Servile Literacy

Meno	Grammarian Slaves
Human Resources	One Third
Great Emancipator	Servius Tullius
Tromes	Phaedo
Epictetus	Prohibition
Braggart Soldier	Arms Control
Sparta	Bookkeeping
First Generation	Secret Agent
Peevishness	Shepherd of Hermas

Meno

In Plato's dialogue 'Meno,' a slave-boy is brought forward, as a fit test-subject because he can be presumed innocent of education:

“Meno. Certainly. Come hither, boy.

“Socrates. He is Greek, and speaks Greek, does he not?

“Meno. Yes, indeed; he was born in the house.

“Socrates. Attend now to the questions which I ask him, and observe whether he learns of me or only remembers.

“Meno. I will.

“Socrates. Tell me, boy, do you know that a figure like this is a square?

“Boy. I do.

“Socrates. And you know that a square figure has these four lines equal?

“Boy. Certainly. [. . .]

“Socrates. And that is the line which the learned call the diagonal. And if this is the proper name, then you, Meno's slave, are prepared to affirm that the double space is the square of the diagonal?

“Boy. Certainly, Socrates.

“Socrates. What do you say of him, Meno? Were not all these answers given out of his own head?

“Meno. Yes, they were all his own.”

(Plato's Dialogue, 'Meno').

It seems to be taken for granted that this slave, though home-born, has not received instruction in geometry, and that thus his answers, elicited through Socrates' questions, can serve as proof in favor of innate ideas, a sound idea, or Plato's theory that learning is reminiscence, a not-so-sound idea. As goes geometry, so, presumably, goes literacy. It seems likely most slaves in the ancient world were in similar condition to Meno's slave-boy, with little effort expended on their education. As seen on the main literacy page, free-born male citizens were expected to be literate; there was no comparable expectation for slaves. However, as we shall see, not all of this population was illiterate by any means.

Grammarian Slaves

The literacy rate amongst the slave population, amounting to perhaps a third of the total population, cannot have been high, yet it was not zero. Exquisitely educated Greek philosophers fell into this condition when their towns were sacked. Some home-born slaves were educated by their masters, including the playwright Terence:

"Publius Terentius Afer, a native of Carthage, was a slave, at Rome, of the senator Terentius Lucanus, who, struck by his abilities and handsome person, gave him not only a liberal education in his youth, but his freedom when he arrived at years of maturity." (Suetonius, Lives of the Eminent Grammarians, Lives of the Poets, Life of Terence.)

Terence was far from being the only talented but low-born youth who went on to a glittering literary career. As Publius Syrus, another freed slave, put it, "A great man may commence life in a hovel." (The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, 246, Kindle location 663, The Cynics). The comic poet Caecilius was a slave:

"Now Statius was a slave-name. In old times there were many slaves of that name. Caecilius too, the famous comic poet, was a slave and as such called Statius. But afterwards this was made into a kind of surname and he was called Caecilius Statius." (Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, Book IV, Chapter XX).

The home-born slave who fetched the highest recorded purchase price in antiquity was a grammarian:

“The highest price ever given for a man born in slavery, so far as I am able to discover, was that paid for Daphnus, the grammarian, who was sold by Natius of Pisaurum to M. Scaurus, the first man in the state, for seven hundred thousand sesterces.”
(Pliny the Elder, Natural History, Book VII, Chapter 40).

Shall we take comfort, reflecting upon our fallen race, or suffer perplexity, that the costliest slave on record should have been a grammarian? The enthusiasm for this science knew no bounds in antiquity: "'We are given over to Grammar,' says Sextus Empiricus, 'from childhood, and almost from our baby-clothes.'" (Citation from Adv. Gramm. 1.44, p. 28, 'The Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity,' Edwin Hatch). Seneca knew of nouveau-riche gentleman who, to appear learned, purchased at great cost slaves who knew Homer by heart, and could prompt him:

"Within our own time there was a certain rich man named Calvisius Sabinus; he had the bank-account and the brains of a freedman. . .His memory was so faulty that he would sometimes forget the name of Ulysses, or Achilles, or Priam,— names which we know as well as we know those of our own attendants. No major-domo in his dotage, who cannot give men their right names, but is compelled to invent names for them,— no such man, I say, calls off the names of his master's tribesmen so atrociously as Sabinus used to call off the Trojan and Achaean heroes. But none the less did he desire to appear learned. So he devised this short cut to learning: he paid fabulous prices for slaves,— one to know Homer by heart and another to know Hesiod; he also delegated a special slave to each of the nine lyric poets. You need not wonder that he paid high prices for these slaves; if he did not find them ready to hand he had them made to order. After collecting this retinue, he began to make life miserable for his guests; he would keep these fellows at the foot of his couch, and ask them from time to time for verses which he might repeat, and then frequently break down in the middle of a word." (Seneca, Epistle XXVII).

These high-priced slaves must have been literate, to learn the poets by heart. Those "made to order" must have been instructed to read and master the poets, a task requiring the purchase of a second reader-slave if the first had not been literate! These literary achievements were integral to Greek civilization: "But when Alexander was civilizing Asia, Homer was commonly read, and the children of the Persians, of the Susianians, and of the Gedrosians learned to chant the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides." (Plutarch, Moralia, On the Fortune or the Virtue of Alexander, Book I, Chapter 5, Complete Works of Plutarch, Kindle location 41469).

