The Epigraphic Habits of the Slaves and Freed Slaves of the Julio-Claudian Households
Date
2013-10-02
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Abstract
This study examines the epigraphic evidence and literary texts relating to the slaves, freed slaves, and staff of the households of the Julio-Claudians. Rather than focusing on the Julio-Claudian emperors alone, the integration of their relatives places the Imperial household in its full domestic context, without separating it from other households which shared the same physical space and social situation. While the literary sources provide important context and details, the bulk of the information concerning the Julio-Claudian household comes from the epigraphic material, with nearly 1,800 names surviving. Through the use of rigorous statistical analysis, it becomes possible to achieve a thorough, multifaceted understanding of the Imperial household itself, its early development, and its interactions with other households with which it was closely associated. The epigraphic evidence plainly illustrates the shift from senatorial household to Imperial household, the development of separate domestic and civil service components, and the gradual formation of a new social class of Imperial slaves and freed slaves. Those belonging to the emperors themselves as well as to their relatives shared similar commemorative patterns, particularly with regard to the importance of occupation as a marker of Imperial identity and a way of recording one’s position in the complex occupational hierarchy. Their marriage patterns and the epigraphic habits of their own households illustrated their high social status relative to their peers of equivalent legal status. As for the Julio-Claudian households themselves, there was a great deal of overlap between them, in terms of the transfer of slaves, the sharing of staff, the creation of familial units across household boundaries, and the development of a functional system for running joint households. These Julio-Claudian households tended to specialize in particular areas, strongly delineated by gender: male-owned households had very different gender and occupational distributions of household staff than did female- owned households. This would have prevented occupational redundancy and enabled the smooth and regular integration and dissolution of joint households, emphasizing that elite households – and even the Imperial household – were not intended to function entirely self-sufficiently, but instead within the larger domestic context of the extended family.
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Ancient, Ancient
Citation
Penner, L. R. (2013). The Epigraphic Habits of the Slaves and Freed Slaves of the Julio-Claudian Households (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/28131