Ancient History from Below

If ancient history is particularly susceptible to a top-down approach, due to the

nature of our evidence and its traditional exploitation by modern scholars, another
ancient history—‘from below’—is actually possible. This volume examines the
possibilities and challenges involved in writing it.
Despite undeniable advances in recent decades, ‘our slowness to reconstruct
plausible visions of almost any aspect of society beyond the top-most strata of
wealth, power or status’ (as Nicholas Purcell has put it) remains a persistent feature
of the field. Therefore, this book concerns a historical field and social groups
that are still today neglected by modern scholarship. However, writing ancient
history ‘from below’ means much more than taking into account the anonymous
masses, the subaltern classes and the non-elites. Our task is also, in the felicitous
expression coined by Walter Benjamin, ‘to brush history against the grain,’ to
rescue the viewpoint of the subordinated, the traditions of the oppressed. In other
words, we should understand the bulk of ancient populations in light of their own
experience and their own reactions to that experience. But, how do we do such a
history? What sources can we use? What methods and approaches can we employ?
What concepts are required to this endeavour? The contributions mainly engage
with questions of theory and methodology, but they also constitute inspiring case
studies in their own right, ranging from classical Greece to the late antique world.
This book is aimed not only at readers working on classical Greece, Republican
and imperial Rome and late antiquity but at anyone interested in ‘bottom-up’
history and social and population history in general. Although the book is primarily
intended for scholars, it will also appeal to graduate and undergraduate students of
history, archaeology and classical studies.

Cyril Courrier is Associate Professor of Roman History at Aix-Marseille University—

CNRS, France, and junior member of the Institut Universitaire de France. He is
the author of La plèbe de Rome et sa culture (fin du IIe s. av. J.-C.–fin du Ier s. ap.
J.-C.) (2014) and co-editor (with Sandrine Agusta-Boularot) of the ninth volume of
Inscriptions latines de Narbonnaise dedicated to the city of Narbonne (2021).

Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira is Professor of Ancient History at the

University of São Paulo, Brazil. He is the author of Potestas Populi: Participation
Populaire et action collective dans les villes de l’Afrique romaine tardive (2012)
and Sociedade e Cultura na África Romana (2020).
Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies

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Divination and Knowledge in Greco-Roman Antiquity

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Travel, Geography, and Empire in Latin Poetry

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Ancient History from Below

Subaltern Experiences and Actions in Context
Edited by Cyril Courrier and Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira

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Ancient History from Below
Subaltern Experiences and
Actions in Context

Edited by Cyril Courrier and

Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira
First published 2022
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© 2022 selection and editorial matter, Cyril Courrier and Julio Cesar
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Contents

List of figures vii

List of contributors viii
Foreword: what is this history to be? x
B R E N T D . S H AW
Acknowledgements xxvi
C Y R I L C O U R R I E R AND JUL I O CE S AR MAGAL HÃES D E O LIV EIR A
Abbreviations xxviii

1 Ancient history from below: an introduction 1

J U L I O C E S A R MAGAL HÃE S DE OL I VE I RA AND CY RIL CO U R R IER

PART 1
Who is below? Subaltern conditions, languages and
communities 33

2 Subaltern community formation in antiquity: some

methodological reflections 35
K O S TA S V L A S S OP OUL OS

3 Southern Gaul from below: the limits and possibilities of

epigraphic documentation 55
C Y R I L C O U R R I E R AND NI COL AS T RAN

PART 2
Experiences of poverty, dependency and work 79

4 Poverty, debt and dependent labour in the ancient Greek

world: thinking through some issues in doing ancient
history from below 81
C L A I R E TAY L O R
vi Contents
5 Destitute, homeless and (almost) invisible: urban poverty and
the rental market in the Roman world 104
C R I S T I N A R O S I L L O- L ÓP E Z

6 Roman agriculture from above and below: words and things 122
KIM BOWES

PART 3
Gender, ethnicity and subalternity 155

7 Hellenicity from below: subalternity and ethnicity in classical

Greece and beyond 157
G A B R I E L Z U CHT RI E GE L

8 Subaltern masculinities: Pompeian graffiti and excluded

memories in the early Principate 175
R E N ATA S E N NA GARRAF F ONI

PART 4
Politics from below: subaltern agency and collective action 193

9 Metics, slaves and citizens in classical Athens: rethinking

the polis from below 195
F Á B I O A U G US TO MORAL E S

10 What is below? The case of the Athenian riot of 508/7 BC 216

A L E X G O T T ES MAN

11 Slave agency in Livy’s history of Rome: between rebellion

and counterconspiracy 237
F Á B I O D U A RT E JOLY

12 The crowd in late antiquity: problems and possibilities of

an inquiry 254
J U L I O C E S AR MAGAL HÃE S DE OL I VE I RA

Epilogue: agency, past, present and future 278

P E D R O PA U L O A. F UNARI

Index 285
Figures

3.1 Narbonne: inscription in honour of Sex. Fadius Secundus Musa 58

3.2 Lyon: base of a statue offered to M. Inthatius Vitalis 59
3.3 Narbonne: homage of the Decumani Narbonenses to Iulia Domna 62
3.4 Arles: funerary stele of Chia and her patroness 66
3.5 Arles: funerary stele of M. Iulius Felix 67
6.1 Plan, Settefinestre (Ansedonia), Phase 2 (after Carandini 1985,
figure 139) 128
6.2 Plan, first century BC/AD (?) field drain, Colle Massari (Cinigiano) 132
6.3 Cereal, fodder/legumes and local pastoral pollen indicators
(LPPI) pollen percentages, late Republican sites 133
6.4 Plan, Pievina (Cinigiano), first century AD phase 137
6.5 Local/regional amphora, Case Nuove (Cinigiano), Phase 1.2
(Augustan/Tiberian) 138
6.6 Reconstruction, Case Nuove pressing site (first century BC/AD) 141
7.1 Paestum: the urban necropolis 164
7.2 Burials at Ponte di Ferro during the excavation 165
7.3 Reconstruction drawing of a loom weight from the Ponte di Ferro
necropolis worn on a necklet 165
Contributors

Kim Bowes is Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Pennsyl-

vania, USA. Her current research addresses the economic histories of Roman
working people, including Roman peasants. Together with a team of colleagues
she has recently published The Roman Peasant Project 2009–2014: Excavating
the Roman Rural Poor (2021).
Cyril Courrier is Associate Professor of Roman History at Aix-Marseille Univer-
sity—CNRS, France, and junior member of the Institut Universitaire de France.
He is the author of La plèbe de Rome et sa culture (fin du IIe s. av. J.-C.–fin du
Ier s. ap. J.-C.) (2014) and co-editor (with Sandrine Agusta-Boularot) of the
ninth volume of Inscriptions latines de Narbonnaise dedicated to the city of
Narbonne (2021).
Pedro Paulo A. Funari is Professor of Historical Archaeology at the University
of Campinas, Brazil. He is co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Global
Historical Archaeology (2020) and Historical Archaeology, Back from the Edge
(1999), and the author of ‘Graphic Caricature and the Ethos of Ordinary People
at Pompeii’ EJA 1 (1993), among others.
Renata Senna Garraffoni is Professor of Ancient History at Paraná Federal Uni-
versity, Brazil. Her current research interests include Latin graffiti from Pom-
peii and classical reception. She is co-editor (with Manel Garcia) of Mujeres,
género y estudios clásicos: un diálogo entre España y Brasil (2020).
Alex Gottesman is Associate Professor of Greek and Roman Classics at Temple
University, USA. He studies Greek politics and Greek political thought. He is
the author of Politics and the Street in Democratic Athens (2014), as well as of
articles on Greek literature and history.
Fábio Duarte Joly is Professor of Ancient History at the Federal University of
Ouro Preto, Brazil, and has published Tácito e a Metáfora da Escravidão: Um
Estudo de Cultura Política Romana (2004) and A Escravidão na Roma Antiga:
Política, Economia e Cultura (2013).
Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira is Professor of Ancient History at the Uni-
versity of São Paulo, Brazil. He is the author of Potestas Populi: Participation
 Contributors ix
Populaire et action collective dans les villes de l’Afrique romaine tardive
(2012) and Sociedade e Cultura na África Romana (2020).
Fábio Augusto Morales is Adjunct Professor of Ancient History at the Federal
University of Santa Catarina, Brazil. His research interests lie in the urban and
global history of classical and Hellenistic Aegean, focusing on Athens. He is
the author of A democracia ateniense pelo avesso (2014).
Cristina Rosillo-López is Associate Professor at the Universidad Pablo de Ola-
vide, Spain. Her most relevant publications are La corruption à la fin de la
République romaine (IIe–Ier av. J.-C.): aspects politiques et financiers (2010)
and Public Opinion and Politics in the Late Roman Republic (2017).
Brent D. Shaw is the Andrew Fleming West Professor in Classics Emeritus at
Princeton University, USA, and the author of Spartacus and the Slave Wars
(2nd ed., 2018), Worlds Together, Worlds Apart (5th ed., 2019, with others) and,
most relevant to this volume, Bringing in the Sheaves: Economy and Metaphor
in the Roman World (2013).
Claire Taylor is John W. & Jeanne M. Rowe Chair of Ancient Greek History
and Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, USA. She is
the author of Poverty, Wealth and Well-Being: Experiencing Penia in Demo-
cratic Athens (2017) and co-editor (with Kostas Vlassopoulos) of Communities
and Networks in the Ancient Greek World (2015) and (with Jennifer A. Baird)
Ancient Graffiti in Context (2011).
Nicolas Tran is Professor of Roman History at the University of Poitiers, France.
He is the author of Les membres des associations romaines (2006) and Dominus
tabernae. Le statut de travail des artisans et des commerçants de l’Occident
romain (2013).
Kostas Vlassopoulos is Associate Professor of Ancient History at the University
of Crete, Greece. He is the author of Unthinking the Greek Polis: Ancient Greek
History beyond Eurocentrism (2007); Politics: Antiquity and Its Legacy (2010);
Greeks and Barbarians (2013); and Historicising Ancient Slavery (2021).
Gabriel Zuchtriegel is Director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, Italy.
His publications include Colonization and Subalternity in Classical Greece.
Experience of the Nonelite Population (2018), as well as a number of articles
on gender, ethnicity and subalternity in ancient Greece and Rome.
Foreword
What is this history to be?

The idea of writing a history of lowly persons, history from below or, as has
often been proclaimed, giving a voice to the voiceless, was a long-term project
of post–Second World War historiography. The desire had its roots in the pre-
War resistance to the then-dominant paradigm of history that had emerged in
nineteenth-century Western Europe, the idea of history as an exact discipline on
a Thucydidean model. History was to become a demonstrable science of the past
focused on the most powerful actors and events, and based on the hard data of docu-
mented evidence found in archives. From von Ranke and Baxter Adams onwards,
the result was a history written as a precise narrative of high politics, important
men, diplomatic affairs, armed conflicts and other matters of state directly related
to these. As with Thucydides, the programme was one of deliberate exclusivity
and exclusion. Of course, there were always eccentric autodidacts who thought
differently, like the late nineteenth-century activist and reformer Cyrenus Osborne
Ward. With the creative use of non-canonical literary sources, marginal Christian
writings, odd material artefacts and epigraphical texts, his multivolume The Ancient
Lowly: A History of the Ancient Working People demonstrated the potential of an
alternative history and imagining what it might look like.1 His impact on the writ-
ing of mainstream history was virtually nil. The first alternatives that permanently
reshaped the writing of history came from youths like Lucien Febvre and Marc
Bloch in France, who had served in the first great war—a catastrophe that destroyed
faith in traditional values and ideas, including ways of doing history.2 They were
not alone. New perspectives also emerged in Anglo-American labour history, in
various species of continental Marxist historiography, in the pathbreaking forays of
the proto-Annalistes, and others, all of which contributed strands of an alternative
historiography that began to flourish in the 1960s and the 1970s of the last century.
Because of the common origin of these diverse new histories in a conscious rejec-
tion of a dominant old-fashioned history, some of the first attempts were simple
negations or inversions of existing paradigms. If there was to be a history of non-
elites like manual labourers, it often turned out to be a mirror image of institutional
political ‘big man’ history. So the history of trade unions, like Henry Pelling’s A
History of British Trade Unionism, became an acceptable stand-in for a history
of working people.3 This was to be the serious labour history, the Thucydidean
version, founded on accuracy, facts, checkability and the deep proofs provided by
 Foreword xi
rafts of written documents. It was meant to replace the childish Herodotean efforts
of a Cyrenus Ward. This was the alternative to orthodox political history that the
working class deserved: its real history, so to speak.
The perverse result of this approach was a history that was still focused on elites,
albeit new ones, but in many ways as narrowly political and as claustrophobic
as the contemporary conservative histories of the state and men who counted.
What was needed was a history of working people that had its own aims, histori-
cal norms, peculiar sources and narrative forms that caught all of its breadth and
energy. In my lifetime, it was E. P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working
Class that ventured boldly to paint a picture of what this quite different type of
historical writing might look like.4 Like the young Annalistes, he was also part of a
movement—in his case, a new generation of young British Marxist historians who
invented a genuine ‘history of the below.’5 The authors of the contributions to this
book rightly quote Thompson’s words as constituting a primary statement of aims
of the history of the voiceless. To ask questions about the ideals, beliefs, values and
practices of working persons as valid in their own right were, as Cyril Courrier and
Nicolas Tran percipiently note, classic ‘interrogations thompsoniennes.’ His epic
achievement was just one part of several streams of post-War historiography that
were developed by a range of new socialist historians. More directly important for
the study of antiquity, the Italo-Marxists centred on the Istituto Gramsci held out
for a more highly theorised deployment of Marxism than their English-speaking
peers.6 If Thompson could lacerate high theory with the sharpened barbs of his
satire, the bearers of the Italian Marxist tradition, armed with their Gramscian
heritage, could insist on the importance of the theoretical aspect of approaches
to the social history of the subaltern.7 From their perspective, even the best thick
description and the best emic appreciation of those people in their own time, even
if shorn of ‘the enormous condescension of posterity,’ would never be sufficient.
Despite its specific linkage with Greek and Roman history and, even more,
with the material record of archaeology, much of the new ‘Gramscian’ historiog-
raphy seemed less attuned to a history of subaltern persons than it was to grander
schemes and globalising developments in which the lowly and servile played their
appropriate historical roles. As far as actually getting down to writing the history
of ordinary persons was concerned, the Marxian trends were overshadowed by the
huge presence of the Annalistes. For the purposes of the history of the lowly, the
important influence was not as much the domineering figure of Fernand Braudel
as the next generation of Annales historians. They turned their focus from the vast
expanses of the super-long and very large to the tiniest elements, individual human
actors, to produce history at the village and street level, microhistory as it came
to be called. More generally, however, these prompts and many others, including
anthropological or sociological models to which historians were looking, were just
‘in the air’ at the time.8 At times, indeed, the different voices that were suggesting
potentially cooperative paths to a new history seemed like a dialogue of the deaf.
Many of the tentative forays seeking a new way were still local and unconnected to
explorations being made elsewhere.9 When the 20-year-old Carlo Ginzburg went
to Pisa in 1959 and set to work on witches and their trials in order to ‘rescue the
xii Foreword
voices and attitudes of the oppressed,’ he was not especially moved by the pre-War
Annalistes or by the Anglo-Marxists but by an Italian trinity: Antonio Gramsci,
Ernesto de Martino and Carlo Levi.10 They were all young men of the pre-War
years. The latter two survived the war and flourished in the decades afterward
when the young Ginzburg came to the Scuola Normale.
The resentments of the old and the pressures felt by younger generations every-
where to develop a new vision of history were compelling historians, like Le Roy
Ladurie in France, to look at the vast areas of undone history of the great majority
of people below the important men and their doings that were the common fare
of existing historical narratives. At first, it was thought that it might be possible to
unlock the world of the subaltern, in Le Roy Ladurie’s case that of the peasants of
the Languedoc, by applying the then new computing technology at scale to amass
and analyse data relevant to everyday life.11 This approach, however, is manifestly
so undoable for ancient historians that no further discussion of it as a possibility
is merited. Parametric modelling has become one of our acceptable stand-ins. The
much bigger problem with numbers, where they are collectible at scale, is not that
they are not in some sense true. The measurements of so many peculiar edges of
lithics by a prehistorian in many thousands of types or of precise kinds of pottery
sherds by his historical counterpart counted at equal magnitudes are indeed facts.
The difficulty is that they are specifically irrelevant as such to humans. In the
transition of detailed mathematical computations of risk from things and natural
forces to decisions made by humans, the Bernoulli’s realised that a common men-
tal aspect decisively skewed their meaning in terms of human behaviour. To try to
measure the precise statistics of climatic change, as Le Roy Ladurie was among the
first historians to do, was a laudable enterprise, but the question then became—as
he realised: what did the very long-term cosmic climate changes mean to a host
of individual human actors?
The great demographic sorting of numbers (and for amounts of cereals pro-
duced and hectarage put under cultivation) for Provence might well document
a great cyclical ‘exhalation’ and ‘inhalation’ of environment and economy, but
it was not total history and much less history from below. It was surely the same
as more widely identified patterns of ‘intensification’ and ‘abatement’ typical of
pre-modern Mediterranean history.12 Recognising the impasse, wonderful tales
from the sub-Pyrenean village of Montaillou soon pointed to different directions
that might enable a history of the subaltern. And if the life of individuals like
the shepherd Pierre Maury could star in a history of the early fourteenth-century
Ariège, then why could there not be histories of other forgotten people, even
complete unknowns of the past?13 Investigations like Alain Corbin’s history of an
anonymous nineteenth-century maker of clogs showed, again, that this too was
possible.14 This might have been a road taken by us: possible, but only in certain
circumstances. The ‘certain circumstances’ meant that such microhistories from
below were simply not doable for historians of much earlier times. The looming
difficulty, duly noted and heavily lamented by every contributor to this volume,
is the quite different world of evidence in which the historian of Mediterranean
antiquity must live. For them, the path to a different history ‘from below’ forged
 Foreword xiii
by modern historians often proves to be a frustrating dead end. In any event, the
temptation had a hidden poison in it. The more that the historian focused on the
rescue of the micro, the individual and the forgotten of ‘below,’ the more the larger
forces, especially the globalising ones in which they lived, were lost from sight.
This, too, was one of the legacies of the Thompsonian moment.
So what is to be done? Ever since Herodotus and Thucydides, Western histori-
ography has oscillated back and forth between a broad, generous, catholic retell-
ing of all peoples, ranks and stories, and a cramped, protestant, Presbyterian-cold
‘scientifically exacting’ record of persons and events that count, and nothing else.
In appearance, the latter type of history is as superior as the men who wrote it.
Given the terms that were established for doing history properly, it automatically
confirmed its own excellence. Attempts were made at reconciliation, but, like all
compromises, they were unsatisfying. To the reader’s benefit, this poison chalice,
the deadly challenge of how we are to get beyond this strong duality, has been
handed to Kostas Vlassopoulos. It takes an inquirer who has ably dealt with the
quintessential repression, dishonour and exploitation, that of slavery in the Greek
and Roman worlds, a fundamental interpretative problem facing the historian of
antiquity, to try to find some ways out.15 What is this new history to be like when it
was constantly configured by humans who were dominated in this fashion, and not
by sort-of-romantic peasant venturers, village millers and shoemakers? For us, this
question cannot be avoided. Slaves and the institution of slavery remain the great
weight that shaped the social worlds below the high elites. Even if some slaves
were in positions of power and authority, the greatest majority were not. And even
if slaves were not present in considerable numbers in every region of the Empire,
their position in systems of colonial expansion and imperial domination meant that
the effects of their use were evident everywhere, from the pragmatics of agency
and management to the hypotheticals of law and imperial ideology.
The distinct possibility of employing the ‘breathing tools’ of slaves in elevated
positions of status and authority raises Weber’s concept of ‘life chances’ as having
a serious relevance to this story. As Cyril Courrier and Nicolas Tran show in their
study of southern Gaul, certain milieux, like the urban port environments, were
peculiarly favourable to the rise of ex-slaves or freedmen into positions that would
elsewhere have been foreclosed to them. Where the most mobile and ‘advanced’
faces of the economy were found is where slaves and freedmen had a special
function and prominence. For the many millions of freedpersons who were part of
Roman imperial society, dozens of millions over its whole existence, this is not just
a theoretical problem but a real-life fact of some consequence. It raises hard ques-
tions about the stratification, sometimes fine distinctions of difference in all social
relations, but especially of those found in the lower orders. Broad-brush categories
of ‘the lowly’ turn out to be typologically questionable and lead to unpersuasive
historical writing. As Claire Taylor rightly asks about the poor, a query that applies
to the full range of non-elite groups: who, exactly, were these people anyways?
And how are we to find them? After all, that world was not a modern one where
the poor live in their favelas, bidonvilles and barrios and the middle classes in their
own neat set-aside, gated, redlined suburbs: slaves, the middling, the poor, the well
xiv Foreword
off and the privileged lived and were housed cheek by jowl. With the poor, and
all the others, it is not a simple question of understanding how vertiginously and
unequally income and wealth were distributed (our society is not all that different)
to show that a great majority of the population was exposed to serious deprivation
or the threat of it.16 But her question applies much more widely. Who, indeed, were
these people in their location and in their experience?
As any analysis of the distribution of wealth and income shows, not all of ‘the
lowly’ were poor, desperate or marginal. A good number of them, the so-called
menu peuple or popolo minuto, might well have been ‘small’ people in wealth and
power, but their numbers were considerable; and they were distributed along a wide
spectrum of types, occupations, resources, skills, expectations, specific cultural con-
ventions and mental horizons. As Courrier and Tran ask, ‘Who counted as subaltern
in that world, and why?’ Even if we manage somehow to cope with the theoretical
problem of identity, we are still left with the pragmatic difficulties of how to do the
history. The huge difference with most modern social histories is, again, the deficit
in the data. Every contributor to this volume rightly emphasises the pathetic state of
the evidence. But one challenge that faces the writer of these histories is the almost
absolute absence of narratives of the lives of ordinary persons written by themselves.
There are no first-hand musings of a Ralph Josselin that enabled a talented modern
social historian to retell his family life, and more.17 There is no diary of a Martha
Ballard with which the life of a midwife in nineteenth-century New England could
be brilliantly reconstructed.18 Nor for the most part do we have records of direct tes-
timony like the inquisitorial records that enabled the villagers of Montaillou or the
now-famous miller Menocchio from the Friuli to be heard.19 For modern historians,
a finer understanding of ‘the low’ logically meant going biographical. Some of the
motives involved in this move can be sensed in Ginzburg’s own recollections:20

The rejection of ethnocentrism had brought me not to serial history but to its
opposite: the minute analysis of a circumscribed documentation, tied to a person
who was otherwise unknown. In the introduction, I took issue with an essay by
Furet in the Annales in which he asserted that the history of the subaltern classes
in pre-industrial societies can only be studied from a statistical point of view.

In the same reminiscence, he tends to accept François Furet’s observation that

it is only at this small scale that the modern historian can comprehend matters like
individual beliefs, values and actions, and the greater social networks of which
each person was part. It might be possible, with some difficulty, to reconstruct the
world of an individual who worked in harvesting cereal crops in one regional part
of the Roman Empire.21 What the same story shows, however, is his systematic
involvement in many other aspects of the social orders of the time. Isolating the
subject would seriously risk marginalising his history.
Anyone writing a history of the subalterns of antiquity has so very little, amount-
ing to virtually nothing, of these kinds of necessary witnesses. The canonical writ-
ings that we do have, like those of the historian Livy, are so heavily skewed to
their own ideological interests that unpacking their narratives for our purposes is
difficult. Simply reading them ‘against the grain’ is not sufficient. In his study of
 Foreword xv
slave agency, Fábio Duarte Joly is able, with considerable exertion and nuance,
to extort something of use, often telling us more about Livy than his intended
subjects. Constantly faced with the mass of stories by elite authors, our challenge
is how to write this other history, but in a different way. And even if we succeed in
this endeavour, as with Ginzburg’s writings subsequent to the Night Battles, how
does one work re-establish connections from below? The life stories of individu-
als, their biographies, might well reflect some of the big forces making them, but
there is simply no way that the larger whole can be extrapolated out of their lives.
Pursuing similitudes here and there, as Ginzburg has done, tends to a dead-end
of historical writing as a kind of Wunderkammer. We must try to explicate the
ways in which the micro and the macro can be made part of a unified history. The
hurdles seem almost insuperable. The historian can produce a detailed recoupage
of the history of a Brazilian bandit like Virgulino Ferreira da Silva, better known
as Lampião, and so rescue the voice of the voiceless, only to find out that he was
a small bit player in the grand power networkings of the oligarchs who dominated
affairs in the Nordeste.22 In defiance of a suggested unimportance of all such small-
ness, however, we have manifest instances, like that of the Christians who moved
from being a very tiny thing to being just about as macro as possible. The nature
of the variable and ever-mobile connective links is another challenge faced by all
the writers of the essays in this volume. Perhaps we will be fortunate and human
history will be biological in nature and it will be possible to link big organisms
with the genomic codes of microbiology.23 But perhaps, we shall have to face the
real possibility that for us there will be no equivalent of the unified field theory
sought by physicists: there will be no way that the very big and the very small
can be made into a descriptive and analytical whole. Multitudinous micro-forces
might create things that are very big that simply function differently—on a differ-
ent plane that has its own rules.
The artificially created problem of an aporia of acceptable types of evidence was
one that already confronted an orthodox historiography based on detailed written
sources. It created problems both for them and for us. What was to be done with
whole periods of history and entire peoples for which written documentation sim-
ply did not exist? Did history for them not exist such that they are ‘pre-historical’
or ‘peoples without history,’ as Eric Wolf aggressively phrased it?24 The same
problem bedevils both the people and their history which are not vastly distant in
time or in some non-Euro world ‘way out there,’ in which whole groups of people
embedded well inside the larger societies but whose ruling orders are governed
by writing and written records.25 This is a daunting challenge that confronts the
historian of the subaltern social orders of antiquity. We are forced to search for
echoes of a pervasive oral culture as it is reflected in material objects and written
records. This does not mean that even very ordinary persons were not influenced
by basic types of literacy. The numbers of graffiti known from a Pompeii or an
Ephesus attest to a desire for writing on almost any surface that presented itself—
and these are, in some ways, direct voices from the past. The graffiti inscribed on
plastered walls or ceramic ostraca, however, are often disjointed and present severe
interpretative challenges.26 To dismiss them as just so many ephemera, however,
is misleading. Graffiti often endure for decades or more and are read and heard
xvi Foreword
by generations of observers. As is often noted, the situation of reporting on the
oral improves somewhat with Christian sources, but only by a little. Even in this
case, the vast bulk of the writing was still being done by the highly literate and
the highly educated. Again, how important was writing as such? I cannot desist
from quoting the words of Georges Lefebvre in his study of the Grande Peur of
1789. The problem, he says, in understanding this history is that it was fuelled by
a big myth, but to understand why the one big lie worked the historian has to face
another hard fact.

The vast majority of the French people depended entirely on oral tradition
for the dissemination of news. What would most of them have done with a
newspaper in any case? They could not read, and between five million and six
million of them could not even speak French.27

How often can these same observations be echoed for the world of antiquity? We
cannot even expect that any substantial part of the vast majority of persons in the
lower orders of that world (however construed) would have written or read anything
of length. But they surely consumed considerable amounts of written knowledge
through oral interfaces. But even for this ‘received knowledge’we will almost always
be dependent on descriptions by the literate. So any method for recouping their his-
tory will have to take the warping effect of the lenses in which such elite knowledge
is pictured as ‘lower.’ Furthermore, even if most communications among persons in
the lower orders were oral, the extent to which the values that we take to be popular
were in fact provided by elite literate writers must not be underestimated.28 As more
than one contributor to this volume rightly remarks, echoing Simona Cerutti, the use
of the spatial metaphor of ‘above’ and ‘below’ echoes too strongly the Manichaean
polarities found in elite writers of antiquity who wished to distinguish themselves,
the less than one percenters, from ‘all the rest’ in the starkest terms possible. Making
our way past the strongly dialogic nature of what is represented as the duality of the
high and the low must be one of the aims of the modern historian.
Far from being the peripheral thing that a history of marginals might suggest,
this history is that of a vast submerged continent dimly discernible through the
historian’s sonar. The theory for dealing with such a subject will somehow have
to engage those people in all of history. Thinking of approaching the problem
within the anodyne framework of ‘outsiders,’ ‘outcasts’ or ‘marginals’ opens up
the floodgates of possible subjects, but in terms of a productive analysis it does not
get us very far.29 All too often, the trope of marginality, by isolating the subjects,
risks marginalising their history by placing them in isolated ghettos of otherness,
like exotic animals in a human zoo.30 Abandoning oppositions and exoticism for a
strongly dynamic dialogic attack on the evidence is not just another desideratum. It
is a necessary first step. As Fábio Augusto Morales argues, the political community
of ‘the Athenians’ and their democracy is simply not comprehensible without the
inclusion of the slaves, freedmen and metics, and the seeing of the whole com-
munity from their perspective. Far from being the history of some ‘small people’
or ‘the low,’ this becomes a history of by far the greatest number of all the human
 Foreword xvii
peoples of that world. Since ordinary persons of every low status provided by far
the greatest bulk of the human power needed to produce the vast range of fixed
constructions and consumable goods, there exists an extensive and varied material
record directly relevant to their activities in creating, building, clearing, distilling,
patching, painting, plastering, loading, fixing, farming and forging. Once again,
despite the creative use of comparative situations and evidence, the descriptions in
technical writings, legal sources and narrative histories, there is still a considerable
void that has to be filled. Real gaps in interpretation have to be traversed before
the silent can be made to speak. But Kim Bowes shows that with the right ques-
tions and attention to the appropriate material evidence, much can be recovered
that pulls us away from the too neat polarities in the ideologies of the elite that we
are so often ready to accept.
Part of our aim must be to integrate the history of these people not only with the
history of social orders as a whole but also with the traditional history of political
power at ‘the top.’ Peter Brown, the pre-eminent historian of Mediterranean late
antiquity, has demonstrated ways in which this task of integration can be achieved.
But investigations of wealth and poverty, even if in the hands of a creative histori-
cal genius, have also demonstrated how very challenging, almost insuperable a
task this is.31 There can be no doubt that the labelling persons in the lower ranks
and orders of society by those who controlled the main levers of communica-
tion did in fact establish norms within which the subordinate and subaltern were
boxed. So we need something like James C. Scott’s concepts of hidden transcripts
and subversive strategies to understand the dialogue of idea and action between
the two.32 Even so, arraying and analysing texts that talk, seemingly without end,
about the poor or about poverty are a far cry from an historical understanding of
the actualities of systemic deprivation, even as felt or perceived. What were ‘those
people’ doing? Claire Taylor tackles this difficult problem, and, laudably, she does
not flinch from looking the beast directly in the eye. To decipher their categories—
the ones through which members of the lower orders were perceived—means to
understand the dual veiling and masking functions of ideology.33 The ‘poor’ are
usually constructed as a huge undifferentiated mass which, as both Taylor and
Cristina Rosillo-López delineate, is part of yet another stark polarity generated by
‘the above.’ It is most unlikely to be true on the ground where significant differ-
ences appear. And different strategies of survival were always in play. To get back
to James Scott’s variable tactics of the oppressed, this meant that poor beggars
could not only humbly beg, playing the role expected of them in a public script, but
they could also demand and even threaten—drawing on different public scripts of
human responsibility, common justice and divine sanction. Or, no longer as indi-
viduals but in larger numbers and assembled in crowds, they might, in the terms of
Thompson’s moral economy, violently demand what they felt was owed to them.
The study of collective violence engaged in by non-authorised groups of ordi-
nary persons, such as the kind that occurred in Washington, DC, on January 6,
2021, has been a fertile ground for modern historians. Ever since Georges Rudé
studied crowd actions in London and Paris, the focalised social values and nature
of the participants concentrated in crowds, riots and demos have been profitably
xviii Foreword
unpacked. They surely merit close attention by historians of antiquity with greater
focus on the values motivating the persons and their modes and rituals of behav-
iour, rather than dismissing them as ‘hooligans’ (Cameron) or ‘the mob’ (Brunt)
and in similar terms that echo the negative labelling of them by the very elites
that a history from below is attempting to avoid. The tactic is necessary, since
the elite writers of our literary works either would not or could not see the people
below them in other than warped and purposefully distorted terms.34 The attitude
is analogous to one where people deliberately do not see persons ‘unseen’ by them
or would prefer them to go away somewhere and disappear.35 We cannot buy into
the neat polarities proffered by the elites themselves so that phenomena like these
are understood to be a general undifferentiated mass of the ignorant and the poor.
When rioters or violent crowds turn out to be composed not by the elite-imagined
caricature of rootless, propertyless, listless, beggarly trouble-makers but by quite
other types of persons—skilled, propertied, educated, motivated by precise aims
and not sheer anarchy—then the historian begins to unlock the range of social
life below the 1 per cent or the more generous 10 per cent at the top. This was
one of the surprise findings of Rudé’s research, richly confirmed by subsequent
inquiries. But the old bipolar images, because of their real function in the present,
have a powerful staying force. Analysis of the makeup of the Trumpist crowd that
invaded the Capitol buildings of the United States in January 2021 provoked many
expressions of surprise and amazement (especially in the so-called ‘liberal’ media
outlets) that army soldiers and veterans, police and firemen, small businessmen,
well-employed skilled workers, the college educated, and even doctors and law-
yers were among its members.36 Rudé would not have been surprised, certainly
not shocked. Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira is surely right to avoid the masks
of the ideology and to follow the lead of the evidence about specific persons: their
normal social connections, their common values—their ‘customs in common’ as
E. P. Thompson phrased it—as well as what is imputed to them. The whole of
this history is a history of dialogues—the actions, aims and tactics of the one side
embedded along with the power and images of the others who want to control
them and wish that they could disappear from notice and memory. Kim Bowes’s
contribution is a particularly damning condemnation of how much the present
historiography of the Roman economy, willingly or not, has often colluded with
one side in this dialogue.
The okhlos or vulgus, and by whatever other terms of disrepute they have been
known, were not infrequently said to be in need of monitoring. Even more, as Alex
Gottesman points out, regardless of their differences of origin, views, institutions
and actions, they were often just bunched together as an undifferentiated mass—a
mass that was frequently seen as amorphous and threatening. Control of popu-
lar threats or ‘the mob’ has been a rich source of information since police were
constantly being called upon to manage the ‘dangerous classes,’ especially in the
larger urban centres. This meant coming face to face with a Dickensian range of
characters that filled Henry Mayhew’s journalistic reportage on the down-and-outs
of nineteenth-century London. Alas, there is almost nothing like this for our cit-
ies, and the satirists, appealed to by every student of daily life from Friedländer to
 Foreword xix
Carcopino, and onwards, do not adequately begin to fill this vast space.37 This path
leads back to the Wunderkammer. How fascinating and entertaining it is to gaze at
how these specimens of the past in their exotic world managed to drink, dine, def-
ecate or dream! Of course, if one possesses the bare-bones of a narrative, like that
of the sixteenth-century peasant and adventurer Martin Guerre, the possibilities of
a history are there, but they still require the historian to do a considerable amount
of imaginative reconstruction. In which case, there are at least two fundamental
objections that might be considered as a riff on Paul Veyne’s denunciation of the
validity of comparative history. Why engage in the reconstruction in the first place
if comparison cannot be the gaps in the original? And how reliable, in any event,
is a probable case fictively confected out of other evidence?38 The one point on
which all of the contributors to this volume are emphatic is that we do not possess
evidence of this kind. The surviving texts and materials that would enable us to
retell the life of one ordinary person of the time must approach zero. The absence
immediately provokes serious problems of method. In terms of our dispossessed,
our poor and our people who are below the top social ranks, we must feel like our
own particular Christ has stopped at Eboli. One of the few things of which we
can be reasonably certain, as Claire Taylor insists, is that the instruments of credit
and debt were the hard enforcers of the subaltern. If pervasive in Athens, Rome
was no different. In the earliest written laws that we have from Rome, after the
regulations governing court procedure the first laws move immediately to harsh
measures of debt enforcement as the first and most important issue to be dealt
with by the society.39 Here, too, the instruments of force and coercion were vitally
connected with slavery. This and not entertaining scenes repainted from ‘everyday
life’ is our problem.
If there have been missing persons in these matters, then there have often miss-
ing items of agenda. So it is a happy thing to see that the team composing this
volume has approached gender and sexuality as part of the constellation of forces
that have produced systemic inferiority and deprivation. This is an issue that often
seemed to drop off the desk of the new social history of previous generations.
Second-generation feminist historians had emphatically drawn attention to this
lost history and had begun configuring the problem of gender as a gateway to the
history of a vast number of humans.40 But their effect on the writing of ancient
history seemed to have been somewhat delayed. Perhaps the difficulties of shaping
this history for ‘those below’ were not just the heavily skewed writings of elites
but a huge lack of first-hand testimony. Nevertheless, a historian who was instru-
mental in exciting interest in the history of orders of society other than the high
elites, Moses Finley, noted that sex and sexual exploitation were primal elements
in the subordination of slavery, one of the fundamental ways in which slaves have
always been ‘answerable’ with their bodies. Note that: one of the most fundamental
aspects. And yet he then promptly said not another word about this fundamental
aspect in all of his other writings.41 This was not an innocent forgetfulness or a
studied disinterest. Despite the challenges of the evidence, this must have been a
kind of deliberate avoidance that is only in the process of being rectified by the
current generation of historians of Greek and Roman antiquity. Even the new
xx Foreword
historiography of the lower orders with its emphasis on class and status, work
regimen, social symbolism, economic exploitation and popular politics tended to
leave unspoken this huge gravitational field of human history almost as if it did not
exist. As the valiant efforts of Renata Senna Garraffoni indicate, even armed with
the roadmap provided by Foucault (itself open to serious objections), this remains
one of the most challenging tasks that face the current generation of historians of
antiquity. On the one hand, so much is hidden from our view. On the other hand,
the sheer ubiquity with which sexuality has universally inflected human relations
makes its specific effects in each instance difficult to understand. As she rightly
shows, the high and the low were jammed more closely cheek by jowl than would
be assumed from the vantage point of the zoned living of today’s towns and cities.
Forum and fornix were exceptionally close. Gender differences always permeated
and configured social relations of both upper and lower, with serious consequences
for women, especially those in the ranks of the subaltern.
The other obvious meta-mechanism that has artificially structured the extremes
of deprivation and subordination were concepts and practices of race/ethnicity.
This historical problem, like slavery, with which it is vitally connected, is a rather
daunting one to unravel. The labelling of whole human groups and populations in
a way that has conditioned systemic repression, exploitation and deprivation of
opportunities and resources has been receiving long overdue attention in recent
decades. Like sexuality, these malignant ideologies were everywhere and never
just limited to the slaving periphery of a conquering colonial power. In his inspec-
tion of democratic Athens, Gabriel Zuchtriegel demonstrates how, no less than
in distant colonial settings, the branding of groups of peoples as marginals, ‘bar-
barians’ and other types of outsiders was central to the structural oppression and
exploitation of those nearby, those living among the insiders in the polis. In the
conventional duet of race and ethnicity, surely far too much has been made of
the supposed fundamental differences between the two. In reality, the race and
ethnicity strongly overlap and have often been made to function—with the nice
adjustments, often simple substitutions in language—in the same fashion and to
the same ends. Ethnic identity, a staple of recent scholarship when done in an
anodyne Barthean mode, was never a kinder version of race. In one of the most
frequently quoted studies of his time of the problem of race, and all too typical
of it, a leading scholar could suggest that all was just fine since the Romans, only
afflicted by mere ethnic prejudices, were prepared to admit people who could be
acculturated into their world as Roman citizens.42 As if such a thing ever obviated
racism. Try telling the more than 45 million African Americans that their sharing
of American culture (much of which they themselves have created) and their pos-
session of US citizenship has effaced the hard edges of racist ideology and action.
Like all the historical actors of the past, we live in Veyne’s messy, contradic-
tory, manic, unique sublunary world—an exasperating, vexatious world where
interpretation must be highly individual and very general at the same time. Hap-
pily, every contribution in this collection engages with the difficulties that are
generated by these complex networks of human creativity. Perhaps best of all—
although setting a severe test for the writer—this collection of essays begins
 Foreword xxi
without blinking by facing head on the core problems of definitions, paths of
development, methodological and evidentiary difficulties—all harsh tasks for the
researcher. The challenges are met by Kostas Vlassopoulos, who, like any good
guide, bravely and competently maps possible roads into this future. After all,
how we are to get to our many destinations? As historians, we know that our great
mission of doing history on the large-stage strategic history, global history if you
will, is baggy, ill-defined, amorphous and so on, but we still sense basically what
it is. But what is ‘history from below’ supposed to be within this other larger
mission? The essays here suggest that different paths might be taken. But which
ones and by which means? A better title for my foreword might be ‘How is this
history to be?’ There is probably no better way to end this foreword than to say
that we are just at the beginning.
Brent D. Shaw

Notes
1 Ward 1888–1900.
2 As evoked by Eksteins 1989.
3 Pelling 1963 (basically, a product of the 1950s); and, in a similar vein, his histories of
the Labour Party.
4 Thompson 1963.
5 There are numerous treatments, but Kaye 1984 should suffice.
6 For some of this background albeit, in my perspective from a somewhat selective view-
point, see Giardina 2007, 15–31.
7 So, almost in the same year: Thompson 1978 and Carandini 1979. Admittedly, Thomp-
son’s target was not Italo-Marxist ideas but rather the nearly incomprehensible high
theorising of the Althusserians in Paris.
8 These always had their own problems. Sociology was always far too myopic and anach-
ronistic in its focus, if not, as Magalhães de Oliveira points out, actually complicit with
legitimising current configurations of power (e.g. the sociology of deviants). Anthropol-
ogy was just a faux history that was created by the abandonment of a whole range of
history by the creation of the Thucydidean/Rankean idea of history as a science, as a
result of which the oral history of ‘primitives’ was left to others to do as a kind of ‘not-
history.’ This was always a quite false idea and so ‘anthropology’ as something different
from history has died a not-so-slow death.
9 Cerutti 2015, a study referred to by several of the contributors, outlines the long-delayed
response to Thompson’s work in France, for example.
10 University of Pennsylvania seminar, led by Francesca Trivellato: 2 March 2021: https://
youtu.be/cgHcSCXknnM.
11 Le Roy Ladurie 1966 (Engl. transl. 1974—a much-reduced selection of the original,
alas).
12 A central theme, for example, of Horden and Purcell 2000.
13 Le Roy Ladurie 1979.
14 Corbin 1998 (Engl. transl. 2001).
15 Vlassopoulos 2021, where he advances a similar programme of new pathways of analy-
sis for slavery as he does here for ‘history from below.’
16 Scheidel 2020, referring to a range of his earlier work on the same problem; of course,
the long shadow of Piketty hovers over all of this.
17 McFarlane 1970.
18 Ulrich 1990.
xxii Foreword
19 Ginzburg 1976 (Engl. transl. 1980). There are some modest possible exceptions in
the records of Q&A sessions between Roman magistrates and Christian defendants,
and in the stenographic records of debates in church concilia. Even so, these are
rather feeble sources for the sentiments, ideas and lives of ‘the lowly’ as expressed
by themselves.
20 Ginzburg 1993, 22.
21 The attempt was made: Shaw 2013, with some of these results.
22 Chandler 1978; someone who merits all of two to three pages in Lewin 1987. She did
recognise the problem: Lewin 1979b. In the history of the Northeast, we can see a lot of
the relevant evidence in detail; the number of analogous cases in the history of antiquity
where we cannot must be almost beyond count.
23 It must be said that the problem was faced by the Annalistes, especially Braudel, who
attempted to link the great forces of the so-called longue durée (volume 1) with the his-
toire événementielle (vol. 2) with no great success. The borrowing of the conjuncturale
from the economists produced nothing of note.
24 Wolf 1982.
25 See, e.g., Seabrook and Siddiqui 2011.
26 Not that these cannot be truly significant. I remember seeing on the inside of the door of a
stall in the men’s restroom in the UL at Cambridge an inscribed arrow pointed to the han-
dle on the door, accompanied with the explanatory inscription ‘The Hand of Maradona.’
The notation was simultaneously a shout against a perceived injustice and an assertion
of British identity. I understood this immediately and laughed. But to reconstruct my
laugh, someone 2,000 years hence would have to understand the cultural relevance of
the physical circumstances (the men’s restroom), specific point of reference (the game
of football, the World Cup of 1986, the fact that a player called Diego Maradona actually
referred to the said act as ‘The Hand of God’), the assumed audience—some of the most
highly educated and privileged persons on the globe—who, despite this, would share in
the sentiments of what was then deemed to be a popular game of working-class origins
and focus. The task would be rather daunting. Since this happened in the men’s restroom,
it seems to confirm some of the methods of Garraffoni’s reading of graffiti.
27 Lefebvre 1932 (Engl. transl. 1973, 73–74).
28 An aspect that was drawn to my attention many years ago in a hard fashion by Lewin
1979a.
29 As I can tell from personal experience: Shaw 2000.
30 So, despite the best of intentions, I am sure: Neri 1998.
31 With repeated attacks on the problem: Brown 2001, 2012 and 2016.
32 Scott 1990 and, more recently, 2013.
33 Merquior 1997 (transl. of the English original 1979); for an attempt to unpack the prob-
lem in this vein, see Shaw 2020.
34 As demonstrated, famously, by Auerbach 1946 (Engl. transl. 1953).
35 Confirmed by the persons themselves: Ellison 1952; a theme in Hacker’s writings: 1992, 12.
36 Lambert Strether, ‘The Class Composition of the Capitol Rioters,’ Monthly Review
Online (January 21, 2021) reposted from Naked Capitalism (January 18, 2021); doctors:
P. Stone, The Guardian, January 22, 2021.
37 The policing units of the time undoubtedly had such records: see, e.g., Tertullian, de
Fuga, 13.3 (CCL 2, 1154–5) on Carthage is good testimony; and there is also evidence
in the papyri from Egypt. It is just that we do not have sufficient survivals from the
policing archives.
38 Davis 1983, followed by the debates on the use of imagination in the American Histori-
cal Review: Finlay 1988, and the author’s reply: Davis 1988 (where Davis’s defence of
her methods seems convincing to me—it’s what historians do).
39 The so-called Twelve Tables of c. 450 BCE, nos. 3 following: FIRA 12, no. 2, table 3,
32–34.
 Foreword xxiii
40 There were many precursors, but in my case the breakthrough historical analysis was
provided by Scott 1986.
41 Finley 1980, 161–4.
42 Sherwin-White 1967; his revised study of the Roman citizenship, it must be confessed,
is no better in this respect.

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Pelling, H. 1963. A History of British Trade Unionism. London: MacMillan.
Scheidel, W. 2020. ‘Roman Wealth and Wealth Inequality in Comparative Perspective.’
JRA 33: 341–52. doi:10.1017/S104775942000104X.
Scott, J. C. 1990. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press.
Scott, J. C. 2013. Decoding Subaltern Politics: Ideology, Disguises, and Resistance in
Agrarian Politics. New York: Routledge.
Scott, J. W. 1986. ‘Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis.’ AHR 91 (5): 1053–
75 (= Gender and the Politics of History. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988
(revised edition, 1999), 28–50). doi:10.2307/1864376.
Seabrook, J. and I. A. Siddiqui. 2011. People Without History: India’s Muslim Ghettos.
London and New York: Pluto Press.
Shaw, B. D. 2000. ‘Rebels and Outsiders.’ In The Cambridge Ancient History. Vol. 11: The
High Empire, A.D. 70–192, edited by A. K. Bowman, P. D. A. Garnsey and D. Rathbone,
361–403. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/
CHOL9780521263351.012.
Shaw, B. D. 2013. Bringing in the Sheaves: Economy and Metaphor in the Roman World.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Shaw, B. D. 2020. ‘Poverty and Charity in Roman Imperial Society.’ Religion in the Roman
Empire 6: 229–67.
Sherwin-White, A. N. 1967. Racial Prejudice in Ancient Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Thompson, E. P. 1963. The Making of the English Working Class. New York: Vintage
Books.
Thompson, E. P. 1978. The Poverty of Theory & Other Essays. London: Merlin.
 Foreword xxv
Ulrich, L. T. 1990. A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary,
1785–1812. New York: Knopf-Random House.
Vlassopoulos, K. 2021. Historicising Ancient Slavery. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press.
Ward, C. O. 1888–1900. The Ancient Lowly: A History of the Ancient Working People, from
the Earliest Known Period to the Adoption of Christianity by Constantine, 2 vols. Chi-
cago: C. H. Kerr & Co.
Wolf, E. R. 1982. Europe and the People without History. Berkeley: University of Califor-
nia Press (reprint: 2010).
Acknowledgements

Most of the chapters gathered in this volume have their origin as papers delivered
at the international conference ‘Ancient History from Below: Possibilities and
Challenges,’ held at the University of São Paulo in March 2018. However, this
book goes far beyond the mere publication of proceedings. Firstly, four chapters
have been added, so the range of topics covered is much more comprehensive. Sec-
ondly, not only the original contributions have been rewritten to take into account
the discussions that took place during the conference but also all chapters have
been subject to the same orientations in a spirit of collegiality and conviviality that
gives the volume a resolutely coherent feature. Yet some themes do not appear
here. For example, the reader may be surprised not to find any contribution of
religious history, especially since two papers at the conference were devoted to
the study of religion from below. Unfortunately, the writing of the book, which
really began in 2019, was seriously impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, which
compelled some scholars to give up the project. Without much hope of a rapid
improvement in the health situation in 2020 and 2021, we did not wish to delay
the publication any further.
The genesis of this book goes back to 2012 and the symposium ‘Locating Popu-
lar Culture in the Ancient World’ organised by Lucy Grig at the University of
Edinburgh. On this occasion, several of the participants of the present book met,
and the result was the international project Subaltern Groups and Popular Practices
in Antiquity. Structured in 2015 and led by Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira, it is
intended to encourage and sustain a theoretical and methodological reflection on
the experience of subaltern groups in antiquity and their practices, forms of expres-
sion and modes of action. It also aims to explore the specific problems involved
in investigating these issues in the study of ancient societies. This project brings
together teachers, researchers and students of history and related fields such as
archaeology, literature and social sciences. It is mainly developed around a blog
regularly updated with new posts and video podcasts on current research in history
from below: https://en.subalternosblog.com.
We would like to address our warmest thanks to the Department of History of
the University of São Paulo, which had hosted the 2018 symposium, as well as to
the Graduate Program in Social History of the University of São Paulo (PPGHS)
and to the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), which had financed the
 Acknowledgements xxvii
event. We would especially like to thank the students, Giovan do Nascimento, Jés-
sica Brustolim, Luiz Giacomo, Márcio Monteneri, Nara Oliveira, Pedro Benedetti
and Rafael Monpean, who played an essential role in the success of the conference.
Since then, many of them have been the backbone of the blog. Our most sincere
thanks also go to Victoria Leitch and Katia Schörle, who ensured the linguistic
correction of the chapters, as well as to the Institut Universitaire de France and
the Maison Méditerranéenne des Sciences de l’Homme (Aix-Marseille Univer-
sity—CNRS) that helped us with the publication. We are also grateful to Lucy
Grig, Brent D. Shaw and Claire Taylor, who helped with the preparation of the
volume in various ways. Amy Davys-Pointer at Routledge has been a generous
and enthusiastic supporter of our project, and we warmly thank her. Finally, we are
grateful to Ben Brown, David Kawalko-Roselli, Elena Isayev and two anonymous
referees of Routledge for their helpful and constructive comments.
Abbreviations

The abbreviations of ancient authors and their works and the collections of inscrip-
tions follow those in the Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th edition, or, when not
found, in the Liddell-Scott-Jones’ Greek-English Lexicon, 9th edition. Journal
titles are abbreviated as in L’Année philologique.
Abbreviations of ancient text editions, reference works and collections of
inscriptions not given in the Oxford Classical Dictionary or Liddell-Scott-Jones’
Lexicon are as follows:

BCTH Bulletin archéologique du Comité des travaux historiques et sci-

entifiques. Paris: Impr. Nationale, 1883–1973.
CAG Carte archéologique de la Gaule. Paris: Académie des Inscrip-
tions et Belles Lettres: Maison des Sciences de l’homme, 1988–
De malig. Her Plutarch, De malignitate Herodoti, edited by P. A. Hansen.
Amsterdam: Hakkertium, 1979.
ICalvet La collection d’inscriptions gallo-grecques et latines du Musée
Calvet, edited by J. Gascou and J. Guyon. Paris and Avignon: De
Boccard and Fondation Calvet, 2005.
ILGN Inscriptions latines de Gaule Narbonnaise, edited by
E. Espérandieu. Paris: E. Leroux, 1929.
ILN Inscriptions latines de Narbonnaise. Paris: CNRS, 1985–
SGD Jordan, D. R. 2004, ‘Survey of Greek Defixiones not Included in
the Special Corpora.’, GRBS 26: 1–81.
1 Ancient history from below
An introduction
Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira
and Cyril Courrier

Questions of a reading worker

Who built seven-gated Thebes?
In the books, there are the names of kings.
Did the kings haul the boulders?
And Babylon, several times destroyed,
Who rebuilt it so many times? In which houses
Of golden shining Lima did the builders dwell?
The night the Great Wall of China was finished, where did
The masons go? Great Rome
Is full of triumphal arches. Who built them? Over whom
Did the Caesars triumph? Did much-praised Byzantium
Have only palaces for its inhabitants? Even in legendary Atlantis,
The night when the sea swallowed it up,
Those who were drowning shouted for their slaves.
Young Alexander conquered India.
He alone?
Caesar beat the Gauls.
Did he not at least have a cook with him?
Philip of Spain wept when his fleet
Was sunk. Did no one else weep?
Frederick the Second won the Seven Years’ War. Who
Won besides him?
Each page a victory.
Who cooked the victory feast?
Every ten years a great man.
Who paid the expenses?
So many reports,
So many questions.
(Bertolt Brecht, translated by Olivier Baisez)1

Why write ancient history ‘from below’ today?