Some in antiquity critiqued literacy as if it were the enemy of memorization, when in fact it is the stepping-stone that makes this feat possible. Plato, perhaps following Pythagoras, suggested that literacy degrades memory rather than enhances it.

Aulus Gellius mentions a slave whose task it was to read aloud during supper: "Whenever we were at an entertainment given by Favorinus the Philosopher, and the dishes began to be served, a slave placed at the table read something of Greek literature or our own." (Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, Volume I, p. 229, Book III, Chapter XIX). One time when the author was present, the reading was from Gavius Bassus' 'On the Origin of Verbs and Substantives!'

It's important to know the percentage of the population who were slaves in estimating ancient literacy. Readers of the 'Jesus Seminar' type of literature know that extremely low estimates for the literacy rate in antiquity are the sole basis for their claim that the gospels cannot have been early and authentic. People are prone to assume universal progress is the rule; if literacy rates were low in medieval times, and they were, then they must have been even lower in antiquity. But the course of this variable is far more dynamic than that. After the Bronze Age collapse, for instance, the Greek-speaking peoples seem to have lost literacy altogether, abandoning the Linear B script they had previousy used, and only regaining the skill by borrowing a new alphabet from the Phoenicians. Literacy rates go up and down, and insistently low-balling ancient literacy is not a safe bet.

Human Resources

Some slaves' daily tasks required literacy, like that speedy slave who took shorthand dictation for Ausonius. No field hand, this highly skilled operator knew what he was doing:

"'Slave, skillful minister of swift notes, come hither. Open the double page of thy tablets, where a great number of words, each expressed by different points, is written like a single word. I go through great volumes; and like dense hail the words are hurled from my noisy lips, but thine ears are not troubled, nor is thy page filled. Thy hand, scarcely moving, flies over the surface of the wax, but if my speech runs into a long circumlocution, you put the ideas on the tablets as if I had already spoken them. I wish my mind had as swift a flight as your right hand when you anticipate my words.'" (Ausonius, Epigram CXLVI, quoted p. 15, 'Later Roman Education in Ausonius, Capella and the Theodosian Code,' with translations and commentary by Percival R. Cole).

Cato the Elder conducted a speculative business in training slaves to enhance their market value: "He used to lend money also to those of his slaves who wished it, and they would buy boys with it, and after training and teaching them for a year, at Cato's expense, would sell them again. Many of these boys Cato would retain for himself, reckoning to the credit of the slave the highest price bid for his boy." (Plutarch, Life of Cato the Elder, Chapter 21, 7).

Crassus was another Roman patrician who invested in human resources:

"And though he owned numberless silver mines, and highly valuable tracts of land with the laborers upon them, nevertheless one might regard all this as nothing compared with the value of his slaves; so many and so capable were the slaves he possessed,— readers, amanuenses, silversmiths, stewards, table-servants; and he himself directed their education, and took part in it himself as a teacher, and, in a word, he thought thtat the chief duty of the master was to care for his slaves as the living implements of household management." (Plutarch, Lives, Life of Crassus, Chapter 2.6).

Titus Pomponius Atticus followed a similar policy: "He kept an establishment of slaves of the best kind, if we were to judge of it by its utility, but if by its external show, scarcely coming up to mediocrity; for there were in it well-taught youths, excellent readers, and numerous transcribers of books, insomuch that there was not even a footman that could not act in either of those capacities extremely well. Other kinds of artificers, also, such as domestic necessities require, were very good there, yet he had no one among them that was not born and instructed in his house;. . ." (Cornelius Nepos, Lives of Eminent Commanders, Book XXV, Titus Pomponius Atticus, Chapter XIII). Some ancient slave-owners were willing to make a considerable investment in human capital; however, such generosity does not seem to have been the rule.

The normal 'career path' for diligent slaves in ancient Rome led them from slavery through manumission to a higher, more independent status as clients of their former owner, so an investment in human resources might have been been a good deal for the patron. Martial's copyist was a young slave, whom he freed when he became ill, though tragically he died anyway:

"Once the trusty copyist of my poems, his hand a treasure to his master and to the Caesars known, Demetrius in his fresh prime has left behind him years yet young: a fourth summer had been added to three lustres. Yet, that he should not go down to the shades of Styx a slave, when a cursed contagion held him fevered in its toils — to this I took heed, and to his sickness resigned all a master's rights: worthy was he by my gift to have seen health once more! He felt with failing strength the boon and called me 'patron,' now that he was passing down, a free man, to the nether wave." (Martial, Epigrams, Book 1, CI, Complete Works of Martial, Kindle location 871).

The prevalence of slavery in the ancient world changes the economics of production: labor was cheap, raw materials dear. It is assumed that hand-copying books made them prohibitively expensive, which would be true if the people doing the work were paid a living wage.

Cicero's slave Tiro served as his secretary. Tiro, first a slave then a freedman, was far more than a transcriptionist, he edited Cicero's works after his assassination:

"Now Tullius Tiro, Marcus Cicero's freedman, was unquestionably a man of refined taste and by no means unacquainted with our early history and literature. He had been liberally educated from his earliest years, and Cicero fund in him an assistant, and in a sense a partner, in his literary work." (Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, Book VI, Chapter III).

