Common historical misinterpretations

History, archaeology, historiography, peoples, and personalities of ancient Rome and the Mediterranean.

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Common historical misinterpretations

Postby Quintus Pomponius Atticus on Fri Jan 30, 2004 7:58 pm

Salvete,

I wish to start a new thread about common misinterpretations of the historical reality of Antiquity. All too often after all, tv documentaries, textbooks etc. repeat the same long corrected mistakes or outdated interpretations.

Yesterday for example, I was watching a documentary about crime in ancient Rome on the German ZDF channel. In the dramatised reconstruction, a master hit one of his slaves with a stick, which was explained by the commentator as follows :
"Masters could treat their slaves as they wanted, as the Romans thought of slaves as being things".


Over and over again, the Roman 'res' is - in this context - wrongly translated by using its primary meaning of 'thing'. Applied to slaves however, the full term used was 'res patrimonii', "part of the patrimony".

As such, a slave could be the subject of all sorts of transactions : he could be bought/sold or lend/borrowed, he could be given in usufruct, be part of a dowry etc. Legally, he was accordingly put on a par with an animal, a comparison explicitly made by the iurisprudentes, or any other possession.

In other cases however slaves were regarded as persons, personae alieni iuris as the juristic term is. Regarded as such, slaves were legally equal to the sons and daughters of their master.

We thus see that the legal character of slaves was hybrid, coming under both the ius rerum ('business law') and the ius personarum ('personal law'). Which of both approaches was applied in daily life depended on the situation, on the character master, the personality and position of the slave etc.

For example, a slave who worked as a farmer on one of the master's estates was rather viewed as a res, while in the intercourse with his personal secretary the persona-aspect often preceded.

On a non-juridical level, we can also mention the respect and even affection many masters showed towards their slaves. Two well-known examples are Cicero, who cherished a warm friendship for his secretary Tiro, and Pliny the Younger, who in one of his epistles shows great sollicitude about the health of his devoted reader (as you know, rich Romans often did not read or write personally, but had a slave to do this for them).

I could disgress much further on this topic, but I believe I may leave of here, having - at least I hope - made my point. If anyone wishes to comment on all this, I'd be glad to enter into a discussion.

I would also be happy if others would come up with a similar piece about another particular historical misinterpretation that comes to his/her mind.

Valete,

Q. Pomponius Atticus
Quintus Pomponius Atticus
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