All of us who have tried to write ‘history from below’ have started with the
same basic questions as those formulated by Bertolt Brecht in 1935. The shift of

DOI: 10.4324/9781003005148-1
2 Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira and Cyril Courrier
attention from rulers to ordinary people that Brecht advocated in this poem gained
ground during the twentieth century as a consequence of the growing impact of
social movements, the wider democratisation of our societies and the gradual
opening of universities themselves to men and women coming from well below
the upper and upper-middle classes.2 Today, it is clear that history is no longer
restricted to the report of ‘the great deeds of kings.’3 Yet it is still significant to
note that most of Brecht’s ‘Fragen eines lesenden Arbeiters’ concerned in fact
ancient history: Thebes, Babylon, imperial Rome, the legendary Atlantis, the con-
quests of Alexander and Caesar. Ancient history is indeed particularly susceptible
to a top-down approach, to the tendency of seeing history through the eyes of the
elite. This reflects not only the nature of our sources but also the conscious or
unconscious identification of modern scholars with the elites of the ancient world,
an identification that has influenced the choices not only of historians but also
of archaeologists and epigraphists.4 Yet there is also another reason why ancient
history features so prominently in Brecht’s poem. This reason is that the view of
history as an account of great and celebrated people, events and achievements
(or, in Walter Benjamin’s words, as a Triumphzug, a triumphal procession of the
conquerors) is an ancient invention and one that remains as a model for modern
conceptions of history.5 Brecht’s poem can, in this sense, lead us to question not
only the thematic preferences of historians but also the very nature of the writing
of history.
The contributors to this book come from different countries, different profes-
sional affiliations and even divergent scholarly traditions, but we are all united by
our common conviction that another ancient history is possible. Writing ancient
history ‘from below’ means, however, much more than taking into account those
who, to repeat Brecht’s formula, ‘built seven-gated Thebes’: the anonymous
masses, the subaltern classes, the non-elites. Our task is also, in the felicitous
expression coined by Benjamin, ‘die Geschichte gegen den Strich zu bürsten’ (‘to
brush history against the grain’). This means breaking with the view of history as
a ‘triumphal procession’ to rescue the subordinated and the oppressed (Benjamin’s
Unterdrückten) from the eyes of judgement of the winners.6 In other words, we
should understand the bulk of ancient populations ‘in light of their own experience
and their own reactions to that experience.’7
There is a political commitment in our engagement with the past, and we
believe that, in this specific juncture, at the beginning of the 2020s, ‘history from
below’ has become more urgent than ever. After all, we live in a world where
inequalities of power and wealth continually intensify. Global financial agents
and institutions dictate governmental policies, ignoring the citizens’ will. The
neoliberal policies of austerity and the increasing flexibility of labour relations
have undermined trade unions and increased the precarity of labourers. The coro-
navirus pandemic has only exposed and further aggravated a previous tendency
of penalising the poor for the crises. In several countries, authorities and security
forces treat immigrants, ethnic minorities or the poor as potential enemies. The
rise of far-right rhetoric threatens to suppress the voices of women, LGBTQ+
people, indigenous communities and other minorities, while traditional political
 Ancient history from below 3
parties and politicians (even on the left), having long abandoned their social
bases, prefer to blame citizens for their wrong political choices, rather than to
understand their aspirations and viewpoints.8 In this context, when we promote a
critical reflection about how subaltern people in the ancient world lived their lives
and coped with their situations, we are also opposing the contemporary tendency
to ignore, disrespect or suppress the ‘voices from below.’ In refusing to accept as
natural ‘the most final, and brutal, of life’s inequalities,’9 the inequality between
who is remembered and who is forgotten, and in trying to understand the Greek
debtor, the urban homeless, the Roman peasant or the domestic slave10 in terms
of the lives they led, we are saying to our contemporaries that the sufferings and
hopes of every human being should not be forgotten, at least for us who aspire
a different future. Ultimately, we are affirming that a really democratic, more
egalitarian society cannot be constructed unless all people are heard and bet-
ter understood. Moreover, at a time when the more conventional, homogeneous
image of the Greek and Roman worlds is once again embraced by the far right
as the foundation of male, white supremacy, it is worth remembering that it is
only by writing an entirely new, more pluralist story about antiquity that ancient
history can really become liberating.11
This kind of history is (as it must be) uncomfortable, because we do not in this
volume treat the ancient world as a refuge from our social hardships, as a haven
of social peace.12 Nor will the reader find here the aseptic approaches inspired
by the New Institutional Economics that became dominant in much of the recent
historiography on the ancient world and that, as Kostas Vlassopoulos rightly
observed, tend to replace discussions of slavery, class and exploitation by ‘purely’
economic accounts of production, exchange and growth.13 While avoiding the
alternative traps of miserabilism or populism,14 this book will take a different path.
The reader will still find here industrious smallholders or prosperous artisans and
traders who benefited from the burgeoning commerce of thriving port towns. But
we also insist on bringing to the fore stories of subjugated and exploited agricul-
tural labourers stigmatised as barbarians, working poor families expelled from
their homes because they were unable to pay their rents and even a whole urban
populace reduced to hunger by the policies and self-interest of their rulers.15 Even
so, this history can also be inspiring, because in studying the strategies, agencies
and solidarities of subaltern groups, we can also show their margins of freedom,
their capacities of resistance and the potential for social change that persist in
spite of the many forms of domination and oppression. But before discussing the
main challenges involved in our endeavour, let us see how the field of ‘history
from below’ was constituted in the first place and how it has developed in recent
decades.

‘History from below’ in context

The phrase ‘history from below’ was used for the first time in English in 1966
as the title of an article published by Edward P. Thompson in the Times Literary
Supplement.16 In French, however, the expression dates back at least to a 1932
4 Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira and Cyril Courrier
essay by Lucien Febvre, who aimed to write a ‘histoire des masses et non des
vedettes, histoire vue d’en bas et non d’en haut.’17 In fact, as Eric Hobsbawm
observed,

it was the French tradition of historiography as a whole, steeped in the history

not of the French ruling class but the French people, which established most
of the themes and even the methods of grassroots history. Marc Bloch as well
as Georges Lefebvre.18

Already in 1924, with the publication of Les Rois Thaumaturges, an investigation

of the belief that the kings of France and England could work miracles, Bloch
showed how a study of the beliefs and mentality of ordinary people and their
changes over time could illuminate the history of major political decisions and
events.19 Lefebvre went a step further, establishing the main precedent of this his-
toriographical perspective which would later be known as ‘history from below.’ In
a series of works, the most famous of which is La Grande Peur de 1789 (1932),
Lefebvre drew attention to the need of taking into account the wider context of
popular life, including the everyday habits and associations, memories and tradi-
tions, as the only way to understand the underlying motives or rationales of popular
actions.20
The two first generations of the French Annales School, however, were much
more concerned with long-term developments, macro-history and serial trends,
rather than with human historical agency. It was only in the late 1950s and 1960s
that the British Marxist historians steered ‘history from below’ in a more critical
and in-depth direction. We are referring here to the remarkable generation of his-
torians that came together initially in the Communist Party Historians’ Group and
whose foremost members were Christopher Hill, Rodney Hilton, Eric Hobsbawm,
Victor Kiernan, George Rudé, John Saville, Dorothy Thompson and E. P. Thomp-
son.21 Owing to their intellectual and political formation in the popular struggle
against fascism and moving away from the deterministic, Stalinist readings of
Marx, especially after the Soviet Union’s invasion of Hungary in 1956, these his-
torians focused their attentions on the capacities of action and the choices of men
and women in making their own history. Consequently, they committed their ener-
gies to recover the experiences and agencies of the labouring classes and their
struggles, practices and beliefs, going well beyond the organised movements or
the critical moments of rebellion or revolution.22
In a famous passage of his preface to The Making of the English Working Class
(1963), E. P. Thompson defined this new way of doing history in terms that remain
to this day the best introduction to the aims of any ‘history from below’:

I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the ‘obsolete’
handloom weavers, the ‘utopian’ artisan, and even the deluded followers of
Joanna Southcott from the enormous condescension of posterity. Their crafts
and traditions may have been backward-looking. Their communitarian ideals
may have been fantasies. Their insurrectionary conspiracies may have been
 Ancient history from below 5
foolhardy. But they lived through these times of acute social disturbance, and
we did not. Their aspirations were valid in terms of their own experience; and
if they were casualties in history, they remain, condemned in their own lives,
as casualties.23

As this passage makes clear, ‘history from below’ is above all a history rooted
in the experience of the subordinated, the oppressed and the dispossessed. It is a
history that treats the common people not simply as effects of the social structures
or as ‘one of the problems the government has to handle’24 but as social actors
who make their own history in the circumstances they encountered. ‘History from
below’ is certainly a ‘rescue’ operation, in the sense that we are looking for people
who were forgotten, ignored or misrepresented by a conventional history. Its main
objective, however, is to rescue them from the judgements of the ‘winners’ and,
consequently, of posterity. History tends to be understood as an evolutionary chain
or as a series of achievements. The consequence, as Thompson observed, is that
‘[t]he blind alleys, the lost causes, and the losers themselves are forgotten.’25 Res-
cuing them from ‘the enormous condescension of posterity’ does not mean their
actions are attributed a retrospective political significance that they did not always
have.26 It means that their actions, motivations and rationales, however unfamiliar
they might seem to us, must be understood on their own terms and not in light of
subsequent evolution or on the terms that the winners have chosen to represent
them.
In his 1966 article, Thompson reviewed the emerging trends in this new type of
history. Although his concern at that time was mainly with labour history, all of his
predictions about what would become central topics of research in the following
decades proved to be correct: histories of crime and popular disorder, of popular
culture and popular religion, and so on.27 The intellectual and political context of
the time was indeed favourable to the exploration of new themes, and not only
among historians. In 1957, the literary critic and sociologist Richard Hoggart pub-
lished his pioneering book, The Uses of Literacy: Aspects of Working Class Life,
while he founded, along with Raymond Williams and Stuart Hall, the Cultural
Studies movement.28 Defining culture as ‘a whole way of life,’ rather than as the
best or the most influential artistic or literary works of a civilisation, these scholars
enabled the investigation of previously ignored arenas, such as the everyday-life
practices, marginal or marginalised groups and popular culture. By their political
commitment with movements against inequality in the 1960s and their insistence
on the potential of working-class cultures to resist dominant cultures, the British
Cultural Studies movement contributed to the same perspective that the British
Marxist historians advocated.29 Indeed, E. P. Thompson, Raymond Williams and
Stuart Hall were close at the time and co-signed a famous text of the new left, the
May Day Manifesto 1968.30
In the 1970s and 1980s, ‘history from below’ continued to flourish, but his-
torians adopting a more bottom-up approach turned to a wider range of histori-
cal concerns than those defined by traditional Marxism. It was in those years,
for instance, that Thompson began his investigation of the ‘moral economy’
6 Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira and Cyril Courrier
of the crowd, of rough music, the sale of wives and other popular customs in
eighteenth-century England, while Natalie Zemon Davis applied the insights of
cultural anthropology in her studies of religious riots, of the organised rituals
of French adolescent males or of the women’s experience of the Reformation
in sixteenth-century France.31 At the same time, in Italy and Germany, ‘history
from below’ assumed radical new forms.32 German Alltagsgeschichte (‘the his-
tory of everyday life’) developed in reaction to the then prevailing hegemony of
Strukturgeschichte, with its emphasis on ‘big structures’ and ‘large processes,’
encouraging instead the qualitative analysis of the mental and material world of
German workers in clearly defined microhistoric environments.33 Italian ‘micro-
history’ similarly reduced the scale of the historical investigation, adopting the
intensive analysis of seemingly mundane sources and the ‘microscopic observa-
tion’ of a single individual, a small community or an apparently obscure event
as devices to get at larger issues.34 Thus, in The Cheese and the Worms (1976),
Carlo Ginzburg used the detailed interrogations of the inquisition to investigate
the mental universe of a sixteenth-century miller and ultimately to explore the
complex relations between elite and popular cultures.35 In France, Emmanuel Le
Roy Ladurie, in his Montaillou (1975), which remains a model work of historical
anthropology, took advantage of the same kind of source to reconstruct the social
life of a medieval village.36
Outside Europe, the attempt to rethink history from the perspective of the sub-
altern was pursued in the 1980s by the Indian Subaltern Studies group. Building
on the concept of ‘subaltern classes’ formulated by the Italian Marxist Antonio
Gramsci, the Subaltern Studies Group, led by Ranajit Guha, extended the concept
of ‘subalternity’ to take into account the various categories of subordination in a
colonial context. Their aim was to deconstruct the colonial perspectives on Indian
history, so often written from the perspective of the state, and retrieve the view-
point of subalterns as autonomous agents.37 In his classic Elementary Aspects of
Peasant Insurgency in India (1983), Guha showed how the codes through which
the colonial officials interpreted peasant rebellion could be inverted to reveal the
constituent elements of peasant protest. Instead of the conventional images of a
peasantry manipulated by the elite, he proposed a new picture of the colonial state
as constantly confronted and limited by the force of an autonomous peasant insur-
gency.38 One characteristic of the work of the Indian Subalternists after the mid-
1980s, and one that by 1993 inspired the formation of a parallel Latin American
Subaltern Studies Group, was, in the words of Florencia Mallon, ‘the irresolvable
tension . . . between a more narrowly postmodern literary interest in documents as
“constructed texts” and the historian’s disciplinary interest in reading documents
as “windows,” however foggy and imperfect, on people’s lives.’39 Although it can
be argued that the tension was ultimately resolved among Indian Subalternists in
favour of the focus on colonial discourse, to the detriment of the recovering of
the experiences of the subordinated and the oppressed,40 this particular combina-
tion of postcolonial criticism and ‘history from below’ that Mallon and the Latin
American Subalternists advocated remains important for some contributors to this
book.41
 Ancient history from below 7
In Brazil, in the 1980s, the project of writing ‘history from below’ became
mainly associated with the study of slavery and the Brazilian labour movement,
but these two fields are only one example of a wider transformation.42 Stimulated
not only by the hopes raised by the (re)democratisation of Brazilian society after
21 years of military dictatorship (1964–1985) and the rise of social movements
on the national political scene but also by the dissolution of Marxist expectations
with the collapse of the Soviet bloc, several historians turned to the study of the
experiences, agencies and culture of subordinated or dominated actors as part
of a larger political commitment with the construction of a democratic society.
In this context, the works of E. P. Thompson, on the one hand, and Michel Fou-
cault, on the other, became some of the main references for Brazilian historians
in search of new historiographic practices, leading them, respectively, to rescue
the struggle, practices and ways of thinking of the dominated and to discover
new research topics such as gender and sexuality.43 It was also in those years, and
in dialogue with these wider transformations, that Brazilian ancient historians
turned to the study of popular culture and the subaltern and marginalised groups
in antiquity.44
By the late 1990s, these various forms of ‘people’s history’ developed in the pre-
vious decades were eclipsed by the new interest in textual, rather than social, anal-
yses inspired by the cultural and linguistic turns. In recent years, however, ‘history
from below’ witnessed a renewed interest. Although incorporating the preoccupa-
tion with the role of language and discourse, historians throughout the world have
returned vigorously to the study of the ‘voices from below,’45 the writing prac-
tices and experiences of the poorest inhabitants,46 the modes of popular protest,
resistance and rebellion,47 and the political activism of workers and disfranchised
groups.48 Two questions, in particular, have become the object of intense debate.
The first one is, ‘Who are the actors studied in a history from below?’49 The second
one is, ‘What is the best scale of analysis for this endeavour?’ The microscopic
one, as brilliantly illustrated by a recent book by Jacques-Olivier Boudon based
on the secret diary of a nineteenth-century carpenter written on the hidden side of
the floorboard of a castle in southern France?50 Or a more global analysis, such
as the study of the eighteenth-century Atlantic connections of slaves, sailors and
commoners by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker?51 The wide range of themes
and possibilities of research currently discussed can be glimpsed through the con-
tributions to an online forum on ‘The Future of History from Below’ inaugurated
in 2013 and continuously nourished by new interventions from medievalists, early
modernists and historians of the twentieth century.52 Some of these contributions
have paved the way for new fields of research, such as ‘landscape history from
below’ or ‘global history from below.’53 Others emphasise the importance of com-
parative and interdisciplinary approaches, as well as the intensive use of electronic
resources for the collection and study of various kinds of evidence.54 In fact, as
Andrew Port suggested in 2015, just as the political turmoil of the 1960s partly
explains the sudden popularity of ‘history from below’ in that decade, recent politi-
cal developments—from the ‘Arab Spring’ in North Africa and the Middle East to
the ‘Occupy Movement’ worldwide—might well spark a sustained interest in this
8 Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira and Cyril Courrier
approach to history.55 Five years later, this tendency seems to be confirmed, and
this book itself is part of that persistent interest.

Ancient history from below?

Ancient historians, as a rule, did not participate in the developments of the
1960s–1980s that consolidated ‘history from below’ into a new way of doing his-
tory.56 This absence is all the more remarkable when we know that those decades
represented an important milestone in ancient historical studies, with the open-
ing up of new research perspectives and the noticeable presence of Marxism as
an innovative trend in ancient studies.57 Why did this not happen? One reason
is certainly that, as Jim Sharpe has put it, ‘the further back historians seeking to
reconstruct the experience of the lower orders go, the more restricted the range of
sources at their disposal becomes.’58 But two other factors should also be consid-
ered in explaining this situation. The first is the breaking of links between ancient
history and other branches of the historical discipline in the post-war period. The
second is the influence among ancient historians of normative, sociological models
of a Weberian or Durkheimian matrix, which led to an emphasis on the functioning
of societies, rather than on their transformations.59
As Vlassopoulos has observed, until the Second World War ‘ancient historians
not only partook of the general frames of interpretation and the intellectual exer-
cises of their discipline, but quite often they were at the forefront of new devel-
opments.’60 Yet the destruction of the German tradition of ancient history under
Nazism and the predominance in the post-war period of Anglo-Saxon historians,
traditionally confined in departments of classics, instead of history, reinforced the
segregation of ancient history from developments in the larger historical disci-
pline.61 The influence of political history and the authoritativeness of practitioners
of (elite) prosopography delayed until the 1970s a more sustained engagement of
ancient historians with social-historical issues that were already thriving in other
fields.62
When, however, historians such as Moses Finley and the Cambridge School or
Jean-Pierre Vernant and the Paris School finally introduced anthropological and
sociological approaches to the study of the Greek and Roman worlds, their adop-
tion of holistic models of the functioning of societies oriented the debates towards
the exploration of social order and social classification, rather than of social con-
flicts and the experiences and viewpoints of the various actors in society. Finley,
for instance, subsumed the study of Greek and Roman economies and societies to
the Weberian model of the consumer city and presupposed that aristocratic values
(such as the contempt for work) were accepted as a rule by all social groups.63
Vernant’s emphasis on the primacy of politics in ancient Greece also led to a con-
ception of the polis as an exclusive club of adult male citizens, thus disregarding
groups without institutionalised political participation, such as women, foreigners
and slaves, as active agents in the life of the city.64 It is not surprising, therefore,
that these scholars have never conceived the project of an ancient history ‘from
below,’ but it is significant that even the Italian Marxist historians, who formed a
 Ancient history from below 9
coherent and innovative group around the Gramsci Institute in Rome in the 1970s,
did not develop anything similar to the emphasis of the British Marxist historians
on the struggles, practices and ways of thinking of the dominated. On the contrary,
their disagreements with Finley’s school led them to focus almost exclusively on
the character of Roman economy and the role of slavery in it.65
There were, of course, exceptions to this generalisation. In the 1960s, Peter
Brunt and Zvi Yavetz proposed interpretations of the activities of the Roman plebs
at the end of the Republic and the beginning of the Principate that in some points
resembled the approaches developed by the British Marxist historians.66 During
the following decade, Claude Nicolet in turn shifted focus by proposing an inno-
vative analysis of the daily lived experience of Roman citizenship, including its
‘alternative’ forms, in the republican Rome.67 Their interpretations were undoubt-
edly inspired by the social ferment of the time, when student revolts and social
unrest agitated Europe, the United States and beyond, and in Yavetz’s case, by his
personal experience in Ethiopia of Emperor Haile Selassie, which allowed him to
think about the relations between the plebs and the princeps in imperial Rome.68
Even so, the preoccupations of Brunt and, perhaps to a lesser degree, of Yavetz
with the logic of popular action did not derive from explicit theoretical reflection
(although they occasionally quoted Hobsbawm and Rudé) but from the almost
positivistic critique of the unfounded opinions of their predecessors. They simply
started with a big question—the transition from Republic to Empire—and sought
to determine the actual role of the Roman populace in this transformation.69 For
his part, Nicolet adopted a more institutional point of view which subsequently
contributed to the debate on the democratic or oligarchic nature of the Roman
Republic, rather than being an evaluation of the political culture of the plebs in
Roman political life.70
This is not to say that scholars during the twentieth century accorded no atten-
tion to subaltern people in antiquity, nor should we ignore the enormous advances
in ancient social history since the 1960s. But taking into account the enslaved,
women, the lower classes or ethnic minorities is not the same as trying to under-
stand them in terms of their own aspirations, experiences and perspectives. The
study of slavery is a case in point. As a moral problem or as the object of antiquar-
ian research, the institution of slavery in Greece and Rome had for long sparked
debates, but slaves and freed people did not occupy many pages in historiographi-
cal works before the twentieth century. Marxist historians were the first to redirect
attention towards the living conditions of the enslaved. The subject, however,
did not become the object of serious debate until the 1950s, when the political
concerns of the post-war period led to a marked polarisation between historians
in the Soviet bloc countries, who emphasised the tensions and struggles between
masters and slaves, and Western scholars, who tended to downplay the unpleasant
consequences of slavery in their treatments of Greek and Roman civilisations.71
From the 1960s to the 1980s, debates focused mainly on the nature of slave pro-
duction or of slave society and whether slaves in Greece and Rome formed a single
social class. In this context, slaves were conceived either as a legal category or
as a status group (M. I. Finley; P. Vidal-Naquet), or as objects of exploitation and
10 Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira and Cyril Courrier
domination (G. E. M. de Ste. Croix), but not as historical agents.72 Scholars also
tended to downplay large-scale slave resistance or any form of group action by
slaves, stressing rather their internal divisions or their use as passive tools in civil
strife.73 Although the possibilities of the slave agency had already been suggested
in some pioneering approaches, such as those of Yvon Thébert,74 it was only in the
past two or three decades that ancient historians began to explore more systemati-
cally the possibility of investigating slave resistance (and even slave rebellion)
in the ‘silences’ of ancient texts75 and, following the path opened by historians
of slavery in the New World and Africa, started to study how ancient slaves and
ex-slaves ‘struggled to reduce the effects of marginality and exclusion and how,
other than by means of usually futile rebellion, they sought to break away from
oppressive forms of dependence.’76
The same can be said of studies on the urban and rural poor. Ancient historians
have not neglected the topic, but a greater amount of research has focused on the
Roman rather than on the Greek world, and most especially on late antiquity.77 The
book that Évelyne Patlagean published in Paris in 1977 (Pauvreté économique et
pauvreté sociale à Byzance, 4e—7e siècles) was one of the first to have proposed
a systematic study of the ancient poor (including their demography, the history of
families, their diets and sanitary conditions, their social relations).78 Two related
issues, however, have dominated the discussions since the 1970s: the first is the
impact of changes in the classical city and the rise of Christianity on the forms
of social classification; the second is the changing attitudes towards the poor.79
Ancient historians have therefore focused on the discourses and representations
about the poor, on the different forms of public generosity in Greco-Roman and
Judeo-Christian traditions or on questions related to the quantification of standards
of living, but rarely on the experiences, conceptions and agencies of the poor—
except in contexts of open social conflict. Classical archaeologists have also rarely
focused their work on the reconstitution of the lives of the poor themselves. As
Kim Bowes observed in a review of the archaeological work on the rural poor in
Roman Italy, even the field surveys that have revolutionised our understanding of
the Roman countryside have been aimed:

either to elucidate the process of ‘Romanization’—how the coming of Roman

domination impacted ‘indigenous’ (Etruscan, Samnite) land use, and/or to
describe the economic changes wrought by the formation of empire—the
development of slave agriculture and the development of commercial wine-
export industries.80

As Claire Taylor has observed, it was only in the two past decades or so that a
number of scholars have recognised the need to focus on the whole way of life of
the poor ‘to see how they negotiated their own roles in society, ways of belonging
to the community, and how they defined their own world.’81
Just as in the case of slave revolts, peasant rebellions and urban riots have also
long attracted a great amount of research by ancient historians. Yet even here, the
prevalence in the twentieth century of normative models, which presupposed the
 Ancient history from below 11
continuity of social relations and the submission of individuals and groups to social
rules, often led ancient historians to treat social conflicts and revolts as anomalies
amid the larger history of Greece and Rome. They also tended to consider the vari-
ous forms of subaltern insurgency as irrational movements without a trace of real
political objectives, except when these movements served as tools for the elite.82
Even Marxists did not completely break with what E. P. Thompson called ‘a spas-
modic view’ of popular history, according to which senseless episodes of disorder
are simply juxtaposed and attributed to compulsive external stimuli.83 In fact, by
focusing on the ‘ancient liberation movements of the oppressed’ and interpret-
ing them as direct responses to acute exploitation or to changes in the prevailing
mode of production, the Marxist historians continued to treat the various forms of
subaltern insurgency in straightforwardly reactive terms.84
The examples could be multiplied, but the general trend is clear. Despite undeni-
able advances in the study of Greek and Roman society, the prevalence of norma-
tive models and the tendency of ancient historians and archaeologists only to touch
on questions related to subaltern groups as part of the study of macroeconomic
trends or inserted into teleological narratives have precluded the advance of studies
on subaltern groups in antiquity on their own terms. Since the 1990s, however, this
scenario has begun to change. Reflection about the place of the study of antiquity
in a world where the classical tradition is no longer dominant has led classicists,
classical archaeologists and ancient historians to become more aware of the theo-
retical side of their work.85 The increasing criticism of normative models by social
movements first, then by academics, also led to a new understanding of the ancient
world as more heterogeneous, conflictive and diverse than the normative concepts
of Hellenisation, Romanisation, the consumer city or even the polis presupposed.86
The development of the field in peripheral countries marked by experiences of
exclusion, violence and social inequality, as is the case of Latin America, has
been no less important for the redirection of ancient studies in this sense. As a
consequence of these changes, over the last 20 years or so, we have witnessed
a renewed interest in the study of ‘ordinary people’ in antiquity. Numerous new
books have been published on the ‘daily life’ of people in the ancient world, on
marginalised and excluded groups, on women, slaves and peasants, on craftsmen
and traders, and on the lower classes as a whole.87 Popular culture in the Greek
and Roman worlds also became the object of several books, and the publication in
2017 of the volume edited by Lucy Grig, Popular Culture in the Ancient World,
marked a significant advance in providing a more theoretical basis for the study
of this challenging topic.88
A number of traditional themes in ancient history have also been reappraised
from a more bottom-up perspective. The Athenian polis, for instance, is no longer
seen as an exclusive club of adult male citizens. Foreigners, women and slaves
also came to be studied not as separated groups but as part of a complex interac-
tion with citizens and with one another.89 The history of Greek colonisation has
also begun to be written from the perspective of the less visible groups involved in
these ventures, such as women, slaves and peasant farmers.90 In the case of repub-
lican and imperial Rome, the study of plebeian culture, of the social relationships
12 Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira and Cyril Courrier
constructed through work and of the informal politics of the plebs has allowed
scholars to move beyond the ‘democracy’ debate launched by Fergus Millar, while
forcefully stressing the subaltern role in politics.91 As for late antiquity, the study of
how peasants and urban plebeians constructed communities and identities, made
use of civic and ecclesiastical institutions, and actively reinterpreted Christian or
civic ideas about charity, legal rights and moral values has also begun to renovate
our understanding of wider conflicts and transformations of the age.92

Key concepts and lines of inquiry

Below
What we need to do now is to reflect anew on the definitions, categories and
methods we should employ in writing ancient history ‘from below.’ We have
to engage with recent debates on the nature of this research project and start
by asking ourselves: who exactly is this ‘below’ whose history we are trying to
write? The question, already formulated by Mark Hailwood in 2013, became
the subject of discussions after the publication two years later of an article by
Simona Cerutti in the Annales revaluating the contributions of Thompson on
the occasion of the first French translation of his Customs in Common.93 Noting
that the ‘popular culture’ that Thompson studied in that book included practices
and places that were not in fact exclusive to popular groups, Cerutti argued that
the assimilation of ‘below’ to ‘popular’ and the consequent attribution of cul-
tures and ideologies to individuals or groups well identified on the social scale
would no longer be sustainable. In her view, the main lesson to be retained from
Thompson would be that ‘history from below’ is a sort of rescue operation, but a
rescue of ‘that which might have been,’ of the forgotten systems of signification
and not of specific social groups.
One may argue that Cerutti ignores a central aspect of the Thompsonian approach
that is to understand how what is shared by different groups is differently lived and
appropriated by the dominated. As Federico Tarragoni has observed, Thompson’s
move is not just about ‘rescuing’ social practices destined to be forgotten; it is also,
and above all, about producing a critical intelligence of politics by focusing on the
experience that the dominated have of relations of domination in a given society.94
Nonetheless, Cerutti’s article undoubtedly has the merit of provoking a debate that
also concerns us as scholars studying the ancient world. Thus, in describing who
is below in an ancient history from below, should we take into account concrete
social conditions defined by the different levels of segmentation (class, status,
gender, ethnicity) and the different forms of subjection and exclusion in ancient
societies? Or should we define this ‘below,’ as Cerutti has proposed, less in terms
of a given ‘condition’ than of a momentary stage of the relations of power, the
individuals and groups ‘from below’ being those who, having lost ‘the battle of
legitimacy,’ were ‘forgotten’?95
In any event, scholars studying the ancient world should take seriously the warn-
ing that Hoggart already made in 1957 about the risks in which books on popular
 Ancient history from below 13
culture incur ‘by not making sufficiently clear who is meant by “the people,” by
inadequately relating their examinations of particular aspects of “the people’s”
life to the wider life they live.’96 ‘History from below’ only makes sense when this
‘below’ is related to something ‘above.’ Such a history therefore cannot be seen as
the history of a group defined by default as the ‘invisible’ Romans, the ‘non-elite’
or the ‘99 per cent’ of the population, as many recent publications continue to do.
It is here that the concept of ‘subalternity’ can be helpful as a way to keep in mind
that the individuals and groups we investigate, however diverse and heterogeneous
they might have been, cannot be seen in isolation but only in a context of domina-
tion, oppression or exploitation crossed by conflicts.

Subalternity
The concept of ‘subaltern’ as a social category was first formulated by Gramsci in
his Prison Notebooks as a way to expand Marxist analysis beyond the terrain of
strict socio-economic relations.97 The word ‘subaltern,’ from the late Latin subal-
ternus (someone who is placed sub alter, ‘under someone’), is present in modern
Italian from the second half of the fifteenth century with the generic meaning
of ‘subordinate’ or ‘auxiliary’ (its use in the military vocabulary only became
widespread in the nineteenth century). In his first notes in prison, Gramsci still
used the term in this common sense, but in his Notebook 3 of 1930 he began by
using the expression ‘subaltern classes’ to refer to all social groups dialectically
opposed to the dominant classes. This included the most marginal social groups as
well as the fundamental classes which are not yet hegemonic, from the Sardinian
peasantry to the Turin workers. Most of Gramsci’s comments on the subject of
subalternity, however, appear under the rubric ‘History of the Subaltern Classes,’
which means that he applied the category even to very distant historical times.
Thus, in Note 18 of Notebook 3, he speaks specifically of the plebs and the slaves
in ancient Rome as subaltern classes (or, as he later redefined, as subaltern social
groups).98 Some of these notes were copied and reworked in Notebook 25 of 1934,
significantly entitled ‘On the Margins of History (The History of the Subaltern
Social Groups).’99 As this title suggests, the focus now was more specifically on the
disaggregated sections of the population, politically and culturally marginalised,
and most especially the Italian peasantry.
The later fortune of the concept owes much to the Indian historians who further
expanded the category of ‘subaltern’ by taking into account all forms of subjection
in a colonial context. In the preface to the first volume of the Subaltern Studies
series, published in 1982, Guha defined their use of the word ‘as a name for the
general attribute of subordination in South Asian society whether this is expressed
in terms of class, caste, age, gender and office or in any other way.’100 Later, how-
ever, the interventions of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and the greater influence of
the postcolonial theory more broadly, turned the definitions of ‘subaltern’ among
the Indian Subalternists in another direction. Spivak defined ‘the subaltern’ in
essentially discursive terms as someone who cannot speak for himself or herself
and who is misrepresented in colonial and scholarly discourses.101 According to
14 Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira and Cyril Courrier
this definition, in direct opposition to Gramsci, the oppressed who manage to
organise and speak for themselves, such as the industrial proletariat, could not
even be considered subalterns.102
The reformulation of the idea of subalternity as an ‘effect of discursive systems’
that Spivak and other postcolonial scholars have promoted raised the important
question of the marginalisation of ‘subaltern voices’ in the very writing of history,
which we have taken into account here.103 We are also aware of the significant
differences that exist among the oppressed between those who could speak for
themselves and those who could not.104 Yet even so, the concept of ‘subaltern’ as
used in this volume follows the Gramscian definition of subalternity as an effect
of the social relations of domination, rather than as the inability of individual sub-
jects to ‘speak for themselves.’ We have certainly adopted a wider understanding
of the forms of subordination in the ancient world than Gramsci himself admitted,
including questions of class, status and political power, as well as of ethnicity and
gender. Our objective, however, is not simply to expose the multiplicity of subal-
tern identities in antiquity but rather to explore how various forms of subordination
were defined, imposed, resisted and contested within the structures of the ancient
city, of the Greek colonies and of the Roman Empire.

Agency
This brings us to one of the most fundamental, even philosophical, problems
involved in the writing of ‘history from below’: the relationship between structure
and agency, between determinism and free will. As Marx memorably wrote at the
beginning of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852), ‘Men make
their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it
under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances already exist-
ing, given, and transmitted from the past.’105 Practitioners of ‘history from below’
tend to emphasise from this Marxian sentence the capability of men and women
to ‘make their own history,’ their ability to actively shape and reshape their condi-
tions of existence. Thompson, for instance, defined agency as the capacity of men
and women, ‘by a voluntary act of social will, [to] surmount . . . the limitations
imposed by “circumstances” or “historical necessity.”’106 Against the mechanistic,
Stalinist version of Marxism, Thompson highlighted the importance of conscious
human agency as part of the ‘dialectic interaction between social consciousness
(both active and passive) and social being’: ‘men, who act, experience, think and
act again.’107 The concept thereby became central for all his work and especially
for the title and the project of his most famous book, The Making of the English
Working Class, which he conceived as ‘an active process, which owes as much to
agency as to conditioning.’108
Critics, however, have argued that such a balance between agency and con-
ditioning is not actually maintained by practitioners of history from below and
that the advocation of the primacy of human agency often leads to a confluence
of various senses of the term, from the ways of coping with adverse situations to
actions that have a more transformative impact on society.109 Antony Giddens also
 Ancient history from below 15
observed that the relation between agency and constraint has nothing to do with the
possibility of doing things otherwise, for structural conditions provide possibilities
for the mobilisation of human capabilities as well as limit them.110 Other critics
refer more specifically to the emphasis on the agency of subaltern peoples. Com-
menting on the social history of American slavery, Walter Johnson noted that his-
torians attempting to rescue enslaved people as agents often start with an abstract,
liberal notion of selfhood, with its emphasis on independence and choice, and
then proceed by looking for signs of the self-determination of slaves as an index
of their ‘humanity.’ By focusing on the fact that slaves were agents, rather than on
the specific social and cultural contexts of their actions, these historians therefore
have tended to alienate the slaves they study from Marx’s ‘circumstances,’ that is,
from the conditions produced by an ‘enslaved humanity.’ Johnson also warns of the
risk of confusing agency and resistance, noting that it is also possible to identify
other forms of human agency, such as collaboration and betrayal.111
Now, there is no doubt that the greatest challenge involved in all forms of
‘people’s history’ is of navigating between ‘the Scylla of blind historical forces
that determine individual behaviors, and the Charybdis of a romanticized self-
determination by radically free actors.’112 But in pursuing the study of subaltern
agency in this volume, we are not ignoring the limitations imposed on the choices
and actions of subalterns in the ancient world, nor are we attributing to them a
transformative power that they did not necessarily have. We are rather trying to
investigate the meaning and motivation behind their activities, the everyday pro-
cesses by which they actively formed social and political solidarities, the means
by which they tried to negotiate the terms of their own subordination and the ways
their agency was made possible in concrete situations.

Experience
The last concept we need to introduce is ‘experience,’ a central category for a proj-
ect that aims at writing a history rooted in the experiences of subalterns. Etymo-
logically, ‘experience’ comes from the Latin experientia, from experior, ‘trying’
or ‘testing,’ a verb related to peritus, ‘experienced,’ ‘skilled,’ and associated with
the Greek πεῖρα, ‘test,’ ‘experiment.’113 There is, thus, a clear connection between
experiment, in the sense of putting to test, and experience, the consciousness of
the result of such a test. In the English tradition, since at least the late eighteenth
century, the term experience assumed two main senses: one as a product, the
other as a process.114 These can be summarised, in Raymond Williams’s words, as
‘(i) knowledge gathered from past events, whether by conscious observation or
by consideration and reflection; and (ii) a particular kind of consciousness, which
can in some contexts be distinguished from “reason” or “knowledge.”’115 Williams
called the first sense ‘experience past’ (the lessons from the past) and the second
‘experience present’ (a ‘full and active “awareness,”’ including both feeling and
thought).
According to Williams, developments in the twentieth century led to a reduc-
tion of ‘experience present’ to an effect of material conditions, thus excluding
16 Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira and Cyril Courrier
the processes of consideration, reflection and analysis that continued to be asso-
ciated with ‘experience past.’116 The question, however, remained controversial.
Thompson, for instance, refused to separate the ideas of external influence and
subjective feeling. In his polemic with Althusser, Thompson defined experience
as the lived realities of social life that mediate between social structure and social
consciousness. Although considering that experience is, in the last instance, gen-
erated in ‘material life,’ Thompson nonetheless maintained that the ways people
‘handle’ this experience ‘defies prediction and escapes from any narrow definition
of determination.’

For people do not only experience their own experience as ideas, within
thought and its procedures; they also experience their own experience as feel-
ing, and they handle their feelings within their culture, as norms, familial and
kinship obligations and reciprocities, as values or (through more elaborate
forms) within art or religious beliefs.117

Developments in German language and philosophy were also influential. For

Victor Turner, for instance, the inspiration for an anthropology of experience
derived from the German term Erlebnis (literally ‘what has been lived through’)
and its conceptualisation by the German thinker Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911).118
Dilthey distinguished between ‘experience’ as the passive endurance and accep-
tance of events and ‘an experience,’ a definite sequence of external events and
internal responses to them.119 Each Erlebnis or distinctive experience, Dilthey
argued, has five moments: a perceptual core, the evocation of images of past
experiences, the revival of past feelings, the generation of meaning by ‘feel-
ingly’ thinking about the connection between past and present events, and the
expression of the lived experience in terms intelligible to others.120 Building on
this scheme, Turner defined experience as ‘both “living through” and “thinking
back”’ and also as ‘“willing or wishing forward,” i.e., establishing goals and
models for future experience.’ He then defined its expressions (in ideas, acts,
works of art or cultural performances) as ‘the crystallized secretions of once
living human experience.’121
Postmodern criticism raised doubts about the possibility that either historians
or anthropologists were able to pass from expressions of experience to experience
in itself and challenged the anchoring of social identities in concrete experiences
that authors like Thompson, or many feminist historians, had established. For
Joan Scott, for instance, there is no reason to suppose that the lived experience of
workers or women necessarily led to resistance to oppression, that is, to the
working-class movements or to feminism. Consequently, it would be much more
important ‘to understand the operations of the complex and changing discursive
processes by which identities are ascribed, resisted, or embraced.’122 There is no
doubt about the importance of this attention to the symbolic forms of differentia-
tion, which can indeed enrich our analysis. But, as Michael Pickering pointed out,
‘we need not reduce experience and the subject to an effect of the play of words
and language alone.’123
 Ancient history from below 17
‘As a living gesture,’ Boaventura de Souza Santos writes, ‘experience con-
venes as a whole everything that science divides, be it body and soul, reason and
feeling, ideas and emotions.’124 An analysis of the social experience of subaltern
groups should therefore hold together what holds together in practice. In studying
the male experiences of the cityscape in Pompeii (Renata Senna Garraffoni), the
living conditions of peasants in Roman Italy or the Greek colonies (Kim Bowes,
Gabriel Zuchtriegel), the experiences of poverty in the Greek and Roman worlds
(Claire Taylor, Cristina Rosillo-López) or the formative experiences in the life
of the urban populace (Cyril Courrier and Nicolas Tran, Fábio Augusto Morales,
Alex Gottesman, Fábio Duarte Joly, Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira), the con-
tributors to this book allow for the role of both discourses and material circum-
stances in shaping and delimiting the lives of subaltern groups and individuals,
even though their emphases vary. Another preoccupation of contributors is on
how to recover the properly lived aspects of subaltern experiences. As Dan-El
Padilla Peralta has argued in a recent article on the experiential and psychological
aspects of ‘slave religion’ in Rome at the era of the Punic Wars, ‘there are tools
available for the effective recovery,’ for example, ‘of the religious experiences of
the enslaved, provided we work with these tools carefully and honestly.’125 This
book will similarly explore such tools, from the adoption of comparative perspec-
tives to the attention to the ‘patterns, gaps, and silences of the literary record,’126
not to mention the practices revealed by the archaeological remains. In the last
instance, by paying attention to the processes of ‘living through,’ ‘thinking back’
and ‘willing and wishing forward,’ we hope to give to subalterns, in the words
of Lila Abu-Lughod,

credit for resisting in a variety of ways the power of those who control so
much of their lives, without either misattributing to them forms of conscious-
ness or politics that are not part of their experience . . . or devaluing their
practices as pre-political, primitive, or even misguided.127

The shape of this volume

This volume aims at reassessing the possibilities and challenges involved in writ-
ing an ancient history from below. What sources can we use? What methods and
approaches can we employ? What kind of history do we want to write? So, all
chapters deal with at least three main problems: (i) determining who was ‘below’
in Greek and Roman societies; (ii) locating the sources necessary to write their
history; and (iii) analysing the experiences of subordination and, beyond that, the
capacity of subaltern groups to adapt and resist the forms of domination under
which they lived. The main objective of the book is, therefore, methodological
and exploratory, without any pretension to exhaustivity. Consequently, the chrono-
logical and geographical range covered, from archaic Sicily to late antique Syria,
passing through classical Greece, late republican Italy or imperial Gaul, serves
mainly as a framework for exploring the possibilities and challenges defined ear-
lier. This is why the book is divided into thematic parts, and not chronologically
18 Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira and Cyril Courrier
or geographically. The goal is to locate and describe the situations of subalternity
in context and then to provide the groundwork for comparison.
The first part provides a theoretical framework for the definition and conceptu-
alisation of subaltern groups in antiquity: who are we talking about, and how do
we find them? The chapters do this both in a general way (Kostas Vlassopoulos)
and in a more specific but richly documented context (southern Gaul: Cyril Cour-
rier and Nicolas Tran). The authors of these two chapters (2 and 3) emphasise
that in Greece as in Rome, factors of hierarchy were multiple and not limited
to dichotomies of slaves/free, citizens/non-citizens, urban/rural, rich/poor, men/
women. Most importantly, they argue that these hierarchies were neither fixed,
nor watertight, nor parallel, giving social inferiority a character as relative and
fluid as it was complex. A particular concern of the chapters of this part is with the
nature and format of our sources and the languages and discourses that subaltern
groups in the ancient world employed to conceive of themselves and achieve their
aims. In Chapter 2, Kostas Vlassopoulos discusses the wide range of problems
and possibilities involved in this study and outlines an agenda for future work. In
Chapter 3, Cyril Courrier and Nicolas Tran illustrate more specifically the problem
of the visibility of subaltern groups in our sources using the example of epigraphic
documentation. While being sources produced by subaltern people themselves,
the inscriptions follow norms and conventions that highlight exceptions and, in
so doing, obscure our understanding of social relations: is the invisibility of cer-
tain groups in the sources the consequence of social inferiority or its cause? Like
Courrier and Tran, the contributors to this book tend to favour the first hypothesis,
without excluding the second.128
The second part examines economic forms of subalternity and the experiences
of poverty, work and debt bondage. Discussing poverty, debt and dependent labour
in the ancient Greek world in Chapter 4, Claire Taylor starts with the difficult prob-
lem of sources and language, for the ancient poor were not necessarily deprived
of everything. As the ‘geste le plus simple d’autolégitimation,’129 categorisation as
poor was, at least in part, the result of a social construction that reveals the ethno-
centrism of those who despised and excluded them. Moreover, as Taylor shows,
the Greek categories of rich and poor, developed for the most part in the Athenian
context, are not necessarily valid elsewhere. In fact, one must question the reasons
for stigmatisation in order to avoid assimilating to poverty practices or situations
that did not fall under it. Taylor develops the example of debt bondage to show that
the prism of dependent labour is perhaps a more suitable focal point for thinking
about subalternity in all its components (economic, legal, social) and the mecha-
nisms of its compensation in ancient societies. In Chapter 6, Kim Bowes focuses
on another example, that of agricultural practices in Roman Italy. Against elitist
historiographical constructions, themselves dependent on the discourses of villa
owners transmitted by agricultural treaties, archaeology proves that the subaltern
peasant should no longer be exclusively conceived of as a destitute person strug-
gling for survival. The same techniques of soil and water maintenance, intensive
manipulation of the land, maximisation of yield and management of risk were
practised by large and smallholders alike. In sum, Taylor and Bowes show two
 Ancient history from below 19
ways of doing ‘history from below’ and treating subaltern groups on their own
terms: mobilising concepts adapted to the analysis of subaltern strategies and/or
bringing together other types of sources usually ignored (by ethnocentric imitation
of literary evidence or because of a deficiency of tools to interpret the evidence). As
part of a recent field of research,130 Cristina Rosillo-López proposes, in Chapter 5,
a third way: learning to examine stereotypes to better deconstruct them by draw-
ing on the very genre of the texts in which the poor appear. She takes the example
of imperial Rome’s homeless and unsheltered, arguing that we should not equate
them with beggars. From the point of view of a Juvenal or a Martial, all were poor.
Yet the experiences of the homeless and beggars were not the same, and neither
were their strategies for survival. She therefore shows how to locate and analyse
them in these inverted worlds of the satires.
The third part focuses on gender and ethnicity as other forms of subalternity in
the ancient world. In Chapter 7, Gabriel Zuchtriegel shows that, long before the
ideal representation of the Greek polis as depicted in Plato’s or Aristotle’s treatises,
the archaeology of the Greek colonies of Sicily reveals that, already in the sixth
century BC, women and foreigners had no visibility and lived on the margins of
the city. Here, the factors producing social inferiority and visibility in the writ-
ten record match perfectly between them: social status, culture, space and ethnic
identity define subalternity at the same time as they separate it from a male and
urban world of the Greek citizen and its official representation. This is less obvious
in Pompeii, as Renata Senna Garraffoni demonstrates in Chapter 8. Exploring the
different types of masculinity constructed in the early Principate through the study
of wall inscriptions found in the lupanar region, she shows a real social and ethnic
diversity in a district located a stone’s throw from the forum. For Renata Senna
Garraffoni, studying the sexual graffiti is a way to give visibility to aspects of life
of people of humble origin who have been marginalised in modern scholarly dis-
course by the typical and flawed assumptions regarding heteronormativity. In this
case, subalternity is akin to a counter-discourse based on the claim of alternative
and outrageous sexual practices, even though the exact meaning of them, without
having all the cultural references, is very difficult to grasp.131
The last part deals with politics and the capacities for action of subaltern groups
in various contexts. Naturally, these varied greatly from one place and time to
another. In classical Athens, for example, the ‘below’ has to be defined in terms
of democracy, where power was exercised by the demos itself. This leads Fábio
Augusto Morales to focus on metics and slaves, that is, those excluded from the
civic system. In Chapter 9, he shows that, contrary to previous assumptions, they
played an essential and dynamic role in the configuration of the Athenian regime.
Agreeing with arguments also developed by Courrier, Tran, Bowes and Julio Cesar
Magalhães de Oliveira (see subsequent chapters), Morales demonstrates that his-
tory from below is not necessarily a history of marginalised people,132 that groups
without institutionalised political participation could also be active agents in the
life of the city and that the structures of domination could nonetheless offer the
means for the subordinated to pursue their own ends. In Chapter 10, Alex Gottes-
man shows that the particular conditions of democratic Athens also had significant
20 Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira and Cyril Courrier
consequences on the writing of history. As he demonstrates, the supposed absence
of riots in the life of this city is much more an effect of Greek literary sources
reluctant to describe Athenian political life in terms of stasis. Thus, the revolt of
508/7 BC was perhaps not that of ‘the’ people against tyranny for the conquest of
their rights but a civil war which opposed two rival factions, where the losers were
assimilated to traitors and condemned to death and oblivion. In republican Rome,
the verticality of social relations was much more marked, but as Lucy Grig recently
pointed out, the possibilities of social mobility were also arguably greater and the
legal barriers perhaps a little less insurmountable.133 In this context, the dialectic
between the structures of domination and the agency of subalterns was necessarily
different. In Chapter 11, Fábio Duarte Joly deals specifically with the problem of
slave agency as described in Livy’s History of Rome, investigating the strategies
that domestic slaves were able to employ in order to obtain their manumissio by
playing between the obligations they owed to their masters and to the res publica.
Like Gottesman, Joly also deals with the difficult methodological problem of using
ancient historiography for writing history from below. In the last chapter (12) we
turn to late antiquity and to the methodological problems involved in the study of
ancient crowds and collective action. Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira, in this
regard, looks at how the motivations of subaltern groups might be reconstructed.
In the major cities of the Roman Empire, urban crowds were neither immature
nor entirely controlled by religious or political leaders. Their demands were based
on shared and inherited values that belonged only to them and defined them as a
group. Rediscovering this culture, giving back a place to these values and not only
seeing antiquity through the eyes of those who wrote ‘great’ history, his chapter
rejoins some of the objectives assigned to this book and reminds us that I padroni
non hanno sempre ragione.134

