The Roman Guide to Slave Management

July 14, 2014
In this creative text, Toner (Roman Disasters), classicist at Churchill College, Cambridge, “translates” a work of Marcus Sidonius Falx, a fictionalized average Roman citizen from a well-off noble family who offers his rationale for owning slaves, how to procure them, and how to treat them. Falx relates the story of when a small hoe banged his leg and a slave had the audacity to smirk. Falx ordered the slave’s legs broken, but a guest from a German tribe, who found slavery distasteful, asked Falx to show mercy. The event was so thought provoking for Falx that he composed this treatise, written in a tone that feels both educated and archaically brutal. After each of Falx’s chapters, Toner offers commentary and explanations for modern readers, and the text as a whole is full of details on the history of the slave trade in the Mediterranean, how slaves came to be slaves (by owing a debt or being captured from a conquered land), the expenses incurred in owning slaves, and the prestige that came from being a slave master. Toner doesn’t condone Falx’s views, but his history and commentary provides context for the dirty institution upon which modern civilization is built.