Like Cicero, Julius Caesar employed a slave to take dictation, a treacherous one: "The slave Philemon, his amanuensis, who had promised Caesar's enemies that he would poison him, he merely punished by death, without torture." (Suetonius, The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Julius Caesar, p. 40 Modern Library). When Nero Caesar ordered a call-up of corvee labor, though unfortunately no estimate is made of percentages, slaves employed as secretaries are mentioned: "He summoned the city-tribes to enlist; but no qualified persons appearing, he ordered all masters to send a certain number of slaves, the best they had, not excepting their stewards and secretaries." (Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, Nero Caesar, Chapter XLIV.).

In some cases, teaching slaves a trade may have been an enlightened provision for their future freedom. John Chrysostom, Christian bishop of Constantinople, urged his audience to purchase slaves, teach them a trade, then manumit them: "Since if it be in care for them, I bid thee occupy none of them in ministering to thyself, but when thou hast purchased them and hast taught them trades whereby to support themselves, let them go free." (John Chrysostom, Homily 40 on 1 Corinthians 15:9, Chapter 6, ECF 1_12, p. 557)

One Third

Some people think the great majority of the population in antiquity were slaves, but a more realistic figure is a third, as in the American south-land before the Civil War. A society one third slave and two thirds free is stable and sustainable. See, for instance,

“For of adult citizens [of Rome] there were more than 110,000, as appeared by the latest census; and the number of the women, children, domestics, foreign traders and artisans who plied the menial trades [γυναικων δε και παιδων και της οικετικης θεραπειας εμπορων τε και των εργαζομενων τας βαναυσους τεχνας μετοικων] — for no Roman citizen was permitted to earn a livelihood as a tradesman or artisan — was not less than treble the number of the citizens.”
(Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, Book IX, Chapter XXV).

The Roman census counted free men. The Greek historian Dionysius wants to enlarge the figure to show how many human beings were at that time trapped in the city, menaced by hostile forces.The phrase translated 'domestics' here, [οικετικης θεραπειας] literally meaning household servants, would ordinarily indicate slaves. Women + children + artisans + slaves = 3x male citizens. In other words, the (male) citizens make up one-fourth of the total populace; add to these a second fourth, their citizen wives, for one half (six-twelfths). Of the remainder, subtract the citizen children, resident aliens, and such of the artisan class as were free but did not enjoy political rights,— very conservatively, one sixth, which leaves four-twelfths, or one third, men, women, and children in servitude.

Naturally this percentage must vary with the fortunes of war, because every citadel stormed loosed a flood of slaves on the market. But averaging out the ups and downs, it cannot be expected the 'normal' figure was very much higher. Those places which did have a higher ratio of slave to free stand out, because society must be organized like an armed camp, as was Sparta, if a minority of free men must keep the chained majority in subjection. Warfare in antiquity was labor-intensive,— numbers matter,— and so no slave-owner can sleep without one eye open if slaves are the most numerous class.

There is no doubt that, owing to the prevalence of warfare, there were times and places where a majority of the populace was enslaved, for instance,

"But Ctesicles, in the third book of his Chronicles, says that in the hundred and fifteenth Olympiad, there was an investigation at Athens conducted by Demetrius Phalereus into the number of the inhabitants of Attica, and the Athenians were found to amount to twenty-one thousand, and the Metics to ten thousand, and the slaves to four hundred thousand." (Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists, or Banquet of the Learned, Book VI, Chapter 103).

If these numbers are reliable at all (always a question), it's a wonder a slave rebellion did not break out there and then, a successful one, at that. But these same people remembered a past in which slavery was uncommon! Before the onset of the big empire-building wars, Herodotus says, there were not so many slaves: ". . .the daughters and sons of the Athenians were wont ever to go for water to the spring of Enneacrunos; for at that time neither they nor the other Hellenes as yet had household servants. . ." (Herodotus, Book VI, Chapter 137, p. 122). Whether there ever was an 'age of Saturn' in which slavery was unknown, it does stand to reason that there would have been less conflict when populations were sparse, accordingly less slavery, because war and slavery go hand-in-hand.

However, in the ancient world, it is not safe to assume the free population was small: "At the time when we were in Egypt, those who kept the census returns of the population said that its free residents were more than three hundred thousand, and that the king received from the revenues of the country more than six thousand talents." (Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, Book XVII, Chapter 52). Tacitus reports a census under Claudius which returned a figure for Rome of nearly 6 million: "He also closed the lustrum, the census showing 5,984,072 citizens." (Tacitus, The Annals, Book XI, Chapter 25, Complete Works of Tacitus, Kindle location 11135). Recall, the census counts free citizens, not slaves. Can anyone seriously believe the true population was ten times that number? 'Critical' historians do not believe these census numbers anyway, any more than they believe any of the rest of the documentary evidence that survives from classical antiquity; they routinely discount them, because they think they are too large. If the stated numbers must be inflated by a factor of ten to arrive at the real numbers, then they would have a case! It is always difficult, even hazardous, to generalize; however, citizens cannot have been a small minority of the populace.