Notes
1 ‘Fragen eines lesenden Arbeiters,’ taken from: Bertolt Brecht, Werke. Große kommen-
tierte Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe, Band 12: Gedichte 2. © Bertolt-Brecht-Erben /
Suhrkamp Verlag 1988. Brecht’s poem was written during his exile in Denmark in
1935 and first published in Moscow in 1936. We warmly thank Olivier Baisez (Uni-
versité Paris 8 Vincennes Saint-Denis, Mondes allemands EA 1577) for the quoted
translation made especially for this volume and Suhrkamp Verlag for the permission to
publish this translation of Brecht’s poem based on the standard German edition (Brecht
1967).
2 See Hobsbawm 1997.
3 Ginzburg 1992, xiii.
4 Toner 1995, 22; Grig 2017b, 1.
5 Benjamin 1980, 696 (Thesis VII). As Tufano (2020) has observed, ancient historiog-
raphy also offers other possibilities of conceiving the past that did not fail to influence
Benjamin’s philosophy of history.
6 Benjamin 1980, 697 (Thesis VII).
7 Sharpe 2001, 27.
8 Robert 2003.
9 Hitchcock 2013.
10 Respectively Chap. 4 (C. Taylor), 5 (C. Rosillo-López), 6 (K. Bowes) and 11 (F. Joly).
 Ancient history from below 21
11 An important point recently raised by D. Padilla-Peralta: see Poser 2021.
12 On the prevalence of this view in the twentieth-century historiography, see Funari
2001.
13 Vlassopoulos 2018, 212–3.
14 Grignon and Passeron 1989.
15 Respectively Chap. 6 (K. Bowes), 2 (C. Courrier and N. Tran), 7 (G. Zuchtriegel), 5
(C. Rosillo-López) and 12 (J. C. Magalhães de Oliveira).
16 Thompson 1966.
17 Febvre 1932, 576.
18 Hobsbawm 1997, 203.
19 Bloch 1924.
20 Lefebvre 1932.
21 Among their best-known book titles, we can cite Hilton’s Bond Men Made Free
(1973), Hill’s The World Turned Upside Down (1971), Rudé’s The Crowd in History
(1964), Hobsbawm’s Primitive Rebels (1966), and E. P. Thompson’s The Making of
the English Working Class (1963).
22 Kaye 2000; Fortes, Negro and Fontes 2012.
23 Thompson 1963, 12–3.
24 Thompson 1966.
25 Thompson 1963, 12.
26 Hobsbawm 1997, 204.
27 Thompson 1966.
28 Hoggart 1957; Williams 1958; Hall 2011.
29 Kagan 2016.
30 Williams 1968. See Jarrige 2015.
31 Thompson 1971, 1972, 1993; Davis 1971, 1973, 1975.
32 Port 2015.
33 Crew 1989; Lüdtke 1995.
34 Ginzburg 1993; Levi 2001; Port 2015, 108.
35 Ginzburg 1992.
36 Le Roy Ladurie 1978.
37 Guha 1997; Chakrabarty 2000; Chaturvedi 2000.
38 Guha 1983.
39 Mallon 1994, 1506. On the Latin American Subaltern Studies, see Rodríguez 2001.
40 Sarkar 2000.
41 See the contributions of Vlassopoulos, Taylor and Zuchtriegel in this volume.
42 Batalha 2003; Chalhoub and Silva 2009.
43 Ramos 2015.
44 Funari 1986–7, 1989, 1993; Guarinello 2004, 2006. The chapters by Garraffoni,
Morales, Joly and Magalhães de Oliveira in this volume can give the reader an idea
of some of the current directions of research on ancient history in Brazil derived from
these initial preoccupations.
45 Hopkin 2012; Lett 2016.
46 Hitchcock 2004; Lyons 2010.
47 Cronin 2007; Rediker 2012.
48 Scott 2018.
49 Hailwood 2013; Cerutti 2015.
50 Boudon 2017.
51 Linebaugh and Rediker 2000.
52 Hailwood and Waddell 2013.
53 Farell 2013; Whyte 2013.
54 Hitchcock 2013; Jackson 2013.
55 Port 2015, 112. See also Ryzova 2020.
56 Ijalba Pérez 2011.
22 Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira and Cyril Courrier
57 On the development of the interest in social-historical issues concerning the ancient
world, see Peachin 2011. On the importance of Marxism in ancient studies from the
1960s to the 1980s, see Giardina 2007.
58 Sharpe 2001, 27.
59 Funari 2001.
60 Vlassopoulos 2007, 61.
61 Morris 1999, xxv; Vlassopoulos 2007, 61–63; Grig 2017b, 14.
62 Peachin 2011, 7.
63 Finley 1973. As Brent D. Shaw has recently observed, this Weberian argument that
social rank and attendant values tended to prevail over economic interest, which
became the orthodoxy in ancient studies in the 1980s and the 1990s, tended to obscure
the behaviour not only of subalterns but also of members the ancient elites, such as the
Roman equites. See Shaw 2020.
64 Vernant 1976. Cf. Joly 2010a.
65 On the themes addressed by the Seminario di Antichistica of the Gramsci Institute
during the 1970s and the 1980s, see Giardina 2007, 23–27.
66 Brunt 1966; Yavetz 1969.
67 Nicolet 1976. On this book and its legacy, see Courrier and Guilhembet 2019, esp.
247–8.
68 Malkin 1994, xi; Peachin 2011, 9.
69 Ijalba Pérez 2011, 247.
70 Montlahuc 2019.
71 On the debates on ancient slavery until the 1960s, see Finley 1980, ch. 1.
72 Finley 1959, 1980; Vidal-Naquet 1986; Ste. Croix 1981. See Vlassopoulos, this
volume.
73 McKeown 2011, 154, discussing Vernant 1976, Vidal-Naquet 1986 and Klees 1998,
418–21.
74 Thébert 1993 [1989].
75 Johnstone 1998; Forsdyke 2012.
76 Galvão-Sobrinho 2012, 132. On the range of activities now investigated as ‘slave
resistance,’ see McKeown 2011 and Bradley 2011.
77 Taylor 2017, 11–2. Poverty in late antiquity: Patlagean 1977; Brown 2002.
78 On the repercussions of Patlagean’s work, see Freu 2012.
79 Osborne 2006, 2–4.
80 Bowes 2011, 3.
81 Taylor 2017, 11.
82 On peasant movements as irrational millenarianism or as tools for the elite, see Mac-
Mullen 1966, ch. 6; Van Dam 1985, 24–56; discussed and criticised by Dossey 2010,
172–3. On the historiography on urban riots, see the chapters by Gottesman and Mag-
alhães de Oliveira in this volume.
83 Thompson 1971, 76.
84 On Marxist approaches on slave and peasant revolts, see Thompson, E. A. 1952; Sey-
farth 1960; Doi 1988.
85 Toner 2002; Settis 2004.
86 Funari and Garraffoni 2018. See also Vlassopoulos 2007.
87 ‘Ordinary people:’ Knapp 2011; for a severe criticism of this expression: Tran and
Vandevoorde 2018, 229–309; Courrier and Tran 2018. Daily life: Funari 2003; Sessa
2018. Marginalised and excluded groups: Neri 1998; Garraffoni 2002, 2005. Women:
Feitosa 2005; Karanika 2014; García Sánchez and Garraffoni 2020. Slaves (and ex-
slaves): Joly 2010b; Bradley and Cartledge 2011; Harper 2011; Bell and Ramsby 2012;
Hunt 2018. Peasants: Dossey 2010; Grey 2011. Craftsmen and traders: Tran 2013;
Bond 2016; Wilson and Flohr 2016. Work and workers: Verboven and Laes 2017.
88 Funari 1989, 2003; Horsfall 2003; Morgan 2007; Toner 2009; Forsdyke 2012; Richlin
2017; Grig 2017a; Nogueira 2018.
 Ancient history from below 23
89 Katz 1999; Morales 2014; Taylor and Vlassopoulos 2015; Vlassopoulos 2016.
90 Zuchtriegel 2018.
91 Courrier 2014; Rosillo-López 2017.
92 Dossey 2010; Shaw 2011; Magalhães de Oliveira 2012.
93 Hailwood 2013; Cerutti 2015. The reader can also consult the podcast of the debate
promoted in June 2016 by the Annales about Cerutti’s article (‘Les Annales en débat:
L’histoire par le bas’): https://annales.hypotheses.org/158.
94 Tarragoni 2017.
95 Cerutti 2015, 952.
96 Hoggart 1957, 11.
97 On what follows, see Liguori 2015.
98 Gramsci 1977, v. 1, 302–3. For the Roman plebs and the slaves as ‘subaltern social
groups,’ see Note 4 of Notebook 25 (Gramsci 1977, v. 3, 2284–7).
99 Gramsci 1977, v. 3, 2277–94.
100 Guha 1988, 35.
101 Spivak 1988.
102 Liguori 2015, 120.
103 Prakash 1994. See Garraffoni, this volume.
104 See Courrier and Tran, this volume.
105 Marx 1979 [1852], 103.
106 Thompson 1958, 89.
107 Thompson 1957, 113.
108 Thompson 1963, 9.
109 Anderson 1980.
110 Giddens 1987.
111 Johnson 2003.
112 Gregory 1999, 105, quoted by Port 2015, 111.
113 Ernout and Meillet 2001, 498–9 (s.v. peritus, -a, -um).
114 Pickering 1997, 92.
115 Williams 2015, 83.
116 Williams 2015, 85–86.
117 Thompson 1978, 171.
118 Bruner 1986; Turner 1986.
119 Turner 1986, 35.
120 Turner 1982, 13–4.
121 Turner 1982, 17–8.
122 Scott 1991, 792.
123 Pickering 1997, 243.
124 Santos 2018, 79.
125 Padilla Peralta 2017, 318.
126 Padilla Peralta 2017, 319.
127 Abu-Lughod 1990, 47.
128 See, e.g., Gottesman’s chapter.
129 Grignon and Passeron 1989, 30.
130 For a first attempt in ancient history, see Ménard and Courrier 2012 and 2013.
131 For a suggestive comparison, see Shaw’s foreword, in this volume, n. 26.
132 See Shaw’s foreword to this volume. On the relationships between history from below
and marginality, see Hailwood 2013: ‘If we are struggling to find suitable indigenous
terms, there are some less loaded analytical categories than class that we might think about
imposing from outside. “Ordinary people” is one I have already used above. My concern
with this label, and likewise that of ‘common people,’ is that it tends to assume a certain
homogeneity amongst our subjects, but it also suggests we are looking for the majority
experience in the search for history from below. For many, though, ‘history from below’
is about recovering the voices or experiences of the marginal, the nonconformist, the
24 Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira and Cyril Courrier
persecuted—those not in the majority. It seems to me the pursuit of the marginal and the
pursuit of the ordinary are two very different agendas, and although both may constitute
‘history from below’ the subjects of such agendas are unlikely to fit within one label.’
133 Grig 2017b, 19.
134 Reversing the agricultural day labourer’s adage repeated by an old emigrant woman
from the Mezzogiorno in Louis Nucera’s autobiography, Avenue des Diables Bleus,
Paris, Grasset, 1979, cited by Grignon and Passeron 1989, 88–94.

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Part 1

Who is below?
Subaltern conditions, languages
and communities
2 Subaltern community
formation in antiquity
Some methodological reflections
Kostas Vlassopoulos

Introduction
How can we write the history of subaltern communities in antiquity? The aim of
this chapter is to raise some major methodological issues about the study of sub-
altern groups in antiquity and to offer a framework that could be utilised in future
work. The main thrust of my argument is that we must not take for granted the
existence of distinct and distinctive subaltern communities in antiquity. If we want
to do history from below properly and accord subaltern agency its rightful place,
we need to explore carefully a range of difficult issues. These issues include the
nature and format of our sources, the metanarratives within which we interpret and
utilise them, the various factors and processes that created subaltern communities,
and the languages and discourses that they employed to conceive of themselves
and the world and achieve their aims.

Methodological issues
I will start by pointing out a number of major problems involved in the study of
ancient subaltern communities. The first nexus of problems relates to the nature
and form of our sources. It is of course well known that the overwhelming major-
ity of ancient literary sources were written by members of the ancient elites; they
reflect elite interests, preoccupations and points of view. Very few sources were
created by subaltern communities and their members, and this creates obvious
problems in terms of studying them. Less obvious are the implications of two other
related issues. Ancient narrative accounts, and by this I am thinking primarily of
ancient historiography, are written exclusively by members of the elite: apart from
this authorial bias, the focus of narrative accounts on politics, warfare and diplo-
macy means that subaltern communities are overwhelmingly absent from them.1
This of course must be qualified. Greek narrative histories are largely oblivious
to subaltern communities. One of the main reasons for this is that Greek narra-
tive histories do not focus on the history of a single community but on the history
of the international political interaction between Greek communities, as well as
Greek communities and various other communities, actors and states (the Persian
Empire, the Macedonian kings, Rome, Carthage). As a result, there is a strong

DOI: 10.4324/9781003005148-3
36 Kostas Vlassopoulos
tendency to focus on diplomacy and warfare, and the elites that run them, and there
is limited interest in the internal affairs of Greek communities, which would allow
more scope for dealing with subaltern communities.2 One could probably argue
that subaltern people appear in Greek narrative histories only in the exceptional
circumstances of civil war that might affect international politics.
Roman narrative histories are quite different in this respect. Because Roman
narrative histories are effectively the histories of a single community, its internal
affairs are evident in the record to an extent that is unparalleled in Greek narra-
tive sources. For certain periods of Roman history, like the archaic struggle of the
orders or the Gracchan crisis, subaltern communities make a notable entrance into
ancient narrative history.3 This does not of course mean that the narrative accounts
where subaltern people have a vivid presence are unproblematic. The elite author-
ship of these accounts, the anachronistic nature of our accounts for early Roman
history and the disjuncture between the aims and the limits of the understanding of
Greek sources like Plutarch and Appian who write about events in Roman history
that occurred hundreds of years earlier are well-known issues that I merely men-
tion without going into detail.4 But the difference between Greek and Roman nar-
rative sources as regards subaltern people should be obvious and should become
an object of reflection.
At the same time, the overwhelming majority of ancient sources created by
subaltern people and relating to them have a non-narrative form. Dedications,
epitaphs, lists, curses or the various inscriptions relating to subaltern associations
have a profoundly non-narrative form. It is natural that ancient historians have
used these pieces of evidence in order to study subaltern people and their com-
munities synchronically, but there is a clear disjuncture between the synchronic
approach favoured by the nature of subaltern sources and the diachronic approach
favoured by narrative sources that tend to elide subaltern people and their role in
history. The result is quite telling: subaltern people make their presence by and
large in synchronic and usually structural accounts of ancient societies (the slaves
in classical Athens, or the plebs in republican Rome), while they are largely absent
from narrative histories concerning long-term change.5 A typical example to illus-
trate this issue is a late fifth-century epitaph from Athens (IG 1³.1361):

Mannes Orymaios was the best of the Phrygians in broad-spaced Athens. This
is his beautiful memorial. ‘And, by Zeus, I have not seen a better wood-cutter
than myself.’ He died in the war.

This is the epitaph of a Phrygian woodcutter, who was probably a metic at the
time of his death and was likely a former slave. He is proud both of his national
origins and of his skill in his art. The text mentioning that he died ‘in the war’ most
likely refers to his death in the Peloponnesian War, fighting in the Athenian army
against the Spartans. The few works devoted to synchronic analyses of subaltern
groups, like the Athenian metics, devote some space to Mannes,6 but I have yet
to encounter any history of the Peloponnesian War which makes any reference to
this subaltern experience and its historical consequences. If we want to pursue new
 Subaltern community formation in antiquity 37
ways of studying history from below, we need to grapple seriously with this major
problem created by the nature of our sources.7
The next problem is distinctive, but it also makes clear the difference between
synchronic and diachronic approaches. The easiest opening to this kind of problem
concerns slavery. Ancient historians interested in history from below have long
found it particularly hard to fit slavery within the study of subaltern groups in
antiquity. On the one hand, there are scholars who focus primarily on slavery and
on the conflictual relationship between masters and slaves. Given the few cases
of slave revolts in antiquity, and their overall concentration within a short period
between the 130s and the 70s BCE, the study of masters and slaves takes a dis-
tinctive non-diachronic form by focusing on synchronic accounts of relationships
between masters and slaves.8 On the other hand, there are scholars who focus on
the conflictual relationship between the ruling elites and the free lower classes:
while such accounts can be synchronic, they are often diachronic and narrative.9
Another distinctive feature of the accounts that focus on the free lower classes is
their particular attention to politics and political struggles for the distribution of
power: a feature almost completely absent from accounts focusing on masters and
slaves.10 Ancient historians have yet to find a way of integrating slaves within the
wider subaltern groups and communities. The old debates of the 1960s and 1970s
about the significance of status, order and class as analytical categories for under-
standing ancient social history might have gradually dissipated, but they have not
left us with any clear or productive solution.11
This brings us to the next major problem of delineating subaltern communities.
For the concept of the subaltern, we need to understand its opposite in order to
acquire its identity. For certain periods and societies, the opposite of subaltern is
relatively easy to define. In early modern Europe there existed a distinctive state
apparatus and court with a monarch at its head, an ecclesiastical establishment and
various forms of hereditary aristocracies with their distinctive privileges and life-
styles.12 These were the three main elements of elite society, and it was relatively
straightforward to define subaltern people and communities in contradistinction
with them.13 But if defining elites in early modern Europe is fairly easy, it would
be a huge mistake to assume that a similar straightforward distinction between elite
and subaltern would apply to antiquity as well. Admittedly, for certain periods and
societies of antiquity the definitional problems are not particularly more complex
than those of early modern Europe. If we turn to the early Roman Empire, it is
relatively straightforward to identify the imperial, senatorial, equestrian and civic
elites that ruled the Empire and its communities.14 The existence of groups like
the imperial slaves or the wealthy freedmen might complicate things somewhat in
terms of defining the Roman elites of the early Empire, but this would not pose a
particularly acute problem.15 Accordingly, defining the subaltern in contradistinc-
tion with such elite groups and cultures appears relatively straightforward—at
least initially.16
The really major conceptual problem rather concerns most periods and societ-
ies of Greek history. It used to be rather easy to presume the existence of Greek
aristocracies that gradually lost their dominance in the archaic period and were
38 Kostas Vlassopoulos
radically transformed in the course of the classical and Hellenistic periods.17 But
in the last few decades, the very existence of Greek aristocracies has come under
strong attack. Recent works have shown the extreme rarity of hereditary aristoc-
racies in Greek history and have plausibly argued that ancient historians must
strongly resist importing assumptions from early modern European history into
the study of ancient Greek societies.18 This of course does not mean that ancient
Greek societies did not have their own elites. But it means that we cannot take
for granted how these elites were constituted, and we cannot assume that there
existed distinctive elite communities and lifestyles. Recent approaches tend to
suggest the existence of a continuum of practices and activities, which were more
accessible and significant to those with more wealth, leisure and power, but in
which anybody could potentially participate, even if in asymmetrical ways.19 If
correct, this continuum model is significantly different from the model of a radi-
cal gap between elite and subaltern worlds employed in many other societies and
periods. If there was no distinctive elite culture, lifestyle or values, then we must
think very carefully about what constitutes subaltern individuals and communities
in such circumstances.20

History from below and subaltern communities

We can now move to a wider range of questions and problems. What exactly
are we trying to achieve when we do history from below and we study subaltern
communities? In a famous poem, quoted in full in the introduction to this volume,
Bertolt Brecht presented the reactions of a worker reading history books.21 Brecht
was attacking history from above: a form of history that focused almost exclu-
sively on ruling elites and rendered invisible the vast majority of the population.
This form of history had a very long pedigree and was still dominant up to the
historiographical revolution of the 1960s and the emergence of social history as a
major field of study.22 In its early stages, the study of history from below took the
form envisaged by Brecht’s worker: that of supplementing the existing accounts
of traditional history from above with references to subaltern people, primarily as
objects of exploitation and domination. This was initially a necessary corrective
to earlier accounts; but once historians started to realise that subaltern people were
not merely objects of exploitation but also active agents of history, they started to
face a major problem.
As we mentioned earlier, ancient narrative sources rarely attribute to subaltern
people any role in the making of history. And this means that it is exceedingly
difficult to find ways of incorporating subaltern people as active agents of ancient
history.23 Ste. Croix’s magnum opus is a characteristic example of this problem.24
It might be titled The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World, but its real title
should have been The Ruling Classes of Antiquity and How They Oppressed the
Lower Classes. The agency of subaltern people and its historical consequences are
hardly visible: subaltern people are merely the passive objects of exploitation, and
it is rather the consequences of the varying degrees of exploitation and domination
that shape the parameters within which ancient elites made history. History is still
 Subaltern community formation in antiquity 39
made by the elites, but on the basis of the blood, sweat and tears of the subaltern
classes.
Historians working on other periods have been exploring these problems for
some time now.25 Perhaps the most illuminating example in relation to ancient
history concerns the case of the history of American slavery and slave agency. For
a long time, slaves were just a footnote in narratives of North American history.
When new approaches started to emerge in the 1950s, slaves finally became one
of the main concerns of historians, but primarily as objects of domination and
exploitation. Slavery was studied from above as a relationship solely defined by
the masters and imposed on the slaves unilaterally. But starting with Genovese’s
masterpiece,26 which focused on slave agency and conceived slavery as an asym-
metrical negotiation of power, historians of New World slavery have started to
reframe their narratives in order to present slaves as historical agents who had an
active, if asymmetrical, role in the making of their own history and the history
of slave-owning societies. Ira Berlin’s Many Thousands Gone was an exemplary
application of this new conception of history from below to the study of slavery.27
There are still major issues of debate and contention: to name just one, ‘To what
extent was the abolition of slavery the result of slave agency, rather than the action
of abolitionists and governments?’28 But historians of modern slavery have taken
a crucial first step into writing new kinds of history from below.
What is the alternative for those ancient historians who are not content to reduce
history from below to the story of the exploitation and domination of the subaltern
groups? Given that ancient sources rarely if ever allow us to look at subaltern
people as active agents in history, ancient historians have been particularly vulner-
able to adopting wholesale and without much critical thinking wider metanarra-
tives that would allow them to conceptualise subaltern agency. The most influential
example is the metanarrative of the French Revolution; this was initially created by
French liberal historians in the first half of the nineteenth century, and was subse-
quently taken over by leftist intellectuals and scholars, while ultimately becoming
effectively the main model for interpreting large-scale historical change in any
historical period.29 According to this metanarrative, the social and economic crisis
of the Old Regime created new socio-economic classes, based on trade and indus-
try, which demanded their fair share in political power, destroyed the privileges
of the aristocracy and ultimately brought down the monarchy. This metanarrative
has certain fixed elements: a socio-economic crisis as the factor that explains how
change was possible, social classes organised as collective actors that fight for their
interests and a direct link between socio-economic structure and political power.
This metanarrative was often employed straightforwardly in ancient history: the
crisis of the archaic poleis, tyranny and the hoplite revolution, the sixth-century
crisis in Attica and the reforms of Solon, or the struggle of the orders in Rome have
often been interpreted in this way.30 But modified versions of this metanarrative
have been employed in all sorts of other ancient contexts; the Gracchan crisis was
often seen as the failed attempt of subaltern groups to stem the tide of accumulation
in the hands of the rich, while Rostovtzeff famously described the major changes
in late antiquity as the result of the coming into power of a subaltern army.31
40 Kostas Vlassopoulos
The obvious problem with such attempts is that they are not particularly suc-
cessful and have been largely refuted.32 I do not have the space here to examine in
detail why the various attempts to explore subaltern agency in antiquity through
the metanarrative of the French Revolution have failed to convince. I am rather
more interested in stressing the fact that over the last few decades it is the valid-
ity of the metanarrative for explaining the French Revolution itself that has come
under severe attack. The revisionist challenge, from the work of Cobban and Furet
in the 1960s till the present, has blown into pieces most of the assumptions on
which this model was based. In particular, it has completely undermined the very
existence of the bourgeoisie as a distinct social class in eighteenth-century France
and as a collective actor that attempted and succeeded in gaining power.33 It has to
be said that the revisionist challenge has largely failed to offer a convincing alter-
native interpretation of the revolution, which does not reduce a momentous event
and a complex process into a series of historical accidents.34 But the important
conclusion for our purposes is that the explosion of the traditional metanarrative
of the French Revolution must force ancient historians to search for new models
and metanarratives concerning subaltern agency.
This search will be complicated by a final general issue. Once upon a time, his-
torians disagreed about which particular concept to employ in order to conceptu-
alise subaltern groups in antiquity. Those of a Marxist persuasion tended to favour
the concept of class, which posited the existence of socio-economic groups based
on their relationship to the means of production. Other historians disagreed with
the Marxist theory of class or merely thought that it was inapplicable to antiquity;
these scholars tended to favour the alternative concepts of status groups or socio-
legal orders.35 Whether they preferred class, status or order as their organising
principles, all historians accepted a particular form of materialist sociology in
which social, economic and political conditions constituted various groups that
reflected those conditions and acted upon them. These assumptions came under
strong challenge from the 1980s onwards with the emergence of the linguistic
and the cultural turns.36 If our only access to the material world comes through
language and discourse, through which human beings conceive of and act upon
it, then this undermines a naïve distinction between base and superstructure. The
study of gender, race, culture and politics has effectively challenged the traditional
Marxist definition of class as a relationship to the means of production by disput-
ing any direct and automatic relationship between economic relationships and the
constitution of people into a class and emphasising the role of politics, culture and
discourse in the processes of class formation.37 And while traditional scholarship
took the existence of classes as collective actors for granted, more recent work has
problematised this by showing a coexisting multiplicity of groups and identities,
partly overlapping and partly moving in very different directions.38
In conclusion, doing history from below and studying subaltern groups in antiq-
uity face some quite difficult questions and problems. Some of them are the result
of the nature of our sources; others relate to the problems of how to conceptualise
subaltern groups in the various societies and periods of antiquity without importing
anachronistic and misleading assumptions or excluding from our purview those
 Subaltern community formation in antiquity 41
groups that do not fit our assumptions and models; but equally significant are those
that result from wider historical debates, in particular about how to conceptualise
the historical agency of subaltern individuals and communities. In the remaining
part of this chapter, I want to offer some constructive suggestions towards creating
the conceptual and methodological framework that we need in order to explore
history from below and subaltern communities and agency in antiquity.39 I want to
explore three broad factors that played a crucial role in the processes of subaltern
community formation.

The formation of subaltern communities

The first factor is the nexus of material activities and practices in which subaltern
individuals engaged in the course of their lives. This obviously includes work in
its most diverse manifestations: not only the production of wealth, which usually
stands at the centre of attention, but also the huge amount of labour necessary
for the daily reproduction of life in the technological conditions of pre-industrial
societies.40 Labour was crucial in the life of subaltern people,41 but it was not
necessarily what defined them as individuals or groups or distinguished them
from the elite. It is true that most ancient societies perceived a major dividing
line between those rich enough to be able to live without the need to work and
the rest who had to work for a living. But within the latter group were included
people of extremely diverse conditions, whom we cannot automatically classify
as subaltern.42 Let us imagine a Roman senatorial landowner, an artisan owning
a workshop where he worked alongside his ten slaves and an unskilled manual
labourer who lived from hand to mouth: we can envisage various lines of cleav-
age between these three individuals, which in certain ways and contexts would
place the first two in the same group of respectable property owners while in
other contexts would create a distinction between the ruling elite, represented
by the first, and the subalterns excluded from power, represented by the latter
two individuals.43 In fact, there have been some stimulating recent attempts to
delineate the Roman middling sort and distinguish them from the wider subaltern
population.44
Furthermore, we need to take seriously the peculiarities of a world where most
labourers had direct control of the labour process, irrespective of who owned the
means of production. In such a world, major forms of exploitation and arenas of
conflict that created dividing lines between elite and subaltern took place outside
the labour process and included factors such as debt, taxation and dishonourable
mistreatment, as Claire Taylor’s chapter in this volume clearly shows.45 The groups
in conflict constituted by such bones of contention had boundaries that could dif-
fer significantly from those created on the basis of labour or wealth and could
be based on identities that owed little to the activity of labour. This is not to say
that the different issues could not feed off and mutually reinforce each other; it
only means that we cannot establish a priori what constitutes a subaltern group in
antiquity. Only work on specific groups in specific periods and contexts will allow
us to move beyond misleading generalisations.
42 Kostas Vlassopoulos
The second factor concerns the concept of community. Traditional approaches
to subaltern people tended to take for granted that subaltern groups would form
automatically on the basis of their shared material interests, and where the
expected subaltern groups did not materialise, or did not seem to act as groups,
scholars either resigned to the study of a passive ‘class in itself,’ which was merely
the object of domination and exploitation, or concluded that there was no point
in studying subaltern groups altogether. In the last few decades, historians have
turned a lot of their attention to the issue of community formation. A revealing
illustration is the concept of the slave community. While ancient historians spent
the 1960s and the 1970s debating whether ancient slaves constituted a class,
modern historians discovered the concept of the slave community as a means of
exploring both slave agency and the world that slaves created beyond and below
slavery.46 The slave community was not the direct result of the slave condition: it
consisted of the diverse outcomes created by slaves out of the materials furnished
by legal condition, labour, race, ethnicity, kinship, family, residence, religion and
commensality. Significantly, the slave community could have contradictory impli-
cations at the same time. The slave family was an important factor of stability for
slaveholding societies. It ensured the natural reproduction of the slave force; slaves
with families were less likely to flee; and the threat of family separation was a
potent weapon in the masters’ hands. But at the same time, family and kinship were
major tools for creating slave communities of emotion, support and solidarity. The
slave family was both a tool in the hands of masters and a means through which
slaves could organise their resistance.
Any attempt to study subaltern agency must start from the processes of subal-
tern community formation.47 In this respect, we must avoid making a number of
mistaken assumptions. The first is to assume the a priori existence of exclusively
subaltern communities. We must start from the much wider framework of ‘the net-
works of sociability.’ Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira has offered us an exem-
plary model of the networks created around the various associations, the taverns
and the baths, the streets, markets and ports, the spectacles and the churches.48 As
should be readily obvious, while some of these networks and communities might
be exclusively subaltern, many of them would have a more diverse membership.49
Many of these communities cannot be seen as expressions of subaltern identity:
they are rather complex communities whose raison d’être might be anything than
the representation of subaltern interests but whose substantial subaltern member-
ship affected them in such ways that they came to play a crucial role in the exercise
of subaltern agency.
The case of late antique North Africa offers a particularly instructive example,
as a result both of the richness of the available sources, literary, epigraphic and
archaeological, and of the fascinating scholarship that has profitably explored
this material. We have moved a long way from the time when ancient histori-
ans wondered whether ancient heresies like the Donatists were national or social
movements in disguise;50 nobody nowadays would accept this particular way of
approaching subaltern agency. Recent studies have explored the emergence of
Christian communities in North Africa with substantial subaltern membership,
 Subaltern community formation in antiquity 43
their new forms of leadership and communication, the various interpretations that
could be placed on the diverse contents of Christian ritual and communication,
and the context of the four-way conflict between the two rival churches, imperial
authorities and local communities and potentates.51 While these Christian commu-
nities cannot be described as subaltern, they provided a crucial medium through
which subaltern individuals constructed communities and identities, related to
their superiors and understood themselves and their world.
To put it in more general terms, we must not assume the a priori existence of
exclusively subaltern communities and identities. In certain contexts and for cer-
tain purposes such groups did emerge, and this has obviously deeply significant
historical consequences. But by and large, we should expect subaltern people and
identities to be part of wider communities and identities, which would often have
deeply contradictory characteristics. We should be on the lookout for the peculiar
subaltern inflection of such wider communities and identities and the ways in
which subaltern people made use of institutions and processes in which they did
not have an independent voice of their own. Recent work on the Roman civil wars
has tried to show the historical significance of the subaltern role in conflicts that
were in theory an affair among the members of the elite.52

Languages of the social

The third factor concerns the role of language and discourse in constituting subal-
tern identities, communities and agencies. We should start by taking the implica-
tions of the linguistic turn seriously. The study of the social history of late antiquity
was long dominated by an image of deep social crisis, including the impoverish-
ment of the free lower classes.53 It is only relatively recently that late antique
historians have started to challenge this picture through a serious engagement with
the generic and discursive features of late antique sources. It has been observed
that whereas classical sources tend to focus on the status distinctions free/slave or
citizen/outsider, Christian sources are based on a fundamentally novel focus on the
poor. Christian sources construct a particular image of poverty and the poor which
focuses on certain aspects that are congenial for the purposes of Christianity; by
making poverty into a dominant subject of discursive debates, Christian sources
bring to light the conditions in the life of the lower classes that classical sources
were largely indifferent to.54 It is not primarily an increase in impoverishment
that makes poverty so visible in late antiquity; it is the emergence of genres and
discourses that make poverty one of their main subjects.
The same applies to the vast collections of laws in the Theodosian and Jus-
tinianic codes. It would again be misleading to interpret them as evidence of a
deep social crisis: if the sale of free children into slavery or marriages between
free and slave are so prominent in late antique laws, the reason is not the radical
impoverishment of the free or the undermining of the status distinctions between
slave and free in late antiquity. Whereas classical law focused on certain areas
and left a large area of social interaction outside purview and subject to ambiguity
and gentlemen’s agreements, late antique laws reflect the decision of the state to
44 Kostas Vlassopoulos
intervene in these areas and attempt to clarify and define the fuzzy edges of social
interaction that classical law left opaque.55 Earlier literalist readings drew a picture
of the radical difference between early Empire and late antiquity on the basis of
a fundamental assumption: that the difference between classical and late antique
sources and the issues they focused on was a direct reflection of differences in
social reality. Recent and more complex interpretations have accepted that there is
no automatic correlation between texts and discourses, on the one hand, and social
reality, on the other. The social imaginaire does not include the totality of relations
and aspects within a particular society: it rather privileges and focuses on certain
issues, while others remain outside purview.
Some conclusions follow from this observation. Precisely because texts and
discourses are not direct reflections of realities, but selective focuses, it follows
that they have to be understood as choices of past actors that need to be explained
historically, rather than being taken for granted. Let us take the case of the Athe-
nian social imaginaire, which exemplifies a major peculiarity which has largely
escaped the attention of ancient historians. The Athenian imaginaire was based
on three major distinctions.56 The first one was that between free and slave; the
second focused on the distinction between male citizens and various excluded
others (slaves, metics, women); finally, within the citizen community the Athe-
nians distinguished between the plousioi, those wealthy enough to live without
the need to work, and the penētes, who had to work in order to make a living,
irrespective of whether they were relatively well-off or destitute. What is pecu-
liar about these three distinctions is that they all express polar opposites rather
than relationships: one can easily gauge the difference if the Athenian pairs were
substituted with the pairs masters/slaves, rulers/subjects and landlords/peasants
or capitalists/workers. Some societies imagine their social reality on the basis
of polarities, while others view it as interdependent relationships. The Athenian
social imaginaire was a deliberate choice about what to focus on, and this choice
cannot be derived from a priori reasoning but needs to be explained as the result
of historical processes.57
Instead of assuming a direct correspondence between social reality and the
world as represented in our textual sources, we should recognise the constitutive
role of language as a means through which the real world is conceived, represented
and acted upon.58 In other words, out of the inherently messy, complex and contra-
dictory world of social reality, human beings employ a range of social languages in
order to conceptualise, represent and negotiate their various relationships.59 These
diverse languages cannot manage to encompass the totality of social relationships,
even if on occasion they are stretched in order to achieve that aim.60 Rather, they
tend to focus on certain relationships and certain phenomena by sidelining others;
they can also deal with the same issues and relationships but present them from a
variety of viewpoints and with different emphases. As a result, most communities
tend to utilise a variety of social languages, which are employed for different pur-
poses and often tend to predominate in different genres. These diverse languages
can complement each other, coexist without interaction or directly conflict with
each other.61
 Subaltern community formation in antiquity 45
I want to present a number of social languages with particular relevance to the
study of ancient history. Four of these languages can be used as holistic representa-
tions of the social world; the others tend to be employed not as holistic descriptions
but in order to focus on particular aspects of the social world. The language of hier-
archy focuses on the gradations created by birth, privilege and status; it tends to
present society as a spectrum of statuses from the highest to the lowest. Normally,
status groups are related to privileges and obligations: a significant aspect of this
language is whether it attempts to integrate all social groups within the hierarchical
order. Greek and Roman processions and the social architecture of the theatre are
characteristic examples in which hierarchical models were visually implemented
for all to see.62 The language of wealth focuses on the distribution of wealth as a
means of distinguishing between various groups in society and defining their role
and place;63 it is a language that tends to favour tripartite models of the social world
(the rich, the middling sort, the poor). On the contrary, the language of oppression
presents a dichotomous division of the social world as a struggle between opposed
groups as a result of oppression and exploitation: the rich versus the poor, the
powerful versus the weak or the mass versus the elite.64 Finally, the language of
function/work divides the social world on the basis of the functions performed by
different social groups; the caste system of South Asia and the medieval tripar-
tite system of warriors, priests and cultivators are well-known examples of this
language.65 While functional models are not as significant in antiquity, they can
certainly be found widely, from the social imaginaries of Greek philosophers to
the significant role in civic life of early and late Roman professional associations.66
Four other languages focus not so much on the divisions within the community
but on the nature of the community itself. The language of exclusion focuses on the
division between the full members of the community and the excluded outcasts:
freemen and slaves, patricians and plebeians, citizens and outsiders.67 On the con-
trary, the language of solidarity focuses on the bonds that link together the insid-
ers: it emphasises the reasons and ways in which those who share a community
need to support each other. A related, but distinct, language is that of reciprocity,
which focuses on a range of relationships, both symmetrical and asymmetrical:
friendship, patronage, exchange, service and honour. This language can stress on
either equality and mutuality in those relationships, or authority and obedience.
While the language of solidarity tends to refer to the community as a whole, the
language of reciprocity tends to focus on binary relationships within the commu-
nity.68 Finally, the language of family not only focuses on relationships within the
patriarchal household but also uses the household as a model for conceptualising
various aspects relating to property, kinship and authority.69
The study of these various languages in the context of ancient history is still in
its infancy, but comparative examples from other periods and societies have a lot
to contribute. David Cannadine has explored, in a very fruitful way, how, over the
last three centuries, spectrum models based on hierarchy, tripartite models based
on wealth and dichotomous models based on oppression have coexisted in the
modern British world.70 As he has effectively shown, each model is sufficiently
sharp to successfully describe many aspects of the social world and yet is incapable
46 Kostas Vlassopoulos
of accounting on its own for the full diversity and complexity of social reality.
Instead, different individuals or groups, or the same individuals and groups in
different contexts, tend to use these models for different purposes. In the oppo-
site direction, Paul Freedman has explored the deep contradictions in medieval
attitudes towards peasants by the coexistence of the language of function and the
language of exclusion.71
My final task is to explore the language in which subaltern communities might
express their grievances. This has highly significant implications. On the one hand,
the language in which a community formulates its grievances might be directly
related to how it conceptualises itself and its opponents. On the other hand, the
language of grievance might provide important evidence of how a community
attempted to solve its problems, and this could prove significant in terms of how
we conceptualise subaltern agency. A first language is that of injustice: griev-
ances cast in the language of injustice can already be found in Hesiod’s Ways and
Means,72 where he inveighs against the unjust decisions of the gift-eating and
people-devouring basileis. Appeals to justice could be based on general principles
accepted by the community at large; they could be more specifically to the body
of written laws of the polity; or they could be based on principles of justice that
appealed to particular subaltern groups.73
A second language is that of domination. Greek and Roman societies developed
a peculiar and highly significant conception of freedom. Freedom was no longer
conceptualised as the state of not being a slave, an idea common to many other
societies. Instead, it became linked to the ideas of independence and autonomy; it
was conceptualised as an unalterable status that could not be shed even voluntarily;
and it was seen as a totalising status, with a tendency to cover the full range of a
person’s life, like the protection from violence and physical punishment. Freedom
provided an entitlement of individuals and communities that could be used in order
to defy domination; and domination provided a model through which a range of
actions could be castigated as inimical to freedom and opposed.74
A third language is that of inequality. One well-known aspect of this language
is the distinction between arithmetic equality with equal shares for all and the
geometric form that posits a proportional equality in relation to the merits and
contributions of each individual or group.75 But I think that a significant aspect
of the language of equality is that it relates to issues that have little to do with the
labour process and exploitation. In many ancient societies the majority of subaltern
people worked for themselves as independent petty producers. These subaltern
people were not directly exploited by the elite, but the unequal distribution of
wealth and property had a deep impact on their lives, and the language of equality
provided a potent means of expressing their grievances.76
The two last languages are particularly prominent in our own world; establishing
their relevance for antiquity requires a lot of further work. The language of distress
and need is a common element in modern humanitarian appeals. It is also a promi-
nent theme in the ancient Near East and the Jewish Bible, and would become a major
aspect of the Christian social language.77 But this language is largely absent from
the normative texts of Greek and Roman political and moral theory. The speech of
 Subaltern community formation in antiquity 47
Tiberius Gracchus, in which he presents the distress of the poor inhabitants of Italy
as an argument in favour of his agrarian law, appears to be a relative rarity in ancient
elite texts (Plutarch, Life of Tiberius Gracchus, 9):78 it would be interesting if a
detailed survey could show that the language of distress was much more prominently
used by subaltern individuals and groups than in elite discourses.79
I turn finally to the language of exploitation. There is no doubt that it is a lan-
guage that is ubiquitous in our own world and constitutes one of the most powerful
ways of conceptualising grievance. And yet, as Dimitris Kyrtatas has forcefully
argued, the language of exploitation is generally absent from the ancient world.80
My general impression from the sources is that exploitation is largely present in
framing political forms of extraction and in particular taxation.81 If this is actually
true, it would have important implications for the history of subaltern communities.
On the one hand, the limited range of long-term uses of wage labour in antiquity
might be relevant here. Equally significant could be the nature of our sources, which
focus largely on relationships between masters and slaves, and allow us rarely to
see the exploitative relationships over free people, like sharecroppers and tenants.
But it might be the case, as Kyrtatas argues, that the language of domination was
the predominant prism through which the ancient subalterns formulated grievances
that we would have expressed through the economic language of exploitation.

Conclusions
The study of subaltern communities should become one of the major preoccupa-
tions of ancient history. Volumes like this one can play a major role not only in
stimulating further research but also in debating major conceptual and methodologi-
cal issues. We should not restrict ourselves to studying subaltern people synchronic-
ally as mere objects of oppression or as one topic among many others. One of the
major desiderata of our work should be to place subaltern agency at the forefront
and repopulate our diachronic accounts with subaltern people and their role in
making the history of antiquity. But if we are to achieve that aim, we need to think
carefully through the various challenges we are facing. The old image of collective
actors representing clear and distinctive subaltern interests cannot ultimately sur-
vive the linguistic and cultural turn. But the solution is not despair but the attempt
to map and explore the complex processes through which the various subaltern
groups lived their lives, formed their communities, conceptualised their various and
contradictory aims and identities, and tried to achieve and realise them; in order to
achieve that, we will need to construct new kind of metanarratives. It is obviously
a heavy task, but we are undoubtedly making serious progress in that direction.

Notes
1 For a fascinating account of ancient historiography as a source of social history and a
reflection on ancient societies, see Mazzarino 1983.
2 Fornara 1983, 50–61.
3 Raaflaub 2008; Toynbee 1965; Brunt 1971.
4 Badian 1972; Gargola 2008. See also Joly, in this volume.
48 Kostas Vlassopoulos
5 Slaves in Athens: Klees 1998; Morales, in this volume. Plebs in Rome: Horsfall 2003;
Toner 2009; Courrier 2014; Kröss 2017 and Knopf 2018.
6 E.g. Bäbler 1998, 159–63.
7 Vlassopoulos 2017.
8 Bradley 1984.
9 Brunt 1971; MacMullen 1974; Ste. Croix 1981; Fuks 1984.
10 Wood 1988.
11 Nafissi 2004; Zurbach 2013.
12 Bush 1983; Clark 1995.
13 Burke 2009.
14 For the general problem of what is subaltern and what is elite, cf. Cerutti 2015; the issue
is also discussed in the Introduction to this volume.
15 Duncan-Jones 2016.
16 Toner 1995, 2009; cf. Grig 2017b; Courrier 2017a and Courrier and Tran, this volume.
17 Donlan 1999.
18 Duplouy 2006; Fisher and Van Wees 2015.
19 Davidson 1997; Van Wees and Fisher 2015.
20 Canevaro 2017. For the concept of popular culture in ancient Greece, see Forsdyke 2012
and my review in www.sehepunkte.de/2012/11/21991.html.
21 Brecht 1998, 252–3.
22 Iggers 1984.
23 Hunt 1998 offers an attempt to think through the implications of slaves as active agents
in ancient warfare; for the role of subaltern people in Roman politics, see Yavetz 1969;
Nicolet 1980.
24 Ste. Croix 1981.
25 Bender 2002.
26 Genovese 1974.
27 Berlin 1998.
28 Drescher and Emmer 2010.
29 Comninel 1987; Vlassopoulos 2018.
30 Kyrtatas 2002a, 133–47.
31 Hopkins 1978, 1–98; Rostovtzeff 1926.
32 E.g. Van Wees 2013; Van Wees and Fisher 2015. See also Gottesman, this volume, for
a reappraisal of the Athenian democratic revolution.
33 Maza 2005.
34 Comninel 1987; Hobsbawm 1990.
35 For these debates, see Nafissi 2005; Zurbach 2013; Ismard 2014.
36 Wood 1995; Dworkin 2007; Eley and Nield 2007.
37 Stedman Jones 1983; Wahrman 1995.
38 Reddy 1987; Van der Linden 2008.
39 For a particularly stimulating contribution along similar lines, see Magalhães de Oliveira
2020.
40 Lis and Soly 2012.
41 See e.g. Magalhães de Oliveira 2012, 43–84.
42 Courrier 2017a.
43 Similar issues are raised by Courrier and Tran’s chapter in this volume.
44 Veyne 2005, 139–94 (and the ancient notion of plebs media, discussed and largely
redefined in Courrier 2014, 299–421); Scheidel and Friesen 2009; Mayer 2012.
45 Fisher 2000; Van Wees 2008.
46 Blassingame 1972; Genovese 1974; Kolchin 1983; Berlin 1998, Penningroth 2003; Tran
2006.
47 Grey 2011; Taylor and Vlassopoulos 2015.
48 Magalhães de Oliveira 2012, 125–55; see also Courrier 2017b; Magalhães de Oliveira 2017.
 Subaltern community formation in antiquity 49
49 Philip Harland has explored this issue in relation to associations in Roman Asia Minor
(Harland 2003). While he is right in his main point that associations cannot be seen as
oppositional communities, the nature of the epigraphic evidence that he has consulted
is unlikely to reveal much about oppositional activities or ideas.
50 Jones 1959.
51 Dossey 2010; Shaw 2011; Magalhães de Oliveira 2012.
52 Osgood 2006; Alston 2015.
53 Patlagean 1977.
54 Brown 2002; Freu 2007.
55 Harper 2011, 351–66.
56 Cartledge 2002.
57 Vlassopoulos 2016.
58 Cf. Ando 2015.
59 The foundational work for this argument is Stedman Jones 1983.
60 The inability of the language of hierarchy to encompass the complex realities of early
modern Europe comes out nicely in Bush 1992.
61 Ossowski 1963.
62 Maurizio 1998; Rawson 1987.
63 Taylor 2017.
64 Ober 1989.
65 Duby 1982; Arnoux 2012.
66 Vidal-Naquet 1986, 224–45; Van Nijf 1997; Tran 2006; Verboven and Laes 2016.
67 Cartledge 2002.
68 Schwartz 2010.
69 Schloen 2001; cf. Herzog 2013.
70 Cannadine 1999.
71 Freedman 1999.
72 Hes. Op. 202–92.
73 Havelock 1978.
74 Raaflaub 2004; Arena 2012.
75 Harvey 1965.
76 Garnsey 2007.
77 Brown 2002; MacMullen 2015.
78 For the meaning of this speech, see Balbo 2013.
79 Fleischacker 2005.
80 Kyrtatas 2002b.
81 But see the case of the coloni of the saltus Burunitanus in Roman Africa (CIL VIII
10570); for this case, see Kehoe 1988.

