerning the social position of women who had to do agriculturallabour:she was poor, and old, and could not stand the blazing
sun.

Thus far we have confronted only the presupposedsocial marginalityof female agriculturalworkers.In a way, this correspondsto the inclinationof ancient authors to number agricultural labour of women among the customs of the barbarians.Hence, Plato contrasts the way of life of the Athenians, whose women would stay at home all the time, with the lifestyle of the Thracians and many other unspecified peoples who, he holds, employ women in arable cultivation, in the breeding of cattle and sheep, and for other slave-like services (Leg. 805d-e). Similar semi-barbarian habits could be found in the remote parts of Greece as well: according to

RURAL LABOUR AND WOMEN'S LIFE

Heracleides Lembos, in Athamania (in northwestern Greece), the women tilled the land while the men tended the animals.In the northwest of Spain, among the Cantabrians,the women took care of domestic work as well as of agriculture,while the men devoted their time to warfare and plunder.28 These accounts may be compared with field data from (mostly tropical) horticulturalsocieties which suggest that women are likely to make a more substantial contribution to primary subsistence wherever the majority of the men are regularly pulled out of work with food crops into activities such as warfare or hunting.29 A late account of the field work of women on the fringe of the classical oikumeneis provided by Eugippius in his Life of Saint Severinus(Vit. Sev. 14. 3): three days after Severinus had, in Noricum, miraculouslyhealed a moribund woman, 'she began to work in the fields with her own hands accordingto local custom'. It is not inconceivablethat the reference to field work done with her own hands is an indication of the tilling of the soil without a plough, that is, of the survival of hoeing at least in the more mountainous parts of Noricum. The compatibilitybetween agriculturalwork and child-bearingaroused particularcuriosity.In Liguria, for instance, women allegedly gave birth to their children during work and, after washing the new-born, immediately resumed digging and hoeing and their other work ([Aristot.]Mirab. 91). (It is compelling to note that the reference to digging and hoeing suggests women's engagement in arablecultivation conducted only by hoes, without ploughs, which may point to the significant contribution to agriculture women had to make in the more backward parts of the ancient world.) Strabo hands down a story told by Poseidonius about a landowner who 'had hired men and women for ditch-digging;and how one of the women, upon being seized with the pangs of childbirth,went aside from her work to a place near by, and, after having given birth to her child, came back to her work at once in order not to lose her pay; and how the landownersaw that she was doing her work painfully, but was not aware of the cause till late in the day, when he learnt it and sent her away with her wages' (Strab. 3. 4. A 17).30 parallel to this event is provided by Varro's description of similar habits of women in Dalmatia (R. R. 2. 10. 8 f.). In spite of any exaggerations and generalizations such accounts might contain there is ample evidence from more recent societies of hard agriculturalwork of women that lasted until the moment of delivery and continued after a very brief respite. Indeed, it is all too easy to come across analogous cases in the now fashionable autobiographiesof former farm-girlsof the early twentieth century. By and large, Greek and Roman art remained blissfuly unaware of the

RURAL LABOUR AND WOMEN'S LIFE

existence of female farm-workers. Unlike medieval illustrators who depicted women who reaped corn-ears or made sheaves,31ancient artists avoided comparablemotifs. Greek vases do not show female farm labour that goes beyond the picking of apples.Rural workingwomen were banned from Roman reliefs and mosaics.32 Under these circumstances,something as unspectacular as a mosaic from Carthage that shows a woman who carries a cask of black olives and another one who carries a lamb has considerablerarity value. Conclusions All in all, this brief survey shows above all that a realistic assessment of women's role in ancient agriculture can hardly be based on those few scarce and often imprecise testimonies available in our sources. For this reason alone, general considerations of probable social and economic conditions will have to serve as a substitute for non-existing quantitative data, whilst comparative material on peasant life and the rural economy from other periods of history will have to compensate for the dearth of reliable information from antiquity itself. The ancient evidence leaves us with just a few general impressions:the fact that many if not most of the female agriculturalworkers mentioned in our sources were slaves or wagelabourers can be explained by the particularinterest the members of the literate classes took in these groups. By way of contrast, the daily life of women among independent peasants and tenants could be passed over in almost complete silence. Apart from this selective lack of interest, which accounts for much of the lack of relevant evidence, we also have to realize that a realistic portrayal of the life and work of the masses would have made it difficult to uphold the traditional, highly idealized image of women's life. Instead, the literati chose to depict agricultural labour of women as a pitiable recourse of the poor and bereaved, or as a strange custom of uncivilized peoples. The opposite extreme is representedby the idealizationof ruralwomen in bucolic poesy and the praisingof the 'simple peasant'. Because of their status as natally alienated outsiders to society female slaves were the only ones whose labour could and its set of values,34 be discussed in a matter-of-factlymanner.Notwithstandingthe seemingly forbidding shortcomings of the ancient sources and the ineradicable ambiguitiesof the comparative approach,I hope that these main trends of the ancient documentation concerning female work in agriculturewill be tested further and put into a broader perspective in more extensive cross-

