The nationality of slaves under the early Roman Empire

Abstract

The Roman master who visited the slave-market to buy a new slave had little difficulty in solving the important question of nationality. He could read the label attached to each man, on which name and origin were recorded, or listen to the crier who announced the nationality of every slave in turn, as the law required; and if he feared the ‘tricks of the trade,’ which were innumerable, he could observe for himself whether the appearance and speech of the slave chosen corresponded to the place of origin ascribed to him. Our difficulties in approaching the same problem are much more formidable. A very large number of Roman slaves and freedmen are known to us by name, but of these only a small minority come to us with labels attached in the form of an explicit statement of origin; and though these ‘labelled’ examples have been collected, and form a body of evidence which is not without interest and value, they are too accidental and isolated, and too widely diffused chronologically and otherwise, to bear the weight of very far-reaching conclusions. Are there then any other indications which may throw light upon servile nationality, and help us towards a more vivid and accurate picture of the slave population of the Roman empire?