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3 Southern Gaul from below
The limits and possibilities of
epigraphic documentation
Cyril Courrier and Nicolas Tran

Who is below? A problem of sources and outlook

Can we make a history of ‘subaltern’ viewpoints in antiquity? Can we rediscover the
values and norms that underpinned the actions of the ‘Romans from below,’ under-
stand them in light of their ‘social heritage’1—that is, their beliefs, their knowledge,
their practices? What do we mean by ‘Romans from below’? Below in relation to
what or to whom? Very ‘Thompsonian’ in their essence, such questions, already
raised in the general introduction, remind us of our difficulties in writing history at
the level of individuals, that of everyday men and women. These difficulties mir-
ror not only the state of the sources, but also their exploitation. Indeed, it is well
known that the available literary documentation throws a strong light on the elites,
the senatorial and equestrian ranks, and indeed often emanates from them; it is only
too rarely and indirectly interested in the plebeian strata. In addition, the ancient
authors’ approach was above all a moral one: they only mentioned the role of the
masses when their behaviour was part of a more general political crisis capable of
attracting the attention of their readers, themselves being from aristocratic circles.2
‘The’ crowd—sometimes referred to as plebs, other times populus, but very often
simply multitudo, turba, vulgus—was ‘described’ only to better mock the infamy of
its condition (imperita, perdita, infima, indocta, misera, etc.) and the inconstancy of
its position (incondita, tumultuosa, ventosa, etc.).3 Worse, this conception was shared
by many modern historians who, until relatively recently, unreservedly accepted
these ancient authors’ judgement calls and ‘their caricature crowd psychology.’4
Zvi Yavetz was the first to show the limits of these schematic descriptions, and,
since his seminal work of 1969,5 in line with the advances made by Eric Hobsbawm,
Edward P. Thompson, George Rudé and others,6 scholars have largely reconsidered
how to analyse the Urbs.7 Studies on urban crowds and their internal stratifications
flourished, from Claude Nicolet’s ordines (1984) to Maria Letizia Caldelli’s pauperes
(2012, 2018), with Emanuel Mayer’s ‘middle class’ (2012) and Paul Veyne’s plebs
media (2000), and recently, the publication of the proceedings of a conference held in
Rome in 2016 specifically devoted to the socio-economic fragmentation of plebeian
circles.8 These works have arisen, from very different perspectives, from the same
desire in the 1980s to think about the organisation of very heterogeneous groups,9
whose definition and outlines have since continued to be developed. Indeed, in the

DOI: 10.4324/9781003005148-4
56 Cyril Courrier and Nicolas Tran
societies of the Roman world, factors of hierarchy were multiple and not necessar-
ily parallel.10 These could be linked to status (servile or free by birth), civic rank
(enjoyment of citizenship, belonging to a privileged order), gender, ethnicity or even
socio-economic structures that arose in terms of resources and in relation to work (day
labourer, long-term contract, master craftsman, entrepreneur, etc.), and even cultural
practices. For this reason, and as Lucy Grig cautiously recalled in the introduction to
a collective work at the very origin of this book, ‘we need to avoid viewing Roman
society in terms of a tiny “elite” atop a huge, non-differentiated “non-elite.”’11
The question ‘who is below’ therefore seems timely in terms of this historical
debate: indeed, introduced by Thompson, the concept of ‘history from below’ has
recently experienced a resurgence of interest consisting not only, to refer to Mark
Hailwood, in considering how to write a history from below12 but also in trying to
define what this below might be: its composition, of course, but also and above all
its internal functioning.13 Without always claiming allegiance to the tradition and
methods of this stream of studies, specialists in antiquity have recently addressed
the question. To do this, they moved the analysis to the field of identities, trying to
rediscover the awareness that the Romans could have of the different hierarchies
that structured their social environment, close ones (family relations, jobs and
sociability) or more distant ones (relationship to the elite, involvement in political
life), thus positioning themselves at the level of individuals and especially how
they viewed their own situation and that of their peers or their superiors.14
The same concern has guided our research on southern Gaul,15 in particular on
individuals, at first glance, one could qualify as ‘subaltern,’ since they belonged to
the great majority of the population and were foreign to the elites of the cities and
the empire.16 The interest of this geographical area is that it provides epigraphic
documentation of undeniable richness compared to other regions of the Roman
West. Southern Gaul—in reality the province of Gallia Narbonensis to which
we can add the neighbouring city of Lyon—has some of the most abundant epi-
graphic corpora of the Roman Empire. Narbonne, Nîmes, Arles, Lyon and also
smaller cities (Aix-en-Provence, Glanum, Valence, Vienne, etc.) have produced
thousands of inscriptions pertinent to this subject. From a qualitative point of view,
the ‘subaltern’ social groups occupy a prominent place. Indeed, the epigraphy of
the major sea or river ports, as well as those located at the mouth of rivers, sheds
more light on the world of urban professions, crafts and commerce than anywhere
else.17 For example, a marginal group from the servile population of this milieu,
made up of slaves and freedmen who worked alongside freeborn, is fairly well
known.18 These major marketplaces aside, the richness of the epigraphy of south-
ern Gaul also concerns the interior and societies born from the coexistence of
indigenous and exogenous individuals. In this region, disturbed by the establish-
ment of Roman colonists, who themselves came from various geographical and
social backgrounds, these ‘subaltern’ people are also the simple incolae, Gallic
inhabitants treated as second-rate inhabitants, in or in the vicinity of Roman colo-
nies.19 As a result, southern Gaul is an excellent observatory of the multiplicity, and
therefore of the complexity, of the hierarchies that structured the societies of the
Empire between the end of the first century BC and the middle of the third century
 Southern Gaul from below 57
AD.20 However, in this multifaceted territory, figuring out who is below quickly
becomes a challenge. Conversely, while such an investigation is undoubtedly dif-
ficult, it seems at least possible, if not fruitful. Indeed, despite the biases induced
by the nature of the available documentation (1) and the difficulties in locating the
subaltern Romans (2), the case of southern Gaul makes it possible to go beyond
vague statements and thus highlight a real social complexity (3).

A distorted vision: the extreme visibility of exceptions

An initial problem is linked to the very nature of our documentation.21 Indeed,
the epigraphy of southern Gaul appears to be clearly dominated by remarkable
individuals who occupied the apex of plebeian circles. In other words, looking
for ‘subaltern’ Romans, you will paradoxically hardly find anything but the elite,
or the elites of the subaltern people. The freedmen of municipal elites (or simply
gravitating around them), whose hopes for social advancement were based on fam-
ily ascension, are the most conspicuous.22 In the second half of the second century
AD, we know in Nîmes of Q. Avilius Q. f. Sennius Cominianus, whom the Senate
bestowed with the public honour of a statue for his father, Q. Avilius Hyacinthus,
himself of servile origin.23 By his acts of euergetism (financing spectacles, fitting
the theatre with vela and especially through providing loans to the city magistrates),
Hyacinthus appears to be a rich financier, at the doors of the notability. The name of
his son, no doubt adopted from among the freedmen’s offsprings of two great Nîmes
families, betrays his project. Nevertheless, his hopes founded on the adoption of
young Sennius Cominianus were squashed by the latter’s untimely early death.
The inscriptions from southern Gaul mostly leave a prominent place to high-calibre
businessmen at the upper echelon of port communities (Arles, Narbonne, Lyon), where
economic dynamism favoured the phenomena of social ascension.24 The Arlesian freed-
man and sevir Augustalis G. Paquius Pardalas was an emblematic figure of this milieu,
even though his funeral altar, in marble, does not explicitly define him as a negotiator.25
Nevertheless, his personal status and his relations with various trades tend to designate
him as such. The shipwrights, the utricularii (transport professionals)26 and the cen-
tonarii (textile professionals)27 chose him as their patron, just as in the port of Lattes,
on the territory of the city of Nîmes, the fabri and the utricularii had relied on the sevir
Augustalis T. Eppillius Astrapton for the financing of a dedication to the god Mars and to
the genius of a community whose identity is debated.28 These titles and practices empha-
sise the importance of vertical relations in the hierarchy of the plebs of southern Gaul.
Relationships of this type structured the intermediate social circles at the
scale not only of the city but also of the civitas. Thus, the shipowner from Arles,
M. Frontonius Euporus, was patron not only of the sailors of the Durance based in
the administrative centre of the region29 but also of the utriculari of Ernaginum,30
a nearby village. The influence of this curator of the navicularii of Arles went
beyond the framework of the colony, since the city of Aix-en-Provence awarded
him the title of sevir Augustalis. This was also the case with the navicularius
Q. Capitonius Probatus,31 who had the honour of being sevir in Lyon and Puteoli.
He had been led from Rome, where he originated, by the circumstances of his
58 Cyril Courrier and Nicolas Tran
existence and his business, to Lyon, and to Puteoli, and, in all probability, through
Arles.32 In Narbonne, too, long-distance traders constituted, at least in the second
century AD (see subsequent discussion), the elite of the subaltern circles, in the
image of P. Olitius Apollonius, navicularius and then negotiator, honoured in the
middle of the second century by the seviri Augustales of which he himself was a
member.33 It was also the trade in Baetican oil that made the fortune of Sex. Fadius
Secundus Musa (Figure 3.1).34 The dedication made to him by the fabri subaediani
in gratitude for a gift shows the success of a lifetime: magistrate of the colony,
priest or, more likely, curator of a temple of imperial worship and grandfather of
a young boy who may have been admitted into the senatorial order.35

Figure 3.1 Narbonne: inscription in honour of Sex. Fadius Secundus Musa

Source: Musée Narbo Via (© photo: Centre Camille Jullian).
 Southern Gaul from below 59
Without giving into the temptation of producing a catalogue, let us add that in Lyon
the upper echelon of the plebeian hierarchy was merged with the realm of the nautae
of the Rhône River and even more of the Saône River, socially close to local wine
merchants.36 Among the first, originating from Lyon and its region, and particularly
active in the surroundings of the city, emerges the figure of M. Primius Secundus, who
was nauta (then prefect of the corporation), sevir Augustalis (then curator of the seviri
Augustales) and member of the college of the fabri tignuarii, within which he exercised
all the responsibilities before being chosen as patron.37 The same three associations
can be found on the epitaph of his son, M. Primius Secundianus,38 who was also a
merchant of fish-sauces (muria)—that is, the owner of commercial cargoes which he
also transported: ‘This accumulation of titles shows that these were persons of high
status, well established in the city, even if they did not have access to the office of a
decurion, and only to that of a sevir Augustalis.’39 Of an even higher social rank were
the nautae of the Saône River: M. Inthatius Vitalis, who was also a wine merchant,
patron of the two collegia, as well as those of the utriculari and fabri of Lyon, was one
of them (Figure 3.2).40 He obtained privileges which brought him closer to the elites
of the city and those of equestrian dignity. The ordo of Alba thus enabled him to attend
civic festivals among the decurions, literally to sit among them,41 a clear sign of the

Figure 3.2 Lyon: base of a statue offered to M. Inthatius Vitalis

Source: Lugdunum, musée & théâtres romains (© photo: J.-M. Degueule, C. Thioc/Lugdunum).
60 Cyril Courrier and Nicolas Tran
scope of his business and the ties forged with the city of the Helvians, renowned for
its vineyards.42 In Lyon, he was also patron of the equites (an unsolved riddle)43 and
of the seviri, among whom was Toutius Incitatus, nauta, centonarius and negotiator
frumentarius.44 Mostly natives outside the city of Lyon, the sailors of the Saône had
come to settle in Lyon, attracted by the prosperity of the city. This was the case of the
Trevir C. Apronius Raptor, nauta and wine merchant, who had the honour of the order
of the decuriones in his city of origin,45 or of C. Novellius Ianuarius, of the city of the
Vangions, in Upper Germany, sailor, curator and ultimately patron of the corpora-
tion.46 It was finally that of Aebutius Agatho, sevir in Arles and Apt, to whom the city
of Glanum had entrusted the responsibility of its finances.47 A form of notability had
evidently resulted from his commercial career as a source of enrichment.
Can we therefore really count these members of the negotiating elites among the
‘subaltern’ Romans? The question might seem odd, because the documents that
promote these professionals precisely aim to present them as exceptional individu-
als and, in particular, as superior to members of client communities. Should we
therefore exclude the negotiatores, the navicularii or the nautae from a history from
below? Why not, but by multiplying exclusions of this type, our study would soon
be deprived of purpose, or almost deprived of purpose. In addition, this approach
would be questionable, simply since it would not pay sufficient attention to the
nature of the inscriptions preserved and to the individual accomplishments and
career or life paths. As many shipowners and businessmen, Pardalas, Euporus and
probably Apollonius were slaves, who rose upwards from their initial social status
in the years following their emancipation. As for Vitalis, Raptor or Ianuarius, they
mention that they had been ordinary members of the associations that they eventu-
ally ended up leading and even protecting. The question therefore is not only to
judge whether they were subaltern or not, at their death, but also to try to determine
when they would have ceased to be ‘subaltern.’ To use Michel Christol’s motto,
epigraphic documentation occurs when the individual trajectory is completed or
perfected, retaining only its most rewarding stages.48 As such, inscriptions are rhe-
torical constructions built on standards and conventions that need to be decoded.49
More generally speaking, it is undeniable that the epigraphy provides a distorted
image of the population of ancient cities. It is a smooth, selective representation
in which only the fairly well-off, or even privileged individuals, appear. However,
insofar as Roman society was structured by the existence of a multiplicity of fine
hierarchies, it is not enough to shift one’s gaze ‘vertically’ from one environment
to another, to consider a lower or upper layer and to claim to access the (more) sub-
ordinate strata. The hierarchies were also parallel, without being watertight, hence
the recurring impression of accessing only the top fraction of each milieu. The case
of slaves is exemplary since, beyond a common inferiority of legal status, on the
socio-economic level, the documentation highlights the better off. In Arles, the
ministri Laribus from Trinquetaille offer a glimpse of Augustan-period slaves with a
large nest egg, thanks to the benevolence of their masters. In fact, a few slaves were
designated each year as servants of the Compitalia, the annual celebration of the
Lares. The ministri sometimes formed a small group rich enough to finance a com-
memorative monument, in the form of an altar or a marble slab, which they installed
 Southern Gaul from below 61
in their sanctuary.50 In Narbonne, the provincial capital and undoubtedly the seat of
the offices of the equestrian procurator who managed the goods of the emperor, the
imperial slaves, and on a lesser scale the colonial slaves, had also acquired affluence
and prestige which contrasted with the general invisibility of the servile world in the
city and the rest of the province. This was the case of first-century AD collegium
salutare familiae tabellariorum Caesaris nostri, an association of imperial mes-
sengers.51 Likewise Faustus, coloniae servus, who had a vicaria: his epitaph, also
dated to the first century AD, takes the form of a beautiful marble slab.52
In short, epigraphy ensures the greatest visibility to individuals who wished to
put a title or a particular function forwards. The ministri Laribus are one of these
groups, as are the seviri Augustales, in a somewhat later period and in a higher
social sphere. Because there was nothing systematic about them, trade names also
appear as distinctive attributes. Beyond epigraphic display, professional knowl-
edge distinguished a minority of individuals from the mass of unskilled work-
ers. This applied to the servile population, as it did among freemen. The Arles
slaves Peregrinus53 and Dionysius54 were able to boast of their respective skills
as treasurer (dispensator) and doctor. In Narbonne, the tomb of the argentarius
Q. Fuficius was given to him by at least two of his slaves or former slaves, left in
the anonymity of their legal condition and devoid of professional know-how,55 at
least from the point of view of the epigraphic display.

Where is the ‘mass’ of subaltern peoples?

So where are the poor? Where are the unskilled workers? They were essential to the
smooth running of port economies, as evidenced in particular by the thousands of
amphorae sherds discovered in the Rhône.56 A group of workers, anonymous to us
now, ensured the loading and unloading of goods, their storage, their repackaging
and their onward shipment, from the transhipment points these ports constituted. At
Cabrières d’Aigues, about 30 km north of Aix-en-Provence, there is a relief which
may appear to be a rare and modest exception to this invisibility.57 However, dated
to the second century AD and depicting a hauling scene (on the nearby Durance?) of
a boat loaded with barrels and amphorae, it undoubtedly adorned the mausoleum of
a wealthy transporter and/or landowner, whose comfort of travel and trips between
the estate and the city can be seen in the upper part of the relief, in the shape of
the horse and carriage. In Arles, the famous landform of the longshoremen lends
itself to a similar analysis,58 just like that of Colonzelle, east of Saint-Paul-Trois-
Châteaux, the capital of the Tricastini, where we can see the top of a loaded cargo
on a boat equipped with a hauling mast with an attached cable.59 In Narbonne,
saccarii and other ferrymen are likewise only attested through iconography and
their depiction in the usual attire of slaves.60 The individuals who orchestrated these
scenes of ‘subaltern’ work were surely not warehousemen. Besides, did the latter
consider themselves to be professionals? We may suspect that many of them did not
exercise one trade alone during the 12 months of the year. Indeed, in an economy
strongly influenced by seasonality, working in the fields or in the city was undoubt-
edly necessary to meet one’s needs. The slaves were then moved by their masters,
62 Cyril Courrier and Nicolas Tran
and the freemen had to find work elsewhere. From this perspective, the lack of a
unique activity (or one worthy of mention)61 was clearly not conducive to the posi-
tive identification of a profession that would have facilitated the visibility of this
type of subordinate worker in our sources.62
To be subaltern was therefore—to use a typically ‘Spivakian’ vocabulary—
to blend in, to be invisible, at least individually.63 The epigraphic references to
Romans from below are furtive, because they are collective, and therefore carry
little information. Thus, behind the Decumani Narbonenses (Figure 3.3), the Sex-
tani Arelatenses or the Septimani Baeterrenses (according to the order of prece-
dence transmitted by Pliny’s formula provinciae),64 loom the simple descendants of
settlers, former soldiers of the legiones decima, sexta and septima, who honoured

Figure 3.3 Narbonne: homage of the Decumani Narbonenses to Iulia Domna

Source: Musée Narbo Via (© photo: Centre Camille Jullian).
 Southern Gaul from below 63
their successive patrons.65 Certainly, these names, participating in the collective
memory of the Roman colonies, designated the entire civic body of these cities.
Admittedly, the Italian population living in Narbonne, Arles or Béziers must have
formed a heterogeneous group from when they settled onwards.66 However, the
establishment of the colonies of veterans in southern Gaul constituted an essen-
tial moment in the history of the province and a lasting reference in memory of
these communities, always attached to the reminder of their origin. Recognis-
ing themselves in these appellations reflects the pride of descending from veter-
ans, rewarded for their bravery at the end of glorious campaigns.67 This feeling
belonged to citizens who could doubtlessly be qualified as subaltern and ensured,
in the long run, the cohesion of that component, among others, within the popula-
tion of these colonies. Conversely, this facet of the identity of the Romans from
below is, by definition, imperceptible in cities where indigenous structures had
endured, such as Nîmes or Vienne. But in one case as in the other, the subaltern is
also and especially confused with the Gallic incola, dominated, in all the aspects
of his existence (wealth, civic integration, legal status), not only by the colonists
but also by the descendants of native aristocrats who counted among the foreign
clientelae of the imperatores at the end of the Republic. As a result, the invisibility
of territories is a fairly general constant that only a few inscriptions allow us to
glimpse. The dedication celebrating the construction of cellae to the god Larraso
by magistri pagi, found in 1849 in Moux, on the edge of the city of Narbonne, on
the side leading towards Carcassonne, suggests that the ancient indigenous com-
munities, structured into pagi by the Roman authority, had not yet disappeared.68
However, they appear here only through their magistrates, of whom three of the
four members (P. Usulenus Phileros, T. Alfidius Stabilio, M. Usulenus Charito)
were the freedmen of wealthy elites who had settled their villae on the borders of
the territory. The fourth (T. Valerius Senecio), on the other hand (the first on the
list), was a native whose onomastics betray a provincial origin. He embodies ‘a
world that will be described as village-based or local, heir to the indigenous world
of the protohistoric period, with its cults and its own notables.’69
Looking at the professional colleges of the second and the beginning of the third
century AD, a similar line of demarcation runs between the activities carried out by
individuals sufficiently well-off to regularly break out of anonymity, gain access to
the sevirate or even come into contact with the State70 and the others, known only
or mainly by collective testimonies.71 Thus, in Arles, the naviculari appear both
individually and collectively, unlike the lenunculari and centonarii. The first were
boatmen who notably ensured links between the river port and its maritime outer
ports. They have only been known since 2007 through an altar collectively dedi-
cated to the genius of their corpus and by a statue of Neptune donated by one of
their benefactors: P. Petronius Asclepiades.72 Likewise, centonarii are only known
through a patron: G. Paquius Pardalas. Their economic sector had to be dynamic,
however, given the intensity of pastoral activities in the Crau plain.73 More gener-
ally, however, ordinary members of the trades often remain in the shadows. Even
if there are exceptions, among the body of the fabri tignuarii in particular,74 epig-
raphy tends to give more visibility to the heads of associations or their patrons than
64 Cyril Courrier and Nicolas Tran
their plebs (see the previous discussion). In the second century, such communities
were an essential part of Arles’s social fabric,75 and no doubt they were even more
numerous than the inscriptions known to date indicate. However, again, not all
were on the same social level. A completely unequal epigraphic visibility suggests
that the fabri navales, the fabri tignuarii and the utricularii, whose magistri never
access the status of sevir, were probably of a higher social rank than the lapidarii
Almanticenses, the centonarii or lenuncularii.76 No doubt the same was true of the
visibility of their urban spaces and the lustre of their meeting places.
Likewise, in the rest of the province, especially on its borders, epigraphical
evidence very often only reveals the workers through their associations, them-
selves known through a single inscription: these individuals would be totally
unknown to us had they not formed such communities (see also the subsequent
discussion). Thus, in Ugernum (Beaucaire)77 and Tresques,78 two agglomerations
located in the eastern part of the vast territory of Nîmes, the centonarii appear on
two epitaphs which in fact mention a more noteworthy character (a magistrate
and what appears to be a benefactress or the wife of an important member of the
association, if not a patron).79 But even a larger city like Alba reveals little more.
Admittedly, the regulation establishing a double foundation there by the centona-
rii, utricularii, dendrophori and fabri for the distribution of sportula80 constitutes
an exceptional document which offers valuable insights not only on the hierar-
chy of associations within the civitas (where the dendrophori occupied a special
place, since they contributed and received more than the other corporations) but
also on the solidarity of these different collegiati, which had formed two common
funds. For the rest of the city, however, only the cupari Vocronenses81 and the
centonarii appear, with similar situations to Beaucaire and Tresques (epitaphs).82
Very often, it is also religious offerings that preserve the place of the association
honoured by the benefactor through a divinity—like the ex-voto offered by L.
Sanctius Marcus, civis Helvetius, to Silvanus in honour of the ratiarii superi-
ores.83 In Vaison, Christol drew attention to a broken column possibly containing
another tribute to the god Silvanus, for the benefit of the town’s utriculari.84 These
groups were apparently having some difficulty in realising all their aspirations.85
However, we can imagine that they played a fundamental role in secondary towns
and rural areas.
But the notion of a ‘subaltern’ Roman becomes even more complex when we
change scale and move away from the Rhône and the influence of Arles. Indeed, the
Arles worker very frequently appears as a corporatus. This is much less evident in
the capital, for example, no doubt for documentary reasons: the epigraphy of Nar-
bonne is earlier and probably prior to the greater development of associations in Gaul,
during the second and third centuries. However, even focusing on this period, a simi-
lar proliferation is not evident in the same proportions in Narbonne and Arles.86 Our
perception of what a ‘subaltern’Roman could be is inevitably altered. The hierarchies
into which these individuals fit do not present the same arrangement. They were thus
able to condemn to oblivion the particularly humble workers who only achieved epi-
graphic visibility within the framework of associations, like the professionals of river
transport, unknown in the context of Narbonne.87 At the same time, one also wonders
 Southern Gaul from below 65
if a smaller development of the associations may not have levelled the social fabric
by limiting the emergence and visibility of more noteworthy individuals. Looked at
this way, the ‘subaltern’ Roman is perhaps less difficult to spot in the capital of the
province, at least in the first century, than in the great port of Arles, because all the
working people provided inscriptions similar in style that we can thus bring together
and examine in series: a proclaimed technical knowledge, an assumed reputation,
a well-marked individuality.88 However, as said before, the analysis must, as far as
possible, not only reconstruct trajectories but also bear in mind that, from one case
to another, the nuances, often difficult to distinguish, constitute signs of quite varied
material realities (and other realities as well).89 The case of the Vettieni of Narbonne
is particularly interesting in this regard. C. Vettienus T. f. Pol(lia) had exercised the
profession of mensularius (money changer) in Narbonne in the last two decades of
the first century BC.90 The reference to the Pollia tribe makes him a shopkeeper
whose family origins go back to the early population of Narbonne, whether he is the
descendant of a settler from 118 BC or an Italian immigrant attracted by the prosper-
ity of the region. His socio-economic profile, typical of the epigraphy of the capital,
is characterised by a certain level of wealth (he owned slaves) and by the display of
undeniable professional pride. Equally interesting is the attention paid to his ‘descen-
dants’: his freedman, Metrodorus, himself had a freedman, Eros, whose enrichment
can be assessed by the yardstick of his own epitaph, a moulded marble slab, which he
also erected for his patron.91 He was able to marry a freeborn woman (Iulla). This rise
is suggestive: the freed ‘heir’had entered the world of the freeborn at the same time as
he changed his economic situation. In this specific case, parallel hierarchies presented
a concordant arrangement. This was far from always being the case.

Limits to possibilities
Due to the lack of sources and the multiplicity of hierarchies that have finely
stratified plebeian circles, the ancient historian finds himself in a delicate situation
considering this ‘below’: he touches on a complexity that is difficult to organise in
a simple way. But, are we perhaps mistaken when wondering about the Romans
whose inscriptions evoke the titles awarded by the city or professional associa-
tions, or the status of specialised workers? Aren’t the subaltern Romans precisely
the ‘group without a rank’ deprived of any distinctive quality put forward by epig-
raphy, like these very numerous epitaphs, simple in their form (stelae with rounded
top) as in their text, and which often only convey the names of the deceased, with-
out any further details on the profession, the family, membership in a community
or social rank? An affirmative answer to these questions would, once again, hardly
be encouraging, since it would lead to the observation that the subaltern Romans
are, in essence, doomed to escape all precise knowledge.
In this regard, the approach proposed by the ‘linguistic turn,’ which makes
language a constitutive element of the social configuration, is an attractive one.
Indeed, the communication paradigm tends to dissolve the stratifications into dis-
cursive strategies. In this way, reasoning in terms of cultures and group ideologies
only comes at best from an etic perspective, from an intellectual construction,
66 Cyril Courrier and Nicolas Tran
foreign to the eyes of contemporaries. In an article recently devoted to a rereading
of the work of Thompson, Simona Cerutti usefully attempted to adapt the concept
of history from below to the framework provided by the linguistic turn. Follow-
ing a very Foucauldian approach, according to which language is essentially an
instrument of social domination, she thus proposed to extend it to individuals
who, precisely, have lost what she presents as a ‘battle,’ that of language, and
thus found themselves, for various reasons, in a position of momentary weakness,
whatever their rank.92 In doing so, they lost the struggle for legitimacy, turning the
‘subaltern’ into the ‘forgotten’ of history, the memory of which would need to be
saved. By adapting the paths set out by Cerutti to our study, would not the subaltern
Roman be the one to lose the battle of epigraphic display? Is this type of analysis
of heuristic interest? The answer is more nuanced than it seems. Indeed, even the
category—not least to say the non-category—of ‘without rank’ shows signs of
heterogeneity and hierarchy. Among the funerary monuments of Arles, a small
series of funeral stelae with portraits, made in the first half of the first century,
particularly stand out.93 One was acquired by freedwoman Chia for herself and her
patroness, who was a slave in the first half of her life (Figure 3.4).94 M. Iulius Felix,

Figure 3.4 Arles: funerary stele of Chia and her patroness

Source: Musée départemental Arles antique (© photo: J.-L. Maby, L. Roux).
 Southern Gaul from below 67

Figure 3.5 Arles: funerary stele of M. Iulius Felix

Source: Musée départemental Arles antique (© photo: J.-L. Maby, L. Roux).

freedman of Marcus, bought another stela during his lifetime to mark the burial he
shared with his relatives (Figure 3.5).95 These intricately carved stelae must have
been valuable objects, so it seems impossible to classify their sponsors among the
poorest population. Above all, nothing proves that their lack of title and simplicity
of funeral form result from a low position, even momentary, compared to that of
a licensed association member or a specialised worker, wishing to be presented as
such. Admittedly, the quality of a funeral monument constitutes a very crude social
marker, because nothing says that the pronounced taste or the relative indifference
towards this type of object was proportional to the wealth of the person involved.
But the same goes for the appetite for civic titles and their display, as well as the
desire to have one’s profession featured on one’s gravestone. From this angle, isn’t
the etic gaze precisely the one that gives social actors the will to wage a ‘battle’
whose basis and existence are sometimes difficult to define?
68 Cyril Courrier and Nicolas Tran
Additionally, if we follow the argument that makes language a constitutive
element of social cohesion, reasoning in terms of hierarchies does not necessar-
ily come from an external perspective. Noting that the lines between elites and
common people, between popular culture and legitimate culture, are not fixed,
Cerutti affirmed that the only possible definition of ‘below’ must free itself from
these hierarchies produced by the sources. The shift in gaze is interesting and
potentially the bearer of fruitful historiographical discussions.96 However, it can-
not lead to a monopoly of the history from below, because ‘in reality, these are
social groups in a relationship of domination and subordination to each other.’97
The visibility or invisibility of social actors in southern Gaul is linked not only
to a battle for legitimacy but to the fact that they fit into hierarchies allowing
them to do so, even in their ability to write history. In this sense, it would be
useful, following an approach that leads back to the agency of Thompson, to
take into account concrete social conditions and to reason in terms of feelings
of belonging to entities—for which we need to rediscover the outlines and the
relative arrangement, in spite of the lack of information in the sources. It is one
thing to consider without due caution the declared membership of a social group;
it is quite another to reduce the existence of that group to a discursive strategy
constructed by language. On the contrary, the experience of Gaul’s ‘subaltern’
groups appears to be very largely determined by the influence of the vertical
relationships that we have mentioned so far. It even constitutes the richness of an
approach that integrates this verticality into the analysis, turning this limit into
a possibility. In this chapter, we will only take two examples: the integration of
this verticality and the reaction to it.
An epigraphic curiosity from the city of Arles has not failed to surprise the
modern historian: the total (or almost total) absence of negotiatores and mer-
catores.98 How do we account for such a situation, which contrasts sharply with
that of Lyon, Narbonne or even Ostia, where negotiatores constitute the most
frequently attested profession?99 The chance of discoveries, among nearly 900
known tituli, could not alone explain this oddity. A recently advanced hypothesis
is that they would have voluntarily chosen not to mention their trade commit-
ments.100 Why? Because they had a more valuable dimension to their social iden-
tity to promote: that of sevir Augustalis. Indeed, a previous prosopographic study,
based on onomastic criteria, is thought to have discovered a split between two
groups of the Arlesian working world. The Latin cognomina are well represented
in the first, which brings together individuals working in professions other than
shipping and trade. On the other hand, two known naviculari out of three have
Greek cognomina, as do three quarters of the seviri Augustales. It is all the more
likely that such professionals ‘hide’ behind the documented seviri Augustales
and, in particular, behind those who combined wealth and geographic mobility.
The proportion of freeborn would therefore have been higher in jobs such as con-
struction, naval carpentry or river transport, for example, which could guarantee
a certain level of wealth. On the other hand, the proportion of freedmen would
have been higher in the most lucrative trades, maritime trade and commerce on
a large scale. These activities demanded capital that only wealthy patrons could
 Southern Gaul from below 69
provide. On the socio-professional level, the elite of the servile population there-
fore seem to occupy a higher place than that of the well-off freeborn, as if the
hierarchy of the working world had reversed the legal divide between men born
free and slaves. However, this type of trade was so lucrative that it allowed its
actors to escape their condition and the aristocratic contempt of their trades and
the status of those who practised it. In other words, behind these seviri Augustales
from Arles who did not mention the origin of their fortunes is hidden the vertical
social relations that pushed them to internalise aristocratic norms in an attitude
of mimicry towards civic elites.101 But, is it that what was valid for the elite of
plebeian circles was also valid for all the plebs? We cannot take this for granted.
The professional pride shown by tradespeople suggests, for example, a mindset
that could vary from one layer of the social hierarchy to another.102
In addition, the influence of vertical relations did not apply only between eco-
nomic elites and ordinary workers. It percolated through the entire social fabric,
sometimes even causing a surprising inversion of the expected hierarchies. A
good example is undoubtedly provided by a famous lost inscription, that of the
pagani pagi Lucreti, whose text, known by a copy of Nicolas-Claude Fabri de
Peiresc, does not present serious problems.103 These pagani lived on the fringes
of Arles’s territory, opposite the capital of the colony. Their village, established
around the priory of Saint-Jean-de-Garguier de Géménos, in the Huveaune
Valley, revealed several epitaphs of first-century peregrini and of new Roman
citizens that were created at some point later on.104 However, the inscription in
question here, engraved under or shortly after the principate of Antoninus Pius,
reveals that these border inhabitants struggled to gain recognition for free access
to the baths of the capital that their status as Arlesians guaranteed them.105 The
inhabitants of Arles and the colonial authorities must have found it difficult to
recognise Gallic people from the distant countryside as compatriots. Yet the
legal promotion of their community was four decades old. The tensions and
the negotiations mentioned show how difficult it was for the pagani to obtain
treatment on an equal footing, and not as second-class Arlesians. However, the
profile of the individual who helped them in their journey is also remarkable.
These descendants of peregrini, and therefore freemen, gave themselves a for-
mer slave as their protector, in the person of the sevir Augustalis Q. Cornelius
Zosimus. Was he a negotiator, retired to the countryside after making his for-
tune? Nothing is known of him, and Zosimus might have been the procurator of
a wealthy landowner. In any case, this character was surely chosen for his high
status, which enabled him to attain the rank of sevir and which also gave him the
respect of the pagani. They made him an ‘extraordinary’ individual within the
pagus. This single example therefore illustrates how distinct hierarchies could
both intersect and give a relative character to each of them. None were valid in
all areas. It also illustrates the influence of vertical relationships between pre-
existing groups on the daily life of subaltern Romans. Finally, it throws a fur-
tive light on the strategies of these subaltern Romans, to compensate for certain
aspects of their inferiority, by bringing into play, and the hierarchies and their
places within these hierarchies.
70 Cyril Courrier and Nicolas Tran
Conclusions
Far from being an undifferentiated mass, the plebeian circles of southern Gaul
appear to be a finely layered world with multiple tensions. However, the very
nature of the epigraphic documentation favours the visibility of individuals who
present themselves as exceptional to the detriment of the most subaltern Romans,
not to mention the marginalised, the persecuted, by nature totally foreign to a
system as conformist as the epigraphic habit.106 In doing so, it complicates our
view of what a subaltern Roman might be, at the same time as it obscures think-
ing about this complexity. We believe that the most fruitful approach consists of
accepting this hierarchical complexity in the analysis of plebeian experiences. That
said, it is true that at the present time there is a lack of conceptualisation of social
relations that takes into account the point of view/social identity of the actors and
succeeds in reconstructing the interpenetrations of hierarchies as the Romans saw
them while classifying what came under discursive strategies and what proceeded
from feelings of belonging.107 However, this is the price for overcoming the all too
simplistic dichotomy between ‘elite’ and ‘people’ which, no more in the Roman
world than today, does not help to understand the subtlety of hierarchies and inter-
nal social relations in subaltern circles.

Notes
* We extend our warmest thanks to Katia Schörle for translating this article into English.
This translation benefited from the support of the Maison Méditerranéenne des Sci-
ences de l’Homme (Aix-Marseille University—CNRS).
1 Inglebert 2005, 5.
2 A finding that we owe to Virlouvet 1985, 6. On the literary sources relating to plebeian
circles and their limits, see Kröss 2017, 71–171, although the ‘inclusive’ definition of
the urban plebs as the entire population of the capital—free citizens, freedmen, but also
slaves and foreigners—is eminently questionable (sources show otherwise: see Cour-
rier 2017, 107), as well as the thesis which proceeds from this ‘non-definition,’ that of
an amorphous mass, controlled by the aristocracy. In the same vein, see the excellent
remarks by Flaig 2019, 77, footnote 5. On the plebs at the end of the Republic, see also
Knopf 2018, 23–53.
3 Courrier 2014, 1–3 and 427–8; Kröss 2017, 24–29 and 113–8.
4 Veyne 2005, 153. See also the introduction and Magalhães de Oliveira’s chapter in this
volume.
5 Yavetz 1969. See also Brunt’s article: Brunt 1966.
6 See Magalhães de Oliveira and Courrier, this volume.
7 To cite three of the most symbolic works: Le Gall 1971; Veyne 1976; Flaig 2019 (first
published in 1992).
8 Nicolet 1984 (esp. Cohen’s (1984) article on apparitores; on this group, see David
2019), as well as Nicolet 1985; Veyne 2005 (on the meaning of plebs media in antiq-
uity, Courrier 2014, 299–421); Caldelli and Ricci 2012 and Caldelli 2018; Mayer 2012;
Tran and Vandevoorde 2018, 229–309. From a more cultural perspective, Clarke 2003;
Toner 2009 or Knapp 2011, but without any reflection on internal hierarchies, beyond
the observation of a common, but necessarily relative, inferiority to the elites.
9 In a landmark debate that pitted the supporters of a ‘Rome, society of orders’ against
those of a ‘Rome, society of classes.’ See Courrier and Tran 2018, 251–5 (with previ-
ous bibliographical references).
 Southern Gaul from below 71
10 Nicolet 1985. On this question, see also the suggestive introductory note by Veyne
2005, 117, footnote 1.
11 Grig 2017b, 17–8, 32 and 36.
12 On this aspect, see Vlassoupoulos, this volume.
13 Hailwood 2013; Cerutti 2015. See also Taylor, this volume.
14 Inter alia: Joshel 1992 and Cristofori 2016 on the social identity of workers; Mouritsen
2011 on that of the freedmen; Magalhães de Oliveira 2012; Flohr 2013 and Tran 2013a
on the imaginaire of artisans and traders and the world of the taberna; on the plebs
of Rome and its culture, Courrier 2014; Vandevoorde 2014, on the world of the seviri
Augustales; on that of the collegiati, Van Nijf 1997; Tran 2006 and Van Haeperen 2018.
15 This chapter is an extension of a recently published study devoted to the colony of
Arles (Courrier and Tran 2018). As a result, it did not seem useful to us to provide a full
historiographical assessment that can be found there (see also Magalhães de Oliveira
and Courrier, this volume), and we chose instead to concentrate on the methodological
biases and on the heuristic possibilities of the epigraphic documentation from southern
Gaul. Inevitably, some evidence overlaps, for which the reader must forgive us.
16 On the definition of ‘below,’ see Vlassopoulos, this volume.
17 To name a few recent studies: on Narbonne, Bonsangue 2016; Christol 2020 as well
as the forthcoming Inscriptions latines de Narbonnaise, edited by Sandrine Agusta-
Boularot and Cyril Courrier (herewith cited as ILN Narbonne); on Arles and its outer
ports, Christol 2010a and Tran 2016; on Nîmes, Vandevoorde 2014; Lyon, Bérard
2012.
18 Tran 2013b.
19 In Arles: Christol 2008; in Valence: Tran 2015a.
20 For obvious reasons, the picture cannot be complete. On gender issues, e.g., see Gar-
raffoni’s chapter, this volume.
21 On epigraphy as a discourse analysed from the perspective of port communities, see
Arnaud and Keay 2020a, with previous bibliography.
22 Christol 2010b, 501–17.
23 AE 1982.681: Ordo sanctissim(us) | Q(uinto) Avilio Q(uinti) f(ilio) Sennio | Palatina
(tribu) Comini|ano in honorem pa|tris eius Q(uinti) Avili Hyacin|thi quod is, praeter
libera|litates spectaculorum quae | sponte ededit vel postulata | non negavit, velis novis
sum|ptu suo in theatro positis cum | suis armamentis, saepe pecunia | mutua quae a
magistratibus | petebatur data actum publicum | iuverit. Cf. Christol 2010b, 483–99.
24 Christol 2010b, 508.
25 CIL 12.700: D(is) M(anibus) | G(ai) Paqui Optati | lib(erti) Pardalae IIIIII(viri), |
Aug(ustalis) col(onia) Iul(ia) Pat(erna) Ar(elate), | patron(i) eiusdem | corpor(is) item
patron(i) | fabror(um) naval(ium), utric(u)lar(iorum) | et centonar(iorum), C(aius)
Paquius | Epigonus cum liberis suis, | patrono optime merito. See Tran 2016, 263–4.
26 See M.-T. Raepsaet-Charlier’s recent comment in ILN Narbonne 176 on CIL 12.*283,
a bronze tessera discovered in Narbonne in 1766 before being transferred to the
Séguier collection in Nîmes and that she interprets as c(ollegium) u(triculariorum)
N(arbonensium). Declared as false by Otto Hirschfeld, it has subsequently been re-
confirmed by numerous researchers on the basis of comparisons with other tesserae.
27 Liu 2009.
28 AE 2003.1142: Deo Marti Aug(usto) | et Gen(io) col(oniae). IIIIIIvir | Aug(ustalis)
T(itus) Eppil(ius) Astrapton | fabr(is) et utric(ularis) Lattar(ensibus) | [ob] mer(ita)
eor(um). This restitution is that of Christol 2010b, 391–404; Christol and Tran 2014,
24–25 (with the elements of the debate).
29 Christol 2008, 183.
30 CIL 12.982: [D(is)] M(anibus), || M(arci) Frontoni Eupori, | IIIIIIvir(i) Aug(ustalis)
col(onia) Iulia | Aug(usta) Aquis Sextis, navicular(ii) | mar(itimi) Arel(atensis), curat(oris)
eiusd(em) corp(oris), | patrono nautar(um) Druen|ticorum et utric(u)larior(um) |
corp(oratorum) Ernaginens(i)um, | Iulia Nice, uxor, | coniugi carissimo.
72 Cyril Courrier and Nicolas Tran
31 CIL 13.1942: D(is) M(anibus) | Q(uinti) Capitoni Probati | senioris domo Rom(a) |
IIIIIIvir(i) Aug(ustalis) Lugudun(i) | et Puteolis | navic(u)lario marino. | Nereus et
Palaemon | liberti patrono | quod sibi vivus insti|tuit posteribusq(ue) suis | et sub ascia
dedicav(erunt).
32 Tran 2016, 259.
33 CIL 12.4406 = ILN Narbonne 124: Dec(reto) (se)vir(orum) | Augustal(ium). | P(ublio)
Olitio | Apol(l)onio, | (se)vir(o) Aug(ustali) et | navic(ulario) c(olonia) I(ulia) P(aterna)
C(laudia) N(arbone) M(artio) | ob merita (et) liberali|tates eius; qui | honore decreti |
usus inpendium | remisit et | statuam de suo | posuit.
34 Christol 2020, 256–7.
35 CIL 12.4393 = ILN Narbonne 69.
36 On river transport corporations in Lyon, see Bérard 2012. On the organisation of trade
in Lyon, see Christol 2010b, 527–8 and 605–13.
37 CIL 13.1967.
38 CIL 13.1966: D(is) M(anibus) || et memoriae aeternae M(arci) Primi Secundiani IIIIIIvir(i)
Aug(ustalis) | c(olonia) C(opia) C(laudia) Aug(usta) Lug(uduni) curator(is) eiusd(em)
cor|por(is) nautae Rhodanic(i) Arare na|vigant(is) corporat(i) inter fabros | tign(arios)
Lug(uduni) consist(entes) negot(iatoris) muriar(ii). | M(arcus) Primius Augustus fil(ius)
et heres patri | karissim(o) ponend(um) cur(avit) et sub asc(ia) ded(icavit).
39 ‘Cette accumulation de titres montre qu’il s’agit de notables bien implantés dans la
ville, même s’ils n’accèdent pas au décurionat, mais seulement au sévirat augustal.’
Bérard 2012, 136–7.
40 CIL 13.1954: M(arco) Inthatio M(arci) fi[l(io)] | Vitali negotiat(ori) vinar(io) |
Lugud(uni) in kanabis con|sist(enti) curatura eiusdem | corpor(is) bis funct(o) item
q(uin)|q(uennali) nautae Arare navig(anti) | patrono eiusd(em) corporis | patron(o)
eq(uitum) R(omanorum) IIIIIIvir(orum) utri|c(u)lar(iorum) fabror(um) Lugud(uni)
con|sist(entium) cui ordo splendidis|simus civitat(is) Albensium | consessum dedit. |
Negotiatores vinari(i) [Lug(uduni)] in kanab(is) consist(entes) pat[rono], ob cuius
statuae ded[ica]|tione sportul(as) | (denarios) X[---] dedit.
41 Christol 2010b, 606–7 and 616.
42 Plin. NH 14.4.25. Lauxerois 1983, 94–97.
43 Christol 2010b, 528 and footnote 47.
44 CIL 13.1972: D(is) M(anibus) || et quieti aeternae | Touti Incitati IIIIIIvir(i) | Aug(ustalis)
Lug(uduni) et naut(ae) Arar(ici) item | centonario Lug(uduni) consis|tent(i) honorato
negotia|tori frumentario. | Toutius Marcellus lib(ertus) | [p]atrono piissimo et sibi
vi|[vus p]osuit et sub ascia dedicav(it) | [opt]o felix et hilaris vivas qui | [leg]eris et
Manibus meis be|ne optaveris.
45 CIL 13.1911: C. Apronio | Aproni | Blandi fil(io) | Raptori, | Trevero, | dec(urioni)
eiusd(em) civitatis, | n(autae) Ararico, patrono | eiusdem corporis, | negotiatores
vinari(i) | Lugud(uni) con[sist]entes | bene de se m[ere]nti | patro[n]o. | Cuius statua[e
d]dica|tione sportulas | ded(it) negot(iatoribus) sing(ulis) corp(oratis) denarios) V;
and 11179: [Dis Ma]nibus | [C. Aproni R]aptoris, Tre|[veri, dec(urionis) eiusd(em)
ci]vitat(is), negot|[iatoris ? vinari(i)] in canab(is), nautae | [Ararici, patro]ni
utrorumq(ue) cor|[porum, ---] Aproniae Belli|[cae ? ponen]d(um) curaverunt et [sub
ascia] dedicaverunt.
46 CIL 13.2020: C. Novellio Ianuario, | civi Vangioni, nautae | Ararico, curatori et |
patrono eiusd[em c]orp(oris), | Novelli Faus[tus et ? Sote]ri|cus de se [merenti ?] | patrono
in[dulgen]tis|simo. C[uius statu]a[e] | dedica[tione ded]it | sportulas u[niversis
n]a[u]|tis praesent[ibus] (denarios) III. | L(ocus) d(atus) d(ecreto) n(autarum)
Araric[or]um, | dedicata pr(idie) [---] Sept(embres) | Sabino II et [Anullin]o |
co(n)s(ulibus).
47 CIL 12.1005: [D. M. et ?] || [me]mori(a)e aeterna[e] | [A]ebuti Agathon[is], | [se]viro
Aug(ustali) corp(orato) [col(oniae) Iul(iae) | Pat]er(nae) Arel(atensium), curat(ori)
e[ius|de]m corp(oris) bis, item IIII[II|vi]ro col(oniae) Iul(iae) Apt[ae], nau|[ta]e
 Southern Gaul from below 73
Ararico, curator[i] | peculi(i) r(ei) p(ublicae) Glanico(rum), qui | vixit annos LXX, |
Aebutia Eutychia patro|no erga se pientissimo.
48 Christol 2010b, 528.
49 Arnaud and Keay 2020a, 37–40.
50 Tran 2014.
51 CIL 12.4449 = ILN Narbonne 106: [ collegium sa]|[l]utar[e f]amilia[e] |
[t]abellarior[um] [C]ae[s]aris n(ostri) qua[e] | [su]n[t] Narbone, in | domu. |
[I]n f(ronte) p(edes) CCCXXV, | [i]n a(gro) p(edes) C[.]CV. See Tran 2015b.
52 CIL 12.4451 = ILN Narbonne 108: Fausti col(oniae) | Narbon|e(n)sium servi | vicaria, |
hic est sepu(l)t(a). | Poethus con|tubernalis. See Moisand 2019.
53 CIL 12.856: Peregrino, | Antistiae Piae | dispensatori, | Antistia Piae liberta | Cypare,
contubernali | pientissimo.
54 CIL 12.725: D(is) M(anibus) | Dionysi, | medici, | Iul(ius) Hermes, | alumno.
55 CIL 12.4457 = ILN Narbonne 184: Q(uintus) Fuficius Q(uinti) T(iti) l(ibertus) [---] |
argent[arius --- ?] | Eleuter, Philotis [--- ?] | de suo [fecerunt ?].
56 The same situation has been observed in other western ports such as Seville, Ostia or
Aquileia (Rougier 2020, esp. 13–49).
57 Espérandieu 1925, no. 6699.
58 Espérandieu 1907, no. 164.
59 Espérandieu 1925, no. 6779, and Blanc 1976.
60 Espérandieu 1907, no. 685 and Lassalle and Jézégou 2018.
61 Arnaud and Keay 2020a, 45: ‘This probably means that those occupations mentioned
in inscriptions were associated with a certain level of social legibility.’
62 Rougier 2015 and 2020, 138.
63 Spivak 1988; Courrier and Tran 2018, 261–4; Arnaud and Keay 2020a, 39. See also
Taylor, this volume.
64 Plin. NH 3.37. Christol 2010b, 129–45.
65 Narbonne: CIL 12.4344–9, 5366 (ILN Narbonne 40–46); Arles: CIL 12.701 and in
Rome, CIL 6.1006, 41045; Béziers: CIL 12.4227.
66 For Arles, see Christol 2008, 132, 191–201. For Narbonne, Gayraud 1981, 149–59 and
181–6.
67 Christol 2008, 126 and 2015.
68 CIL 12.5370 = ILN Narbonne 279: T(itus) Valerius C(ai) f(ilius) Senecio, | P(ublius)
Usulenus Veientonis l(ibertus) | Phileros, | T(itus) Alfidius T(iti) l(ibertus) Stabilio, |
M(arcus) Usulenus M(arci) l(ibertus) Charito, | magistri pagi ex reditu fani | Larra-
soni cellas faciund(as) | curaverunt idemque probaverunt.
69 ‘Un monde que l’on qualifiera de villageois ou de local, héritier du monde indigène
de la période protohistorique, avec ses cultes et ses propres notables.’ Christol 2010b,
469.
70 On this point, the documentation comes from Narbonne, in the second century
(Gayraud 1981, 534–6 and the comments of Maria Luisa Bonsangue in ILN Narbonne
121 = CIL 12.4398 and 124 = 4406), but also refers to Arles and to the famous inscrip-
tion of Beirut CIL 3.14165–8.
71 Rougier 2020, 139–44.
72 AE 2009.823: ------ | [Genio cor|po]ris len|[u]nclari | sacrum; AE 2009.822: Numi-
nibus Auggg(ustorum) nnn(ostrorum), | honori corporis renunclariorum, P(ublius)
Pe|tronius Asclepiades donum dedit. See also Christol 2010a, 409–12; Christol and
Tran 2014, 17–20 and Tran 2020, 85–86, 98.
73 Badan, Brun and Congès 1995; Marty, Courrier and Fontaine 2019, 64–67.
74 CIL 12.714, 722, 726, 728, 736, 738.
75 Christol 2008, 182–7.
76 Christol 2010a, 409 and 2010b, 525–6; Tran 2016.
77 CIL 12.2824: D(is) M(anibus) | Mocciae C(ai) f(iliae) | Silvinae | centonari | Ucern-
enses | ob merita.
74 Cyril Courrier and Nicolas Tran
78 CIL 12.2754 = AE 1999.1032 = ICalvet 92: D(is) M(anibus). T(ito) Craxxio | Sev-
erino, | collegium | centonar|io{rio}rum | m(agistro) s(uo) colle|g(a)eq(ue) p(osuit)
ex | fun[eraticio].
79 Christol 2010b, 505 and 522.
80 ILN Alba 7.
81 CIL 12.2669 = ILN Alba 61: D(is) M(anibus) | Max{x}imi, | cupari Vocro|nenses.
82 AE 1976.412 = ILN Alba 23: [D(is)] M(anibus) | C(ai) Petroni (Cai) f(ilii) | Vol(tinia)
Iunio[ris], | decur(ionis) Albe[nsium], | iuveni inno[centi] | patron(o) IIIIII[vir(orum)] |
et centonari[orum] | Petroni Barba[rus ?] | et Nice paren[tes]. Evidence from Vaison
is usually associated with this: CIL 12.1384, which mentions a group of opifices lapi-
dari and their action ob sepulturam of a deceased member of the college.
83 CIL 12.2597 = ILN Vienne 838: Deo Silva|no, pro salu|[t]e ratiarior(um) | superior(um),
a|micor(um) suor(um), | pos(u)it L(ucius) Sanct(ius) | Marcus, civis Hel(vetius), |
v(otum) s(olvit) l(ibens) m(erito); | d[e] suo d(edit).
84 ILGN 209: Sil[vano] | base[m] | utric(u)laris | Vas(iensium) Voc(ontiorum) | donum
d(at). See Christol 2010b, 543.
85 Christol 2010b, 515. See also CIL 13.2002.
86 Christol 2010b, 533–4.
87 Unless the nauclarii, known by various inscriptions (CIL 12.4493 = ILN Narbonne
234; CIL 12.4495 = ILN Narbonne 235; CIL 12.4701 = ILN Narbonne 236), had this
function.
88 Bonsangue 2016.
89 Christol 2010b, 533.
90 CIL 12.4491 = ILN Narbonne 229: [C(aius) V]ettienus T(iti) f(ilius) P[ol(lia)], men-
sularius, heic sepultus est.
91 Christol 1997, 271–80. See also CIL 12.5226 and 6016.
92 Cerutti 2015.
93 Gaggadis-Robin and Heijmans 2015.
94 CIL 12.891: [---]raniae Sex{s}t(i) l(ibertae) | [Ph]ilemationi C(h)ia l(iberta) | [si]bi
et patronae | viva fecit.
95 BCTH 1908.213 = CAG 13–5.264: [---]us M(arci) l(ibertus) Felix uiuos | [fecit s]ibi
et Coeliae | [---] Maxumae et | [---]ae M(arci) f(iliae) Pollae || [---] Potitus M(arcus)
Iulius M(arci) f(ilius) | ------ ?
96 As Gottesman, this volume.
97 ‘Dans la réalité, ce qui existe, ce sont des groupes sociaux qui sont dans des rapports
de domination et de subordination les uns par rapport aux autres.’ Cuche 2010, 78.
98 The recent discovery of a dedication, in Fos-sur-Mer, on the territory of the Arles
colony, by a nauclerus cor[---] to an association of negotiantes subaediani, is all the
more remarkable (Courrier 2015).
99 Rougier 2020, 134.
100 Tran 2016, 263–7; Courrier and Tran 2018, 264–5.
101 Christol 2010b, 506.
102 Courrier 2014, 277–86.
103 CIL 12.594: [P]agani pagi Lucreti qui sunt fini|bus Arelatensium loco Gargario,
Q(uinto) Cor(nelio) | Marcelli lib(erto) Zosimo, IIIIIIvir(o) Aug(ustali) col(onia)
Iul(ia) | Paterna Arelate, ob honorem eius. Qui notum (sic) fecit | iniuriam nostram
omnium saec[ulor]um sacra|tissimo principi T(ito) Aelio Antonino [Aug(usto) Pio.
Te]r Romae | misit, per multos annos ad praesides pr[ovinci]ae perse|cutus est iniu-
riam nostram suis in[pensis e]t ob hoc | donavit nobis inpendia quae fecit, ut omnium
saecu|lorum sacratissimi principis Imp(eratoris) Caes(aris) Antonini Aug(usti) Pii |
beneficia durarent permanerentque quibus frueremur | [oleo] et balineo gratuito quod
ablatum erat paganis | quod usi fuerant amplius annis XXXX. The version is that by
Christol 2004, 97 and 95, and differs from Gascou 2000a.
104 Gascou 2000b.
 Southern Gaul from below 75
105 For another interpretation (a local conflict, limited to the pagus Lucretius), see the
bibliography in Courrier and Tran 2018, 266–7, footnote 125.
106 Hailwood 2013. See Magalhães de Oliveira and Courrier, this volume.
107 See Vlassopoulos in this volume, based on David Cannadine’s work.