It is frustratingly difficult to cull precise figures from the ancient historians. Diodorus Siculus mentions a Roman siege of the Sicilian city of Acragas, then held by the Carthaginians: "After a siege of six months they became masters of Acragas in the manner described and carried off all the slaves, to the number of more than twenty-five thousand." (Siculus, Diodorus. Library of History, Book XXIII, Chapter 9.1. Complete Works of Diodorus Siculus (Delphi Ancient Classics Book 32) (Kindle Locations 26255-26256).) Though it was common for the civilian population of conquered cities to be sold into slavery, this language suggests rather that they carted off the existing servile population. This same city had undergone prior sieges, including one for which the total free population is given: "For at that time the citizens of Acragas numbered more than twenty thousand, and when resident aliens were included, not less than two hundred thousand." (Siculus, Diodorus. Library of History, Book XIII, Chapter 84.3. Complete Works of Diodorus Siculus (Delphi Ancient Classics Book 32) (Kindle Locations 13514-13515). This city evidently had an oligarchic constitution according to which only a slice of the free-born population were citizens with political rights. It would be attractive to the compare the slave population upon its Roman conquest: 25,000,— with its prior total free-born population of 220,000, giving a rate of enslavement of ten per cent. Unfortunately this is comparing apples with oranges, as there is no way of telling what population losses this city had sustained in the Sicilian wars. This fruitful island was a prize contended for between Romans, Carthaginians, Greeks, the native population, and various tyrants and adventurers.

It is difficult to get an exact fix on the percentage of the population in servitude, and of course this is a moving target, varying in different times and places. It is easy to over-estimate the number, as people form an image in their mind from watching Cecil B. DeMille sword and sandal epics. Retreating from primary sources to secondary ones, "In the larger cities, such as Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, and Antioch, as many as one-third of the population were legally slaves and another one-third had been slaves earlier in life." (International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Servant; Slave). Here is another modern estimate: "By the time Christ was crucified over 25 percent of the empire's population were slaves." (Tamim Ansary, The Invention of Yesterday, p. 125). I would guess a figure of one third slave is probably close to normal conditions, though as noted this can vary from near 100 percent as the captive population is led out from a sacked city to lower rates under circumstances of peace and prosperity.

A popular video series, "Meet the Romans," narrated by historian Mary Beard, also gives this number: "In a population of a million, one third might have been slaves." (Mary Beard, Meet the Romans, Part 3, 46:24-46:27). During the first century, Roman citizenship was a rare achievement for those residing in the hinterlands, even for those who were free men. As time went on, the right of citizenship was granted to more and more people, until by the time of Justinian, there was nobody left standing in the empire but slaves and citizens: "We have made all freedmen whatsoever Roman citizens, without any distinction as to the age of the slave, or the interest of the manumittor, or the mode of manumission. We have also introduced many new methods by which slaves may become Roman citizens, the only kind of liberty that now exists." (Institutes of Justinian, Book I, Section V.) That's not yet the case in our period, though.

The percentage of slaves in the population of the holy land appears to have been smaller than the norm for classical antiquity, presumably owing to Moses' institution of the sabbatical year, "An official document of the year AD 71 shows that in one region where the fiscal authorities counted three hundred and eighty-five tax-payers, all these people together owned no more than forty-four slaves, that is to say, one slave between nine of them." (Henri Jules Charles Petiot, Daily Life in Palestine at the Time of Christ, p. 141.)

Hannibal, having crossed the Alps with his elephants but then frustrated by General Fabius' inaction, reportedly made a similar promise to his troops, offering foreign allies valuable citizenship rights: "Next I say to the allies of foreign blood who fight in the ranks of Carthage: if any of you lift up a hand red with Roman blood, he shall be henceforth a citizen of Carthage." (Silius Italicus, Punica, Book IX, Kindle location 2679).

Even the Spartans, willing to make their society into an armed camp so as to maintain control of the Helots, in desperation when their city was under siege offered freedom to these disenfranchised people:

"As for the people in the city [Sparta], the women could not even endure the sight of the smoke, since they had never seen an enemy; but the Spartiatae, their city being without walls, were posted at intervals, one here, another there, and so kept guard though they were, and were seen to be, very few in number. It was also determined by the authorities to make proclamation to the Helots that if any wished to take up arms and be assigned to a place in the ranks, they should be given a promise that all should be free who took part in the war. And it was said that at first more than six thousand enrolled themselves, so that they in their turn occasioned fear when they were marshalled together, and were thought to be all too numerous. . ." (Xenophon, Hellenica, Book VI, Chapter 5).

This last, desperate measure of a slave society seeking to preserve its existence, bought little respite in the American Civil War because they waited to employ it until a Union victory was a foregone conclusion.

Servius Tullius

This ancient king of Rome grew up in the slave quarters: "Or Tullus's reign, who by the power of Fate, Was born a slave, yet ruled the Rome state" (Manilius, The Rule of Fate, Modern Library, The Latin Poets, p. 505). He took over after the murder of the prior king, not openly at first but by failure to issue accurate reports of his medical condition. The Red Chinese used to put out photos of Mao swimming, when people said that he was dead; but Tarquinius really was dead:

"Servius Tullius, who followed Lucius Tarquinius, was the first king, according to tradition, who ruled without the sanction of the people. It is said that his mother was one of Tarquinius' slaves, while his father was one of the king's clients. Although he was reared among slaves and served the king's table, the spark of genius, which even then was evident in the boy, was not obscured, so intelligent he proved himself in every word he said and in every service he performed. And although Tarquinius then had children who were quite young, he loved Servius so deeply that the latter was commonly reputed to be his son. Moreover, he took the utmost care to instruct Servius, according to the finest patterns of Geek education, in all the arts which he himself had learned. After Tarquinius was treacherously murdered by the sons of Ancus, Servius began his reign, as I said before, not by the command of the citizens but with their leave and approval. For when it was falsely said that Tarquinius had been sick from a wound but was still living, Servius assumed the royal insignia, administered justice, and relieved debtors out of his own purse." (Marcus Tullius Cicero, On the Commonwealth, Book II, Chapter XXI).