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cultural studies of the differences between attitude and behaviour, and between literary representation and real life, in various past and present societies.

NOTES 1. This article is continued from (&R 42 (1995), 202-17. 2. Philod. Oik. col. VIII 35-40 (ed.Jensen). Cfl Timaios FGrHist 566 F 157. 3. See Scheidel, Gymnasium 97 (1990), 416 n. 51 for discussion. The two iron ploughshares deposited at the sanctuary dedicated to Demeter in Bitalemi (cf. G&R 42 [1995], 216 n. 41) may have had only ritual significance and in any case need not have been dedicated by women: U. Kron, Arch. Anzeigcr 1992, 636-8, 649. By way of contrast, however, a greater number of hoes of various sizes came to light there (op. cit., 638 f.), which could be suggestive of women who cared for vegetable beds or covered the seed with earth after the sowing. Perhapssomewhat surprisingly,only one sickle was found among more than 20,000 votive offerings:op. cit., 637 fig. 10. 4. Aristoph.fr. 829 (IPCGIII. 2. 329); Poll. Oniom.1. 222. 5. Archipposfr. 44 (I. 806 Edmonds);Hesychios and Photios, s.v. poasln'ai. 6. Magnes fr. 5 (PCG V. 630); Phrynichos fr. 39-45 ()(CG VII. 412). The apparent frequency of these referencesseems to rule out the possibilitythat female gleaners and weeders were mere phantoms equivalent to the 'Ekklesiazusai'. 7. Poll. Onom. 1. 222; Hesychios s.v. kalametuis; Plut. Mor. 784a. 8. Athen. 14. 619a; J. Hinrichs, De Operariorum Cantilenis Graecis (Darmstadt, 1908), 15 f: K. Bucher, Arbeil und Rhythmus(Leipzig, 1919), 170f Cf. also Longos 3. 30.2. 9. See, e.g., E. Friedl, Vasilika, a Villagein ModernGreece(New York, 1962), 20. 10. J. Hengstl, PIrivate Arbitsverhdalnisse fivier IPesonenin den hellenistischcn I'apyri bis I)iokletian (Bonn, 1972), 40. 11. Demosth. 57. 45; Dio Chrys. 7. 114; Poll. Onone.s. v. tuygeUriai. 12. I will treat this in greater detail in a future comparative study of plantation management and rural chattel slavery in classical antiquity and the American South. Cf. also my 'Reflections on the Differential Valuation of Slaves in Diocletian's Price Edict and in the United States', IMBAt H (forthcoming). 13. K. R. Bradley, 'Child Labour in the Roman World', HIistorical Reflections 12 (1985), 325 f. (now in I)iscovering the Roman Family [Oxford, 1991], 114); T. Wiedemann, Adults and Childrenin the Roman Empire(London, 1989), 155. 14. [Theocr.] Idyll. 20. 34f.; Varro R.R. 2. 10. 6f; Verg. Eel. 7. 14f; Ov. Fast. 4. 511; Dio Chrys. 1. 54; Longos, 1. 7. 2; 1. 8. 2f.; 1. 27. 2; 1. 28. 2f.; 2. 34. 1. For women's contributionto animal husbandry, see L. Bodson, 'Le role de la femme dans l'elevage antique', in Lesfemmeset l'evage (Ethnozootechnie 1 38, Paris, 1986), 5-19; H. Grassl, 'Zur Rolle der Frau in antiken Hirtenkulturen', Lavemna (1990), 13-17; 'Women in Ancient Pastoralism', unpubl. paper read at the 12th InternationalCongressof and Anthropological EthnologicalSciences,Zagreb,July 24-31 1988. 15. Philostr. Soph. 2. 554 is the only reference to milking by a woman I have come across. 16. Nothing can be said about the presupposedstatus of herdswomen in bucolic poetry:Grassl, op. cit., 17 n. 11. 17. J. K. Campbell, Honour,Family and Patronage(Oxford, 1964), 29, 32. 18. The childrenof such slave women would also help to tend animals:Varro R. R. 2. 10. 1 and 3; 3. 17. 6; cf. Geoponica18. 1. 5. 19. Varro .R. . 117. on which see R. Martin, 'La vie sexuelle des esclaves d'apres les Dialogues R 5; antique el stylistiquelatine (Paris, 1978), Rustiques de Varron', in J. Collart (ed.), Varron,grammaire 117. Cf. the case of the Sarakatsanireferred to above. 20. Martin, op. cit., 120f. Cf D. G. White, Am 't I a Woman?Female Slaves in the Plantation South (New York and London, 1985), 66. 21. M. Golden, EMC 36 (1992), 318 rightly stresses the limited representative value of this reference, derived as it is from a 'notoriously problematicpiece of advocacy'. 22. P. Herfst, I.e travail de la femme dans la Grice ancienne (Utrecht, 1922), 91-5; D. M. Schaps,