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Les Belles Lettres.
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Flaig, E. 2019 [1992]. Den Kaiser herausfordern: die Usurpation im Römischen Reich.
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Gaggadis-Robin, V. and M. Heijmans, 2015. ‘Espaces et monuments funéraires en Arles:
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Grig, L. 2017b. ‘Introduction: Approaching Popular Culture in the Ancient World.’ In Grig
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Part 2

Experiences of poverty,
dependency and work
4 Poverty, debt and dependent
labour in the ancient Greek
world
Thinking through some issues in
doing ancient history from below
Claire Taylor

Introduction
As other chapters in this volume have discussed, doing ancient history from below
has a number of challenges. One of these is how to think about poverty within the
context of subaltern identities, lifestyles and practices, and this chapter will offer
a few thoughts on this topic. Subaltern studies in general have raised questions
about the types of evidence available and how these should be read, the modes
of knowledge generation and retrieval, and the power dynamics and relationships
between elites and non-elite groups, and all of these are pertinent here.1
This chapter focuses on three aspects of poverty—precarity, dependency and
vulnerability—as features of ancient life that structure social relationships. In par-
ticular, it explores the role that these aspects play in relations of dependency in
the ancient Greek world and, in doing so, uses debt and, especially, debt bondage
as a lens through which to think through various theoretical and methodological
issues of concern to the overall presentation of this volume. In practice, my argu-
ment sketches some ground concerning the intersections between poverty, debt
and slavery, the relationships between social structures and historical agency, and
raises some questions about the gendered implications of debt bondage in the
ancient world.

Who are ‘the poor’?

There are two methodological questions that form the starting point of almost all
attempts to do ancient history from below: who are we attempting to find, and how
do we find them? In the context of ancient poverty studies these questions take
shape in the following ways. First of all, the source tradition is weighted towards
those who were not poor, leaving a direct challenge for historians to access the lives
of these groups. Secondly, although we all think we know what poverty is, there
is actually no agreed-upon definition and there are some significant differences
between ancient and modern conceptions. Thirdly, the multiplicity of diverse and
dynamic social groups within Greek communities and across the Greek world sug-
gests that there was no single experience of being poor. The focus of this chapter
DOI: 10.4324/9781003005148-6
82 Claire Taylor
on precarity, vulnerability and dependency, therefore, attempts to isolate certain
strands of these experiences through which we might assess poverty, but other
aspects—for example, hunger or social marginalisation—might also be chosen.
The question of evidence survival is also fundamental to assessments of debt
bondage, not least because scholars suspect that it was fairly prevalent, if not
widespread in the ancient Greek world, yet it rarely shows up in the extant source
material.2 This, in and of itself, raises a number of questions, the most pertinent
of which is: how should we not only read the evidence that survives but explain
that which does not?
The problem is that from the point of view of the historian, trained to base
interpretation on evidence, the lack of visibility of certain social groups within the
source tradition is a ‘gap’ against which knowledge of a past society is defined.
Metaphorically, these ‘gaps’ are frequently seen as gaping holes of silence jux-
taposed against the audible chatter of extant evidence.3 However, framing the
source tradition in this way can also be problematic. Firstly, it places too much
weight on the views of the non-poor on the behaviours, attitudes and social posi-
tions of those they may view as different to themselves. This implicitly overvalues
the production of knowledge from some social groups and downplays that from
others. Secondly, conceptualising our evidence in terms of presence or absence
ignores the complexities of social and economic differentiation that underlie the
attestations (or lack thereof) of those variously classified as poor in our source
material, paying insufficient attention to the discourses and practices that construct
ideas about poverty (and through which the poor are not absent) and ignoring the
processes through which certain types of evidence are preserved and others are
not.4 Thirdly, it implicitly assumes that poverty is defined by basic needs alone,
that the poor are simply those people who fill the ‘spaces’ left when all other forms
of culture are accounted for, divorced from social processes and lacking any form
of agency. This, as I have argued elsewhere, is overly narrow in focus and, as we
will see here, does not particularly aid our understanding when discussing debt,
debt bondage and dependency.5
The difference between ancient and modern conceptualisations of poverty is
also important here. This means that we cannot take poverty for granted as a
category of analysis without seriously unpicking what is meant. Although we all
think we know what is meant by the alluring simplicity of the term ‘poverty,’ what
it means in practice is, in fact, ‘neither obvious nor universal.’6 This is because
poverty is, at least in part, a socially constructed experience that takes shape from
the society in which it is found. This also means that being poor is not simply an
economic condition in which wealth or income is lacking but rather that it takes
meaning from social categories, discourses, interlocking networks of relations and
social structures (which are dynamic).
As others have demonstrated, classical Athenian ideas about poverty (perhaps
the only time and place in the ancient Greek world where we are able even to
begin to unpick these) were rooted in ideologies of labour and leisure, which
themselves reveal tensions between notions of political and economic (in)equality
that are of particular relevance within this democratic society.7 Penia—the word
 Poverty, debt and dependent labour (Greek world) 83
most commonly translated as ‘poverty’—is hardly a neutral term; it signals the
need to work for a living in contrast with being wealthy. This, in turn, suggests an
ideological polarity between the plousioi and penētes, even though this appears
to be at odds with social reality. Indeed, such a definition of poverty envisions
(at least in our minds) a dichotomous social structure with a small wealthy elite
(the rich) and a subsisting, or barely subsisting, mass of people (the poor) with
no one in between. This does not adequately describe Athenian society in the
classical period.8 Moreover, it takes little account of others for whom a differ-
ent terminology typically applies but which is no less ideological—for example,
ptōchoi/ptōcheia.9 Other terms, which in context clearly point to people who were
categorised as poor in some sense (alētai, thētes, etc.), are no less slippery.10 These
are not neutral descriptive terms but ones that construct a series of discourses about
what it meant to be poor in a particular time and place.
Like in Greek, in English the terms ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ often form a rhetorical
pair; however, most modern definitions of poverty actually conceptualise wealth
and poverty as two ends of a sliding scale of differing material resources or as
interconnected social relations, rather than as contrasting conditions.11 These views
of poverty, therefore, are distinct from ancient conceptualisations, which included
people who might be seen today to be relatively well off (one might be considered
‘not-wealthy’ but have plenty to live on and be far from destitute, for example).12
This has ramifications for how we try to identify ‘the poor’ within the source mate-
rial. It is tempting, for example, to exclude categories of evidence, for example
material evidence of everyday life, on the grounds that if an item cost anything
to produce, obtain or use, it does not provide evidence for the poor. Looking for
archaeological evidence of the very poorest is equally difficult because of the prob-
lem of identification that our sources raise.13 On the other hand, we can certainly
identify aspects of the material culture of the penētes—workshops, housing, ritu-
als, marketplaces and so forth—that is, the lives of people who are categorised as
poor in ancient terms. But this then, in itself, raises questions about the process of
categorisation of people as poor.
The issue can be illustrated with regard to perhaps the best-known example
of the problem of debt in Greek history: the reforms of Solon. As is well known,
Solon’s seisachtheia cancelled debts made on the security of the person, thus
abolishing debt slavery in Athens, and attempted to return to Attica those who
had been sold into slavery abroad.14 As such, it is typically seen by scholars as a
political response to economic inequality and social unrest where portions of the
demos were either in or reduced to poverty brought on by the actions of the elite.15
In this, they follow authors such as Ath. Pol., Androtion and Plutarch who also
explained the reforms as being related to poverty, albeit using the language of their
day.16 However, the groups that these later authors categorised as poor are not the
same as those that Solon does. The only groups that Solon explicitly notes as being
poor (in the albeit fragmentary poems) are those who are no longer in Attica: those
who were ‘sold and bound [and sent abroad] in shameful fetters’ (F 4 lines 23–25).
It is these people, and these alone, who are described as penichros.17 Others fled
Attica ‘through dire necessity,’ although it is unclear whether this is a result of
84 Claire Taylor
economic factors or for other reasons (F 36).18 For the most part, however, Solon
is concerned with the kakoi, whom he contrasts with the agathoi (negatively) in
a role reversal from the normal order of things.19 He describes them as having
become wealthy (ploutousi), and the agathoi as penontai.20 The least forced trans-
lation of this term is, indeed, ‘poor’ (‘many kakoi are rich, and many agathoi are
poor’), but more accurately the agathoi have not become poor as such—they are
elites who have been reduced in status; it is Plutarch who glosses them as penētes,
because it forms part of his (wrong) interpretation that Solon thought of himself as
a penēs.21 More precisely, the agathoi were ‘those who by their own merit deserve
to be wealthy but are not,’ and the kakoi were ‘relatively wealthy non-aristocrats.’22
Changed in circumstance as they seemingly are, neither the agathoi nor the
kakoi were exactly poor. In contrast, it is the hektēmoroi and pelatai, not the kakoi,
who the Ath. Pol. describes as ‘poor,’ explaining the terminology of the past, now
fallen out of use, for readers of his day (‘the penētes were enslaved (edouleuon)
to the plousioi, and their children and wives; they were called (ekalounto) pelatai
and hektēmoroi’).23 In this, he reveals different assumptions about poverty to both
Solon and Plutarch, rooted in fourth-century language. That is, later authors had
different criteria for categorising the people they found in Solon’s poetry as ‘poor,’
none of whom are explicitly called ‘poor’ by Solon (at least in the fragments that
survive) and, with perhaps the exception of the hektēmoroi and pelatai, would not
be called ‘poor’ by modern scholars.
Questions of definition and categorisation are not just semantic; they point to
a central difficulty in how to approach subaltern groups for whom little evidence
survives: who are we looking for when we look for the poor, and how do we read
the multiple intertwining discourses that construct poverty in different ways in
different times? At the very least, the differences between ancient and modern
understandings of poverty raise questions about the relative weight historians
might give to questions of subsistence, social exclusion or capability deprivation
in approaching the study of poverty and cause us to reflect on our own assumptions
about what that means.24 Valid though all these approaches are, they will reveal
different aspects of poverty. Indeed, they shape how the source material is inter-
rogated in the first place and pose the question to historians: what do we envisage
when we think of ancient poverty?

Poverty and debt

These questions can be explored further through the frame of debt. This was not
because debt was the preserve of the ‘poor’ but because debt was a major feature
of (as far as we can tell) all parts of the ancient Mediterranean world.25 Credit
relations were multiple, pervasive and cut across society in a variety of ways.
Political programmes rose and fell on the back of debt; legal systems attempted
to control it (or at least the responses to it); armies marched as a result of it; the
success of numerous farms—and the ability of populations to eat—rested on it.26
Lending and borrowing (with or without interest) were a fact of life for large
numbers of people regardless of wealth or social status.27 Because of the ubiquity
 Poverty, debt and dependent labour (Greek world) 85
of credit relations, we can use this as a way of thinking about issues of structure
and agency.
As Millett demonstrated, there was a wide variety of credit available in a city
like Athens, and this was governed by social relations.28 Indeed, the pervasiveness
of credit here highlights that loans were provided not just in a top-down fashion
from wealthy to poor but loaning and borrowing were located within diverse net-
works of relations, neighbours and other groups. We can see that in Athens large
numbers of wealthy men had money on loan, but credit was also available to, and
from, less well-off Athenians and involved larger networks than friends and fam-
ily. These were ‘frail networks’ for sure, consisting most likely of other similarly
non-wealthy people who both acted as creditors and contracted debts in multiple
ways.29 That is, although our source material only really presents credit and debt
relations among wealthier groups in any coherent way, we should be wary about
assuming that debt caused more problems for the poor than the rich.30
Did the rich and the poor have different motivations for borrowing? Many
discussions surrounding such practices suggest scholars believe they did. Millett
assumes, for example, that the poor contracted debts to avoid starvation, whereas
the rich did so in order to pay dowries, lease the estates of orphans, take on com-
mercial loans or pay liturgies.31 This implicitly assumes, however, that poverty is
defined solely by basic needs and that the poor behave differently to the non-poor.
The evidence, however, shows that both the rich and the poor were concerned with
providing funerals and dowries for their relatives, and both were concerned with
maintaining their standards of living, which suggests that behavioural patterns of
the rich and poor were broadly similar. Debt, particularly that arising from unfore-
seen circumstances, affected all social groups.32 Indeed, this fear—that wealth was
unstable and misfortune just lay around the corner—is prevalent in a wide variety
of Greek literary texts that derive from elite authors and speak to wide audiences.
However, to assume that the non-rich are not concerned with prestige is ques-
tionable; this is an illusion of the source material. Whilst it is certainly true that
the non-wealthy did not pay liturgies or need to raise money for Olympic chariots
(Millett’s examples of prestige goods), there were other forms of social recognition
that were equally as important for non-elite groups, such as pride in work, choral
singing and dedication at sanctuaries. Even ptōchoi are considered aidioi (worthy
of respect) in the Homeric poems.33 The problem is that if we follow too closely
the discourses of the elite, we miss the discourses of other groups and perpetuate
the categories of the former at the expense of the latter.
Kapēloi, for example, are often viewed in a negative light by our sources in
ways which highlight relations of power within Athenian society but through
which we can also raise questions about agency. They were viewed as deceptive,
opportunistic and greedy, over-charging, short-changing and fleecing customers
in taverns and inns as well as in the agora.34 In Aristophanes’ Wealth, Penia is
mistaken for a kapēlis, highlighting the low social status—and gender—that was
frequently associated with this group of people.35
However, it is also clear that kapēloi were centrally active within the kinds of
social networks that both acquired and provided credit. Not only did they contract
86 Claire Taylor
debts themselves (Theophr. Char. 6.9), they also lent to their customers (Lys. F 1,
Hermippos F 78).36 In some sense, this is perhaps no surprise given that they must
have been in regular contact with large numbers of people, especially if many
Athenians in the fifth and fourth centuries were fairly regularly purchasing (at
least some) food from markets or taverns.37 The widespread presence of kapēloi
in curse tablets highlights their visibility and centrality within social networks.38
Indeed, extending small-scale credit to customers is an extremely common practice
throughout history; in other contexts it can be seen to cement social ties, reproduce
social hierarchies and provide a means through which those with limited resources
could manage their basic needs.39 The fact that many kapēloi were women, met-
ics and/or freed slaves implies that these groups played a crucial role in credit
relations for non-elite residents of Athens, a pattern that interestingly mirrors that
which we see in the banks that catered to the wealthy.40 Some kapēloi were male
citizens to be sure; we might even suggest that those who lent to Aeschines the
Sokratic were, given that Lysias (F 1) says they bring actions (dikazontai) against
him. It is not necessary, however, to assume this: metics had access to justice via
the polemarch and are known to be active in dikai suits.41 The text is unsurprisingly
silent on the matter.
Borrowing from others, therefore, was a strategy that was available to many and
was widespread. We should not assume it was a feature of poverty any more than
it was a characteristic of wealth. Through such practices kapēloi—or kapēlides—
may have been able to negotiate their own positions as important members of
social networks within broader structures that denigrated or sought to isolate them.
In some circumstances, they were at the mercy of unscrupulous borrowers, as
implied by Theophrastos, but they were also central nodes in networks that could
use lending and borrowing to ameliorate hardship, cement social ties and perhaps
resist the alienation that the literary sources reflect. Those who were very poor
might have found these networks harder to access, but as Millett points out, even
the poorest had their labour to offer.42 This, however, raises some difficult ques-
tions about the practice of debt bondage within ancient societies.

Poverty and debt bondage

Debt bondage is a term that is used to describe various relationships of social and
economic dependency—the differences between which we can only sketch out
roughly in the ancient world.43 Perhaps more common than the surviving source
material suggests are indenture-like relationships, in which a debtor provides
labour for a creditor, usually to service a loan.44 In such cases, the loan is ‘real’
(e.g. the debtor receives seed to plant to enable next year’s crop to grow) and
labour is exchanged for collateral (e.g. agricultural labour on the creditor’s farm or
service within their household) for a limited period of time until the loan is repaid.
Alternately, a person may act as collateral for a loan or as a guarantee that the loan
will be repaid, becoming a kind of hostage to ensure repayment (pawnship). In
addition, sometimes a person is placed in the household of another as a result of a
legal judgement. These arrangements are well attested in Near Eastern sources.45 In
 Poverty, debt and dependent labour (Greek world) 87
the ancient Greek world, the latter is also documented in Crete and it seems likely
that Plangon’s service in the household of Myrrhine in Menander’s play Heros
(discussed further below) is an example of the former.46 Either way, the debtor or,
frequently, a member of his household—often female and/or enslaved—is trans-
ferred to the household of the creditor, sometimes for an agreed length of time,
although sometimes (often?) in practice in perpetuity, to work to repay the debt.
Antichretic loans involving people were forms of pawnship in that the labour of
the debtor was transacted in lieu of interest owed, often over long periods of time.47
Again, the person whose labour is transferred is likely to have been a member
of the household of the debtor (i.e. women, children, or slaves).48 Near Eastern
sources also make it clear that threats of distraint towards the household of the
debtor could act as inducements to pay, emphasising that debts were the concern
of the whole household, not the individual; in fact, in the case of pawns acting as
hostages in contexts of distraint, parallels from the ancient Near East only involve
women or animals.49
Alternately, as Finley observed, the ‘debt’ may also be fictitious in that it is trans-
acted not primarily to provide collateral for the debtor, but for the main purposes
of providing additional labour for the ‘creditor’ (that is, this is a disguised form of
indenture in which ‘debt bondage’ exists without any clear debt).50 Like pawnship,
this creates relations of dependency between households as labour is transferred
from one to another. The transferal of labour between households may be particu-
larly necessary at certain times in the agricultural year, e.g. when crops need to be
sown, but it also might be sought after on a more long-term basis. Indeed, Foxhall
has shown that larger landowners needed to acquire the labour of others (that is,
those outside their own households) in order to generate wealth, which implies ripe
conditions for such transactions.51 In Hesiod’s Works and Days, this is not just men
to work on the farm, but includes women whose skills are needed to process wool.52
Working for others was the characteristic that defined thēteia, but there was
clearly a fine line between selling one’s labour for, e.g., an agricultural season or
year, doing so as a result of a debt bondage-type arrangement, and slavery. Indeed,
this slippage allows Harris to translate thēteia (controversially) as ‘debt bondage’
and for Blok and Krul to dispute this.53 In practice there may have been as many
shades of dependency as households needing labour.
As a strategy to gain access to resources for those who had little, working for
others in such arrangements presumably provided food and shelter for defined
periods of time, thus alleviating households of a mouth to feed.54 But these arrange-
ments were no doubt precarious and had the potential to be seriously disruptive.
Jacquemin, for example, shows how thetes are portrayed as those without ties or
otherwise unattached (i.e. without a household to support on their own) which
implies that the ideal worker-for-hire be male, unmarried and relatively young.55
Obviously we have no idea what proportion of thetes fit this profile, nor how
many hired themselves out as a result of debt or the threat of debt, fictitious or
otherwise, but it is clear that in doing so they both created and reinforced relations
of dependency between richer and poorer households. Parallels from elsewhere,
and the household basis of economic transactions in general, suggests that being
88 Claire Taylor
placed in any form of debt bondage was, in fact, a particular threat to women,
children and slaves.56
However, debt bondage could also be used as a strategy to negotiate these rela-
tions of dependency, as is clear from the Cretan katakeimenoi who appear in the
Gortyn Code. Katakeimenoi could be either freemen whose labour was pledged to
another household, or slaves who, as a result of legal disputes, would be obliged
to work for a different household for a defined period of time before returning
to their previous household. Free katakeimenoi remained free, whereas enslaved
katakeimenoi were enslaved both before and after the agreed-upon period.57 As
Kristensen points out, one likely motivation for free katakeimenoi to agree to take
a position working in another’s household was precisely to keep their property
together in order to preserve it for inheritance purposes.58 It is likely that this group
used their labour, or that of members of their household, as a strategy to maintain,
and pass on, already existing property. Similar motivations might be deduced in
Mesopotamian and Hebrew texts where daughters were placed in pawnship with
clauses that they marry the creditor or a member of his household.59
It is worth pausing here to ask a question. Given that debt bondage is frequently
associated with poverty,60 in what sense were the katakeimenoi poor? Should they
be viewed in terms of the Athenian penētes, socially integrated, but working for
others? As recent research has shown, the penētes in Athens were well-integrated
into Athenian society (unsurprising given the political dominance of the demos),61
but can we say this was the case elsewhere? Oligarchic cities, like Gortyn, had
property qualifications that excluded at least some of the penētes from political
participation, which suggests, at the very least, that experiences of penia were dif-
ferent across the Greek world.
Or were the katakeimenoi more akin to ptōchoi, those who ‘had nothing,’ social
outcasts, defined by their inability to supply their basic needs? We might be tempted
to answer these questions by dividing the group according to status and viewing
free katakeimenoi as more like Athenian penētes, whereas slave katakeimenoi are
more like ptōchoi, but this raises further problems. Whilst slaves might sometimes
be seen as socially isolated, slave katakeimenoi in Gortyn had fairly robust legal
protections; their labour was simply transferred from one household to another.
Ptōchoi are normally characterised as itinerant, people on the verge of destitu-
tion who survived often through begging.62 Slave katakeimenoi were pawned to a
household for a defined period of time and it was in the interest of the temporary
master to ensure that their basic needs were met. Moreover, as highlighted by
Kristensen, it is not at all clear that free katakeimenoi were ‘poor’ at all.
Further research is undoubtedly needed, but these difficulties suggest that catego-
ries that are developed predominantly within the Athenian context might not neces-
sarily be a good guide for somewhere like Crete (or Sparta, or elsewhere). This is
because poverty is, at least in part, a social relation, therefore it takes meaning from
the society in which it appears, and underlines again the importance for historians
to be sensitive to the contexts in which people were—or are—categorised as poor
and consider the reasons for this categorisation. It also suggests that we should be
wary about associating all forms of debt bondage with poverty.
 Poverty, debt and dependent labour (Greek world) 89
Debt bondage and slavery
On the other hand, there are clearly features of debt bondage that overlap with slav-
ery. Regardless of the motivation that precipitates such actions, these are forms of
labour arrangements which function through asymmetrical relations of power and
below we will turn our attention more closely to the connections between forms of
debt bondage and the slave trade. But before we do so, it is necessary to consider
debt slavery and its similarities to and differences from debt bondage.
Typically, scholars have distinguished the various forms of debt bondage and
debt slavery in legal terms.63 The former is considered to be time-limited whereas
the latter is permanent unless the slave-owner decides to manumit. Debt-bondsmen
(or -bondswomen) remain legally ‘free,’ usually stay within their own community
to service the debt, and if the debt is paid off can return to their own household.
The Cretan katakeimenoi fall into this category, regardless of whether they were
free or slave to begin with. Debt slaves, on the other hand, are people who are
permanently enslaved as a result of a debt, considered no longer free and perhaps
sold outside their community.64
This legal distinction, however, disguises other significant aspects of depen-
dency, of which slavery is but one manifestation. Vlassopoulos demonstrates that
rather than being simply a question of property, relationships of domination are
central to understanding ancient slavery.65 The term douleia, he argues, expresses
not the ownership of one human by another but ‘the pragmatic result of the fact
that there exists inequality of power and wealth among individuals and communi-
ties. . . . It defined a situation in which an individual or community was under the
power of another individual or community.’66 These relations of power were just
as present between pawn and ‘creditor,’ whether they were regarded as legally
free or legally a slave; in fact, both existed in Gortyn, where slaves acting as debt-
bondsmen remained slaves and free remained free.
This explains why there could be considerable slippage between debt bondage
and slavery: the debt-bondsman or debt-bondswoman could become (effectively
or in reality) a slave over time as masters continued to control their labour and
exert their power over them and their families. Indeed, the fact that debts were
passed on within families demonstrates the long-term nature of such relations.67
This seems to have been part of the problem in pre-Solonian Athens where the
long-term impact of indebtedness on families is clear: Solon claims he brought
home those who were sold abroad so long ago that they were ‘no longer speaking
the Attic tongue’ (F 36).68
Legal distinctions between debt bondage and slavery as a result of debt are
undoubtedly important, but we should question whether these distinctions were
particularly significant or even perceptible from the point of view of those most
affected. Arguably they were not. Menander’s Heros provides food for thought
here. In this play, Plangon is working off a debt, first of her father, then of her
brother, through service in the household of Laches. Her father Tibeios, a former
slave himself, borrowed two minai from Laches (presumably his former master)
but died before paying off the loan. Her brother Gorgias then borrowed another
mina for Tibeios’ funeral and works also for Laches, like his father, as a shepherd.69
90 Claire Taylor
Interpretations of debt bondage in this fragmentary play have typically been
shaped by legalistic questions. This is because the terms of the debate have been
focused on the abolition in law (or otherwise) of debt bondage in Athens and the
maintenance of this ban by democratic institutions. Harris, for example, argues
that the play demonstrates the continuation of debt bondage (as opposed to debt
slavery) in Athens post-Solon. He objects to Ste. Croix and Millet ‘explain[ing]
away’ this passage; the former by stating the play was produced after the fall of the
democracy (and therefore that Solon’s law abolishing debt slavery was repealed)
and the latter by arguing that the family concerned were non-citizens (and there-
fore not covered by the law anyway).70 Legal questions notwithstanding, focusing
on the dependency relationships within the play reveals some important similari-
ties between debt bondage and slavery.
It is clear that Plangon has been pawned. She is placed in the household as
either collateral for the debts of her male relatives or as a guarantee it will be
repaid, she is not sold abroad and the arrangement appears to be understood as
temporary. How temporary this type of arrangement typically was, if it reflected a
common practice in real life, is a matter of conjecture. In the play it comes to an
end, not when the debt is repaid, but when Plangon and Gorgias are discovered to
be the birth children of Laches and Myrrhine, and therefore citizens themselves. As
Lape has shown, this conforms to various plot patterns of New Comedy, notably
those that stage concerns surrounding citizenship.71 A real life Plangon, however,
would have unlikely been in such a situation as depicted here, released from the
debt on discovery of her ‘true’ citizenship. Indeed, regardless of her citizenship
status, her actions were severely constrained by those of her male relatives with
the consequence that she is required to work in the household of another for an
unknown—but clearly not inconsiderable—length of time.
Furthermore, her work—she is ‘in service’ (diakonei) and works wool with her
mistress—is remarkably similar to the duties of a domestic slave and she is clearly
portrayed throughout the first part of the play in a servile fashion.72 Daos, another
slave in the household who has fallen in love with her, is granted permission by
Laches to marry her because they are both governed by the same relationship of
domination. She is described in the hypothesis as ‘a slave like him’ (homodou-
lon).73 That this betrothal falls apart when her ‘true’ identity is discovered and she
is married to Pheidias, a citizen, reinforces the importance of these relations of
power. That is, in terms of lived experience, the day-to-day existence of a woman
like Plangon was hardly that much different from that of a household slave. Her
brother might have paid off the debt eventually, but the time required to do so is
likely to have been long (here it is generational). From this perspective, Finley
was absolutely correct to say that ‘“sale” into bondage [i.e. debt slavery] and debt-
bondage cannot be distinguished very sharply.’74
Indeed debt bondage and debt slavery are not phenomena we can study in isola-
tion from slavery and the slave trade in general. This, of course, has not escaped the
attention of a number of historians. Finley’s evolutionary explanation, however—
that chattel slaves replaced debt bondsmen and other forms of dependent labour in
the archaic period—has been superseded by arguments that recognise that various
 Poverty, debt and dependent labour (Greek world) 91
forms of dependent labour developed in tandem with slavery and observe that,
in practice, they frequently appear together.75 Comparative evidence from pre-
colonial west Africa, where pawnship was common, shows a similar pattern. Here,
pawnship existed hand-in-hand with the growth of the transatlantic slave trade
and the development of overseas markets.76 Together, this suggests that various
forms of debt bondage (and other types of dependent labour) and slavery are
forms of dependency that are themselves manifestations of precarious economic
conditions—not just in the societies where debt bondage occurs—and reveal the
vulnerability of individuals and communities to the violence and domination of
others. That is they are both features and causes of social and economic inequality.

Debt bondage and the slave trade

In this section I wish to investigate further the relationship between some forms
of debt bondage and the slave trade with particular focus on Thrace, the Black
Sea regions, and Attica. The reason for doing so is to draw attention to the ways
in which these phenomena cut across individual polities and regions, develop-
ing in tandem and feeding off one another. Slavery, debt slavery and debt bond-
age are forms of dependency that are closely related: all three are manifestations
of inequality and reveal aspects of poverty that transcend status categories and
regions. Here we see in particular that legal distinctions between debt bondage and
debt slavery are less helpful than focusing on the conditions of precarity, depen-
dency and vulnerability that characterise poverty and inequality in the first place.
The slave trade between Athens and the Black Sea regions must have been
highly organised, profitable and systemic, despite the fact that little evidence sur-
vives that allows us to sketch in detail how this worked.77 Slaves were procured
through warfare, raiding and piracy, but the large numbers of slaves and their
consistent use over long periods of time suggests that these could not have been
the only mechanisms of supply.78 The presence of slaves in Thracian and Scythian
society suggests that there was local and regional demand for this form of labour
as well as from the Aegean world more broadly (Athens as well as other places).79
Slave markets are attested in a number of cities in the region, which may have been
geared predominantly towards Mediterranean export (though perhaps not solely).80
What other factors might have sustained the supply of slaves in this region? It is
widely recognised that local conditions in Thrace and surrounding areas played a
role here. The fact that there were many competing ‘tribes’ in the region, to whom
the accumulation of wealth was important and warfare between was frequent,
suggests highly stratified societies in which the exploitation of populations by
local elites was a significant factor.81 This certainly took the form of local elites
capturing enemies in war,82 but Testart and Brunaux suggest that pawning is also
a possible factor here, and there is some evidence to suggest that this linked into
the Aegean-wide slave trade.83
Although no source speaks directly about any form of debt bondage in this
region, Herodotus does provide some relevant evidence about Thracian society,
albeit filtered through a Greek lens. He states that the Thracians sold their children
92 Claire Taylor
for export and had polygamous marriages arranged through the payment of a bride
price.84 Testart and Brunaux argue that this is not just a literary trope that otherises
the Thracians, but that these practices were accurately reported (at least in their
general form) by Herodotus.85 They suggest that these marriage practices created
the conditions for debt as the accumulation of wealth was a major factor in the
ability of men to be able to marry and debts could be incurred in order for them to
do so. Ethnographic comparisons from pre-colonial west Africa suggest also that
bride wealth, polygamy and pawning went hand-in-hand as additional wives and
their children were placed in the households of creditors as collateral for loans.86
If this is the case for Thrace, pawning may have been significant and would have
predominantly affected women and children. Echoes of this practice can perhaps
be seen in Greek observations of the prevalence of Thracian women working in
the fields; this would be the likely destination of many pawns sent as an additional
labour source to wealthier households.87
Women and children who were pawned were also vulnerable to becoming debt
slaves, to being sold outright, or to being captured. The mechanisms by which this
happens are, however, poorly understood. Near Eastern sources frequently outline
the time limits of service, but also explicitly state that a pledged wife could be
sold into slavery if a debt was not repaid.88 Women and children were particularly
at risk from being captured in war and raids across the ancient world.89 Given
the prevalence (and social significance) of warfare in Thrace, it is possible that
pawns were fairly easily transferred outside of the ‘creditor’s’ household through
capture or sale without the objection of their own kin.90 Pawns could also have
been transferred as part of trade dealings, akin to the ‘commercial hostage taking’
of the west African slave trade.91 There is no direct evidence for this stage of the
process admittedly, although slaves are certainly embedded within networks of
exchange in Thrace.92
It has been noted in other historical societies that women and children were
especially vulnerable here too not least because they were sought after by slave
traders who may have considered them to be more docile and easier to control than
adult men.93 Not all Thracian slaves were female of course, but it is noteworthy
in this context that large numbers of Thracian slaves in Athens were. On the Attic
stelai, it is often noted that Thracians form the largest group, but rarely noticed that
almost half of these Thracians were women.94 Indeed, of the female slaves listed
on these inscriptions, only two are not from Thrace.95 Other evidence confirms the
impression that women made up a relatively large contingent of Thracian slaves:
Thratta is the most common name for female slave characters in Aristophanic
comedy suggesting that this formed some kind of stereotype.96 Moreover, Thra-
cian women are well represented in the epigraphic evidence: they form the largest
group of people commemorated in Bäbler’s catalogue of foreigners in Athens.97
Thracian women, it seems, were well enough known that they were stereotyped as
being industrious and considered a good source of wet-nurses or nannies.98 Female
and child slaves are also explicitly mentioned in a number of the Pontic lead let-
ters.99 Elsewhere, Thracian women are manumitted at twice the rate of Thracian
men in the Delphi inscriptions.
 Poverty, debt and dependent labour (Greek world) 93
The Greek belief that the Thracians ‘[sold] their children for export’ therefore
may allude to more than a response to short-term economic problems such as
harvest failure,100 but instead to deeper social inequalities that located Thracian
practices within divergent forms of credit relations and labour extraction which, at
present, we can only guess at. Local and regional demand for slaves was certainly
present, but the (additional? much greater?) demand from Greek cities like Athens
was a key driver of the slave supply within Thrace and beyond. That is to say that
although debt slavery was abolished in Athens in the sixth century, this does not
mean that it did not affect Athens as Athenians bought slaves who may well have
been enslaved because of debt or were captured pawns.101 In fact, Athenian demand
for slaves elided various distinctions in dependent labour-regimes elsewhere, con-
tributed to the conditions that encouraged debt slavery, intensified the inequalities
of other regions and supported what was, in all likelihood, a highly gendered
system of interlocking dependencies.102 Although the process is difficult to parse,
similar patterns might be seen in other contexts where we know that forms of debt
bondage were prevalent such as Phrygia, Israel or Mesopotamia. More research
needs to be done.

Poverty, debt and dependent labour: some conclusions

Thinking about poverty, debt and dependent labour from below therefore raises a
number of important questions that interlink in various ways. It shows how debt,
various forms of debt bondage, and slavery intertwine across time and space, cre-
ating systems of dependency and structuring social and economic relations, but
does not necessarily assume that those involved were always poor. It is not always
the case that all forms of debt bondage occurred as a result of abject poverty; we
have seen in Crete (with parallels from other historical societies) that pawning was
a mechanism through which assets could be preserved or liquidity maintained.
Rather it highlights the need to interrogate how poverty is constructed through
these interlocking practices and the real-world consequences of this. Moreover, it
suggests that debt bondage as a catch-all term to describe all forms of dependent
labour outlined here may be conceptually too broad.
In addition, the perspective from below highlights the constraints placed on
people in precarious situations and, in particular, the vulnerability of women and
children to different forms of dependency relations that (from our perspective)
shade into one another. On the other hand, it also allows us to view these groups
as historical agents shaping transregional economies and social relations across the
Aegean. It may be the case, for example, that pawnship in Thrace was sustained
not just by local inequalities, but by the slave trade in general and Aegean-wide
demand for Thracian slaves.
Of course, such conclusions shine a light once more onto questions of evidence,
how we can interrogate the kinds of source material we can use and to question
how it has come into being, but also to reflect on the process of doing ancient his-
tory from below. As ancient historians, can we position ourselves as interlocutors
with people in the past rather than solely interpreters of it from a distance? Perhaps
94 Claire Taylor
by centring the kapēlis, the debtor, the pawn or the enslaved person within our
inquiries, being sensitive to the discourses that categorise people in certain ways
and foregrounding (and critiquing) the historical agency of marginalised groups
we can begin to do so. We can also acknowledge that although there is much we
have lost, that all is not lost, and that the attempt is, in and of itself, worthwhile:

The contradictory attempt to ‘know’ the past, to become acquainted with the
human beings who made it, leads us through archival sources that refuse to
yield clear pictures. But because the archives provide unique clues about
power relations, and about the human, moral, and philosophical quandaries
faced by the people who produced them and by the people whose shadows
inhabit them, we cannot afford to do without them. In my experience, it
is the process itself that keeps us honest: getting one’s hands dirty in the
archival dust, one’s shoes encrusted in the mud of field work; confronting
the surprises, ambivalences, and unfair choices of daily life, both our own
and those of our ‘subjects.’ However poignantly our search is conditioned by
the understanding that we will never know for sure, occasionally, just for a
moment, someone comes out of the shadows and walks next to us. When, in
a flash of interactive dialogue, something is revealed; when, for a brief span,
the curtain parts, and I am allowed a partial view of protagonists’ motivations
and internal conflicts—for me, those are the moments that make the quest
worthwhile.103

Notes
1 See, e.g., Guha 1997; Spivak and Morris 2010 for a selection of some of the debates.
2 Ste. Croix 1981, 137, 162; Millett 1991, 78; Harris 2002, 429–30; Vlassopoulos 2016,
425–6. This is also true in other historical contexts: Austin and Lovejoy 1994, 120.
3 Morley 2006, 31–32.
4 Vlassopoulos 2016; Courrier and Tran, this volume.
5 Taylor 2017.
6 Green and Hulme 2005, 869. In the context of the ancient world, see the chapters in
Taylor (forthcoming).
7 Markle 1985, 268–71; Rosivach 1991; Lenfant 2013; Galbois and Rougier-Blanc
2014a, 39–44.
8 Ober 2010; Kron 2011; Cecchet 2015.
9 Kloft 1988; Roubineau 2013; Coin-Longeray 2014, 177–201; Cecchet 2015.
10 Jacquemin 2013; Coin-Longeray 2014, 183. Agyrtai (‘beggar priests’) might be con-
sidered in this category too: on which, see Eidinow 2017.
11 Lister 2004.
12 See also Lenfant 2013; Roubineau 2010, 2013.
13 See Rougier-Blanc 2014. For similar problems within iconographical studies, see
Villanueva-Puig 2013; Jacquet-Rimassa 2014.
14 Solon F4; Ath. Pol. 2.2, 6.1; Plut. Sol. 13.4–5. That these are not necessarily connected
see Noussia Fantuzzi 2010, 34–37.
15 There is considerable debate as to the precise nature of the reforms, e.g. on who the
hektēmoroi were (Rihll 1991; Van Wees 1999), precisely what removing the horoi
did (Harris 1997; Ober 2006), whether Solon abolished debt bondage or just enslave-
ment for debt (Finley 1981a; Harris 2002), and on the causes and consequences of the
 Poverty, debt and dependent labour (Greek world) 95
reforms (see overviews by Forsdyke 2006; Noussia Fantuzzi 2010; Zurbach 2013). On
the Near Eastern context of various aspects of the reforms, see Blok and Krul 2017.
16 Ath. Pol. 2.2: the penētes—identified as pelatai and hektēmoroi (see subsequent discus-
sion)—and their families were enslaved to the plousioi in pre-Solonian times; Andro-
tion FGH 324 F 34: the penētes welcomed cancellation of debts and reduction of
interest rates (see Rhodes 1993: 168 on some of the anachronisms here); Plut. Sol.
13.2: the disparity (anōmalias) between the penētes and the plousioi led to instability
in the polis.
17 Penichros is predominantly found in lyric poetry and falls out of regular use after the
archaic period (see Coin-Longeray 2014, 146–8; Werlings 2014, 73).
18 See Noussia Fantuzzi 2010, 38–39, 469; Lewis 2007.
19 Solon mostly uses the terms kakoi and dēmos (i.e. not explicitly the poor) who are
contrasted with the agathoi. See, e.g., Solon F 4, F 5, F 15, F 37, F 36 (kakoi contrasted
with esthloi and agathoi) for similar contrasts. That he is not especially concerned with
economic reform is argued by Noussia Fantuzzi 2010, 40–41.
20 Solon F 15: πολλοὶ γὰρ πλουτεῦσι κακοί, ἀγαθοὶ δὲ πένονται. This role reversal is a
topos of archaic lyric poetry: see, e.g., Thgn. 315–8.
21 Plut. Sol. 3.2: ‘he [Solon] classified himself among the penētes rather than the plou-
sioi.’ Solon did not place himself on the side of the penētes (the term is not securely
attested before the fifth century); he is concerned, rather, with ethical behaviour. See
Noussia Fantuzzi 2010, 446–8.
22 Noussia Fantuzzi 2010: 279, 448; Rosivach 1992, 156.
23 Ath. Pol. 2.2. See Rhodes 1993, 90–97. Note that neither term is attested in the surviv-
ing fragments of Solon’s poetry and Noussia Fantuzzi (2010, 31) thinks it is unlikely
that pelates was used by Solon.
24 Compare Gallant 1991; Roubineau 2013; Taylor 2017.
25 On debt in general, see Graeber 2011. Ancient Near East: Westbrook and Jasnow 2001;
Hudson and Van de Mieroop 2002. Greece: Finley 1981b; Millett 1991. Rome: Shaw
1975; Bernard 2016 with literature cited there; Rosillo-López, this volume.
26 Asheri 1969; Hudson 2002.
27 Historians inevitably differ on its interpretation: compare, e.g., Finley 1985; Millett
1991 with Cohen 1992; Harris 2013 for Athens.
28 Millett 1991.
29 E.g. eranoi loans: Millett 1991, 153–9; Thomsen 2014; but also interest bearing loans
obtainable through (e.g.) obolostatēs (Theophr. Char. 6.9). On ‘frail networks,’ see
Lemercier and Zalc 2012.
30 On the public debts of the wealthy and/or prominent, see Hunter 2000.
31 Millett 1991, 75–84.
32 As indeed Millett 1991, 59–64 acknowledges.
33 Hom. Od. 14.56–8. See Cairns 2011, 30.
34 Kapēleia is a generic word that covers a range of retail from small-scale peddlers,
shopkeepers and tavern- or inn-keepers: see Finkelstein 1935. For their bad reputation,
see, e.g., Dem. 25.46, Antiphanes F 157, 159. See also Pl. Leg. 915d—7d (with Leese
2017, 50–53) for a lengthy discussion of some of the assumptions about kapēloi. In
general Kurke 1989; Leese 2017.
35 Kapēlides are very well attested in Athens: IG 22.1553.16–18, 1566.12–14, 1557.51–4;
Def. tab. Wünsch 68, 87; SGD 11, Ar. Thesm. 347–50. There are also a number of
female specialist sellers attested: IG 13.546, IG 22.1554.40–3, 1570.73, 12073, 11254.
36 Millett 1991, 179–88.
37 This is the resounding implication of recent research which emphasises the abundance
of references to kapēloi of various descriptions within literary evidence (Harris and
Lewis 2016) and increasingly frequent identification of agora sites throughout Attica (IG
22.1174 (Halai Aixonides), 1180 (Sounion), 1202 (Aixone), 2500 (Thria), Kakavogianni
2009a (Myrrhinous), Kakavogianni 2009b (Paiania), Kaza-Papageorgiou et al. 2009, 209
96 Claire Taylor
(Besa)). On the gap between discourses about kapēloi and their social reality, see also
Vlassopoulos 2016, 432–3.
38 Def. tab. Wünsch 68, 70, 75, 87, SGD 11, 43. See Eidinow 2007, 196.
39 See Lemercier and Zalc 2012 on the dangers of viewing this as ‘informal’ lending. As
is clear, this form of credit was widespread.
40 Cohen 1992. On women collecting loans: Harris 1992.
41 Ath. Pol. 58.2–3. See Todd 1993, 194–9.
42 Millett 1991, 74–75, 77–78.
43 Falola and Lovejoy 1994a: 1–2; Testart 2002; Stanziani and Campbell 2013, 2–3.
44 See, e.g., Millett 1991, 78.
45 Guarantors/hostages: Steinkeller 2001, 50–51; Westbrook 2001, 73, 85. Legal judge-
ments: Radner 2001, 281–2.
46 Crete: Kristensen 2004, 77–78.
47 Falola and Lovejoy 1994a, 3; Lovejoy 2014, 66. In general see Taubenschlag 1955,
286–91. Paramonē clauses also dictate the terms of labour for freed slaves.
48 Garfinkle 2004, 5; Justel and Justel 2015.
49 Westbrook 2001, 84–86.
50 Finley 1981a, 153–6; Murray 1993, 190; Zurbach 2013, 628–31.
51 Foxhall 2003.
52 Hes. Op. 603–4.
53 Harris 2002, 419; Blok and Krul 2017, 618.
54 Schaps 2004, 150–3.
55 Jacquemin 2013, 10.
56 Falola and Lovejoy 1994a; Westbrook 2001, 84–89; Justel and Justel 2015.
57 Kristensen 2004; Lewis 2018, 73–74.
58 Kristensen 2004, 77–78.
59 Garroway 2014, 140, argues that this might be seen as a form of social mobility.
60 Ste. Croix 1981, 163; Millett 1991, 77–78; Testart 2002, 178 but see also Lovejoy 2014
for the contrary position.
61 Lenfant 2013; Roubineau 2013.
62 Kloft 1988, though see also Cecchet 2015.
63 Ste. Croix 1981, 136–7; Harris 2002.
64 Testart 2002, 175–8. Lovejoy 2014, following Testart, stresses the role of kinship in
distinguishing the two.
65 Vlassopoulos 2011.
66 Vlassopoulos 2011, 120.
67 Falola and Lovejoy 1994a, 5–6; Testart 2002. The marriage of female pawns to mem-
bers of the household of their father’s creditor in Near Eastern sources also demon-
strates this: see the numerous examples in Garroway 2014, 113–40.
68 See Noussia Fantuzzi 2010, 471–2.
69 Men. Her. 27–36.
70 Harris 2002, 420–1, with n. 22; Ste. Croix 1981, 163; Millett 1991, 78.
71 Lape 2004.
72 Men. Her. 38–39.
73 Men. Her. hypothesis line 6.
74 Finley 1981a, 151.
75 Finley 1981a; Van Wees 2003; Zurbach 2013. In Rome: Kleijwegt 2013.
76 Falola and Lovejoy 1994a; Austin and Lovejoy 1994.
77 Finley 1981c; Taylor 2001; Gavriljuk 2003; Avram 2007.
78 Finley 1981c; Taylor 2001.
79 See Archibald 2013 for the regional character of exchange in the northern Aegean
with comments on slavery at pp. 118–23 and Lewis 2018, 279–82, for regional (and
chronological) patterns within the Aegean slave trade.
 Poverty, debt and dependent labour (Greek world) 97
80 IGBulg. III-1 1114 (Philippopolis, late fourth/early third century BC) makes reference
to a panēgyris for Apollo which might be a venue for a periodic local or regional
market (see Tzochev 2015, 418–9); elsewhere these are attested as venues of buying
and selling slaves: Siewert and Taeuber 2013, no. 13 (Aktion), Paus. 10.32.15–16
(Tithorea), Polyb. 5.8.5 (Thermon). SEG 48.1024 attests to the selling of a slave from
Borysthenes (Olbia) to Phanagoria (see Vinogradov 1998, 160–3, no. 3) and possibly
further afield (Avram 2007: 240). Inter-regional slave markets are attested at Byzan-
tium: Polyb. 4.38.4, 50.2, Tanais: Str. 11.2.3, Abdera: SEG 47.1026 (see Archibald
2013, 121–2), Colchis: Braund and Tsetskhladze 1989, Olbia: SEG 48.988, 54.694
(see Gavriljuk 2003, 80–1; Avram 2007, 240–1). Possibly Pistiros: Avram 2007, 241;
Archibald 2013, 122–3, Istria: Hind 1994. Avram (2007, 242) argues that many Thra-
cian slaves were shipped to the Mediterranean via slave markets of the west Pontic
cities.
81 Finley 1981c, 175; Braund and Tsetskhladze 1989, 118; Lewis 2018, 283–6.
82 Xen. An. 7.4.2.
83 Testart and Brunaux 2004.
84 Hdt 5.6.1.
85 This is accepted by Archibald 2013, 118; 2015, 386, 388; Braund and Tsetskhladze
1989, 117–8. Polygamy is also noted by Str. 7.3.3.
86 Falola and Lovejoy 1994a, 11–2. These loans might be accrued for the purpose of
marriage given that this was a major expense, but need not be. The point is that wives
and children in polygamous marriages are often vulnerable to such arrangements.
87 Pl. Leg. 7.805de.
88 See Westbrook 2001, 73–4.
89 Gaca 2010. See Xen. An. 6.3.2–4 for an example in Thrace.
90 Note in this context Antiphon 5.20 which describes Thracians travelling on board a
ship sailing from Mytilene to Ainos who had arranged a ransom for some ‘andrapo-
dized’ Thracians and Aelian F 71, which mentions a trader, Dionysios, who bought a
female slave from Colchis ‘whom the Machyles, a local tribe, had carried off.’
91 In the Bight of Benin and Biafra children especially were placed with traders as collat-
eral, following local pawning practices and through which parents intended to redeem,
but the traders viewed such transactions differently, i.e. as sales, since pawning was
not prevalent within the Islamic societies of the traders: see Lovejoy 2014, 71. Might
similar cultural differences lie behind Hdt 5.6.1?
92 Pollux 7.14, SEG 26.845, 42.710, 54.694.
93 Morton and Lovejoy 1994; Ojo 2013.
94 IG 13.421–30. This is a much greater female–male ratio than we find in almost any
other source.
95 IG 13.422.79–80: Polyxsene of Macedonia; IG 13.421.49: Lyde. Possibly Melitten[os]
should read Melitten[e]: IG 13.421.48. There is never more than one woman from any
other ‘ethnic’ group, though this may be disguised by naming practices of masters, on
which see Tsetskhladze 2008; Vlassopoulos 2015. Unsurprisingly there are far fewer
women recorded in the Laurion region or on naval lists, other important sources of
slave names.
96 Ar. Ach. 273, Pax 1138, Thesm. 279–94, Vesp. 828. See also Ar. Lys. 184 for a
Skythaina.
97 Bäbler 1998.
98 Bäbler 2005.
99 SEG 26.845, 48.988, 47.1175. Other letters may have included female slaves, but
the collective noun is masculine. Further afield, Xenophon’s peltast, once a slave in
Athens and presumably sold as a child, recognized the language of the Makrones
on the southern shores of the Black Sea, three days’ march from Colchis: Xen. An.
4.8.4–7.
98 Claire Taylor
100 Braund and Tsetskhladze 1989, 117; Tzochev 2015, 421.
101 See also Ar. Plut. 147–8: Karion appears to have entered slavery via this route.
102 On slave demand as a destabilising force, see Lewis 2018, 285–6.
103 Mallon 1994, 1507.