It seems that the popular conjecture, that this was his natural child, is the most plausible explanation for Servius' succession to the monarchy. Slavery opens up possibilities of sexual harassment beyond anything experienced today. When the slave screams 'Rape!' she gets nothing but a perplexed look from the constable; after all she is the master's property. American slavery was nothing out of the ordinary in this respect. What was unusual is the absence of stories like this one: we do not hear of slave-children inheriting the plantation, as Servius inherited his father's kingdom. Evidently the poison of racism was sufficiently toxic to smother the natural human feeling of paternal pride.

Tromes

In his monumental slug-fest with Athenian orator Aeshines, Demosthenes accuses Aeschines of being the child of an elementary school-teacher:

". . .while his father, who kept an elemetnary school, as I am told by my elders, near the temple of the Hero-Physician, made a living, such as he could indeed. . ." (Demosthenes, On the Embassy, Oration XIX, Against Aeschines, Chapter 249, The Public Orations of Demosthenes, Volume 1, Kindle p. 110).

From numerous mentions, we know that the profession of elementary school-teacher was not a high-status one in antiquity. Those who practiced this profession themselves, or were descended from those who did, were likely to get this honorable endeavor flung back in their face by later rivals and enemies. By the snobbish standards of the day, it was a humble background indeed. Some people think this proves literacy cannot have been widespread in the day, leaving open the question how literacy, supposedly such a rare and valuable accomplishment, did not raise the profession in the esteem of the public.

Paying for a slave rather than a salaried professional would have been a bargain for the long-suffering tax-paying public, making widespread literacy easier, not harder, to achieve. And indeed Demosthenes goes further, claiming that Aeschines' father was a slave:

"But though I am not at a loss to know what to say about you and yours, I am at a loss to know what to mention first. Shall I tell first how your father Tromes was a slave in the house of Elpias, who kept an elementary school near the temple of Theseus, and how he wore shackles and a wooden halter?" (Demosthenes, The Public Orations of Demosthenes, 2, Chapter 129, Kindle page 49).

Demosthenes accuses Aeschines of adding syllables to his parents' names: "For only lately— lately, do I say? only yesterday or the day before—did he become at once an Athenian and an orator, and by the addition of two syllables converted his father from Tromes into Atrometus, and gave his mother the imposing name of Glaucothea, when every one knows that she used to be called Empusa. . ." (Demosthenes, The Public Orations of Demosthenes, Volume 2, On the Crown, Oration XVIII, Chapter 130, Kindle page 50). Does it frustate you, Dear Reader, as it does me, to discover that ancient Greek names were originally brief and easy to remember, until their relentless social climbing kept adding syllables? While this clash between two orators of monumental abilities strikes me as a Liars' Contest of first order, in any event Demosthenes thought it credible that a school-teacher might be a slave, which is relevant to the topic of this page, namely servile literacy.

We don't often enough stop to think about the differences between the modern economy and the ancient economy. Some things we think should be cheap, like land transport, were expensive. Some things we think should be expensive, like human labor, were cheap, owing to slavery. When we calculate what is feasible based on our own pay scales, we err.

Phaedo

According to Aulus Gellius, Phaedo, in whose honor one of Plato's dialogues is named, was a slave:

"Phaedo of Elis belonged to that famous Socratic band and was on term of close intimacy with Socrates and Plato. His name was given by Plato to that inspired dialogue of his on the immortality of the soul. This Phaedo, though a slave, was of noble person and intellect, and according to some writers, in his boyhood was driven to prostitution by his master, who was a pander. We are told that Cebes the Socratic, at Socrates' earnest request, bought Phaedo and gave him the opportunity of studying philosophy. And he afterwards became a distinguished philosopher, whose very tasteful discourses on Socrates are in circulation.

"There were not a few other slaves too who afterwards became famous philosophers, among them that Menippus whose works Marcus Varro emulated in those satires which others call Cynic, but he himself, Menippean.

"Besides these, Pompylus, the slave of the Peripatetic Theophrastus, and the slave of the Stoic Zeno who was called Persaeus, and the slave of Epicurus whose name was Mys, were philosophers of repute."

(Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, Book II, Chapter XVII).

Slave-philosophers must however be considered the exception rather than the rule.

Epictetus

The philosopher Epictetus was a slave, and one with a broken leg:

"In the next place, consider Epictetus, who when his master twisted his leg violently, said, smiling gently and without being terrified, 'You will break my leg;' and when his master had broken his leg, only observed, 'Did I not tell you that you would break it?'" (Celsus, On True Doctrine, Arguments of Celsus, Porphyry, and the Emperor Julian Against the Christians, Thomas Taylor Kindle location 417).