10

RURAL LABOUR AND WOMEN'S LIFE

Economic Rights of Womenin Ancient Greece (Edinburgh, 1979), 18; cf. T. W. Gallant, Risk and Survival inAncient Greece(Cambridge, 1991), 133f., 164f. 23. E.g.,G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, TheClass Strugglein theAncientGreekWorldfrom ArchaicAge to the theArab Conquests(London, 1981), 185 f.; S. Mrozek, Lohnarbeit klassischen im Alterum (Bonn, 1989), 46-53. 24. Thus A. D. Fitton-Brown, LCM 9 (1984), 73. On echoes in Old Comedy of the anxiety of common Athenian citizens over the potential of their wives to engage in extramaritalsexual activity, seeJ. F. Gardner, 'Aristophanesand Male Anxiety:the Defence of the Oikos', G&R 34 (1989), 51-62. 25. J. Kitteringhamin VillageLife and Labour (London, 1975), 129f. 26. S. Said, 'La societe rurale dans le roman grec ou La campagne vue de la ville', in E. Frezouls (ed.), Societes urbaines, societes rurales dans l'Asie Mineure et la Syrie hellenistiqueset romaines (Strasbourg, 1987), 151-4. 27. Ter. Ad. 847-9; Theocr. Idyll. 3. 35; Hor. Epod. 2. 41f.; Anth. Pal. 9. 89. Cf. Aristot. Gen. Animal. 1. 20. 728a for the idea that females are often fair-skinned and thereby feminine, whereas males are darker and masculine. 28. Heracleides Lembos fr. 53 (ed. Dilts); Iustin. 44. 3. 5. 29. C. R. Ember, AmericanAnthropologist (1983), 297f. 85 30. Cf. N. C. Saxena, 'Women in Forestry', SocialAction 37 (1987), 153, referringto contractorsin India who employ, along with male workers, women to undertake earthwork for digging pits for plantations. 31. E. Epperlein,JWG (1976) I, 196-200. 32. T. Precheur-Canonge,La vie ruraleen Afriqueromained'apresles mosaiques(Paris, 1962), 38 f.; K.M.D. Dunbabin, The Mosaics of Roman North Africa (Oxford, 1978), 114f. Highly idealized depictions of women as personifications of the seasons constitute the only exceptions: D. Parrish, Season Mosaics of Roman NorthAfrica (Rome, 1984). 33. Dunbabin, op. cit., plate 109; cf. M. Rostovtzeff, TheSocial and EconomicHistoryof the Roman Empire(Oxford, 19572), 528. 34. For this concept, see 0. Patterson, Slavery and Social Death (Cambridge,Mlass.and London, 1982), 1-13.