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5 Destitute, homeless and
(almost) invisible
Urban poverty and the rental
market in the Roman world
Cristina Rosillo-López

Introduction
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and
well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing
and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in
the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other
lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
(Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948, article 25)1

In general terms, definitions of poverty that have been applied to the Roman
world have focused on food and living standards in general, while few have
focused on housing specifically. However, the United Nations’ definition of
poverty includes both food and shelter, addressing housing poverty as an
impactful category to be considered a basic need.2 Housing is a human neces-
sity; as such, it also reflects the inequalities of human existence. It is so in our
times, and it was so in ancient Rome. While some people owned several houses
and enjoyed private rooms, elsewhere, whole families squeezed into just a few
square meters.
Storey has argued that ‘the true poverty of ancient Rome is defined by life
in the tiniest, most cramped upper-floor apartments in apartment houses.’3 The
following pages attempt to demonstrate that the true poverty of ancient Rome is
defined by people who lived unsheltered, and who fell into homelessness. If we
want to develop a real economic history from below, we have to look at those who
were totally outside the housing market; the unsheltered people, the urban poor,
who lived in slums, or were homeless in the city of Rome. If housing is a human
necessity, what happened to those for whom housing was actually a luxury? Can
we reconstruct their experience in Rome? What were their challenges, and where
did they end up? Finally, can we integrate them into a study of the housing market
in Rome?
This study will first survey contemporary terms such as slums, homeless-
ness and poverty, before analysing what living conditions were like in Rome
at the bottom of the economic scale, and the experience of homeless people
in the city.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003005148-7
 Destitute, homeless and (almost) invisible 105
Slums, homelessness and poverty
The existence of slums in Rome, the circumstances of slum-dwellers and the daily
lives of the homeless are, as expected, difficult to grasp through the available
sources. Due to the nature of their shelter (or lack of it), archaeological sources
encounter many difficulties when trying to trace these people. Furthermore, the
modest nature of a dwelling was not always linked to the modest or poor eco-
nomic or social status of its dwellers.4 Literary sources talk occasionally about
poverty and sometimes even destitution, but they do so with a literary objective
in mind.5 Beggars, for instance, are ostensibly absent from most Roman texts, but
that absence should not make us think they can be erased from history.6 Poverty
is a multifaceted and complex phenomenon, of difficult definition even today; in
antiquity, the concept of poverty was wrapped in multiple categories, social hier-
archies and ethical discourses.7
Slums can be defined as closely packed housing units in poor condition, without
access to adequate infrastructure such as water supply, and inhabited by impover-
ished people. There is a great variety in the composition, size and quality of slums,
from shanty houses to more durable dwellings. Today, slum-dwellers make up a
third of the world’s urban population, around 863 million people (2012).8 Common
causes for the existence of contemporary slums are made up of a complex mixture
of political, demographic, social and economic circumstances: rapid rural-to-urban
migration, poor planning, economic crises, poverty, inequality, natural disasters
and social conflict. Rapid rural-to-urban migration often means that migrants have
a hard time finding housing in cities, since the number of available housing units
is not great enough to satisfy such a sudden influx of population, and urban infra-
structure can be stretched beyond its limits. Slums typically originate in the least
desirable parts of a city, where less population pressure exists. For this reason, the
outskirts of cities are often one of the main locations. They typically emerge in
places with difficult access: on the sides of mountains or in flood plains. Regardless
of their location, their inhabitants usually have no legal right to live there and so
may experience continuous insecurity regarding their shelter. Furthermore, such
insecurity typically precludes them from upgrading their facilities, as they face
the constant fear of their shelters being torn down, leaving them even more at the
mercy of natural disasters.9 Finally, slum-dwellers are more prone to high rates
of disease due to their lack of adequate infrastructure (clean water, availability of
sewers), malnutrition and overcrowding.
Homelessness is defined as the state of being without permanent housing. The
definition varies widely from country to country; in some, people living in shanty
town structures, tent cities or the like, and even squatters, can count as homeless.10
The number of homeless people throughout the world is difficult to quantify, not
only because of the various different definitions of homelessness but also because
of the elusive nature of many of their sleeping arrangements.11 Homelessness is
considered not as a static state but rather as a process. Scholars have pointed out
that homelessness is not just the state of not having a shelter but also the absence of
a ‘home,’ that is, an ‘experience place’ that serves as a base for cultivating human
106 Cristina Rosillo-López
relationships and establishing an identity; such a lack creates psychological, health
and socio-economic deficiencies.12

Is it possible to study homelessness in ancient Rome

from below?
Rome was the ancient megalopolis in which a population of up to one million
people had to find living quarters.13 The model of the ‘urban graveyard effect’
posits that, in pre-modern cities, deaths exceeded births due to the dreadful sanitary
conditions, and the resulting lack of natural population growth was compensated
for by migration.14 Being poor in Rome brought with it a vulnerability to food
shortages and natural hazards, and almost certain exclusion from the reciprocal
patron-client relationship, cutting poor people off from any support network, since
they had nothing to offer. In the mentality of the Roman elite, in contrast with the
idealised rural poor, urban poverty was linked with rebellion and crime.15 It is a
complex debate that is far from settled.16 Lo Cascio has argued that early modern
cities, upon which the model is mainly based, had variable populations, and that
the unsanitary conditions in the city of Rome were not as extreme as previous
studies had proposed;17 therefore the ‘urban graveyard effect’ does not accurately
describe Rome’s population increase. Courrier suggests that the plebs frumentaria
was not hit as hard by poverty as recent migrants, who could not easily access to
the distributions and sales of grain at low prices.18
For the study of the ancient world, as is the case in more recent definitions of
poverty, it is more useful to leave aside an absolute definition of poverty, based
on a specific property line below which someone could be considered poor or
on a fixed set of criteria, and adopt a sliding scale of poverty, which is fluid and
according to context.19 Poverty is thus not an objective economic condition, but
an experience set in a given social and cultural context. Contemporary definitions
of poverty establish a difference between structural and conjunctural poverty. The
first category refers to those who are born and die poor, while the second refers to
those who fall into poverty through misfortune. Free urban dwellers in Rome were
more likely to have been overrepresented among the structural poor, since they
relied on their own capacity to find a job (in contrast with slaves), and were cut off
from patronage relationships: the chronically ill and disabled, disabled veterans
and the unsupported elderly formed part of such a group.20 The conjunctural poor
were those struck down by temporary situations such as famine, war and debt:
often, for instance, the labouring urban poor, migrants and foreigners.21 Morley
has pointed out that this distinction is not always clear, especially in the case of
widows and orphans.22 Another question refers to the difference between poverty
and destitution, the latter being an extreme form of poverty.23 Ancient Greek, for
instance, established a difference between poor (penestai) and destitute (ptochoí).24
Egens and pauper in Latin approximate those expressions but, in the end, are
subjective terms.25 In Latin, inopia, inops, egestas and egentes were the poorest
of the poor; other concepts, such as mediocres, imply a lower social, rather than
economic, status.26
 Destitute, homeless and (almost) invisible 107
On the basis of Augustine, Carrié has analysed the obvious elements of poverty
in ancient Rome, such as the lack of food, domicile or any income or property.27
In any case, Scheidel has argued plausibly that Roman society was not defined
by the dichotomy of rich versus poor, with no middle gradations; nuances were
widespread, and there was a big difference between a poor and a destitute person.28
Publius Iuventius Celsus, a jurist who was active at the beginning of the second
century CE, discussed a case in which someone planted or built upon land of other
persons and then he was evicted. If he was a poor person (pauper), he may need to
sell his house or the tombs of his ancestors; he may be poor, but he had still a roof
under which to live.29 This example leads to my third point: there is a conceptual
problem with much of the modern historiography about Roman poverty, which
has lumped together mass of peoples whose experiences were different under the
same category. In the case of the present study, beggars and homeless people have
been considered to be roughly the same.30 In all likelihood, the reality was much
more nuanced; such sweeping statements conflate thousands of people and situa-
tions into one big amorphous crowd. Not all beggars lived in the streets, and not
all those who lived in the streets or in slums were beggars.31 For the sake of this
study, I will set aside all references exclusively to beggars and their behaviour,
with the exception of their living arrangements (and I will specifically note that
they refer to beggars). This methodology will allow us to overcome the previously
mentioned dichotomy of rich and poor by constructing a more defined sub-division
among those at the lower end of the scale. It provides more adequate and nuanced
categories for the study of the urban poor and, especially the context of their rela-
tionship to their access to, and exclusion from, the rental market.
Could we recover the voice and agency of homeless people from the sources
and analyse them through the lens of history from below? How could we go
beyond stereotypes and clichés regarding the urban homeless? Historians of the
eighteenth century, such as A. Farge and T. Hitchcock, have attempted to recover
the voices and experiences of poor people. Farge centred upon the experience
of the street in Paris, pointing out the richness and complexity of the sociability,
relationships and even the violence that occurred in it, through the perspective
of the people themselves, not of the administrators, thinkers or philanthropes.32
Hitchcock has carried out a similar study in London, refusing to consider them
just as pegs of a machinery that led to the modern administration and modern
State. At the same time, he had denounced the fixation of historians with the
‘middling sort’ and the history of consumption, leaving poor people aside or, at
best, just considering them through statistical studies that dehumanise them. For
him, a real history of poverty from below has to take into account the economic
role of activities related to charity and beggary, and focus on their agency and
survival strategies to balance out the limitations of public or private assistance.33
A similar exercise for the ancient Roman world collides with the limitation of
sources; Farge and Hitchcock have used as their main source accounts of trials,
legal statements, newspaper accounts and police reports, which are not available
for previous centuries. Furthermore, only Hitchcock has briefly breached the sub-
ject of homeless people.34
108 Cristina Rosillo-López
This methodological problem is symptomatic of the study of homelessness: it is
a research issue difficult to grasp, even nowadays, because of its very nature. The
picture gets more complicated for the ancient Roman world: if elite sources did
rarely paid attention to the lives of people in poverty, the homeless were absolutely
out of their interests. As we shall see, homeless people figure only in certain kinds
of sources; first of all, as part of the background, when historians such as Tacitus
or Appian mention the consequences of natural disasters or of political decisions
that dispossessed people from their lands. Secondly, as characters in poetry, the
subjects of the mockery and scorn of the poet, such as Martial or Juvenal. Finally,
as legal figures whose actions should be controlled and punished if they interfered
with private property, as in the works of the jurists Gaius and Ulpian or in the
Theodosian Code. We should not forget that history from below should be studied
in the context of relationships of power and domination. How far could we grasp
the social and economic life of homeless people in Rome through those sources?
First of all, we should keep in mind the presence of topoi and literary construc-
tions, since those sources had their own literary objectives. If we take Juvenal or
Martial, for instance, at their face’s value, the city of Rome was full of poor people
who lived in buildings that were about to crumble at any moment; Courrier has put
forward that some scholars have read those sources without paying close atten-
tion and that the reality is much more nuanced.35 Secondly, even if occasionally it
would not be possible to reach that socio-economic reality, we could still at least
consider them a reflection of the mentalities of the upper classes regarding home-
less people.36 These methodological reflections having being raised, the following
pages will attempt to recover the experiences and agency of homeless people in
the Roman world.

The difficulties of living in Rome

Renting lodgings in Rome was more expensive than in other cities in Italy or
probably any other Roman province.37 After the civil war, Caesar enacted a mea-
sure that established a maximum price for rents of 2,000 sesterces for the city of
Rome and 500 sesterces for the rest of Italy—four times more in the capital.38 A
freedman in the second century BC paid 2,000 sesterces a year for a cenaculum,
the lowest rent recorded for such type of home.39 However, it should be noted
that literary sources mention the prices of rents of well-off people, such as sena-
tors, knights or moneyed freedmen, and mostly with a moralising objective.40 We
should not have the impression that 2,000 sesterces represented a minimum price
for the rental market in Rome in general, but for the upper tier of the market.
Furthermore, we do not know what kind of cenaculum is being discussed. In the
Satyricon, one as per night was paid for an unpleasant room.41 Some papyri from
Roman Egypt mention rental prices: if we look at the bottom end of the scale, the
lowest price for a house with a courtyard was 20 drachmai p.a. (for half a house)
and 26 drachmai p.a. (for a whole house) in the second century AD, and 8 drach-
mai p.a. for half a house with a courtyard at the end of the first century AD.42 For
rooms, the lowest price attested in AD 173 for the two-year lease of a dining room
 Destitute, homeless and (almost) invisible 109
and storeroom was 20 drachmai.43 We are probably not dealing here with the low-
est level of property. Sixty drachmai, for instance, allowed for the purchase of
half a house with a courtyard in Soknopaiou Nesos; the difference is not that big,
even allowing for the differences in location and their unknown size and state.44
In Rome, there was no housing planning in the sense of providing people with
adequate housing. The jurist Gaius stated that some considered food the only
essential requirement for living; the late republican jurist Ofilius, a contempo-
rary of Cicero, added clothing and some bedding or bedclothes.45 Lodging of any
kind was not considered a basic necessity.46 In ancient Greece, Coin-Longeray has
suggested that the mild climate could be the reason for this; however, in parts of
Greece, and in Rome, cold weather (and sometimes very cold weather) is an annual
occurrence. It probably had more to do with a view of the world in which food was
considerably more necessary than housing. In any case, governments only began
to worry about the basic necessity of housing from the twentieth century onwards,
and the extent to which the State should provide an answer to that need is still a
subject for debate. Taking that context into account, mild weather does not seem
a very convincing explanation.
The Senate (later the emperor) and the magistrates, who were in charge of the
city, did focus on infrastructure (aqueducts, roads) and on food supply (annona);47
regarding housing, throughout the Republic and Principate a number of laws were
passed that restricted, for instance, the number of floors that could be built, or
the material that could be used in their construction.48 Other imperial laws tried
to prevent property speculation. For instance, two decrees of the Senate (senatus
consultum Hosidianum Vagellianum, AD 47, and senatus consultum Volusianum
Cornelianum, AD 56: FIRA I, nº 45) legislated against speculation in urban resi-
dential property (negotiandi causa), forbidding the purchase of private dwellings
in order to demolish and rebuild them. Both documents seem to have applied to
Rome, and probably also to Italy.49 They also addressed how speculation could
become a problem, describing it as ‘this most cruel form of profiteering’ (cruen-
tissimo genere negotiationis). The emperor Claudius, who was behind the first
decree, was concerned with buildings left purposely to run to ruin, so that they
could be destroyed and rebuild later. The second decree was actually an inter-
pretation of the first, since it compelled citizens who had bought some land and
abandoned buildings actively to demonstrate that no-one lived on the premises,
and the Senate warned against this kind of speculation. This type of legislation
was repeated during the reign of emperor Vespasian, at an undetermined later date,
and in a rewriting of the law by emperor Severus Alexander in AD 222 (Codex
Iustinianum 8.10.2). Such laws were not exclusively for the city of Rome or even
Italy but represented a constant and conscious policy of the Roman government at
least in the first centuries BC/AD: the law of Tarentum (Lex Tarentina 32–38), the
code of Urso (lex Ursonensis 75) and the municipal code of Malaca (lex Flavia
Malacitana 62) incorporated similar clauses.
Despite those cases, housing policy did not constitute a question that they felt
fell within the purview of the Roman government. There were just two exceptions:
during the civil war between Caesareans and Pompeians, a praetor and a tribune
110 Cristina Rosillo-López
of the plebs proposed measures through which the State would intervene in the
rental market. The political and military context was instrumental in the failure
of such proposals, but popular support was huge. A year later, in 46 BC, as previ-
ously stated, Caesar established the maximum rates for residential rents in Rome
(2,000 sesterces) and Italy (500 sesterces).50 A few years later, in a more volatile
and unstable context, Octavian re-enacted Caesar’s economic policy on the rental
market for a year.51 These measures have been understood as remissions of rents
but in fact they were revolutionary rent control measures, unheard of in other
periods of Roman history.52
If we focus on the bottom end of the economic scale, how could people with
very low incomes access the rental market? Who was excluded from it, and under
what circumstances?
Frier divided the rental market into several categories: firstly, the stable and
long-term leases of apartments, composed of a long corridor with private rooms
(cenaculum), paid at the conclusion of the period; secondly, people who lived in
the mezzanines or backrooms of the shops in which they worked; and finally, the
lower end of the market (short-term contracts), which was composed of long rows
of partitioned cubicles, akin to hotels or lodging houses (deversoria, synoikia,
even tabernae). The latter catered not only to travellers or occasional guests but
probably also to tenants.53 Humble people lived in quarters sometimes described
as cella, a term with special connotations of poverty.54 Seneca the Younger criti-
cised those millionaires who kept one very small and humble room to simulate the
lodgings of the poor (cella pauperis); Martial described a certain Olus who had
such a room built for his enjoyment, again with moralising connotations.55 In my
opinion, Frier’s dichotomy is artificial; the reality was more nuanced.56 Martial (cf.
infra) described someone who went from a long-term contract directly to living in
the streets as homeless, without touching on their passing through other segments
of the market.
Working poor also existed in Rome—that is, people who, due to lack of work-
ing hours and/or low wages, strove with difficulty to make ends meet.57 Martial
described two advocates, Atestinus and Civis, who emigrated to Rome deter-
mined to make a living there through pleading in the forum. However, ‘neither
made enough to pay for his lodging’ (sed neutri pensio tota fuit).58 Juvenal men-
tioned the high rent that had to be paid in Rome as one of the reasons for the lack
of social mobility.59 In the case of Atestinus and Civis, a common reason for the
condition of the working poor can be identified: the cost of housing can consume
the majority of income, making it very difficult to carry on a normal life. More-
over, housing costs can even induce poverty. In any case, we should also question
Martial’s depiction of Atestinus and Civis: are they purely a joke? Martial and
Juvenal had different attitudes and opinions about the urban poor, with Martial
disdaining them and veering towards the rich, while Juvenal claimed that they
deserved it.60 In Martial 11.32, not to have nothing is not to be poor.61 Atestinus
and Civis were not in all likelihood real individuals but paradigms; in any case,
the situation Martial was describing should be plausible enough to be recognised
as a reader as believable.62
 Destitute, homeless and (almost) invisible 111
In the shaky circumstances of the working poor in Rome, a small misstep
could derail a whole life. People were evicted from their homes when they could
not pay the rent. Martial devoted a poem to Vacerra, who had suffered such a
situation:

I saw your movables, Vacerra, your disgrace of July’s Kalends, yes, I saw
them. They were not impounded in lieu of two years’ rent, so your wife with
her seven red curls and your white-headed mother, and your burly sister were
carrying them. I thought the Furies had come out from the darkness of Dis.
These three went in front and you followed, parched with cold and hunger,
paler than old box-wood, the Irus of your times. One would have thought that
Aricia’s slope was moving house. Along went a three-footed truckle bed and
a two-footed table, and a broken chamberpot was pissing from a chip in the
side together with a lamp and a cornel-wood bowl. . . . Why do you look for a
house and make mock of superintendents when you could lodge for nothing,
Vacerra? This procession of movables is fit for the bridge.63

Unable to pay two years’ rent, Vacerra had been expelled from his house,
together with his wife, mother and sister; note the predominance of women in
this situation and the absence of slaves, an indication of their poverty.64 Cold
and hungry, they had to carry their belongings, mockingly enumerated by the
poet: a bed, a table, a lamp, a cup, some pots and few other humble posses-
sions; so miserable were they that they were not even seized in payment.65 In
the poem, Vacerra is looking for another house, but, according to Martial, he
needed both to face up to the fact that he had no means to pay and to move to
a place suitable to his condition in life: living in the streets, under a bridge.
Vacerra and the women of his family were leaving the bottom of the housing
market to become unsheltered and homeless people in Rome. Watson has con-
vincingly suggested that Vacerra and his family could represent the prototype
of the migrants from the North, probably Celts; among other arguments for this,
the sister is described as gigantic (ingens), and the wife as having her red hair
arranged in seven locks.66 If so, this poem would be one of the rare testimonies
to the plight of migrants in Rome who could not afford any lodgings, despite
being a family of four, and who ended up joining the ranks of the destitute.
Martial depicts the situation of Vacerra and his family with scorn.67 To what
point does Martial provide us with information on the plight of eviction and
not a set of topoi and prejudices regarding poor people? Watson has described
a possible approach to the study of the figure of Vacerra:

If, in what follows, I occasionally talk of Vacerra as though he were a real

individual, this is not to be taken as meaning that he should be regarded as
such. Rather, I am reflecting the procedure of Martial himself, who creates
fictitious or type-figures (in the present case, the unsuccessful migrant), and
invests these with a wealth of circumstantial detail in order to sustain the illu-
sion that he is treating living personages.68
112 Cristina Rosillo-López
Even though Vacerra the person did not exist, for the sake of this study Martial is
describing a reality, a behaviour and a series of circumstances that were present in
the city of Rome during his time; the depiction of Martial had to be at least coher-
ent with the situations that could be found in Rome.

Where and how did homeless people live?

How and where did people who fell into destitution in Rome, excluded even from
the lowest end of the rental market, find shelter? First of all, some methodological
points. Previous studies have conflated beggars with homeless people, but, as it
has been previously argued, those two terms do not always cover the same ground.
Furthermore, some studies of homelessness in Rome have included people like
prostitutes in brothels, pilgrims in lodging-houses or soldiers in their tents.69 The
present study does not concern itself with people who lived in temporary accom-
modation but had no economic constraints when finding lodgings, but specifically
with those who had no kind of roof over their heads, and no social environment
to call a home because of their lack of income and means. This is a reflection of a
similar problem today, because different countries have very different definitions
of homelessness. Such a lack of a common working definition makes it more dif-
ficult to grasp the problem; the historical research into this question is thus even
more urgent.
The evidence for homelessness in Rome is anecdotal but, when brought together,
paints a consistent portrayal of the situation.70 Despite enjoying some warmer
months, winters in the city of Rome could be very cold, and the lack of lodgings
could be painfully felt. Covered parts of public buildings were one of the places
where destitute people found shelter, such as in arcades and under the columns of
temples. In an epigram, Martial curses a slanderous poet, wishing on him a cruel
destiny of destitution, to be a wandering beggar, deprived of shelter, who fights for
food with the dogs: ‘May the shutting of the arcade prolong his miserable chill’
(clususque fornix triste frigus extendat).71 The miserable poet lives in a closed
arch, probably that of a temple. Despite it being closed, he is at the mercy of nature,
which the poet emphasises cruelly by wishing him a long and wet December (Illi
December longus et madens bruma). Ammianus Marcellinus described the situ-
ation of those who spent their nights lurking under the awnings of the theatres of
the city (sub velabris umbraculorum theatralium latent).72
Homeless people also lived in the open air, under bridges. Martial considered
such a dwelling suitable for someone who had been evicted from his house together
with his family.73 Seneca also mentioned the Sublicius bridge as a place where beg-
gars lived.74 Robinson proposed that squatters lived under the aqueducts, but there
is no ancient source on this point.75 As happens today in 24-hour restaurants and
cafés, Juvenal mentioned all-night popinae (pervigiles popinae), where Roman
homeless may have also found shelter and warmth.76 Evidence about baths open
at night is difficult to determine; the entrance fee may have been a problem for
some people, but taverns and eating places presented the same problem.77 In any
case, the Greek Sophist Alciphron mentioned poor people finding warmth in the
 Destitute, homeless and (almost) invisible 113
baths, and around the bath ovens.78 Tombs, some of them richly elaborate build-
ings, were also popular places: Ulpian considered living in a grave a dolo malo act
to be punished.79 Slaves were also found among the grave-dwellers.80
Poor, and especially destitute, people were at the mercy of sudden disasters.
Floods were a recurrent occurrence in Rome.81 Tacitus described the flood of AD
15, when the Tiber destroyed inns, houses and insulae, bringing hunger and scar-
city. In fact, insulae were prime candidates for being destroyed in floods, since
they were usually built of inferior materials and were sometimes of considerable
height.82 For some people of humble extraction, such an event could put an end to
their ability to pay for a roof over their heads, even if it was humble.83
Apart from natural disasters, Ault links the homeless population with wars and
displacement.84 During the triumviral expropriations in Italy carried out in the
late 40s BC to distribute land among the veterans, a sizable number of common
people, deprived of their means for making a living, and not having received any
compensation, moved to Rome:

They came to Rome in crowds, young and old, women and children, to the
forum and temples, uttering lamentations, saying that they had done no wrong
for which they, Italians, should be driven from their fields and their hearth-
stones, like people conquered in war.85

The sources do not specify their number but, taking into account that the cities
where expropriations were carried out were located a maximum of 2–3 days away
from Rome, and also that, even though the triumvirs had established a minimum
size of the plot to be expropriated, smaller plots of lands were seized, it is reason-
able to think that a sizable number of dispossessed families without jobs (at least
when they arrived) joined the ranks of the lower stratum of the population.86

Conclusions
We have seen that a true economic history of the rental market from below needs
to address not only those who lived in minuscule dwellings or miserable quarters;
it should also include those who were priced out completely, and expelled from
the rental market, becoming homeless and unsheltered. Housing in Rome was not
considered a basic necessity, as it has been in recent decades. Even though ancient
evidence for the homeless is scarce, especially when we try to differentiate them
from beggars, the former are not absolutely invisible in the sources, as they were
not invisible in the city of Rome. Even though we hear about homelessness through
elite sources, we discover tantalising evidence about that experience. Most of the
sources either do not specify gender or refer mainly to male homeless; however,
women, especially widows, and children were part of the structural poor of Rome
and thus they constituted very possibly a sizable number of homeless people. As
we have seen, Vacerra was not evicted alone from his rented apartment; he was
accompanied by his wife, his mother and a sister. The female experience of home-
lessness alluded in this case to unmarried and elderly women.
114 Cristina Rosillo-López
Were the homeless marginalised? Was there a lived experience of exclusion
and shame? The malicious comments by Martial and Juvenal would point in that
direction and would lead us to consider homeless people not only as marginal but
also as the dregs of society. However, it is also necessary to look at them from their
own point of view and ponder whether they developed a sense of self-identity and
agency. For eighteenth-century London, Hitchcock mentioned the Black Guard
youth, that is, boys and girls who slept in the glass houses in the Minories and
earned their life by pickpocketing, pilfering and stealing, risking, if caught, death
penalty or transportation to the colonies as indentured servants.87 The experience
of finding shelter in the streets in Rome would gather some people together and
create community ties. The clivus Aricinus, the slope in the via Appia near the city
of Aricia (around 30 km from Rome), was mentioned as one of the places where
homeless people lived.88 Juvenal described that they mobbed the carriages of the
rich to force them to give alms; Parkin suggested that the travellers gave alms out
of fear of violence or shame.89 Such group points out to a strategy of survival of
homeless people and a possible sense of community.
At the same time, the existence of the clivus Aricinus and other habitational
strategies indicate the agency of homeless people, finding shelter outside the pri-
vate rental market. As we have seen, tombs and bridges were well-known places
where homeless people lived. Temporary structures were erected against, or on
top of, more solid constructions, such as private or public buildings. City officials
could tear them down if they considered them a fire hazard or if they caused
insidiae.90 More in-depth research into terms such as tuguria, ergasteria or para-
petasia and their contexts will bring nuance to this anecdotal evidence and provide
answers to such questions.91
The present contribution offers an approximation of the situation in a sub-
ject that has been insufficiently investigated, and about which many questions
remain open. Did the number of low-income households exceed the available
affordable housing units in Rome? Where were the slums in Rome?92 Were there
slums in other cities, such as Ostia, Herculanum or Pompeii? Was there any State
reaction to their existence? Were they tolerated, harassed, or dismantled? In a
contemporary world in which one third of all urban inhabitants live in slums,
and homelessness is not even counted in some countries, tracing the historical
roots of those experiences in an ancient megalopolis constitutes a necessary and
valuable exercise.

Notes
* This research has been financed by the project ‘El sector inmobiliario en el mundo
romano: un análisis económico; s. II a.C.-s. II d.C.’ (HAR2016–76882-P), Ministerio
de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades, Spain.
1 Italics are mine. In 1976, Habitat I took place, the first United Nations Conference on
Human Settlements, to discuss the challenges of rapid urbanisation. The establishment
of UNCHS (Habitat), the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements, was one of the
results of the conference. Ensuring adequate shelter for all human beings has since been
endorsed as a universal goal. Habitat II took place in 1996 and Habitat III in 2016.
 Destitute, homeless and (almost) invisible 115
2 UNESCO web page: https://en.unesco.org/themes/fostering-rights-inclusion/migra-
tion. Accessed January 15, 2021. ‘Absolute poverty measures poverty in relation to the
amount of money necessary to meet basic needs such as food, clothing, and shelter.’
3 Storey 2013, 155.
4 Rougier-Blanc 2014, 105–6 for Greece; similar considerations in Driaux 2020 for
ancient Egypt.
5 Marsilio 2008, Marina Castillo 2015 and Larsen 2015 on poverty in Martial.
6 Balsdon 1969, 268; Neri 1998, 33–83; Parkin 2006 on Roman attitudes towards giving
to beggars.
7 Courrier forthcoming for an analysis of how the Romans conceived poverty through
different categories.
8 ‘State of the World’s Cities Report 2012/2013: Prosperity of Cities’ (https://
sustainabledevelopment.un.org/index.php?page=view&type=400&nr=745&menu=
1515; Accessed January 15, 2021).
9 E.g. Aldrete 2007 on urban floods in the city of Rome, especially 215 with a table on
the number of houses in flood-prone areas of the city.
10 ETHOS (European Typology of Homelessness) was created to provide a common work-
ing language about the topic throughout Europe.
11 Depending on the country, situation and location, these sleeping arrangements include
homeless shelters, 24-hour Internet cafés or McDonalds, abandoned buildings, inex-
pensive motels, outdoors in general, vehicles, public places (railway or bus stations,
airports, libraries, on public transport), tunnels, bridges, squatting, etc. On the difficul-
ties of quantifying the number of homeless people, see Busch-Geertsema, Culhane and
Fitzpatrick 2016.
12 Springer 2000; Morley 2005; Tipple and Speak 2005.
13 Debate on the population size of Rome, cf. Lo Cascio 1994 and 2000.
14 Scheidel 2007. Holleran 2011 and Tacoma 2016 for recent studies on migration.
15 Whittaker 1989; Morley 2006, 33–35.
16 Courrier 2014, 116–25, for a criticism of the model.
17 Lo Cascio 2006. Hin 2013 has also questioned the comparison with early modern cities.
18 Courrier 2014, 116–28.
19 E.g. Taylor 2017 for ancient Athens. See also Taylor, this volume.
20 See Thompson 2003 on slaves’ living arrangements.
21 Grey and Parkin 2003, 287–8. Harris 2011 argues that there was a high degree of struc-
tural poverty and destitution.
22 Morley 2006, 28–29.
23 Harris 2011 discusses several definitions of poverty in Rome; see also Bolkestein 1939,
328–32 on destitution in Rome.
24 Ault 2005. See Ar. Plut. 551–4 for the difference between Penia (poverty) and Ptochia.
25 Harris 2011, 31.
26 Grodzynski 1987; Courrier forthcoming for further reflections on this vocabulary.
27 Carrié 2003, 73–75, based on August. Ep. Divjak 20*; he has tried to provide a number
for a poverty threshold in Rome, using the Theodosian Code, Diocletian’s prices edict
and Egyptian papyri (Carrié 2003, 88–102).
28 Scheidel 2006. See Graham 2006, 48–62 on the Roman urban poor.
29 Dig. 6.1.38 (Celsus 3 Dig.).
30 E.g. Grey and Parkin 2003; Ault 2005, 146. Neri 1998, 37–42 on the lexicon regarding
beggars in pagan literature.
31 Juv. 14.34 claimed that a poor man’s food was so sparse that a beggar would refuse it.
Rougier-Blanc 2014: 108–11 on the vocabulary for homeless in ancient Greek (aoikos,
anoikos); cf. also Coin-Longeray (vocabulary in ancient Greek poetry); Grodzynski
1987 on the Theodosian Code.
32 Farge 1979. In the field of classical studies, see also Ménard and Courrier 2012 and
2013.
116 Cristina Rosillo-López
33 Hitchcock 2004. See also Vaillant 2013.
34 Hitchcock 2004, 40–48 (Black Guard youth; cf. infra).
35 Courrier 2014, 28–44 (with historiographical and methodological remarks).
36 On this regard, we could establish a parallelism with Petersen’s remark regarding Tri-
malchio, Petersen 2007, 86: ‘When historians talk about Trimalchio as if he were a
historical individual rather than a literary construct, they risk perpetuating ancient elite,
pejorative attitudes about ex-slaves, rather than getting closer to revealing the multifac-
eted and diverse intentions of historical ex-slaves.’
37 Frier 1977, 34; Harris 2011, 29 on how the city of Rome was not typical of the Roman
empire as a whole.
38 Suet. Iul. 38. On this measure, cf. Courrier 2014, 65–66; Rosillo-López forthcoming.
39 Plut. Sull. 1.6. Cicero (QRosc. 28) is our only source for a salary (3 sesterces a day for
a non-specialised worker), but the reference dates of half a century later, so it should be
taken into account with caution (cf. Courrier 2014, 49–50).
40 On the sources for the price of rents, cf. Dubouloz 2011, 187–97 (legal sources); Cour-
rier 2014, 63–68, is pessimistic about the usefulness of the prices of rent mentioned in
the sources, since they do not provide details about location and number of rooms and
cannot be integrated into a purchase power index.
41 Petron. Sat. 8.4.
42 20 drachmai: P. Lips. 16 (AD 138), in Tebtynis (a four-year lease). 26 drachmai: P. Tebt.
2.372 (AD 141), in Tebtynis (for a six-year lease). 8 drachmai: P. Soterichos 26 (AD
82–96), near Theadelphia (for a three-year lease). See Harper 2016 for the latest study
on prices in Roman Egypt.
43 P. Oxy. 8.1128, in Sepho, Oxyrhynchites nome.
44 P. Ryl. 2.162, in AD 159 (also one the lowest prices attested in Egypt).
45 Whittaker 1989, 305–6; Gaius (2 ad leg. Duodec. Tab.), Dig. 50.16.234.2.
46 Coin-Longeray 2014, 48.
47 Cod. Theod. 17.27.1: the State even provided clothing to avoid people selling their
children (cf. Humfress 2006).
48 See Robinson 1994, 28–40 for a useful survey.
49 Procchi 2001.
50 Suet. Iul. 38.2.
51 Dio Cass. 48.9.5.
52 Frier 1977, 36 (remission). See Rosillo-López forthcoming for a study of these measures
as rent control.
53 Frier 1977 and 1980. Hermansen 1978 and Dubouloz 2011 on the different meanings
of the concept insula. Bergh 2003 on the leases of poor people.
54 E.g. Mart. 3.30.3, 7.20.21.
55 Sen. Ep. 2.18; Mart. 3.48.
56 See criticism of Frier’s hypothesis that the law on tenancy was created for upper class
tenants exclusively in Crook 1983.
57 Andress and Lohmann 2008 on modern definitions of working poor.
58 Mart. 3.38.5–6.
59 Juv. 3.166–7: magno hospitium miserabile, magno / servorum ventres, et frugi cenula
magno.
60 Larsen 2015, 220–37, with references to previous scholarship.
61 Mart. 11.32: Non est paupertas, Nestor, habere nihil; cf. Kay 1985, 142–3.
62 Moreno Soldevila, Marina Castillo and Fernández Valverde 2019: s.v. Atestinus and
Civis suggest that Atestinus could have been a real or fictional character, although they
reject that Atestinus and Civis should be a veiled allusion to C. Vettulenus Civica Ceria-
lis and M. Arrecinus Clemens.
63 Mart. 12.32: O Iuliarum dedecus Kalendarum, / Vidi, Vacerra, sarcinas tuas, vidi; /
Quas non retentas pensione pro bima / Portabat uxor rufa crinibus septem / Et cum
sorore cana mater ingenti. / Furias putavi nocte Ditis emersas. / Has tu priores frigore
 Destitute, homeless and (almost) invisible 117
et fame siccus / Et non recenti pallidus magis buxo / Irus tuorum temporum sequebaris. /
Migrare clivom crederes Aricinum. / Ibat tripes grabatus et bipes mensa, / Et cum
lucerna corneoque cratere / Matella curto rupta latere meiebat; / Foco virenti suberat
amphorae cervix; / Fuisse gerres aut inutiles maenas / Odor inpudicus urcei fatebatur, /
Qualis marinae vix sit aura piscinae. / Nec quadra deerat casei Tolosatis, / Quadrima
nigri nec corona pulei / Calvaeque restes alioque cepisque, / Nec plena turpi matris olla
resina, / Summemmianae qua pilantur uxores / Quid quaeris aedes vilicesque derides, /
Habitare gratis, o Vacerra, cum possis? / Haec sarcinarum pompa convenit ponti.
Translation Shackleton Bailey 1993. Watson 2004; Marsilio 2008 on the analogies
between this poem and Catullus 23. On Vacerra, see also Moreno Soldevila, Marina
Castillo and Fernández Valverde 2019, s.v. Vacerra.
64 On the urban rental market, cf. Frier 1977 and 1980. Vacerra was evicted on the 1st
of July, when new leases began. The only other portrait of eviction, in this case in the
countryside, is Hor. Carm. 2.18.26, during the triumviral land confiscations of the 40s.
See Desmond 2016 for an impressive sociological account of eviction and poverty in
the contemporary USA.
65 On the mockery with which destitution was usually regarded in the ancient world:
Watson 2004, 312–6.
66 Watson 2004, 319–23. See also Marina Castillo 2015, 584–5 on Vacerra in Martial’s
work.
67 Neri 1998, 34–36, who also comments on the marginality of beggars on Roman literature.
68 Watson 2004, 231, n. 1.
69 Scobie 1986, 403; Ault 2005 for Greece, criticised in Rougier-Blanc 2014, 104–5.
70 See for ancient Greece Ault 2005; Rougier-Blanc 2014.
71 Mart. 10.5.2–9.
72 Amm. Marc. 14.6.25.
73 Mart. 12.32.
74 Sen. Vit. Beat. 25.1; cf. Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae, s.v. Pons Sublicius.
75 Robinson 1980, 72.
76 Juv. 8.158. See supra for Juvenal’s view of the poor. Grey and Parkin 2003, 287; Le
Guennec 2019, 87–94 (popina).
77 Scobie 1986, 403 points out that question, but adds that SHA, Alex. Sev. 24.6 explicitly
mentions thermae open at night. Parkin 2006, 75–76 on the relationship between beg-
gars and shopkeepers, that could be extrapolated here (although note that it refers to
beggars, not to homeless people).
78 Alciphron 3.40.3. Rougier-Blanc 2014, 123–5 on finding shelter in the baths in ancient
Greece.
79 Ulp. (25 ad edict. praet.) Dig. 47.12.3pr: Si quis in sepulchro dolo malo habitaverit
aedificiumve aliud, quamque sepulchri causa factum sit, habuerit: in eum, si quis eo
nomine agere volet, ducentorum aureorum iudicium dabo. In Lucian’s Philosophers for
Sale 9, Diogenes advised to leave the house and settle in a sepulchre, a ruin or a tub.
80 Ulp. (25 ad edict. praet.) Dig. 47.12.3.11.
81 See Aldrete 2007, 15 (list of known ancient floods).
82 Tac. Hist. 1.76. See Aldrete 2007, 15 and 91–128 on the immediate effects of floods;
Larsen 2015, 149–50. Crumbling insulae are a recurrent motif in Juvenal: e.g. Juv.
3.193–6; see also Cic. Att. 14.9; 14.11 (the collapse of one of Cicero’s properties).
83 Aldrete 2007, 105–13 on the collapse of houses and structures because of floods (20 out
of 33 accounts of floods in ancient Rome refer to damaged or destroyed structures).
84 Ault 2005, 145–7.
85 App. B Civ. 5.12: ἀλλa συνιόντες ἀνὰ μέρος ἐς τὴν Ῥώμην οἵ τε νέοι καὶ γέροντες ἢ
αἱ γυναῖκες ἅμα τοῖς παιδίοις, ἐς τὴν ἀγορὰν ἢ τὰ ἱερά, ἐθρήνουν, οὐδὲν μὲν ἀδικῆσαι
λέγοντες, Ἰταλιῶται δὲ ὄντες ἀνίστασθαι γῆς τε καὶ ἑστίας οἷα δορίληπτοι.
86 Dio Cass. 48.8.5 (minimum size of the lots: between 35 iugera (Cremona) and 50 (other
colonies). See Keppie 1983. Veterans sometimes seized neighbouring lands: App. B Civ.
118 Cristina Rosillo-López
5.13–14; Dio Cass. 48.6.8–9. Properties belonging to senators were exempt from the
land distributions (Dio Cass. 48.8.5).
87 Hitchcock 2004, 40–8. The Black Guard was treated by Daniel Defoe in his 1722 novel
History and Remarkable Life of the Truly Honourable Colonel Jack, the story of the
bastard child of a gentleman who is left to the mercies of the street and joins a group
of homeless boys. Hitchcock 2004, 40 remarks that ‘the Black Guard was an object of
both high-level social policy and literary invention.’ The existence of such bands would
sound familiar to any reader of Dickens’ Oliver Twist.
88 Mart. 2.19.3, 12.32; cf. also Juv. 4.116–7; Friedländer 1886, 249, n. 3 (considered it
a beggar’s colony, as do Grey and Parkin 2003, 288 and Parkin 2006, 74–5); Marina
Castillo 2015, 98.
89 Juv. 4.116–7; Parkin 2006, 74–5.
90 Dio Chrys. Or. 40.8–9; Cod. Theod. 15.1.39.
91 E.g. Vitr. De arch. 2.1.4–5 for types of tuguriae and huts in the Roman world (note that
he did not mention them for the city of Rome, but in Phrygia and other provinces, and
that they are not always associated with poverty and destitution). See Ault 2005, 146 on
archaeological instances of squatting in ancient Greece; Courrier 2014, 32–3 on tuguria.
92 Prell 1997, 126–7 considers that there were no slums in the city of Rome.

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6 Roman agriculture from
above and below
Words and things
Kim Bowes

Introduction
When we speak of agriculture in the Roman world, particularly in Italy, we often
speak of two agricultures: an agriculture of elite villas or large estates, centred on
surplus production for the market, and a so-called peasant or smallholder agricul-
ture of the majority.1 It’s a binary seemingly supported by both our textual corpora
and the archaeological evidence. From Cato’s labour requirements for a 100 iugera
vineyard to Columella’s repeated advice on management and transportation, the
technical manuals on Roman agriculture penned by elites describe agricultural
production which was large in scale and destined, at least in part, for the market.2
Excavations of the great villas of central Italy have confirmed the scale of produc-
tion, particularly the wine destined for overseas markets.3 Smallholders’ smaller
scale and autarkic ambitions are suggested by the small plot sizes handed out to
veterans, the small surface scatters found in archaeological field surveys and the
seeming absence of large production and storage facilities.4
The two agricultures binary is, however, rooted in an evidence binary. We are
well informed about elites, both through the extensive writings by elites them-
selves and with excavated examples of their villas, including, in many cases, their
agricultural quarters. We are far less informed about smallholders. No writings
exist describing their activities, while the archaeology has quite literally remained
at the surface, with field survey data providing information on the size and chro-
nology of such sites while remaining mute on aspects of lived experience, includ-
ing agriculture.5 Until recently in Italy only a handful of peasant sites had been
excavated, and detailed knowledge about arable and animal agricultural strategies,
surplus production and interactions with markets was largely absent.
Despite its lopsided evidentiary basis, the two-agricultures model has been
made to do substantial historical work. It underpins a major model of Roman his-
tory that pits smallholders in a losing battle against villa-based agrobusiness.6 It
underlies an associated labour binary in which villas are presumed to be worked
by slaves and/or tenants and farms by family effort.7 And it lurks in the tendency
to further divide Roman agriculture into ‘intensive’—capital- and labour-intensive
grape and olive production—and ‘extensive’—cereal and pastoral crops requiring
allegedly less labour or capital. The former is thought to characterise villas and the

DOI: 10.4324/9781003005148-8
 Roman agriculture from above and below 123
latter smallholders, while the evolution of Roman agrarian economies in Italy are
thought to be marked by a shift from the former to the latter.8
This chapter suggests that this model needs revising. It argues that smallholders
and villas employed a broadly shared set of agricultural practices and intentions,
which differed most significantly both in the scale at which those practices were
carried out and in their deployment to shape identity and status. I make these
arguments on the basis of an allied set of arguments about words and things, in
particular, between the agronomic literature and the archaeological data including
new archaeological work on smallholders. We have misunderstood or at least mis-
represented the nature of Roman agriculture not only because we’ve mostly done
it from the top-down but also because we haven’t been as attentive as we might
to the particular character of our two forms of evidence. Words describe not only
agricultural techniques but also labour and tenurial relationships; things, that is to
say archaeology, are mute on ownership and labour but eloquent on practice. The
two-agricultures binary stems in part from a tendency to map differences in labour
and land tenure onto different kinds of agricultural practice. When we disentangle
words from things, we find that history from below and from above meet in a place
of shared praxis and diverge not only in terms of labour and scale but just as impor-
tantly in the temporal and ideological planes on which those practices took place.