The literate Epictetus commends this Stoic indifference to others in his treatises:

The second amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms; nevertheless, this right was routinely denied, by law, to a large chunk of the population in the Southern states: "No objections are made to hunting, inasmuch as it dispenses with drafts upon the smoke-house, and because every marauding coon that is killed is so much saved from the standing corn. They are hunted with dogs and clubs, slaves not being allowed the use of fire-arms." (Solomon Northrup, Twelve Years a Slave, p. 83). You can't have slavery and also, at the same time, a second amendment.

The Roman army, in this early period, was a citizen army; an armed man was a citizen, generally speaking, not a slave. In Lucan's 'Pharsalia,' Caesar is quoted as telling his rebellious soldiers, "'Quit ye, then, my camp, And leave my standards to the group of men, Coward Quirites!" (Lucan, Pharsalia, Book V, 413-415, p. 136). He is calling them 'citizens,' i.e., no longer soldiers, civilians, a stinging rebuke— but the fact is, they were citizens, as was any man bearing arms. The necessity for this is obvious. Armed slaves are slaves no longer; you must say 'please' and 'thank you' when you talk to them. The exceptions, noted above, when slaves were offered freedom in exchange for taking up arms, were an infrequent final act of desperation taken by societies on the ropes.

Though their treatment of their slaves could be brutal, the Romans were reminded of better things, every year at the festival of Saturnalia, a drunken riot, but one which encoded the memory of a happier time, when there were no slaves and no masters:

"Numa's muse was a gentle and loving inspiration, fitting him well to turn and soothe his people into peace and justice out of their violent and fiery tempers; whereas, if we must admit the treatment of the Helots to be a part of Lycurgus's legislations, a most cruel and iniquitous proceeding, we must own that Numa was by a great deal the more humane and Greek-like legislator, granting even to actual slaves a license to sit at meat with their masters at the feast of Saturn, that they, also, might have some taste and relish of the sweets of liberty. For this custom, too, is ascribed to Numa, whose wish was, they conceive, to give a place in the enjoyment of the yearly fruits of the soil to those who had helped to produce them. Others will have it to be in remembrance of the age of Saturn, when there was no distinction between master and slave, but all lived as brothers and as equals in a condition of equality." (Plutarch, Life of Numa Pompilius, Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, Kindle location 1970).

The Romans rationalized slavery, on the grounds that the conqueror of a city had the right to put the population to the sword; if in his mercy he spared them, selling them into slavery instead, they ought to be grateful rather than complain. This argument ran into rough sledding in Christian times, because no Christian ethicist could be found who agreed the conqueror has the right to massacre the civilian populace:

In its early years, Rome was reluctant to arm not only slaves, but even the poor class of free citizens:

"Laudable also is the modesty of the people, who by briskly offering themselves for the toils and dangers of military service saw to it that commanders did not have to ask capite censi to take the military oath, whose excessive poverty made them suspect and on that account they did not trust them with public arms. But this custom, fortified though it was by long observance, was broken by C. Marius when he enlisted a capite census into the army." (Valerius Maximus, Memorable Doings and Sayings, Book II.3, pp. 147-149 Loeb edition).

This class was free, and thus counted in the census, but too poor to present any property for valuation. Marius' military reform had the unfortunate, unintended consequence of making the soldier more loyal to his general, who dispensed rewards, than to the state.

Sparta

The worst case scenario for ancient slavery were places like Sparta or Sicily where huge numbers of people, amounting to a majority of the populace, were enslaved. Compare the numbers of Spartans, a warrior elite who made it their full-time occupation to suppress the remainder of the population, made up of indigenous groups like the Helots, to those oppressed by them, as unfolded during this investigation of a revolutionary conspiracy:

“And when the ephors asked how he had said that the plan would be carried out, the informer replied that Cinadon had taken him to the edge of the market-place and directed him to count how many Spartiatae there were in the market-place. “And I,” he said, “after counting king and ephors and senators and about forty others, asked `Why, Cinadon, did you bid me count these men?’ And he replied: `Believe,’ said he, `that these men are your enemies, and that all the others who are in the market-place, more than four thousand in number, are your allies.’”. . .

“When the ephors asked how many Cinadon said there really were who were in the secret of this affair, the informer replied that he said in regard to this point that those who were in the secret with himself and the other leaders were by no means many, though trustworthy; the leaders, however, put it this way, that it was they who knew the secret of all the others — Helots, freedmen, lesser Spartiatae, and Perioeci; for whenever among these classes any mention was made of Spartiatae, no one was able to conceal the fact that he would be glad to eat them raw."

(Xenophon. Hellenica, Book III, Chapter 3, Complete Works of Xenophon (Delphi Ancient Classics) (Kindle Location 10293-10303).)

Notice that the proportion here,— four thousand to forty,— is only 1 percent! However, technically, the larger, disaffected class amenable to this abortive revolution included legally free persons, including low income Spartans; exactly what ratio the disenfranchised Helots bore to their Spartan masters is unstated, but they certainly outnumbered them to a very great extent. Young Spartans would make KKK-style terrorist raids into the country-side, murdering any hapless Helot, walking down the road, they came upon, just to send a message. It was an ugly, brutal, oppressive society, a slave-state, hell on earth for the majority of inhabitants. And those who ran it had to sleep with one eye open.