Sowing
The two-agricultures model has a long and impressive pedigree, originating, seem-
ingly with the Romans themselves: small farmers’ complaints at having been pushed
off their lands by elite land-grabs leading to the failed Gracchan land reforms and
their laments about increasing debt are but two threads in an important strand of
Roman history defined by agrobusiness versus the small farmer.9 These Roman
threads were woven into a broader tapestry by a nineteenth- and early twentieth-
century scholarship, itself spurred on by the land debates and reforms of its own
age. Mommsen, Weber and Rostovtzeff all penned decline-and-fall narratives of
the Roman small farmer, but with important shifts in emphasis and vocabulary from
their ancient interlocutors.10 What had been a Roman story about land ownership
became an industrial history of agricultural practice, in which the Roman sources’
pitting of small plots versus larger plots became a contest between different tech-
nologies of working the land and different agricultural practices. For Weber and
particularly for Rostovtzeff, the large elite-owned estate practised a different kind of
agriculture, one borrowed from allegedly eastern traditions of large-scale monocul-
tures.11 This pernicious ‘capitalist’ agrobusiness produced monoculture economies
of scale with which the traditional polyculture small farm simply could not com-
pete. Villas monopolised oil and wine production while peasants, either freehold-
ers or tenants, were pushed into growing unprofitable grain.12 Thus, what for late
republican and early imperial Roman historians had been a story about the owner-
ship of land became, in the hands of a modern historiography shaken by the rise
of industrialised agriculture, a change in the nature of agricultural practice itself.
124 Kim Bowes
The Romans’ own writings on agriculture—the so-called agronomic literature—
were thus read as manifestations of this two-agricultures model. Until relatively
recently, these texts were written as straightforward, if not always terribly well-
informed, accounts of agricultural practice, taken at face value as how-too manuals
reflecting the preoccupations and management practices of elite estate owners,
who, while they might bemoan the sad decline of agriculture in their day, were
engaged in precisely the kind of monoculture-driven, surplus-for-export practices
outlined earlier.13 Cato’s slave rations seemed to describe just the kind of slave-run,
surplus-driven agrobusiness that, already in the 160s BC, was putting smallholders
out of business, while Columella’s productivity calculations for a vineyard were
actually used as an interpretive guide in the first large-scale, scientific excavations
of an Italian villa—Settefinestre.14
The assumption of two agricultures continues to shape recent trajectories in
the study of the Roman economy. For Moses Finley, the agronomists were proof-
positive of an elite gentleman-farmer, whose agricultural manuals were little more
than performance art in a world in which agriculture spelled status, not profit.15 The
broad underbelly of unproductive subsistence agriculture, practised by peasant and
villa owner alike, lay at the basis of an agrarian world whose thin crust of surplus
and exports were little more than the crest on a wave. Finley thus eschewed the
two-agricultures model even as he accepted the broad narrative of smallholder
decline at the hands of villa-owning elites. The recent rejection of Finley’s substan-
tivism in favour of both modern approaches and an emphasis on the productivity
of Roman agriculture have led to new readings of the agronomic literature, find-
ing proofs of both production and profit maximisation in everything from Cato’s
recommendations on fodder to Columella’s soils recommendations.16 Efforts have
been made to use Geographic Information Software to hunt for matches to the
latter’s land requirements for viticulture, while a careful reading of the various
authors’ interest in fodder crops has suggested an application of crop rotation
strategies designed to maximise yields and mitigate soil depletion.17 Calculation
of productivity from oil and wine vats and presses has produced similarly optimis-
tic assessments of wine and oil production capacity.18 In short, the new work on
Roman agriculture has tacitly assumed that its efficiencies and maximising ethos
is centred on, if not confined to, villa agriculture. Smallholders rarely form part of
the calculus or the conversation.
At the same time that economic historians have returned to the agronomists as
data sources for maximisation-oriented practices, literary scholars have made an
equal effort to incorporate the agronomic texts into the corpora of Latin literature,
dissecting them as literary productions in their own right.19 The deployment of
specialised know-how as part of the toolkit of literary status and the construction
of a trope of ‘old-time agriculture’ as either a yardstick to measure the evils of
the present age or an alchemical set of praxes with which even ‘new men’ might
construct an ancient bloodline are central to the other ‘functions’ of these texts—
not as how-too manuals, but as agents of elite identity.20 Agriculture practice was
so central to Roman thought that the qualities of the vir bonus might be found in
an articulation of the bonus agricola, the arc of imperial conquest and rule might
 Roman agriculture from above and below 125
be elaborated in the successive stages of arable agriculture, while the very order
of what appears to be an encyclopaedic march through agrarian topics is itself a
reflection on man’s relationship with nature and with himself.21 As these studies
have made us ever more aware of the nuance and complexity of agronomic texts
as literary constructions, however, ever wider seems the gap between an elite
meta-literary practice of agriculture and the actual work on the ground. Taking the
agronomists seriously as literary figures would seem to require either taking them
less seriously as farmers or concluding that the texts themselves are largely mute
on aspects of real praxis.
What’s notable about most of this new work is its emphasis on elites: either as
rationalist, profit-mongers or as astute manipulators of language and metaphor, or
as some combination of both, we now have a detailed, if diverse, set of lenses on
villas and large-scale agriculture. What has proven less appealing is an interroga-
tion of the other half of the two-agricultures model—the peasants. Smallholders
are of little interest to a recent Roman economic history preoccupied with surplus
production and the state, and archaeologists have obligingly followed the same
leads, continuing to privilege villas over farms as an object of excavation inter-
est.22 The result is a tacit but widening gap between what has become either an
elite rationalist economy or an elite literary apparatus, and a peasant world which
was neither rational nor literary. This deepening evidentiary binary has tacitly
reinforced the sense of two different worlds making the land produce in two dif-
ferent ways.
This chapter offers a bridge across both the two agricultures and the words and
things divide. My argument centres largely on the agrarian landscape of central
Italy, both the mis-en-scène for the agronomists and the villa excavations which
have shaped scholarly perceptions of elite agriculture, as well as the location of the
Roman Peasant Project’s recent work on Roman peasants.23 I argue that when we
take both groups—and their evidentiary corpora—seriously on its own terms, what
emerges are common practices employed by all kinds of farmers, regardless of the
scales at which they worked. In short, there was only one kind of agriculture—a
Roman agriculture—characterised by a hyper-detailed management of soil and
water, a simultaneous management of risk and maximisation of yield through a
deployment of polycultures. While this argument is not wholly new, it is now pos-
sible to make it in the rather pointed way I shall develop here, thanks to this new
work on both words and things. That new work also allows the real differences
between villa and smallholder agriculture to shine through—differences not of
practice, but of scale and discourse. Not only did villa owners and small farmers
operate at different scales, but just as importantly, they shaped their work around
different temporal scales and a different articulation of status.

Digging up words and things

Filling the gap between elite and smallholder agriculture requires a robust set of
methodologies for making sense of both words and things. It’s a fascinating irony
that the fields of philology and archaeology, whose history in classical scholarship
126 Kim Bowes
has been so conjoined, suffers from a chronic communication problem.24 As the
two disciplines have decoupled from their shared nineteenth-century origins, each
adopting a more precise, discipline-specific and ultimately more rigorous toolkit,
it has become harder to use them simultaneously to ask shared questions, while
continuing to permit each to speak with its own particular voice. While we’ve
developed ever more exacting tools for interrogating words and things, we’ve
been remiss in developing parallel tools for interrogating them together.25 A clear
sense of our two evidentiary corpora—their potentials and limitations—and some
parameters for tackling them together, is thus a necessary prolegomenon to exam-
ining Roman agriculture. As the problem is central to doing history from below—a
task which, as the editors of this volume note, requires more robust definitions and
methods—it’s worth the detour.
The agronomic texts provide a useful place from which to examine words and
things, given that, for a long time, they were assumed to offered a straightforward
application of the former on the latter. The Greek and Latin treatises on building,
medicine, farming and other ‘practical’ matters were long regarded as providing
reliable windows into actual praxis. In the agronomic texts, for instance, plough
techniques, animal husbandry, arboriculture, water management and a myriad of
other subjects were elaborated in detail seemingly similar to the technical manuals
penned in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Technical literature’s attention
to minute detail and its encyclopaedic structure, authoritative voice and the oft-
stated desire voiced in its prefaces to serve as ‘useful’ references lent them the
air of factual repositories. Ancient historians and archaeologists, eager for these
glimpses into lived experience and most recently, desirous of evaluating ancient
economic capacities, have thus mined them extensively as repositories of fact and
practice. As many of these practices were the province of non-elites from farmers
to builders to craftsmen, the so-called technical writers would seem to provide a
rare window into non-elite experience—their labour practices, craft and technical
know-how.
As we noted earlier, only more recently has the literary quality of these works
been emphasised. Studies on their generic qualities, voice and structure have drawn
attention to their rhetorical intent.26 Just like epistolography or historiography,
these works were structured to convey authorial auctoritas and self-fashioning via
the very qualities—encyclopaedic enumeration, second-person narration, logical
progression—we have used as evidence of their ‘factuality.’ Thus, we have come
to recognise the insoluble ties that bind, say, Vitruvius’ treatise on architecture to
Livy. The result has been, as Matheus Trevizam has recently heralded, the integra-
tion of so-called technical literature into classical literature writ large.27
It is revealing of the centrality of agriculture to a Roman worldview that farm-
ing, and the minutiae of farming practices, could be used to think across the broad-
est aspects of Roman experience. As the prefaces to Cato and Columella’s manuals
make clear, enumerating the qualities of a good farmer was nothing less than enu-
merating the qualities of the good man and the ideal soldier.28 While farming as moral
exemplum was one of the unifying features of all agronomic metaphor, each author
modified those relationships through a complex and distinct interplay of intertext,
 Roman agriculture from above and below 127
organisation and linguistic nuance to make more pointed, individual narratives.
Cato’s careful construction of smallholder agriculture as part of the apparatus of
ancient civic virtue—a trope now so familiar we have to look carefully to find
Cato inventing it—provided a means for him, a novus homo, to lay claim to an
ancient skill in lieu of an ancient bloodline.29 For Varro, narrowly having avoided
the proscription of 43 BC, the organisation of the farm, from its religious apparatus
to its beehives, provided a canvas on which to paint the arc of Roman political his-
tory, from its storied past to its more troubled present.30 Columella’s more massive
work, one that expands the subject to include animal husbandry and land survey-
ing, and the genre to include poetry, provides nothing less than a meditation, via
the themes of productivity and preservation, on man’s civilising relationship with
nature.31 Throughout the latter work appears the spectre of Virgil, the acknowl-
edged master of fact and the focus of literary ambition, with the Georgics as the
central intertext that defined both an agrarian golden age and the summa, which
required constant homage even as it demanded to be supplemented.32
Unearthing the literary qualities of these works will be the work of a generation,
only barely begun as their literary complexity becomes more apparent. Yet some of
the most recent exploration on the shared generic qualities and authorial intent of
the three principal agronomic texts may have revealed a bridge between the worlds
of words and things. For the three principal agronomic texts are inescapably ‘both/
and’: they are clearly both expositions of detailed agricultural know-how, trimmed
and pruned by literary aims and generic constraints. Indeed, the genre of Roman
agronomy is a genre defined by know-how with the enumeration of technical
details itself central to literary self-fashioning, the techne defining intertextual
play.33 To whom this complex interweaving of literary play and exhaustive detail
was addressed has long puzzled scholars, and the most recent work has convinc-
ingly shown how, at least in Cato and Columella, the combined address in both
the second-person (mostly) singular and the imperative describes two sets of audi-
ences—an elite peer group of gentlemen farmer-literati and the bailiffs actually
charged with running the estate.34 It has been further ingeniously argued that the
extension of the master’s hand and intent to the slave bailiff is entirely in keeping
with Roman understandings of master–slave relationships, so that the seeming dis-
junction in audience is no disjunction at all. To write for a bailiff is merely to write
to extension of oneself and most importantly, a self which is actually ‘doing’ the
manual work of farming as did one’s mythic ancestors, now through the extended
self of the slave.35 In this way, agronomic texts, or at least Cato and Columella,
have a real and central function as ‘manuals’ that actually define their literary
generic qualities. While this doesn’t mean that the farming practices enumerated
by these texts were necessarily the only or even the most common practices, it does
pull them back into an intermediate space where praxis and language might meet.
While the work on agronomic literature has undergone a salutatory moment
of self-reflection, the scholarship on the material side has been slower to shift
perspective, despite the fact that it has suffered from many of the same blind
spots—assumptions of ‘fact’ and an unwillingness to recognise its own rhetori-
cally, culturally constructed qualities. The majority of work has focused on the
128 Kim Bowes
monumental portions of Roman villas, Vitruvius’ villa urbana, with less work
being devoted to their work quarters, the so-called villa rustica.36 The most com-
prehensive and comprehensively published excavation of a whole villa in Italy
remains Settefinestre, excavated in the 1970s as both a proof-positive for Marxist
narratives about the rise of a slave mode of production and an effort to find in
its remains a largely empirical reading of the agronomic texts, particularly the
roughly contemporary Columella’s De re rustica (Figure 6.1).37 Recent critiques
of the Settefinestre excavations have exposed the problem with such a simplistic

Figure 6.1 Plan, Settefinestre (Ansedonia), Phase 2 (after Carandini 1985, figure 139)
 Roman agriculture from above and below 129
relationship between words and things as they meet around Roman agriculture.38
Harder to shake off is the modern historiographic baggage, described earlier, which
tacitly or explicitly locates the more productive, efficient agriculture derived from
the agronomists in cash-crop producing villa estates.39 Similarly, the polyculture
and locally oriented agricultural elements of villas like Settefinestre—its olive
presses, granary and animal stalls, as well as its predominantly local ceramics—
have never been given as much attention as its wine-for-export component, despite
these being on a similarly large scale.
Some recent archaeological work has laid down new paths which both take the
material culture in toto more seriously and may provide a bridge between the world
of words and things. The barns, presses and productive facilities of these villas,
it has been argued, form part of the same rhetorical apparatus which defined the
bonus agricola as one who saved and planned, even as they exhibited the same
contemporary anxieties about excess.40 Farm buildings, and by extension farm
productivity, were part of elites’ self-fashioning every bit as much as luxurious
villae urbanae, and elites used a complex set of allusions to time and scale which
while distinct from overlap felicitously with agronomic poetics to do similar work.
Yet even this new work on villa storage buildings assumes that surplus and its rhe-
torical elaboration is proper to elites and villas, while smallholders, by definition
without surplus, are cast in a ‘have-nots’ role.41
The smallholder side of the archaeological picture has suffered from some
of its own biases. While very few excavations have been carried out on peasant
farmsteads—our own project having been designed to fill that lacuna—remote
sensing, including systematic, non-invasive surface collection, aerial photogra-
phy and geophysics has produced abundant datasets on rural non-elites. It has
been presumed that the smallest surface scatters from these surface surveys rep-
resented peasant homes, and a rich literature has developed in tracking the fate of
these scatters over time.42 The late nineteenth-century historical preoccupations
with the fate of the peasant farmer described here translated into post-war efforts
to map the vanishing countrysides around Rome. The large-scale South Etruria
Project spurred hundreds of smaller, more methodologically sophisticated proj-
ects which have been used to argue for either the demise or the survival of Roman
smallholders during the late Republic and early Empire. Lurking behind all these
surveys, however, is the continued assumption that Roman peasants lived in small
farms and that those farms were represented by the smallest surface scatters. 43
This image of the solitary ‘farm’ and its denizens have thus biased the interpre-
tation of the survey data around modern conception of landscape and labour.
Furthermore, the very framework in which smallholders have been placed tends
to view them in a binary with elite villas—as objects (or not) of elite land-grabs,
as durable autochthonous locals versus elite Roman newcomers—binaries which
tacitly or explicitly have helped reinforce the two-agricultures model.44 Some
work, particularly on the field survey data, has acknowledged that small and large
scatters seem to have symbiotic chronologies, but this observation hasn’t dented
the certainty that even this symbiosis was formed by two essentially distinct
spheres of agricultural praxis.45
130 Kim Bowes
In ploughing through these layers of historiographic soil—of both elite and small-
holder agriculture and the parallel stories of agronomic literature and archaeology—
we might derive a few best practices of our own for doing work with words and
things. The first is a purely negative one, namely, that it is necessary to turn over
the surface of things to get at more durable relationships. Mining our evidence for
empirical facts, be they yields reported by Columella, the tank capacity of pressing
vats, or the comparative chronologies of large and small surface scatters, are not ter-
ribly useful ways of seeing the shared world of smallholders and elite agriculture, or
bridging the worlds of words and things. Deeper digging is required, as is an effort
which takes all our sources seriously on their own terms, and in the totality of their,
often contradictory, evidence. Furthermore, we shouldn’t necessarily assume that
our different kinds of evidence should be placed together: difference and slippage
will be as important as sameness, and it is in the interstices where our data simply
don’t line up that important observations about the fundamental character of modes
of agriculture practice—physical and literary—may be found.

Binding: managing resources

Central to all farmer’s work is the proper management of the two environmen-
tal substrates—soil and water. Having read the agronomists as centred on profit
and/or status-producing viticulture, most earlier accounts of Roman agriculture
assumed their subjects weren’t terribly interested in the seeming mundanities
of soil or hydrological management. These earlier accounts found no evidence,
either in the agronomists or in the archaeology, that villa estates practised soil
maintenance strategies like crop rotation, instead assuming that they practised bi-
annual or dry fallowing, either because of a desire to maintain soil water reserves,
or as the most basic tool in soil nutrient maintenance.46 The capability of Roman
ploughs to cut through heavy clay soils at their winter wettest was also in doubt,
pushing ploughing into the dryer season where the precious water might inevi-
tably be lost.
More recent work on the agronomists, plus a bit of new data from the field, has
found the opposite.47 Columella begins his sprawling work, and indeed his whole
agricultural-golden age and the project itself, around soil: ‘Again and again I hear
leading men of our state condemning the unfruitfulness of the soil.’48 Rather, Colu-
mella argues, soils are only a reflection of human management and it is modern
management that is to blame. And the reader is off, set on a course to improved
agriculture—and a better Roman society—via soil science. It took the first female
soil scientist in America—Lois Olson—to recognise Columella’s remarkably
astute and detailed commentary on soils—their colour, humidity, texture, topo-
graphic setting—for what it was, namely a manager’s guide to the maximisation
of the Mediterranean’s diverse soil profiles, and just as importantly, soil mainte-
nance.49 Managing, which means maximising as well as maintaining, soils lies
at the heart of Columella’s project. Manuring and above all, the proper selection
of crops to suit specific soils, all get full treatment in his treatise, as well as the
seasonal rhythms by which soil was to be cared for.
 Roman agriculture from above and below 131
Central to Columella’s soil-and-civilisation restoration project is the manage-
ment of water. While he discusses irrigation somewhat, he’s more concerned with
a micromanagerial (diligens) approach to in situ water supplies. The location
of cisterns, their sources and maintenance, and particularly the management of
ground water, sodden soils and surface water is an abiding preoccupation.50 He
offers detailed descriptions on how to construct field drains to drain saturated
fields including materials, labour organisation and maintenance plans.51 For Colu-
mella, these instances of water management appear not so much as a generalised
manifestation of the Roman control of nature, but a specific riff on his theme of
attentive curation of extant resources as characteristic of the good manager, that is,
the bonus agricola. Only through the correct and balanced management of nature’s
gifts, particularly water, are land and farmer brought into productive harmony.
The archaeology of water management still remains in its infancy in Roman
Italy. A few large-scale geophysics projects have traced possible Roman field
boundaries and drainage systems around Grosseto.52 The traces of villa agricul-
tural drainage projects (to be distinguished from the large-scale efforts of the state
to remove wetlands) have been found in various parts of central Italy—from big
stone or amphora-built drains near Terracina seemingly built by the villa owners
of the region, to smaller versions near Praeneste.53 A GIS-based study of Roman
land management in the Tiber Valley also suggested, albeit based on both modern
soils data and Columella, that Roman farmers avoided the heavy clays of the low-
lands as being too difficult to plough, building their farms and villas adjacent to
the lighter soils of the rolling uplands.54
The Roman Peasant Project found smallholders engaged in whole series of water
and soil management projects, all at a small scale and aimed at controlling the erosive
effects of surface and ground water runoff and seepage. The sites excavated by the
project included a series of field drains, excavated some 50 cm into the clayey soils
and lined with cobbles taken from the fields which formed both a structure and a filter
to remove eroding soils.55 In one instance, the drain in question appears to have been
built to drain a small upwelling of subsurface water in land, judging from the pol-
len data, that was used for grain and/or pasture (Figure 6.2).56 Another drain located
not far from a possible farm house/work hut seems to have been one of several that
drained a parcel of land rich with heavy clay soils, but pockmarked by upwellings of
ground water.57 Again, cereals or pasture, probably not grapes or olives, were grown
near the structure, the drain serving to make viable land that would otherwise have
been frequently inundated by surface and subsurface run-off. Both these drains would
have had their principal function during the rainy winters, rendering otherwise inun-
dated, sodden and heavy soils viable for ploughing the all-important winter grain or
fodder crop. That Roman smallholders would have bothered to excavate a 13-metre
drain just to remove a pooling spot for ground water in land that didn’t even boast
so-called high-value crops is perhaps surprising to us, but Columella would have
approved. It is precisely this management of the destructive properties of pooling
surface water upon which he and Cato dwell: such pools of stagnant water, rife with
parasites, represented a threat to livestock grazing on these fields, and the production
of consistent, productive arable soils required just these kind of interventions.58 In
132 Kim Bowes

Figure 6.2 Plan, first century BC/AD (?) field drain, Colle Massari (Cinigiano)
Source: © Roman Peasant Project (Elisa Rizzo, Marco Sfacteria).

short, the smallholders we studied were every bit as attentive, or diligens as Columella
would have said, at the management of field water as we find in the agronomic texts
and are starting to see in the archaeology of villa estates. Drainage for erosion pre-
vention and ground-water management was basic to all agriculture in Mediterranean
climates characterised by massive variation in precipitation, and all farmers—small-
holders and great estates owners alike—seem to have taken it very much to heart.
One of the principal tools in the villa owner’s soil maintenance toolkit was crop
rotation. A careful re-read of the agronomic literature has recently brought forth
what others had long suspected, namely, a careful strategy and just as importantly,
a vocabulary for rotation: restibilis described land used in arable cultivation, prin-
cipally of cereals, while novalis or veteretum described land either sown with
fodder crops or maintained as cultivated pasture.59 This vocabulary presupposes a
tripartite rotation of grain, nitrogen-fixing leguminous fodder crops followed by a
period of cultivated pasture—a system sometimes termed convertible or ley agri-
culture. In Columella, this vocabulary is heavily focused on a specific managerial
decision—whether and how to open new, previously forested land for cultivation
and how to mitigate the ensuing perils of soil depletion should one do so.60 Like-
wise, his extensive discussion of fodder crops is predicated on the assumption that
such crops are central both to large-scale animal husbandry practices (discussed at
length in Books 6–9) and to soil maintenance.61
 Roman agriculture from above and below 133
Agronomic rotation practices have been assumed, at least tacitly, to be elite
know-how, utilised not only for soil maintenance but also yield and profit maxi-
misation. The first archaeological data in support of ley agriculture as a com-
monplace, however, came from peasant farms in our project.62 The excavation
of eight sites with late republican/early imperial phases ranging from farms to
stables to seasonal work sites to a ceramics production site permitted the extrac-
tion of pollen from among our stratified remains. This pollen can be dated to the
same degree of precision as the archaeological contexts from which it is drawn, in
this case usually to an accuracy of around 30–70 years, and the species of plants
grown in a 1–3 km radius assessed. The chronological granularity of pollen data
is insufficient to parse year-to-year patterns, nor can it be used to reconstruct the
agrarian landscape, as different plants produce differing amounts pollen of differ-
ent weights and dispersion.63 However, a clustered dataset like ours drawn from
the same locale and period and with the same methods can be relatively com-
pared. In all sites where notable (i.e. greater than 3 per cent) quantities of cereal
pollen were found, a slightly smaller equivalent of leguminous fodder plants and
approximately twice that percentage of grazed pasture pollen were also found (Fig-
ure 6.3). This strongly points to the regularised alternation of cereals and fodder
crops, followed by a longer period of maintained, grazed pasture. Whether these
alternations were within the same field or the product of multiple adjacent field
managed in succession cannot be determined from the evidence we have. What the
pollen data makes clear, however, is that smallholders are managing arable land
very much along the same lines as Columella instructs his would-be villa owners
and bailiffs, both adopting a relatively sophisticated, intensive, and sustainable
practice of land management.

Cereal (% pollen)
24%

LPPI (w/out
Cichorieae) Legumes/Fodder
(% pollen) (% pollen)
60% 16%

Figure 6.3 Cereal, fodder/legumes and local pastoral pollen indicators (LPPI) pollen per-
centages, late Republican sites
Source: © Roman Peasant Project (Anna Maria Mercuri/Eleonora Rattighieri).
134 Kim Bowes
Rotation practices imply a silent third party in the effort to manage soils: ani-
mals. Animals are central to lay agriculture as manure sources, grazing on the
stubble of harvested cereal fields, as consumers of nitrogen-fixing fodder crops
grown in the second rotation, and as the principal occupants of the fields during
the long stint as managed pasture. Cato and Varro, not as keen on animals as they
are on arable agriculture, seemed to imply that Roman agriculture writ large raised
animals simply as an aside, even as labour. The all-important viticulture seemed
largely driven by seasonal human-labour and for a diet presumed to be centred on
grain, animals could only represent an adjunct labour source used for ploughing,
but only occasionally for eating.
New work on both the agronomists and the animal themselves, via their bones,
has radically revised this picture. Columella, it is true, is the only one of his agro-
nomic peers to devote a whole chapter to animal husbandry, a novelty in which
we might read as both part of his deliberate expansion of the definition of agricul-
ture into heretofore excluded realms and reflecting the enormous importance that
animals—particularly oxen—had assumed by his day.64 For as new zooarchaeologi-
cal work has shown, the expansion and intensification of Italian agriculture by the
first century BC/AD was in large part due to animals.65 Not only did the previously
described rotation schemes depend on it, but the ploughing of new lands, including
those hard-to-plough lowlands, required new sources of animal labour. The deliber-
ate breeding of ever larger oxen—taller, heavier, or both—was both cause and effect
of agricultural expansion, and cattle breed size increased significantly starting in the
republican period but principally in the early years of the Empire when Columella
was writing.66 The expansion of cities at the same time, and the increasing demand
for pork by non-farming urbanites may have also driven the increase in pig size, as
well as regional pig breed specificity.67 Meat, it is becoming clear, formed a signifi-
cant part of the urban-dwellers diet: far from being the grain-dominated fare for-
merly assumed, meat, particularly pork but also beef, were consumed consistently,
if not daily, by elites and non-elites alike while the pastio villatica encouraged by
Varro of ducks, chickens, and rabbits seem to have been more elite fare.
The same earlier pessimism about animals in Roman agriculture was assumed to
apply doubly to peasants, thought to be so poor that they had to use family members
as plough animals and were subject to a largely vegetarian diet.68 Again, recent work,
including our own project, finds animals doing the same jobs, and subject to the
same husbandry practices, on small farms as on large ones.69 As discussed earlier,
if smallholders were engaged in the same rotation strategies used by villas, animals
would have played the same critical roles as manure sources, grazers, and along with
the crops themselves, factored as a major part of the caloric output of the land. The
faunal collections from smaller sites across central Italy show the same trends in breed
size increases as on villa sites: the size variety may be somewhat greater on individual
sites, a product either of those collections being smaller or because consistently large
breeds may have been less required, but overall, the sizes of all the major domesticates
are broadly similar to those in villas.70 Smallholders seem to have shared a dietary
preferences for pork, although beef and mutton/goat are also important dietary meat
sources. The key to these modest species differences is labour: the smallholders’
 Roman agriculture from above and below 135
animals seem first and foremost to represent labour and/or secondary products, and
only secondarily meat. Most animals (with the exception of pigs) were consumed
at the end of the labour-use life as traction, milk or wool, and then they were eaten
somewhat more indiscriminately than on the pork-dominated villas. The other prin-
cipal difference is quantities: in many of the smallholder sites we excavated, faunal
samples were tiny. This was in part to our having excavated largely short-term use
sites (on which more below), but also seemingly again the scale of exploitation and
consumption was simply smaller than on villas. In short, the overall role of animals
as partners in arable agriculture is broadly shared between smallholders and great
estates: the differences, in scale and end-life use, are linked to a more profound dif-
ference in the scale of specialisation, which we will take up in a moment.
At the heart of the most current version of the two-agricultures model is the con-
cept of risk. Smallholders avoid it, while agro-capitalists assume it, at least in part, in
pursuit of profit.71 The more likely reality was that both groups avoided and courted
risk in ways frequently ignored by this binary. The most fundamental tool of risk
avoidance was the adoption of polycultures by all farmers in Roman Italy.72 Mono-
cultures did not exist, a rather obvious fact which has become somewhat obscured
by the two-agricultures model’s distorting effects. Equally obvious, although rarely
remarked on, is the fact that Roman agronomic literature as a genre is predicated on
polycultures: the encyclopaedic elaboration of different crops and their complemen-
tary needs—soils, water and labour—define their poetics and narrative structure.73
It is the multiple, not singular, crops and their ability to both maximise the multiple
properties of the land and exploit those properties to mitigate the failure of any one
crop—which anchors the agronomic text. One of the reasons that the poetic garden
in Columella’s Book 10 can act as a synecdoche for the whole of Columella’s estate
at the end of his immense book is their shared polyculture—the estate and the garden
are both defined by the multiple, complementary things they produce.74
Polyculture risk avoidance is obvious, too, in the remains of great villas like
Settefinestre (see Figure 6.1):75 the scale of pork production (assuming that great
stall is for pigs) alone is massive, the granary some 1400 m2, but both grain and
pork get scant play in a narrative based on the presumed centrality of viticulture.
The allegedly different end-use of these products—the former two directed towards
the villa itself as autarkic unit, with the wine being sold for profit on the market—
has been used to explain away villa polycultures as the ‘natural’ component of
a ‘natural-monetary’ economic binary.76 The agronomic texts don’t dice up their
produce like this: they frequently discuss the marketability of all kinds of things,
from animals to grain to timber, and describe a world in which any surplus might be
sold, given the right conditions, just as growing a bit of everything simultaneously
maximised the land’s yield while mitigating risk. Theirs is a ‘both/and’ principal.
How central was this ‘both/and’ principal is revealed in one piece of the recent
archaeology—cereal and legume cultivation. While cereals are assumed to consti-
tute the majority of the Roman diet, cereal cultivation is dealt with more summarily
than viticulture in the agronomic texts, proof positive for many scholars that cereals
were an onerous requirement, undeserving of particular comment. In actual fact,
cereal and legume agriculture is, in the absence of other qualifiers, what is assumed
136 Kim Bowes
as the arable agriculture in the agronomic texts, and the enumeration of different
kind of cereals, alongside different legumes, forms part of all the treatises, not least
because their varieties and subvarieties provide fertile ground for authorial command
of know-how.77 As is becoming clear, however, those different varieties were more
than part of the display of know-how, but were central to grain production strategies.
Most everywhere in Italy we have archaeobotanical data for cereals, we find multiple
different kinds of wheat, plus a host of other cereals, being grown and consumed
simultaneously.78 Large villas like a newly excavated one in Gerace, Sicily, seem to
be growing not only the triticum aestivum for fine bread but together with the heartier
durum (triticum durum) and emmer (triticum diococcum) wheats, as well as barley.79
Barley, farro, emmer and some millet were also consumed together in the wealthier
houses of Pompeii.80 This plurality of cereals points not only away from the hierar-
chies someone like Pliny the Elder places on these plants, with triticum aestivum at
the top, but also towards a widespread use of cereal polyculture for risk reduction.81
Each of these cereals, as someone like Varro or Columella is keen to tell you, have
their own set of environmental conditions.82 Grow them all and the farmer has cov-
ered the bases from drought to inundation, cold to heat; not to mention exploiting all
available land parcels which, as Horden and Purcell have taught us, are themselves
subject to different climatic conditions in any given year.83
Needless to say, cereal polyculture also seems to have been practised by small-
holders. Everywhere that our project found cereals we found multiple types—bread
wheat, durum wheat, emmer and barley—the same kind of cereal polyculture
found in villas. The absence of millet is interesting: millet has been presumed to
be a poverty food and recent isotope studies in a Roman cemetery tentatively sug-
gested that its consumption might be linked with class.84 The ubiquity of millet
in archaeobotanical assemblages from Pompeii, even in wealthy houses, suggests
that that binary, too, is unhelpful, and that like most other foods, the decision to
grow and eat millet is governed by the particularities of climate and choice.85
Closely related to the binary of risk and profit are the concomitant binary of sur-
plus and autarky. Peasants are assumed to be largely autarkic, producing just enough
for their needs and for bad-year storage and seed; they eschew markets because mar-
kets are risky and thus any surplus production which winds up being sold is ad hoc,
not by design or long-term strategy.86 Elite estate owners are, in a Marxist paradigm,
embedded in a bimodal economy in which things like cereals are part of a ‘natural’
economy dedicated to supplying the estate and viticulture is part of a monetary
economy dedicated to the market.87 According to more recent New Institutionalist
thinking, elites funnel their capital into profit-making agriculture.88 Either way, inten-
tional surplus production, mostly for the market, defines their agricultural strategies.
Both sides of the binary owe their origins to the Romans themselves, who pains-
takingly constructed it to do important poetic and political work. As has recently
been argued, Cato’s invention of the ancient Cincinnatus-figure, whose subsistence-
oriented small plot (four iugera) defined his moral and political virtus, was a highly
calculated move, constructing a scale of agrarian virtues in place of family lineage
in which new men like himself might have a place.89 The man who works his own
farm efficiently and consumes its products claims pride of place in Cato’s hierar-
chy—even if that work is done by slaves as an extension of his master’s hoe-arm.
 Roman agriculture from above and below 137
The opposite end of the scale, particularly for Columella, is occupied by the absen-
tee agro-businessman, producing surplus for profit and critically, not supervising his
estate with the diligentia that defines the true bonus agricola.90 The smallholder’s
virtue-kit is further equipped by the Virgilian corpus, his oneness with a natural har-
mony ground in by the Moretum, while the Georgics defined his unending routine
of labour as both banishing the siren-calls of luxury and dodging the equal perils of
living outside of nature’s intended temporal rhythms.91
So successful were these poetic caricatures, both in their own time and at vari-
ous moments in their reception, that it has proven almost impossible to escape
their shadow. Assumptions about peasant autarky find their way into almost every
consideration of Roman smallholders, while surplus remains the yardstick that
various types of villas are measured. Indeed, it is perhaps no wonder that one has to
leave Italy altogether to escape the shade of Cincinnatus, where new archaeologi-
cal evidence from Gaul and the Rhineland have banished it. In the Low Countries,
Roman villages of smallholders produced consistently robust surpluses of both
grain and animals for sale on urban markets. In both villas and farms of the Ile-de-
France, decisions were made to concentrate on specific cereals for urban export,
with some villas opting to concentrate on the closed-hull coarser wheats, while
some small farms grew the finer, more risky, open-hulled varieties. Back in Italy,
progress has been slower, but similar trends are emerging. The modest scale gra-
nary from our own excavations at the farm of Pievina describe surplus grain pro-
duction well in excess of what a family would need for a year even with reserved
seed (Figure 6.4).92 The small, flat-bottomed amphorae we found at most of our

Figure 6.4 Plan, Pievina (Cinigiano), first century AD phase

Source: © Roman Peasant Project (Elisa Rizzo, Marco Sfacteria).
138 Kim Bowes

0 5 10 cm

Figure 6.5 Local/regional amphora, Case Nuove (Cinigiano), Phase 1.2 (Augustan/Tiberian)
Source: © Roman Peasant Project (Emanuele Vaccaro).

sites describe a heretofore unknown local trade in surplus wine, destined for one’s
near and far neighbours, not overseas export (Figure 6.5).93 These amphorae were
made in local ceramic kilns for short-distance land transport to peasants custom-
ers who, presumably, may have grown their own grapes but opted to supplement
their home vintage with that of their neighbours. Another small farm near Volterra
seems to have been producing dormice—presumably for sale in the nearby city.94
On the other side of the surplus/autarky divide, villas clearly produced and used
large quantities of their own produce, although the destination of crops which
never left the estate is harder to track than amphora-born goods that did. The
recent discovery through isotope analysis of imported grain at one such villa, the
 Roman agriculture from above and below 139
so-called villa of Horace at Vacone, may suggest that even such an autarkic staple
might be imported from elsewhere, purchased, like peasants bought wine, not
necessarily because of want but for preference, or to allow the estate to concen-
trate on other activities.95 Some observations on the application of water power
in Gallic villas have suggested it was often employed to grind wheat for in-house
consumption.96 Much wider application of both isotopic analysis on botanical and
faunal materials, and thin sections to track the origins and consumption-points of
ceramics is necessary to really see these trends in detail. The initial data, and the
comparanda from north of the Alps, describes a world in which it was the scale,
not the presence, of market-oriented surplus which really distinguished smallhold-
ers from their villa-owning neighbours.97 All farmers aimed to sell some of their
surplus on the market: at what scale and by what means lay the differences.

Threshing
The flat-bottomed amphorae described earlier were dwarfed by the great Dressel
1B which held the produce of a villa like Settefinestre, just as its granary loomed
over the small affair at the peasant farm at Pievina. These material differences
in scale epitomise the broader scaler distinctions which everywhere distinguish
smallholder agriculture from villa agriculture: from hectares under the plough to
the size of agricultural labour force to the overall scale of surplus production, size
differences are the most obvious ways in which villa and smallholder agriculture
differed. As we’ve cautioned earlier, that difference in scale takes place upon a
shared basis of practices, which are, in most instances simply scaled-up in the
case of large estates: larger scale of cereal polycultures, larger wine surpluses,
larger herd sizes. A certain kind of subtle specialisation can be found as a product
of larger scales; we’ve already noted the way in which work animals and eating
animals might be distinctly managed on larger estates versus smaller ones where
labour trumped dietary meat. But these tend to be differences of emphasis, not
radical distinctions in practice.
As has been long recognised, this difference in emphasis rather than kind is
similarly true of labour practices. As we’ve noted earlier, the assumption that Ital-
ian villas were worked with a predominantly slave system, with tenancy used for
specific land types or geographies, lies at the heart of the two-agricultures model
and lurks behind a presumed concomitant difference in agricultural practices.98 As
has been clear for some time, however, the equation of Italian villas with majority
slave labour forces has been exaggerated; most Italian villas were worked with a
complex, largely impossible to reconstruct mélange of slaves, free wage labour,
and tenants.99 For Columella, it is quite clear that labour determinations are a
product of a complex calculus—the personalities of locals, the time the owner
plans to spend on the estate; even the nature of the soil.100 From his indications that
wandering shepherds were often slaves, and Cato’s contracts for wage labourers at
harvest time, it’s plain that specific crops did not necessarily dictate specific and
singular types of labour.101 Furthermore, these categories of tenant, wage labour
and smallholder were fluid.102 Smallholders might let out portions of their land to
140 Kim Bowes
tenants, or act as tenants in addition to owning their own plots, while large land-
owners might also rent land as tenants.103 Slave owning was not limited to large
villas, as evidenced by the canonical smallholder, Simulus of the Moretum, who
owns a female slave. Smallholder family members might work for wages dur-
ing harvest time and other moments of labour dearth.104 In short, the differences
between villa and smallholder labour were again a matter of emphasis, with larger
slave populations on villas, but slavery, tenancy and wage labour used everywhere.
Where there are non-scalar, structural differences to be found between peasant
and villa agriculture, they are to be sought both in more subtle material distinc-
tions on the ground and in the slippage between words and things. Indeed, the
most obvious difference between the peasant doing agriculture and the aristocratic
writing about doing agriculture are the words between. In writing agriculture—in
ordering its practices and know-how, in planting it in ancient literary soil—the elite
agronomists ploughed words into the praxes of planting and tilling and harvesting
and storing that they shared with their smallholder neighbours. In doing so, they
transformed those praxes in ways that, while they still permit a glimpse of that
shared world, made it do extra, different kind of work.
The most obvious work is status. In laying out a dizzying display of know-
how of everything from soil selection to land surveying, and using it to create or
uphold a mythic past in which that very know-how defined aristocratic virtue,
the elite agronomists shifted the infinite tasks and knowledge involved in grow-
ing from part of a survival apparatus to a status apparatus. Know-how ordered
and debated, used to construct and critique history or to make oneself a place
in that history—these were uses of agriculture which words, and the agronomic
genre, permitted. Agronomy was geekiness exhibited, a genre of minutiae in
which information on distinguishing the fattiness of soil by soaking it overnight
or a dispute over the best material for beehives, constituted literary form as well
as practical instruction.105 Smallholders, who produced the know-how but who
seemingly had no such literature, were denied its status-producing qualities. If
there were oral versions of such competitive displays of knowledge, which there
very well may have been, their form restricted their circulation to the here of the
local and now of their telling.
Putting knowledge on a stage is also characteristic of the monumental physical
villa. In lining of the perimeter of his/her villa with buildings that monumentalised
the outcomes of know-how—granaries, cisterns, animal stalls—the villa owner
like the agronomist trumpeted agricultural successes to neighbours and passers-
by.106 So, too, the great oil and wine presses, which in the late republican/early
imperial villas of Italy lay adjacent to and on-par with the luxurious living quarters,
or in the provinces often flanked the villa entrance, these made status out of the art
and scale of agro-processing (see Figure 6.1).
So prominent and impressive are these monuments to elite production capacities
that we can be forgiven if we have assumed that peasants had no equivalent, and,
has often been argued, had little surplus to store.107 That they did have granaries
and cisterns and presses and often significant surplus is only evident from a care-
ful archaeology which seeks out the whole of the peasant task-scape, where such
 Roman agriculture from above and below 141
structures are often placed at some distance from their central dwelling spaces.108
As noted earlier, our project located a small granary, as well as a cistern at the
late republican site of Pievina (see Figure 6.4), while the large-scale excavations
in northern Gaul and Germania have found whole villages defined by their mul-
tiple granaries.109 But these are not status projects: they have none of the overt
monumentality, masonry architecture or placement which suggests buildings try-
ing to do anything other than store water, animals and cereals. Indeed, in many
peasant farms, the principal vessel of storage may not have been a building, but
ceramic dolia, whose broken fragments we found in numbers only near sites which
longer-term occupation.110 Presses, similarly, may have been open air—either free-
standing as in the hill-top press we located at Case Nuove (Figure 6.6), or outside
the house as was the case at the peasant farm at Podere Cosciano near Volterra.111
Often built to press both grapes and olives and constructed of a minimum of opus
signinum liquid-resistant mortar, these presses, like the granaries and cisterns,
were modest affairs, often without roof or walls, used only during the harvest
months. The apparatus of crop processing was not only not claimed through monu-
mentalisation but may have been shared between multiple peasant families, as the
positioning and archaeobotanical record of Case Nuove suggests. The rhetorical
possibilities of these activities are passed over and they simply do the one job of
pressing, its costs divided among many.

Figure 6.6 Reconstruction, Case Nuove pressing site (first century BC/AD)
Source: © Roman Peasant Project (Studio InkLink).
142 Kim Bowes
The fact that rural dwellers don’t seize on the doing of agriculture as an
opportunity to proclaim status is somewhat at odds with the activities of their
non-elite brethren in cities. Shop-owners, butchers, bakers and tanners in cit-
ies like Ostia and Pompeii both insistently used buildings, images and inscrip-
tions to proclaim their identity, cement their success at their chosen field and
stake their claim over their rivals.112 The shrine and paintings from the shop of
Vetutius Placidus in Pompeii which advertise their owner’s commercial suc-
cess, inscribed signs like a humorous example from an innkeeper in Asernia,
the funerary inscriptions of freed-people who proclaim their occupational
identity in lieu of a familial one—the Roman city was littered with the detri-
tus of makers using their making as an instrument of status creation.113 Why
non-elites in the Italian countryside did not do so suggests both important
differences in the benefits of status creation in the countryside and/or differ-
ent non-material vehicles like reputation and storytelling, by which that status
was maintained.
Another deep-seated difference between the world of the villa owner and that
of the smallholder was the nature and rhythms of time. These differences are not,
perhaps, the ones we expect. The agronomist or elite villa owner with their urban
political careers seem the epitome of lives lived in Braudel’s événement, while
the peasant living out their lives according to the rhythms of soil and rain would
seem to embody the longue durée.114 That a more complex, even opposite reality
characterised aristo-time and peasant time is suggested by both the agronomists
themselves and the new archaeology. The agronomic text is shackled to the past:
the construction of agricultural virtus is tied to a mythic smallholder past, itself
constructed around political figures like Cincinnatus whose événement lives sav-
ing the Republic from invasion and crisis are mere punctuation points of a career
allegedly lived on and with the rhythms of the land. The agronomist, each in their
own way, seeks to mask the present with its many agrarian innovations, from
the expanding villa to the huge investment in animal agriculture, with prefaces
setting those innovations in the context of renewal and return.115 Whether it be
Columella’s counter to soil exhaustion or Varro’s troubled arc of Roman history
narrated through the farm, the agronomic genre is defined as much around a past
golden age as it is about know-how in the present, and the latter must always bow
to the former.
The physical villa, too, was built to create and recall a family’s longue durée
ties to the land. Villas were meant to embody family memory in rural place.116
Their monumental, masonry architecture emphasised their durability and longev-
ity. The shrine at a villa like that of the Volusii tied that villa to family history,
with dozens of public honorific inscriptions to generations of notables placed in
a prominent room in the public space of the villa. So, too, did free-standing villa
mausolea, set at the approaches or boundaries of villas, marking the intersection
of agriculture and habitation with the memory of family members past.117 When
accompanied by great storage spaces, these other parts of the villa’s monumental
apparatus bound agricultural production to ancestral identity, just as Cato sought
to do for his upstart gens.
 Roman agriculture from above and below 143
A more attentive reading of the texts as well as the archaeology can help us
see these statements for the reality they conceal, a reality in which few families
retained their estates for more than a generation or two, in which, as the agrono-
mists themselves admit in the interstices, buying and selling of estates was con-
stant and desirable.118 Villa excavations with detailed stratigraphic sequences often
find the impression of longevity broken by periodic abandonment, large-scale
rebuilding, restoration or other indications of hiatus and rupture.119 The letters of
elites from Cicero to Pliny are filled with plans for buying and selling rural estates,
of transplanting one’s rural family identity from one place to another. The notion
of villa permanence managed to do important rhetorical work while remaining a
convenient fiction.
The notion of the autochthonous, unchanging peasant likewise has a long and
diverse history, one elite Romans themselves contributed to in their effort to tie
their own modern agriculture to a mythic past. The figure of Simulus or Virgil’s
Georgics’ farmers are framed as eternal figures, grown from the soil, their days a
round of the same tasks on an unchanging land.120 The actual peasant worlds we
found in our project were almost entirely the opposite. The average site occupation
length was 44 years, the number encapsulating a whole series of indicators for a
mobility and change among rural non-elites.121
Most pronounced were the non-permanent nature of the majority of the spaces
we excavated. One, at most two of the various-sized sites were what one might
term ‘houses’—spaces which displayed material indicators for cooking, storage,
sewing or weaving, or other of the multiple-elements of days lived out in the same
space. Instead, most of the sites we encountered were specialised in function and
seemingly used for varying lengths of time—from occasional to seasonal.122 Two
work huts whose botanical profile suggested the periodic stabling of animals as
well as short stays with no facilities for cooking; the afore-mentioned outdoor
pressing site complete with rudimentary press, treading surface, well and cistern
used presumably during the September and November harvest months; planned
facilities for the production of various phases of Italic sigillata ceramics—these
comprised the bulk of the sites, large and small, revealed by the project’s excava-
tions. In contrast, the one likely farm at Pievina included structures for long-term
storage (a granary and cistern), an outdoor hearth and multiple and abundant faunal
and ceramic collections—something missing in the shorter-use sites.
We termed the very different use periods and functions as ‘distributed habita-
tion,’ a mode of living in which different ‘domestic’ activities—pasturing, press-
ing, artisanal activities—were separated in space and time.123 The fact that most of
these activities pertained to production is characteristic of smallholder’s particular
‘domestic,’ centred on making and growing. Their separation in space we inter-
preted as a doubling-down on the micro-regional possibilities presented by an
environmentally diverse landscape characterised by plots of different soil, hydrol-
ogy, and topography. Thus, these smallholders tended to build small work huts
used for short-term animal shelter areas in lowland, clayey areas more readily left
as pasture, the pressing site on a hilltop unsuitable for agriculture but visible from
the fields around, while longer-term sites tended to sit in better drained, somewhat
144 Kim Bowes
lighter soils.124 The diversity in these sittings, however, belied any simple environ-
mental determinism and pointed to choices made beyond the ability of archaeology
to recover. Habitation, then, consisted of movement between these different areas
and specialised sites as need and time required. Mobility and transience, occa-
sioned by a desire to make more efficient and productive the use of diverse plots
of land, characterised the smallholder experience in this area.
The architecture of these sites was itself a product of this distributed, mobile
mode of dwelling. Made largely of rammed or mounded earthen walls atop stone
socles, the buildings were a combination of micro-locally available earth and
collected stones.125 A stone-poor area, the region prompted recycling of these
structures and reuse of the stones whose multiple geological origins described
a palimpsest of use and reuse, occasioned by the constant movement around the
locale. Tile roofs were required to preserve the earthen walls, but once the site was
no longer deemed useful, the roofs were recycled and reused in other projects. The
remnants of such a recycling project were found at the site of Poggio dell’Amore,
where one wall and fragmentary remains of a recycled roof were all that remained
of a small pasture hut.126 It is important to note that the earthen material of these
structures did not itself produce impermanence: just as the monumental stone vil-
las might be sporadically occupied, the earthen walls of these smallholder sites
could in theory be preserved for centuries by careful maintenance of their bases
and roofs. The fact that they generally were not was a product of their imperma-
nent function, used for days or seasons, and then as generational shifts prompted
new uses of the land, they were abandoned and recycled, their walls returned to
the earth.
Finally, as we’ve noted earlier, even the peasant use of the land was character-
ised by constant change. Crop rotational schemes likewise imply a shifting use of
the land as different plots were rotated with different crops. Distributed habitation
strategies were also developed in dialectical relationship with agricultural practice;
longer term sites tended to have higher quantities of olive and grape pollen as
those more fixed crops seem to have been situated near more fixed dwellings.127
Finally the notion of an unchanging earth on which the soil-tied smallholder toiled
is confounded by the construction of field drains and containment of groundwater,
signs of an insistent effort to bend land and water to human needs.

Conclusions
Eric Hobsbawm once cautioned that the grassroots historian would find only what
he or she was looking for, not what was already waiting to be found. The search
for working people in most periods, he warned, was conditioned by the historian’s
questioning of a recalcitrant source base and thus was even less a positivistic enter-
prise than most history writing: ‘There is generally no material until our questions
have revealed it.’128 In the case of Roman agriculture, this is both particularly true
in ways that are actually revealing of our subject and also not true. As I’ve tried
to describe here, the shared practices of smallholders and elite villa owners were
simultaneously advertised and obfuscated by the latter, the genre of agronomy
 Roman agriculture from above and below 145
serving to clothe shared know-how in a garb of self-presentation and poetics in
which, for a while, it became hard to take the know-how seriously. The literary work
of the last few years has revealed a genre defined by ‘both/and,’ a peep-show that
reveals actual practices of ploughing and planting, harvesting and storing, delivered
as instructions to villa managers, only to periodically reclothe those practices as
Roman history and literary self-crafting. Those moves, I’ve argued, are themselves
an integral part of history from below, in which practice is shared but put to very
different uses by smallholders and elites. Both are engaged in the detailed business
of persuading the land to produce to its maximum capacity and leveraging that pro-
duction for self-sufficiency and profit. But only elites put that work to further work,
using their agricultural praxes both to craft a distant past to which they shackled
their identity and as part and parcel of their efforts to bolster and maintain their
moral and family status in the now. It is indeed, as Hobsbawm notes, only when
we pose questions about smallholder agriculture that we can see that Janus-faced
structure. But it is also the obfuscating act itself on the part of elites and the absent
equivalent on the part of smallholders, which tells us something interesting about
the latter. It’s puzzling as to why Roman smallholders don’t seem to have seized
hold of their production as an opportunity to make claims about themselves, if not
in writing then in their buildings, and why there is no peasant equivalent to the art
and architecture of working urbanites. The answer to that question might reveal two
quite different grassroots histories between city and country.
Hobsbawm, too, didn’t reckon on archaeology: new archaeological work on
villas and peasants alike allows us another way of doing history from below. That
way, as I’ve tried to suggest here, does not lie in just bypassing the elite written
source corpora as irrelevant or wrong. Rather, archaeology gives us the oppor-
tunity to compare and contrast two different kinds of information about the past
and, in their overlaps, to identify the many points where all farmers, large and
small, are engaged in the same thing—crop rotation, polycultures, investment in
animals, self-sufficiency combined with surplus export, even at small scales. Only
the new attention to archaeobotanical and faunal remains, ceramic fabric and thin-
section studies, laid against the agronomic texts, allows us a glimpse of that world.
Similarly, only a detailed attention to stratigraphy and stratigraphic dating, which
ironically is required of smallholder archaeology and is still optional in large villa
excavations, laid against the atavistic agronomy literature, allows us to get at the
potentially different temporal scales at which these two groups lived—or at which
elites claimed to have lived. In short, while archaeology holds out the most prom-
ise for a rural history from below, it is a careful questioning of all our data and
a desire to see it on its own terms, that might produce what Hobsbawm urged us
toward—a grassroots history which doesn’t just discover the past but explains it.