Some people assume that population figures like these were normal for the world of classical antiquity as a whole, that slaves greatly out-numbered free persons, in all polities at all times. Those who defended American slavery often made this argument. I cannot confirm any such set of circumstances, and the mere fact that most ancient communities were not constituted as armed camps, as was Sparta, serves as credible circumstantial evidence to the contrary. This bears upon the question of literacy, because slave education was neglected by most masters, although some enterprising entrepreneurs like Cato sponsored vocational education for this group.

Marxism was given a full and fair trial during the twentieth century, and it failed abysmally. When it became impossible to ignore the bankruptcy of their economies, most of the nations which had adopted this system abandoned it. But one place where this system entrenched itself, and still continues to be taught, in spite of its near-universally acknowledged failure, is academia, where professors continue patiently to explain to their charges that the means of production determine history. Everything else that might seem to be important, such as political arrangements or religious or ethical ideals, are mere epiphenomena thrown off by the one moving engine of history, the one independent variable, which is the means of production. It's good to look at the ancient world for a fact-check on this theory. Instead of seeing one uniform type of polity, corresponding to the 'iron plow' or whatever, we see the widest variety, from pure democracy, to communism, to tyranny. These little social experiments worked their way to completion, showing what happens when you set the system up this way or that way.

One horrible way is mass slavery, pioneered by the Carthaginians. They bundled together vast estates worked by slave labor. This system was adopted throughout their domains, which at one time included much of Sicily. How well did this innovation turn out? For the estate owners, fabulous. For the slaves, miserable. For the family farmer toiling on his small plot, it meant ruin; a free man cannot compete with slave labor. Like a parasitic organism attached to a host, slavery can kill the organism it latches onto. In these settings, the observer will notice that periodic slave rebellions are a given. So we see in Sicily. Athens, during her imperial phase, lost an army in Sicily; one must wonder if any enslaved survivors of this military adventure, several generations later, could still recall their family tradition. Still remembering and knowing what freedom was, did they explain it to their slave-fellows? However, where we don't see persistent slave rebellions, we are not justified in assuming the conditions that generate them are present. A far-seeing Moses or Solon may have legislated to control the beast.

The Greek and Roman world labored under irremediable ignorance of economics; they never got away from seeing wage and price controls as the remedy for inflation, for instance. But many did fully understand that slavery is bad medicine, as indeed it is; this cruel and inhuman institution was not a given realizing the extreme poverty of the day, rather it was itself a major cause of that poverty: "The gangrene of a slave-proletariat gnawed at the vitals of all the states of antiquity, and the more so, the more vigorously they had risen and prospered; for the power and riches of the state regularly led, under the existing circumstances, to a disproportionate increase of the body of slaves." (Theodor Mommsen, The History of Rome, Book V, Chapter II, Kindle location 26906). When Henry Ford paid his workers enough so that they could afford to purchase the machines they were making, the American economy took off for the stars. When large numbers fell into slavery, the ancient economy dove for the abyss:

Incidentally, these people would do well to believe in their own world view. One of the great technological inventions which changed history is the phonetic alphabet, invented by the Phoenicians. Teach a child this alphabet, a fairly small task, and he can in theory read. Actually it's not so easy; how, after all, do you pronounce 'ough'? Cough? Through? Doughnut? Ought? Borough? English, we know, has a history. But when the phonetic alphabet was first enunciated, it went to work on languages with no recorded history, a clean slate. One of the ways in which the 'Jesus Seminar' spreads its confusion is by importing low literacy rates from societies with pictographic alphabets, like medieval Japan, into antiquity. They insist the literacy rate in the first century Roman empire must have been 2-3%, because after all they used the iron plow. This is a non sequitur. They should take notice of this great innovation, the phonetic alphabet, which really did change history, as did no doubt the iron plow.

A form of writing, like cuneiform, which requires the student to memorize long lists of syllables, or ideographs like the Egyptian hieroglyphics, requires a huge investment of time to master. The bait and switch they've done on us is to substitute languages, like Chinese, which were and remain difficult to learn, for the easy Phoenician alphabet Cadmus gave the Greeks. The phonetic alphabet made mass literacy possible. The earnest inquirer should reject this switcheroo, reject the 'cross-cultural' approach, and insist on studying only data from the civilization under scrutiny, not foreign societies with completely different alphabets, not to mention social structures, not to mention world-denying ideologies like Buddhism which ensure stagnation. If you do that, then it's an entirely new ball game. If it should turn out that a world-changing technology like the phonetic alphabet actually has no effect on literacy rates, so that societies which employ these alphabets have no higher literacy rates than those which do not, then their system is disconfirmed anyhow. Maybe the iron plow isn't such a big deal, versus the digging stick, either.

Bookkeeping

The slave administrator of a rural estate owned by an absentee landlord was expected to keep written records:

"They themselves even steal it [grain], and they certainly do not guard against theft by others. And they don't even record the amount of grain honestly in their account book." (Columella, De re rustica 1.7.6-7, quoted in Entrusted with the Gospel, Andreas L. Kostenberger and Terry L. Wilder, Kindle location 2441).

How? With picture stickers? Cato advises the proprietor to stage unannounced visits to check the books before they could be doctored:

"Look over his account books for ready cash, grain, fodder supplies, wine, oil— what has been sold, what payments have been collected, how much is left, and what remains to be sold." (Cato, De agricultura, 2, quoted in Entrusted with the Gospel, Andreas L. Kostenberger and Terry L. Wilder, Kindle location 2449).

The Romans were good bookkeepers, if they required keeping an eye on, and not because they were illiterate. The beneficent institutions of democracy and republicanism did their social molding work in antiquity as well as today, improving civic awareness and literacy. Slavery, a brutal and barbaric practice, did no one any good but may not have functioned to suppress literacy as much as might be assumed.

First Generation

Under the rules of ancient warfare, the entire population of a captured city could be led out in chains. These people entered into slavery in the same condition of literacy which they had been under while free. Epic poet Silius Italicus tells a tangled tale of a father, captured in war by the Carthaginians, enslaved and sold, who then returns to Italy with the troops under Hannibal's command, only to suffer the tragic fate of death at the hands of his surviving son. He took it in his mind to visit his old farm-stead as the army was passing through, and unwittingly strips the arms from his dead son on his way out from the camp. Returning through the lines, he is impaled by the surviving son's javelin. Looking with horror upon his dying father, this victorious son, now a parricide, commits suicide, but before dying relays his father's parting warning to the Romans against entering the death-trap of Cannae: "With these words he drove his sword into his own body; and, when the blood flowed forth from the dark wound, he checked it and wrote his father's message in letters of blood upon his shield — "Varro, beware of battle!" Then he hung the shield on the point of his spear, and threw himself down upon the body of the father he so deeply mourned." (Silius Italicus, Punica, Book IX, Kindle location 2658). The son being literate, it seems likely so was the slave-father; the family's socio-economic status is unlikely to have risen after the father's capture.

One interesting feature of the story is the way the advancing troops, moving in early morning optimism to meet disaster at Cannae, are stopped in their tracks by an ominous message written in blood: "The vanguard halted, forbidden to go on by the letters of blood upon the lifted shield; the portent struck them dumb and motionless. A fearful sight was before them: the ill-fated pair lay locked in an embrace, and the son had laid his hand on his father's breast, to hide the fatal wound." (Silius Italicus, Punica, Book IX, Kindle location 2691). A legend? Perhaps. While I wouldn't bet the farm that this incident took place in just the way described, it does give us a slave from a literate family, the turning wheel of fortune having up-ended his prior social status, and a literate army concerned by ill-omened warnings writ in blood.

Secret Agent

Late in the day, the Civil War by which the Roman Republic expired changed scenes, to North Africa and Spain. This last ditch effort to save the Repuublic was a time for the double cross and precipiate change of side. For much the same reason as in the Virginian Bacon's Rebellion, the Republicans at times encouraged slaves to desert their masters and join up. This slave murdered his master, deserted to the Republican side, but then gave secret intelligence to Caesar:

"A slave, whose master was in Caesar's camp, and who had left his wife and son in the city, cut his master's throat, and deceiving the guards, escaped privately to [young] Pompey's camp; whence by means of a bullet, on which he inscribed his intelligence, Caesar was informed of the preparations made for the defense of that place." (On the HIspanic War, Chapter 18, attributed to Julius Caesar).

However he did not long survive liberation. Did the slave go to Kinko's and hire someone to inscribe the information on the projectile? Wouldn't that be risky? What if the desk clerk is a loyalist for the Republican side?

Peevishness

Historian Cassius Dio accuses Nero Caesar of "peevishness" because he was sometimes not even on speaking terms with the people he worked with: "Likewise he was very liable to peevishness that showed in his behavior, and at such times he would not speak a word to his servants or freedmen but write on tablets whatever he wanted as well as any orders that he had to give them." (Cassius Dio, Roman History, Book 62, Chapter 14). If his "servants" were not literate, then he was guilty not of peevishness but of insanity. As it happens Nero was rather unhinged, but in any case it seems likely the "servants" assigned to work in government ministry would be literate, since their duties would involve record-keeping. Oh, I forgot, this was an 'oral culture' that didn't keep records.

But even slaves who did not work with writing could be literate. We have still survivng today the testimony of ancient craftsmen, whose pride of accomplishment left its mark on their wares. A tile-maker in Roman Britain left us his name: "Mr. Gilmour said the latest find was 'really unusual' because it reads 'Potentius fecit,' which translates as 'Potentius made me,' or as some linguists would say, 'I was made by Potentius.' 'They have actually written their name with their finger,' he said." (BBC News, 'Corby: Roman tiles found at Priors Hall Park question worker theory,' retrieved 2/1/23).We don't know for a fact that the tile-maker was a slave, nor was the tile in question of good quality, but he may have been.

Shepherd of Hermas

The narrator of the 'Shepherd of Hermas' refers to a stage in his life history when he was "sold:"

"The man who brought me up sold me to a woman named Rhoda in Rome. Many years later I met her again and I began to love her as a sister." (Shepherd of Hermas, Vision I, 1, p. 194, The Apostolic Fathers, J. B. Lightfoot and J. R. Harmer, revised by Michael W. Holmes).

He is instructed by one of his docents to write his instructions down, "'First of all, write down my commandments and parables; but write down the other matters as I show them to you.' . .So I wrote down the commandments and parables, just as he commanded me." (Shepherd of Hermas, Revelation 5, 25, p. 214, The Apostolic Fathers, J. B. Lightfoot and J. R. Harmer, revised by Michael W. Holmes). Given that 'Hermas' reads like a work of fiction, this former slave's literacy has little evidentiary value, although the author, at least, must have found his literate slave narrator credible.