Notes
1 On the use of ‘peasant’ as a shorthand for non-elite countryman and for a dissection of
the term’s ancient through modern baggage, see Grey 2011, 26–33. This essay will use
the term ‘smallholder’ and ‘peasant’ interchangeably to refer to non-elite countrymen
whose economic strategies were centered on, but not limited to, agriculture.
146 Kim Bowes
2 Cato, Agr. 11; Columella, Rust. 1.1.18, 1.2.1, 1.2.3, 1.3.3, 1.7–1.9.
3 E.g. Carandini 1985b; Marzano 2007.
4 Cambi 2002; Capogrossi Colognesi 1986; Rathbone 2008; Launaro 2011.
5 For critical observations about smallholder archaeology, see Rathbone 2008.
6 For a review of the debate, see Bowes 2021b.
7 Carandini 1983; Giardina and Schiavone 1981.
8 Carandini 1985a; Carandini 1989; Vera 1992; Morley 1996; Patterson 2006, 66–88;
cf. Bowes et al. 2017.
9 For a careful reading of the Gracchan evidence, see Gargola 2008 and Balbo 2013; on
debt, see Rosenstein 2004, 51–55.
10 For a summary, see Momigliano 1982; Bowes 2021b.
11 Weber 1891; Rostovtzeff 1926.
12 Weber 1891; modified but substantially retained by Neeve 1984, 90–93.
13 White 1970; Duncan-Jones 1982, 33–59; Spur 1986; Marcone 1997, the later more
attentive to their literary qualities and emphasis on polycultures.
14 Cato, Agr. 11; Columella, Rust. 3.3; Carandini 1985b.
15 Finley 1999 (updated edition), 108–17.
16 Kron 2004 and 2012; De Sena 2005; Goodchild 2013.
17 Goodchild 2013; Trapero Fernández 2016.
18 Marzano 2013 and 2015 (on Gaul and Spain).
19 See generally Diederich 2005; Trevizam 2013.
20 On know-how, Thibodeau 2018; on the trope of old-time agriculture, Reay 2005; on
agricultural measurements of the decline of history, Nelsestuen 2015; on the construc-
tion of first century BC elite identity via literature, Habinek 1998.
21 Spanier 2010; Nelsestuen 2015; Henderson 2004, 7–11.
22 Bowes 2021c.
23 Bowes 2021c.
24 On the relationship between philology and archaeology in classical studies, see Dyson
1981; Hall 2014, ch. 1.
25 A notable exception is Hall 2014.
26 Gibson 1997; Habinek 1998, 46–50; Hine 2011; Henderson 2002.
27 Trevizam 2013.
28 Cato, Agr. praef.; Columella, Rust. praef.
29 Reay 2005.
30 Nelsestuen 2015.
31 Henderson 2002; Henderson 2004.
32 Thibodeau 2011.
33 Thibodeau 2018.
34 Hine 2011; see also Reay 2005.
35 Reay 2005.
36 See the critique in Marzano 2007.
37 Carandini 1985a.
38 Marzano 2007.
39 Marzano 2013.
40 Van Oyen 2015 and 2019.
41 Van Oyen 2019, 42–43.
42 See the review of this literature in Witcher 2006a and 2006b; Launaro 2011.
43 See the cautions in Witcher 2006a.
44 E.g. the debates between Terrenato 1998 and Carandini et al. 2002.
45 Marzano 2007, 137; Launaro 2011.
46 White 1970; Finley 1999, 106–11.
47 Starting with the careful work of Spurr 1986. See now Kron 2005.
48 Columella, Rust. praef 1.
49 Olson 1943.
 Roman agriculture from above and below 147
50 Columella, Rust. 1.5, 2.4.
51 Columella, Rust. 2.2.
52 Campana 2017.
53 Quilici and Quilici Gigli 2009.
54 Goodchild 2007, 184–5.
55 Bowes 2021c, ch. 4, 8 and 9.
56 Bowes 2021c, 207–20.
57 Bowes 2021c, 221–48.
58 Cato, Agr. 155; Columella, Rust. 2.2. Spurr 1986, 38, 57–58.
59 Kron 2000. See also suggestion in Spurr 1986, 27.
60 Columella, Rust. 2.1–2.
61 On fodder crops, Columella Rust. 2.10–3.
62 Bowes et al. 2017; Mercuri and Bowes in Arnoldus et al. 2021.
63 Cf. Groot and Kooistra 2009, who use similar data to make more definite ‘reconstructions.’
64 Fögen 2016.
65 Kron 2002 and 2004.
66 MacKinnon 2010.
67 MacKinnon 2001 and 2015.
68 Jongman 1988, 80–82.
69 MacKinnon in Arnoldus et al. 2021.
70 MacKinnon in Arnoldus et al. 2021; MacKinnon in Bowes, MacKinnon, Mercuri,
Rattighieri and Rinaldi 2021.
71 See Garnsey 1988, 44–47.
72 Long ago noted by Spurr 1986, 5–6.
73 For a rare notice of the genre’s emphasis on polycultures, Duncan-Jones 1982, 37;
Henderson 2004, 10 (on Columella).
74 See Henderson 2002.
75 As noted by Carandini 1983.
76 Carandini 1983.
77 Columella, Rust. Book 2, ostensibly on soils, is principally dedicated to soil selection,
ploughing and seeding for cereals and legumes. Cato, Agr. 34–37; Varro, Agr. 42–53.
78 E.g. Motta, Camin and Terrenato 1993; Caramiello et al. 2000; Kron 2004; Ciaraldi
2007; Mercuri et al. 2009; Rowan 2016, Bosi et al. 2019, among many.
79 Wilson and Ramsay 2017.
80 Ciaraldi 2007; Rowan 2016.
81 Pliny’s hierarchy of cereals: Plin. HN 10.18.20.
82 Varro, Agr. 9; Columella, Rust. 2.9.
83 Horden and Purcell 2000, 77–79.
84 On association of millet with poverty and small farmers, Spurr 1983, 14; for the isotope
evidence, Killgrove and Tykot 2013.
85 Murphy 2016.
86 Garnsey 1988, 44–48; Gallant 1991.
87 Carandini 1983.
88 Kay 2014; Stringer 2020; Marzano 2015.
89 Reay 2005.
90 Columella, Rust. Praef.
91 Thibodeau 2011.
92 Ghisleni, Vaccaro and Bowes 2011; Bowes 2021c, 104.
93 Pecci et al. 2015; Bowes and Vaccaro in Bowes, Vaccaro, Collins-Elliot and Gray
2021.
94 Camin 2014.
95 On the imported grain from Vacone, see Rowan 2019.
96 Marzano 2015, 218–9.
97 See, for instance, the contributions in Deru and González Villaescusa 2014; Groot et al. 2009.
148 Kim Bowes
98 For an elaboration of this earlier model, see Giardina and Schiavone 1981.
99 Rosafio 1993; Capogrossi Colognesi 1986.
100 Columella, Rust. 1.7.
101 Columella, Rust. 1.9; Cato, Agr. 144–5, respectively.
102 Foxhall 1990.
103 Neeve 1984, who argues that status and vocabulary might distinguish elite from non-
elite tenants in this period.
104 Marcone 2009.
105 Columella, Rust. 2.2.20 (on soils); 9.6–7 (on beehives).
106 Van Oyen 2019.
107 Van Oyen 2019, 42–43.
108 On task-scape, see Ingold 1993, and below.
109 Pievina: Ghisleni, Vaccaro and Bowes 2011; Bowes 2021c, 63–105; Groot et al. 2009;
Ferdière 2015.
110 Bowes in Bowes, MacKinnon, Mercuri, Rattighieri and Rinaldi 2021.
111 Vaccaro et al. 2013; Bowes 2021c, 107–62; Camin and McCall 2002–3.
112 See the surveys in Joshel 1992; Petersen 2006; Mayer 2012; Flohr 2013, ch. 6. See
also Courrier and Tran, this volume, for the case of southern Gaul.
113 Aesernia inscription: CIL 9.2689; Fagan 2017.
114 Braudel 1958.
115 On the craft of literature as therapy for anxiety about the present, see Habinek 1998.
On the prefaces specifically see Reay 2005; Spanier 2010, 210–62. On the masking of
the present in the Georgics, see Thibodeau 2011.
116 Bodel 1997.
117 Bowes 2006.
118 Bodel 1997, 12; Hillner 2003.
119 E.g. Greenslade 2019; in general, Foxhall 2000.
120 On the Virgilian construction of an unchanged farming, see Thibodeau 2011.
121 Bowes 2021a.
122 Bowes, Collins-Elliot and Grey 2021.
123 Bowes, Collins-Elliot and Grey 2021.
124 Arnoldus et al. 2021.
125 Bowes 2021a.
126 Bowes 2021c, 185–206.
127 Arnoldus et al. 2021.
128 Hobsbawm 1988, 271.

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Part 3

Gender, ethnicity
and subalternity
7 Hellenicity from below
Subalternity and ethnicity in
classical Greece and beyond
Gabriel Zuchtriegel

Introduction
If we look at ancient history ‘from above’—that is, from the viewpoint of urban
elites in the Greek and Roman world—ethnicity as a category for defining indi-
vidual and group identities appears neglectable. From the literary and archaeo-
logical evidence on intermarriage in the context of Greek colonial-indigenous
encounters to Roman senators and emperors coming from the provinces, the elites
of the ancient world showed an astonishing openness when it came to integrating
with ethnically diverse groups. Apart from isolated cases (e.g. access to Athenian
citizenship in the fifth century BC), ethnic ‘purity’ seems not to have been a major
concern for ancient Greek and Roman elites. It is therefore understandable that
scholars such as Robin Osborne have concluded that ethnicity was not a crucial
category for ancient societies.1
However, things change if we look at history ‘from below’—that is, if we focus
on non-elite and non-urban, subaltern experience and agency. Arguably, ethnic
diversity was crucial for defining non-elite identities and shaping subaltern expe-
rience in the ancient world. This was not the case from the beginning, though. In
fact, a second point I would like to emphasise is that ethnicity was not a stable
category during antiquity but a dynamic one. The intrinsic link between ethnic-
ity and subalternity, as described here, developed in a specific period and region,
namely in Greece and the Greek colonies between the sixth and fourth centuries
BC. Therefore, I will focus on this particular historical context in my contribu-
tion. Further, I will touch on how the classical Greek notion of ethnically codified
subalternity might have influenced later, especially Roman, ideologies and social
practices.
On a global level, depicting ethnically diverse groups as inferior is a common
phenomenon that cannot be linked to any specific region or period. However, the
kind of ethnically codified subalternity we will be looking at in this chapter goes
beyond depicting the Other as inferior. Subalternity, according to the definition
provided by Antonio Gramsci, is a social category and therefore presupposes some
form of integration or incorporation: it applies to those who are part of a society
but within it are occupying a marginal position (‘gruppi sociali ai margini della
storia’).2 The subaltern is the Other Self, the outsider who is included inside the

DOI: 10.4324/9781003005148-10
158 Gabriel Zuchtriegel
hegemonic ‘bloc,’ as Gramsci calls it. The ‘voicelessness’ of the subaltern stems
from their being part of a society without having access to the hegemonic codes
structuring it. In Gayatri Spivak’s words, ‘their speech acts cannot be concluded
because the elite lacks the necessary infrastructure.’3
As an archaeologist whose professional socialisation took place in the 2000s in
German and Italian universities, I grew up in an academic environment in which
the ‘pots equal peoples’ model was considered as completely outdated—rightly
so.4 As a consequence, our professors would often warn us better not to engage
with ethnicity, as if this were a kind of academic no-go-area. The possibilities of
tracing ethnic identities in the archaeological record are indeed limited. In the
case of subaltern groups, who left no written sources and whose experience is
not included in official historical accounts, this is even more difficult.5 Yet, I only
realised later, while working on colonisation and subalternity in classical Greece,
that screening out the dimension of ethnic identity means ignoring one of the key
elements by which subalternity was defined in the ancient world.6 Arguably, eth-
nicity as a cultural construct that pretends being founded on a shared biological
lineage is one of the most effective means of naturalising subalternity—that is, of
presenting social inferiority as a natural condition.7

Ethnicity, subalternity and colonisation: literary sources

In this context, Aristotle’s concept of ‘natural slavery’ (douleia kata physin, Poli-
tics, Book 1) has received much attention.8 However, in this chapter, I would like
to take another passage from the Politics as a starting point. In Book 7, while
addressing the organisation of the ideal polis, Aristotle gives a hint to where the
subaltern labour force working the land owned by the citizens should come from:

τοὺς δὲ γεωργήσοντας μάλιστα μέν, εἰ δεῖ κατ᾽ εὐχήν, δούλους εἶναι, μήτε
ὁμοφύλων πάντων μήτε θυμοειδῶν (οὕτω γὰρ ἂν πρός τε τὴν ἐργασίαν εἶεν
χρήσιμοι καὶ πρὸς τὸ μηδὲν νεωτερίζειν ἀσφαλεῖς), δεύτερον δὲ βαρβάρους
περιοίκους παραπλησίους τοῖς εἰρημένοις τὴν φύσιν.

Those who are to cultivate the soil should best of all, if the ideal system is to
be stated, be slaves, not drawn from people all of one tribe nor of a spirited
character (for thus they would be both serviceable for their work and safe to
abstain from insurrection), but as a second best they should be neighbouring
barbarians (barbaroi perioikoi) of a similar nature.9

That in the ideal state subaltern labourers should be ethnically diverse from the
citizens (slaves from different tribes or ‘neighbouring barbarians,’ whatever that
means) is an idea that is also present in the Laws of Aristotle’s teacher Plato.
In Book 8, Plato states that ‘no resident citizen shall be numbered among those
who engage in technical crafts, nor any servant of a resident’ (ἐπιχώριος μηδεὶς
ἔστω τῶν περὶ τὰ δημιουργικὰ τεχνήματα διαπονούντων, μηδὲ οἰκέτης ἀνδρὸς
ἐπιχωρίου).10
 Hellenicity from below 159
Neither Aristotle nor Plato provides any further context for these statements. It
is unclear where the ‘foreign labourers’ in Plato’s ideal polis should come from.
Likewise, Aristotle does not specify what tribes the slaves who work the land
should come from nor what relation the barbaroi perioikoi were to have with the
polis. Are they also slaves or ethnically diverse groups living on the margins of,
or even outside, the polis territory?
Yet, by using the term barbaroi perioikoi, Aristotle has left a trace of the ide-
ology that sustained his viewpoint—as well as the blind spots surrounding it. It
appears that it makes little sense talking of ‘neighbouring barbarians’ with regard
to places in mainland Greece such as Athens, Corinth, Sparta or Thebes, as these
were surrounded by other Greek communities. It is therefore likely that Aristotle
had a colonial setting in mind. As I have tried to show, the whole discussion on
the ‘best state/polis’ in Plato’s Laws and Aristotle’s Politics is fully understandable
only if we contextualise it in a society where the foundation of new colonies in
non-Greek territories was a common phenomenon.11 Arguably, the Greek colonial
experience of the sixth to fourth centuries BC provided the backdrop for the politi-
cal and economic theories of classical writers such as Aristotle and Plato—includ-
ing the way they conceptualised subalternity as ethnically codified.
Aristotle’s mention of the barbaroi perioikoi is emblematic in this regard. It
appears rather enigmatic in a purely philosophical, abstract context (who are they,
where do they come from, what is their place in the polis?); though, it is less enig-
matic if we analyse it on the backdrop of colonial subaltern groups such as the
Kyllyrioi in Syracuse. In 1891, during the heyday of British colonialism, Oxford
professor Edward A. Freeman summarised what we know of the Kyllyrioi, thanks
to Herodotus’ Histories (Book 7, 155) and a series of later sources (in particular,
late antique lexica):

These last [i.e., the Sikels, the indigenous population of eastern Sicily] had
their place in the economy of the Syracusan commonwealth, but without being
its members even in the lowest sense. Under the name of Kyllyrioi, a name
of uncertain origin, they dwelled in a position much like that of villainage
on the lands of the Syracusan landowners. They are likened to the Helots of
Laconia and to the Penests of Thessaly. But the Helots were Greeks as much
as their masters; the Penests were more truly so; a scrupulous genealogist
might have called in question the right of the Thesprotian invaders to the
Hellenic name. This relation of villainage was a common one in the Greek
colonies. The natives of the soil tilled the lands which had once belonged to
their own people.12

Apart from its specific content (the Kyllyrioi as one possible example of barbaroi
perioikoi), I quote this text here for two further reasons: firstly, it shows how the
nexus of subalternity/ethnicity was approached in the wider context of modern
European colonialism in nineteenth-century scholarship. On the same pages, Free-
man distinguishes people of ‘pure Greek blood’ from Barbarians of various kinds.
Secondly, the text stands out against the backdrop of post-war archaeology and
160 Gabriel Zuchtriegel
historiography that have attempted to avoid the pitfalls of colonialism. After the
Second World War, an increasing number of scholars started questioning Eurocen-
tric and racially biased visions of the ancient world. While this can be considered
a major shift towards a better understanding of ancient Mediterranean migration
and hybridisation, it also entailed a certain scepticism, or even unwillingness, to
accept that in some cases otherness and subalternity were defined along ethnical
division lines. To some extent, this resulted from a misinterpretation of postcolo-
nial theories and frameworks, such as Middle Ground, Third Space, hybridisation
and so forth, giving rise to exaggeratedly irenic representations of ancient Greek
colonial interaction with local groups.13 Against this backdrop, Benjamin Isaac and
Kostas Vlassopoulos were among the first to point out the outspokenly ethnic, or
even racist, definitions in ancient Greek discourses about the Other.14 Thus, after
more than a century, groups such as the Kyllyrioi have re-emerged at the centre of
classical studies—though now from a critical/postcolonial viewpoint.
If we follow the trace left by Aristotle’s mention of the barbaroi perioikoi, it
turns out that while ethnical mixture and diversity had a positive connotation on
the level of elite interaction, this was not necessarily the case on the level of lower
and subaltern classes. Freeman sustained that the kind of subaltern status typical of
the Kyllyrioi was ‘a common one in the Greek colonies.’ Again, after more than a
century, this continues to be a crucial point. When writing this, Freeman probably
had other—scanty—references to subaltern groups of non-Greek origin in mind,
such as the Pedieis at Priene, a local Carian population living in the countryside
and working the fields of the citizens (Pedieis literally means ‘inhabitants of the
plain’).15 In Herakleia Pontike on the southern coast of the Black Sea in modern
Turkey, the local population of the Mariandynoi seem to have lived under com-
parable conditions.16 In this case, however, the name ‘gift-bearers’ (dorophoroi),
which the people of Herakleia gave them, tended to obscure their ethnic identity
rather than emphasising it, as Athenaeus suggests:

λέγει δὲ καὶ Καλλίστρατος ὁ Ἀριστοφάνειος, ὅτι τοὺς Μαριανδυνοὺς

ὠνόμαζον μὲν δωροφόρους ἀφαιροῦντες τὸ πικρὸν τῆς τῶν οἰκετῶν
προσηγορίας, καθάπερ Σπαρτιᾶται μὲν ἐποίησαν ἐπὶ τῶν εἱλώτων, Θετταλοὶ
δ᾿ ἐπὶ τῶν πενεστῶν, Κρῆτες δ᾿ ἐπὶ τῶν κλαρωτῶν. καλοῦσι δὲ οἱ Κρῆτες
τοὺς μὲν κατὰ πόλιν οἰκέτας χρυσωνήτους, ἀμφαμιώτας δὲ τοὺς κατ᾿ ἀγρὸν
ἐγχωρίους μὲν ὄντας, δουλωθέντας δὲ κατὰ πόλεμον· διὰ τὸ κληρωθῆναι
δὲ κλαρώτας. ὁ Ἔφορος δ᾿ ἐν τρίτῃ Ἱστοριῶν, κλαρώτας, φησί, Κρῆτες
καλοῦσι τοὺς δούλους ἀπὸ τοῦ γενομένου περὶ αὐτῶν κλήρου. τούτοις δ᾿
εἰσὶ νενομισμέναι τινὲς ἑορταὶ ἐν Κυδωνίᾳ, ἐν αἷς οὐκ εἰσίασιν εἰς τὴν πόλιν
ἐλεύθεροι, ἀλλ᾿ οἱ δοῦλοι πάντων κρατοῦσι καὶ κύριοι μαστιγοῦν εἰσι τοὺς
ἐλευθέρους.

Aristophanes’ student Callistratus [FGrH 348 F 4] claims that people called

the Mariandynoi ‘gift-bearers’ as a way of removing the sting of the term
‘slaves,’ as the Spartiates did in the case of the Helots, the Thessalians in the
case of the Penestai, and the Cretans in the case of the klarōtai. The Cretans
 Hellenicity from below 161
refer to urban slaves Aschrusōnētoi, and to those in the countryside who are
native-born, but have been enslaved in war Asamphamiōtai; they call them
klarōtai because they are distributed by lot (klēros). Ephorus says in Book III
of the History [FGrH 70 F 29]: Cretans refer to their slaves as klarōtai because
of the lot cast for them. Certain festivals in Cydonia are considered theirs; free
people do not enter the city during them, and the slaves control everything and
have the authority to whip free individuals.17

The situation of the Cretan Asamphamiōtai resembles that of the Kyllyrioi and the
Pedieis: in all these cases, local non-Greek populations were integrated as subal-
tern groups in a colonial economy, living in the countryside and serving as agri-
cultural workforce. While this situation characterised their being subjugated and
exploited, it also allowed them to maintain some form of ethnic identity diverse
from that of their Greek masters. As the cases of the Cretan Asamphamiōtai and
of the Spartan Helots suggest, such ethnic distinctions could also be applied to
communities living in the Greek mainland or even to Greek tribes that were seen
as ethnically diverse from others.18 Irad Malkin has shown how this could lead
to forms of subjugation and colonisation in the Greek homeland that in many
respects resembled those known from the colonies.19 Thus, while the Messenian
Helots were not considered as barbaroi, their ethnic identity was fundamental to
the Spartan project of subjugating and exploiting them.
The sources further refer to local populations who lived in some kind of depen-
dent or subaltern status in Hellenistic settlements in Asia Minor, the Levantine,
Egypt and the Near East—for example, the local Phrygian population living near
Zeleia. An inscription from Zeleia dating to the end of the fourth century BC
‘explicitly distinguishes between the Greek population of the town and the rural
population of Phrygians in the chōra of Zeleia.’20 While this does not necessarily
mean that the Phrygians were serfs, what is striking is that:

even in the Hellespontine region, where the two peoples had lived in close
proximity for more than three centuries by this point, there was still such a
clear ethnic, spatial and juridical separation between the urban Greeks and
the rural Phrygians.21

The commonness of the subjugation and/or exploitation of ethnically diverse

groups in colonial settings also seems to emerge from a passage in Xenophon’s
Anabasis, in which he describes an area that to his eyes is ideally suited for estab-
lishing a colony (my emphasis):

ὁ δὲ Κάλπης λιμὴν ἐν μέσῳ μὲν κεῖται ἑκατέρωθεν πλεόντων ἐξ Ἡρακλείας

καὶ Βυζαντίου, ἔστι δ᾽ ἐν τῇ θαλάττῃ προκείμενον χωρίον, τὸ μὲν εἰς τὴν
θάλατταν καθῆκον αὐτοῦ πέτρα ἀπορρώξ, ὕψος ὅπῃ ἐλάχιστον οὐ μεῖον
εἴκοσιν ὀργυιῶν, ὁ δὲ αὐχὴν ὁ εἰς τὴν γῆν ἀνήκων τοῦ χωρίου μάλιστα
τεττάρων πλέθρων τὸ εὖρος: τὸ δ᾽ ἐντὸς τοῦ αὐχένος χωρίον ἱκανὸν μυρίοις
ἀνθρώποις οἰκῆσαι. λιμὴν δ᾽ ὑπ᾽ αὐτῇ τῇ πέτρᾳ τὸ πρὸς ἑσπέραν αἰγιαλὸν
162 Gabriel Zuchtriegel
ἔχων. κρήνη δὲ ἡδέος ὕδατος καὶ ἄφθονος ῥέουσα ἐπ᾽ αὐτῇ τῇ θαλάττῃ ὑπὸ τῇ
ἐπικρατείᾳ τοῦ χωρίου. ξύλα δὲ πολλὰ μὲν καὶ ἄλλα, πάνυ δὲ πολλὰ καὶ καλὰ
ναυπηγήσιμα ἐπ᾽ αὐτῇ τῇ θαλάττῃ. τὸ δὲ ὄρος εἰς μεσόγειαν μὲν ἀνήκει ὅσον
ἐπὶ εἴκοσι σταδίους, καὶ τοῦτο γεῶδες καὶ ἄλιθον: τὸ δὲ παρὰ θάλατταν πλέον
ἢ ἐπὶ εἴκοσι σταδίους δασὺ πολλοῖς καὶ παντοδαποῖς καὶ μεγάλοις ξύλοις. ἡ
δὲ ἄλλη χώρα καλὴ καὶ πολλή, καὶ κῶμαι ἐν αὐτῇ εἰσι πολλαὶ καὶ οἰκούμεναι:
φέρει γὰρ ἡ γῆ καὶ κριθὰς καὶ πυροὺς καὶ ὄσπρια πάντα καὶ μελίνας καὶ
σήσαμα καὶ σῦκα ἀρκοῦντα καὶ ἀμπέλους πολλὰς καὶ ἡδυοίνους καὶ τἆλλα
πάντα πλὴν ἐλαῶν.

As for Calpe Harbour, it lies midway of the voyage between Heracleia and
Byzantium and is a bit of land jutting out into the sea, the part of it which
extends seaward being a precipitous mass of rock, not less than twenty fath-
oms high at its lowest point, and the isthmus which connects this head with
the mainland being about four plethra in width; and the space to the seaward
of the isthmus is large enough for ten thousand people to dwell in. At the very
foot of the rock there is a harbour whose beach faces toward the west, and an
abundantly flowing spring of fresh water close to the shore of the sea and com-
manded by the headland. There is also a great deal of timber of various sorts,
but an especially large amount of fine ship-timber, on the very shore of the
sea. The ridge extends back into the interior for about twenty stadia, and this
stretch is deep-soiled and free from stones, while the land bordering the coast
is thickly covered for a distance of more than twenty stadia with an abundance
of heavy timber of all sorts. The rest of the region is fair and extensive, and
contains many inhabited villages; for the land produces barley, wheat, beans
of all kinds, millet and sesame, a sufficient quantity of figs, an abundance of
grapes which yield a good sweet wine, and in fact everything except olives.22

The way in which Xenophon introduces the presence of villages in the area which
he thought to be a favourable territory for a new city foundation is revealing for
various reasons. Firstly, the passage casts doubt on the idea that the ideal territory
the Greeks imagined for a new foundation was an eremos chora, an empty land.23
Rather, the presence of an indigenous population is presented here as an advantage
for a colonial settlement. Secondly, this favourable condition—from the Greek
colonial viewpoint—stems from the local population living in villages (komai)
and not in a fortified settlement centre. The underlying idea is that of subjugating
the indigenous population, who do not have the military organisation of a walled
polis and exploit the extant agricultural land and manpower for the new founda-
tion. The indigenous villages were important for yet another reason: the army
guided homeward by Xenophon after the Battle of Cunaxa (410 BC) consisted, if
not exclusively, almost entirely of men. In order to establish a new settlement, they
would have to found families and therefore needed women. Archaeological and
literary sources suggest that intermarriage was frequent in colonial settlements;24
a further reason why Xenophon considered the presence of local villages as an
advantage, thus, could be seen in the presence of women.
 Hellenicity from below 163
Archaeological research in southern Italy and Sicily has long shown that Greek
colonies were regularly established in areas that were already inhabited (and cul-
tivated) by local populations.25 Likewise, almost all Ionian cities in Asia Minor
seem to have been established on the sites of extant Carian settlements, the only
exceptions (according to Pausanias) being Klazomenai and Phokaia.26 It is likely
that intermarriage between Greeks and Carians was a frequent phenomenon in this
context, too. In the case of Miletos, the violence towards non-Greek groups that
accompanied such foundations is recorded in a tale Herodotus narrates in Book 1
of the Histories:

οἱ δὲ αὐτῶν ἀπὸ τοῦ πρυτανηίου τοῦ Ἀθηναίων ὁρμηθέντες καὶ νομίζοντες

γενναιότατοι εἶναι Ἰώνων, οὗτοι δὲ οὐ γυναῖκας ἠγάγοντο ἐς τὴν ἀποικίην
ἀλλὰ Καείρας ἔσχον, τῶν ἐφόνευσαν τοὺς γονέας. διὰ τοῦτὸν δὲ τὸν φόνον αἱ
γυναῖκες αὗται νόμον θέμεναι σφίσι αὐτῇσι ὅρκους ἐπήλασαν καὶ παρέδοσαν
τῇσι θυγατράσι, μή κοτε ὁμοσιτῆσαι τοῖσι ἀνδράσι μηδὲ οὐνόματι βῶσαι τὸν
ἑωυτῆς ἄνδρα, τοῦδε εἵνεκα ὅτι ἐφόνευσαν σφέων τοὺς πατέρας καὶ ἄνδρας
καὶ παῖδας καὶ ἔπειτα ταῦτα ποιήσαντες αὐτῇσι συνοίκεον.

And as for those who came from the very town-hall of Athens and think they
are the best born of the Ionians, these did not bring wives with them to their
settlements, but married Carian women whose parents they had put to death.
For this slaughter, these women made a custom and bound themselves by
oath (and enjoined it on their daughters) that no one would sit at table with
her husband or call him by his name, because the men had married them after
slaying their fathers and husbands and sons. This happened at Miletus.27

What is interesting to note is the fact that the memory of the ethnic identity of the
female members of the Milesian community seems to have endured, although we
cannot tell to what degree Herodotus’ claim that the wives refused to sit at the
table with their husbands or call them by their names corresponded to the facts of
his own time.28 Yet the idea as such of subaltern ethnic (and gendered) identities
surviving in this manner is noteworthy. It testifies to the ethnicity being crucial to
social status and identity.

Tracing the subaltern in the archaeological record

While tracing subaltern populations in the literary sources is not easy because of
the systematic underrepresentation of such groups in the texts, the archaeological
evidence is even more lacunary and difficult to interpret. There are hardly any direct
traces of subaltern groups in the archaeological record, let alone the ethnic identi-
ties that might have been associated with their social status. One possible exception
is a necropolis north of the ancient Greek colony of Poseidonia in southern Italy.
At a distance of 850 metres from the urban centre, at Ponte di Ferro near the
beach, from 1983 to 1988, 191 tombs dating from the late sixth to early fifth century
BC were excavated (Figure 7.1).29 Analysis of the burials as well as of the grave
164 Gabriel Zuchtriegel

Figure 7.1 Paestum: the urban necropolis

Source: (© Parco Archeologico di Paestum e Velia, Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del
Turismo).

goods suggests that we are dealing with subaltern community members, although
one should be cautious with the term ‘slaves.’ All tombs excavated so far at Ponte
di Ferro are inhumations; cremation burials seem to be lacking. The tombs are dug
into the sand, which is highly unusual (Figure 7.2). Moreover, the density of tombs
in this necropolis is significantly higher than that in other necropolis of the same
area and period. In several cases, two or more burials overlay one another. The
study of the burial site is still ongoing, which is why only preliminary results can
be presented here. As has been observed, the majority of tombs lacked grave goods
and other features; the skeletons were found buried ‘in the naked sand.’ Especially
in male adolescent and male adult burials grave goods were missing, while it was
female burials that occasionally contained small vases and other items—though
rarely more than one or two. The grave goods often consist of waster pottery. The
same holds true for the small number of ‘Cappuccina’ tombs—that is, tombs that
were covered with a small ridged roof made of two rows of roof tiles, as known
from other cemeteries of the period. However, at Ponte di Ferro, the vast majority
of roof tiles used as tomb covers were wasters. In one case, the find-spot of a loom
weight suggested that it was worn on a necklet, which is also highly unusual and
points to a low social and economic status of the buried person (Figure 7.3). The
only burials that generally were carried out with some effort are infant burials of
individuals aged between zero and six years. They are usually buried in large pots
 Hellenicity from below 165

Figure 7.2 Burials at Ponte di Ferro during the excavation

Source: (© ParcoArcheologico di Paestum e Velia, Ministero dei Beni e delleAttività Culturali e del Turismo).

Figure 7.3 Reconstruction drawing of a loom weight from the Ponte di Ferro necropolis
worn on a necklet
Source: (Drawing by Rosario Marino, © Parco Archeologico di Paestum e Velia, Ministero dei Beni e
delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo).
166 Gabriel Zuchtriegel
(so-called enchytrismos), which were often poorly fired and/or defective. Infant
burials contained up to six objects, which further distinguishes them from the
adult, especially male, burials.
The necropolis of Ponte di Ferro evidently belonged to a group of low social and
economic status that could be labelled ‘subaltern.’As Emanuele Greco has pointed
out, the tombs date to a period in which Poseidonia was rapidly growing.30 New
infrastructure and temple-building projects created an ever-increasing demand for
workforce, and it is likely that the people buried at Ponte di Ferro were among
those involved in carrying out the ambitious projects of the polis. However, the
community of Ponte di Ferro seems to have maintained some kind of cultural and
social identity, considering that they were entitled to formal burial, though in a
marginal area of the necropolis. Rather than totally disenfranchised ‘slaves,’ it is
likely that they were a culturally and socially defined group within the popula-
tion of Poseidonia. The fact that they were buried some distance from the urban
centre on the shore, which had no agricultural value and was a kind of ‘no-one’s
land,’ suggests that while they might have resided in the countryside, they had no
extensive land property, nor did they belong to a family or household owning land
in the countryside. It is therefore likely that they had a status that was somehow
akin to that of the Kyllyrioi in Syracuse and to the barbaroi perioikoi mentioned
by Aristotle. This impression is further corroborated by an observation by Paola
Contursi, who is currently studying the necropolis. A series of features of the
burial rites and grave goods from Ponte di Ferro have parallels in the area north of
Poseidonia around the Etruscan-Campanian settlement centre of Pontecagnano.31
While this does not mean that the individuals buried at Ponte di Ferro came from
that site, it sustains the notion that they adhered to forms of ritual and social rep-
resentation that were different from that of the citizens of Poseidonia.32 To sum up,
it looks as if the necropolis of Ponte di Ferro belonged to a subaltern or low-status
group within the polis who were characterised as ethnically/culturally different
and marginal with regard to the urban elite.
Hopefully, the ongoing analysis of the necropolis will shed more light on the
cultural identity and experience of the people from Ponte di Ferro. Yet, it remains
difficult to interpret a cemetery for which no close parallels are known so far.
On a broader level, the ethnical determination of social class and subalternity
emerges indirectly from the archaeological record of classical colonies and their
hinterland. Classical colonial settlements formed the backdrop on which Plato and
Aristotle developed their notion of subalternity as something linked to rurality and
to ethnical diversity. Aristotle’s barbaroi perioikoi are characterised on two levels:
ethnicity (they are barbaroi, i.e., non-Greeks) and rurality (their living places—
oikoi—are situated ‘around’—peri—the urban centre). They are opposed to the
Greek citizens who live in the urban centre where they can fully participate in the
political, social, military and athletic activities that constitute Hellenicity. In Plato
and Aristotle’s ideal geography of the polis, the difference between urban centre
and countryside contains the double boundary of Greek-Barbarian and citizen-
subaltern. ‘Barbarian,’ however, is not a fixed category. As Lin Foxhall has
observed, Greekness was an unstable and blurry category in rural areas on the
 Hellenicity from below 167
margins of Greek colonial territories, where Greekness faded as the very possibili-
ties of participating on a regular basis in urban-based social and religious practices
that constituted Greekness (symposia, hetairiai, assemblies, military training, ath-
letic training, social interaction on the agora) was practically impossible.33
The structural opposition of urban/Greek versus rural/Barbarian also applied to
communities in homeland Greece, at least to some degree. Notably, from the early
sixth century onwards, chattel slavery was spreading in the Greek world.34 Many
of the slaves deported to Greece came from the Black Sea Region and Thrace.
While in earlier periods slaves and dependent workers were often local Greeks
who had lost their livelihood, e.g. because of debt slavery or as war prisoners,
from the sixth century onwards the typical slave would be an ethnically diverse
individual. In the Attic comedy, it is typically Scythes and Thracians who figure as
douloi, ‘slaves.’ However, local community members could also experience forms
of ethnically codified downgrading if they failed to meet the standards of Greek
citizenship/urbanity and Greekness. As Jonathan Hall has observed, in classical
Greece ‘transhumant subsistence strategies’—that is, economic activities that were
not in line with the urban-based elite culture, as well as ‘the right of women to
dispose of alienable property and to act as heads of families’ could mark out certain
areas in homeland Greece as ‘more primitive and thus more “barbarian.”’35 These
were also more exposed to the forms of internal colonisation mentioned earlier in
this chapter.
As I have argued before, the social geography of classical settlements sug-
gests that the binary structure urban/Greek/citizen versus rural/barbarian perioikoi/
subaltern was firmly implemented in Greek political practice as early as the fifth
century BC.36 A century before Plato and Aristotle defined citizenship as a privi-
lege of urban, Greek-born, male land-owners ‘who must not engage in any arti-
sanal activity,’37 colonial settlements appear to have been organised according to
the same ideological principles. The settlers received land lots, ideally of equal
size, and were expected to live off their land property. Trade and artisanry were
viewed as socially suspect and dishonourable for a citizen already by Herodotus.
What is more, the settlers of classical colonies lived not in farmsteads and vil-
lages in the countryside, but in the walled centre. Apart from the frequent military
conflicts with local populations and other Greek communities, the reason was
that only by living in the urban centre one could fully participate in the social and
political way of life that characterised the Greek polis. In order to do so, the less
fortunate settlers who were allotted land some distance from the urban centre, put
up with walking distances of up to four or five hours to reach their parcels. While
in many colonies, after several decades a rural population of low to middle class
status appears in the archaeological record, what is particularly striking about
most new foundations of the classical period is the invisibility of non-citizen,
subaltern groups—both on the level of archaeology and in the social geography
of the settlements. There had to be labourers who worked the fields, processed
the produce, weaved cloths, produced pottery, built houses and so forth for the
land-owning settlers. Apart from slaves, this were likely the children and wives
of the settlers. Female community members in colonial settlements often had a
168 Gabriel Zuchtriegel
non-Greek, indigenous background, although this was usually not emphasised in
the material culture, which appears predominantly of Greek tradition. Yet, literary
sources, inscriptions and grave goods suggest that a considerable number of the
women participating in many new foundations came from non-Greek areas.
Further, indigenous groups such as the Kyllyrioi in Syracuse or the community
members buried at Ponte di Ferro near Paestum contributed to agricultural and
handicraft production, thus making it possible for the male citizens to avoid such
‘dishonourable’ occupations. The concentration of the settler community in the
walled centre suggests that the majority of settlers tried to comply with that ideol-
ogy, at least in the early phases of a settlement.

Conclusions
To sum up, it looks as if the idea according to which being a Greek citizen meant
being an urban-based landowner, as advocated in Plato’s Laws and Aristotle’s
Politics, was somehow prefigured in classical settlements. These settlements were
organised according to the same principles that guided classical theorists who
were thinking about the ideal state; consequently, the settlements suffered the
same shortcomings characterising some of the major theoretical texts: by organ-
ising the entire polis—both concretely in colonial settlements and ideally on
the level of politics and political theory—around the male, urban-based citizen,
other groups such as women, foreigners/non-citizens, and subaltern labourers
are ignored. In the official representation of the polis, these groups have little
or no visibility. On the level of space, the distinction between the visible and
the invisible is reflected in a fundamental difference between rural and urban
spaces as parts of the social geography of the polis. Non-citizens living on the
margins of a colonial polis such as the Kyllyrioi or the community of Ponte Ferro
near Poseidonia literally remained out of sight. Together with other population
groups, they formed an obscure background for the development of Greek male
citizenship and subject realisation. Aristotle’s mention of the barbaroi perioikoi
is symbolic in this regard. It is little more than an allusion to something beyond
the focus of the male citizen and therefore, inside the text, remains as unexplained
and enigmatic as the real lives of these groups remained outside the imagination
of Greek elite members.
The binary structure that emerges behind that distinction can be summarised
in a table:

Politai Barbaroi perioikoi

Legal status citizens non-citizens

Economic status own the land, at least ideally have no legal title to land
ownership within the polis
Culture elite, urban subaltern, mostly rural, living
literally and metaphorically
on the ‘margins’ of the polis
 Hellenicity from below 169

Politai Barbaroi perioikoi

Gender follow Greek-elite male- unwilling and/or unable to

female role models
Ethnic identity Greek; hybridisation (e.g.,
intermarriage) with non-
Greeks is seen as a symbolic
capital that ultimately
enhances the subject (e.g.,
in the foundation story of
Massilia)
implement Greek-elite role
models (e.g., women have to
work outside the house rather
than staying inside)
Other, even if of Greek
origin, seen as ‘less Greek’
and somehow more
‘Barbarian’ by virtue of their
lifestyle

While representing the (ethnically) Other as somehow inferior is so widespread

a phenomenon that it offers little historical insight, the combination of a series
of features, as just described, creates a specific structure consisting in a typically
Greek discourse linking social status, culture, space and ethnicity.
From a broader historical perspective, the importance of this discourse consists
in the fact that it became a blueprint for codifying subalternity ethnically also in
other cultures. This is surprising, given that it presupposes a substantial change in the
contents of the structure: ‘Greek’ as opposed to non-Greek/Barbarian/uncivilised is
replaced by another ethnic identity, e.g. Roman, although from a Greek point of view
the Romans were themselves Barbarians. However, in this process, the underlying
structure remains unaltered. Arguably, it can be traced from the Lucanians in south-
ern Italy to Roman and even early Christian modes of representing the Other as both
subaltern and ethnically diverse.38 If this holds true, we have to acknowledge that the
legacy of classical Greece includes a specific way of collocating subalternity on a
spatial and ethnical level and obscuring it in the political and philosophical discourse.
While Aristotle remained linked to the model of the city-state, the fourth-
century BC writer Isocrates went a step further: in his speech Panegyrikos (380 BC),
he envisages making ‘all Barbarians the perioikoi of Greece’ (131), thus ‘bringing
enormous wealth from Asia to Europe’ (187). What is more, Isocrates’ text insists
on an ontological (‘racial,’ in modern terminology) difference between Greeks and
Barbarians. While the Barbarians theoretically could become Greeks through cul-
ture/education (cf. Pan. 50), their entire way of life is such that they have a ‘totally
ruined nature’ (Pan. 151: μάλιστα τὰς φύσεις διαφθαρεῖεν). There is an underlying
ambiguity in Isocrates’ work. In terms of rhetoric, Greek culture is presented as
a universal heritage appealing to all men. However, in terms of political practice,
the Barbarians are de facto excluded from fully partaking in ‘Greekness’ on the
grounds that their way of life is so diverse that their very nature (physis) inhibits
them from aspiring to the highest level of Greek culture and virtue.39
The Roman image of the Barbarian, as it evolved from the early imperial period
onwards, reiterated this Greek notion of subalternity as something linked to eth-
nic diversity and rurality. This is suggested by literary texts.40 However, a certain
170 Gabriel Zuchtriegel
continuity in the representation of the ‘Barbarian’ also emerges from the icono-
graphic evidence, in particular official monuments such as triumph arcs and funer-
ary and honorary monuments for emperors such as Trajan, Hadrian, and Marc
Aurelius.41 One might even ask whether the notion of the ‘pagan’ in one of the
foundational texts of Christianity, namely Augustin’s City of God (the full title being
De civitate Dei contra paganos), somehow carried on the classical notion of the
Other as a perioikos barbaros, given that paganus originally meant ‘rural dweller.’42
Doubtless, the question of how the link between subalternity and ethnicity devel-
oped and eventually became part of Roman and early medieval ideologies is highly
complex and merits further inquiry. What seems to be clear so far is that there is
a tradition of entangling ethnicity and subalternity that can be traced back at least
to fifth-to-fourth-century-BC Greece. The classical period of Greek art, literature
and philosophy produced a certain image of the subaltern Barbarian that was incor-
porated in the classical tradition and re-emerged in various forms and at various
times, arguably until today. In Colonization and Subalternity in Classical Greece,43
I have argued that the way citizenship is conceptualised in the modern nation state
as essentially separated from the globalised economy (and the forms of subaltern
labour and modern forms of slavery that sustain that economy)44 can be considered
as a legacy of classical political theory, which was on its part influenced by the colo-
nial practice and experience of the time. While such views remain controversial,
the debate of the last two decades has shown that the rejection of ethnicity and rac-
ism as allegedly purely modern categories with no value for the study of antiquity
deserves being revised. Screening out ethnicity as a political and social reality on
the grounds that it is a modern concept risks depriving us of one of the fundamental
categories for understanding the construction of subalternity in the ancient world.

Notes
* I would like to express my gratitude to Irad Malkin for helping me with the historical
part of this contribution. Paola Contursi shared her insight into the necropolis of Ponte
di Ferro (Paestum) with me, for which I am also very grateful. I wrote this chapter
during the pandemic with very limited access to libraries, which is why I would like to
thank the colleagues who sent me PDFs of their works and apologise to those on whose
work I might have missed out due to the general situation.
1 Osborne 2012.
2 Gramsci 1977.
3 Spivak 1988. For the application of subaltern studies and postcolonial criticism
in the fields of classical archaeology and history, see the seminal paper by Pappa
(2013).
4 At that time, the work of Brather (2002, 2004) had stimulated a vivid debate, as sum-
marised in a response by Curta (2013).
5 Diaz Andreu et al. 2005; Esposito and Pollini 2013; Joshel and Petersen 2014; Cuozzo
and Pellegrino 2016.
6 Zuchtriegel 2018. Following Cerchiai (2012), ethnicity in this context could be defined
as a ‘relational process’ rather than as a stable identity.
7 Cf. Hall, E. 1989; Malkin 2001, 2011; Harrison 2002; Hall, J. 2002, 2016; McInerney
2014; Vlassopoulos 2013. J. Hall in particular has emphasised the construction of (supe-
rior) Hellenicity in opposition to (inferior) barbarism as a binary structure emerging not
before the sixth century BC.
 Hellenicity from below 171
8 Arist. Pol. 1.1254. See the discussion in Alston, Hall and Proffitt 2011; Deslauriers and
Destrée 2013.
9 Arist. Pol. 1330a, transl. H. Rackham, 1944, slightly altered.
10 Pl. Leg. 8.846d.
11 Zuchtriegel 2018, 216–35.
12 Freeman 1891, 13–4.
13 Pappa 2013; Zuchtriegel 2016.
14 Isaac 2004; Vlassopoulos 2013. An early, widely neglected forerunner can be seen in
Puzzo 1964. See also McCoskey 2012.
15 Ohto 1972.
16 Cf. Heinemann 2010, 201–8.
17 Ath. 263e, transl. I. Malkin.
18 An overview in Gschnitzer 1958. See also the recent study by J. Zurbach (2017).
19 Malkin 1994.
20 Syll.3 279; Thonemann 2013, 16.
21 Ibid.
22 Xen. An. 6.4.3–6, transl. C. L. Brownson, 1922.
23 On the motif of the eremos chora (‘empty land’), see Moggi 1983. On the complexity
of foundation processes, and the tendency in the ancient literary tradition to simplify
them ex post, see Braund 2019.
24 Shepherd 2011, 2012, 2013; Saltini Semerari 2016; Zuchtriegel 2018, 69–71.
25 See the papers of the annual Convegno di Studi sulla Magna Grecia, in particular vol. 50
(Alle origini della Magna Grecia, 2010) e 54 (Ibridazione e integrazione in Magna
Grecia, 2014); see further: Giangiulio 2010; Osanna 2012; Denti 2013; Burgers and
Crielaard 2016.
26 Paus. 7.2.5. Crielaard 2009, 57.
27 Hdt. 1.146, transl. A. D. Godley, 1920.
28 See also Thuc. 1.8.1, who suggests that also the Aegean islands were once Carian and
had been colonised.
29 Avagliano 1985; Contursi 2016 and 2018.
30 Greco 1987, 486–7.
31 Contursi forthcoming.
32 On the indigenous settlement in the area of Poseidonia, see Cipriani 2019.
33 Foxhall, Michelaki and Lazrus 2007, 26.
34 Andreau and Descat 2009, 35–40.
35 Hall 2002, 195.
36 Zuchtriegel 2018.
37 Pl. Leg. 8.846d.
38 Zuchtriegel 2020.
39 In this, Isocrates turns out to be a strikingly modern. In his texts we find the same
ambiguity that characterises modern European hegemonic discourse. On the one hand,
Western culture claims to offer a set of universal values for all mankind (from Christian-
ity to human rights and democracy) while, on the other, thousands of minor differences
make it practically impossible for non-white, non-Western people to get full access to
that culture.
40 Isaac 2017.
41 Cf. Raeck 1981; Krierer 1998; Zuchtriegel 2020.
42 The etymology of the term and its introduction in Christian terminology is controver-
sial. As has been argued, by the time the term was first used with the modern sense of
‘pagan,’ the paganus was the ‘civilian’ as opposed to the Christian ‘miles Dei.’ At any
rate, the word paganus could be associated with rurality and subalternity way into the
Middle Ages. Cf. Mathisen 2006.
43 Zuchtriegel 2018.
44 The ‘international division of labour’ in Spivak’s (1988, 287) words.
172 Gabriel Zuchtriegel
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8 Subaltern masculinities
Pompeian graffiti and excluded
memories in the early Principate
Renata Senna Garraffoni

Introduction
The social movements of the 1960s and the 1970s—feminism, gay liberation, the
Black and civil rights movements—undoubtedly had a deep impact on academia.
In this process of epistemological transformation of the field of classical studies,
Michel Foucault became a key figure. With the publication of his volumes of The
History of Sexuality, Foucault reshaped our understanding of ancient philosophy
and its relationship to today—as did Dover upon relating canonical texts and Greek
vases to discuss homosexuality in the Hellenic context, and Catherine Johns and
Amy Richlin in their published work on phallic images produced in diverse types
of material culture.1
Notwithstanding such significant efforts, themes of economic, political and
social history continued to prevail within the historiography of the Greco-Roman
world. Culture, and even postcolonial concerns, did not gain purchase within the
field until recent decades. As the introduction to the present anthology makes
clear, classical studies, segregated within their own departments, took extra time
before beginning to examine the possibilities of action that were there for men and
women of different social strata in Greco-Roman antiquity. Despite the theoretical
and methodological progress offered by Vernant and Finley’s work—as the editors
of this volume point out—historians of the Greco-Roman period largely tended
to reproduce more normative explanations of the past, leaving little room for the
study of erotic desires or modes of resistance and marginalised lives.
This is so much the case that Clarke, upon publishing a book on Roman erotic
images, began his work with a direct question: ‘why a book on sex in ancient
Rome?’2 It is important to give salience to this phenomenon, considering that
almost two decades after the publication of The History of Sexuality and the growth
of discussions in the field of gender studies, it was still necessary not only to
provide a justification of the pertinence of such themes within research on the
classical world but also to clear ground for an issue that often permeated 1990s
studies and which, in spite of obstacles, brought them to the forefront: the excess of
generalisations and anachronism that prevailed within the modern gaze on social
practices in the ancient world. Over the last two decades, gender studies, with an
emphasis on masculinities, have not only grown but also veritably reconfigured

DOI: 10.4324/9781003005148-11
176 Renata Senna Garraffoni
the field of Graeco-Roman societies, bringing to light the experiences of subjects
beyond the military elites.3 The contribution that material culture makes to this
process is highly relevant; after all, exploring the silences and gaps in the stud-
ies of marginalised masculinities provides us with alternative routes for thought
on power relations during the Roman Empire. This means placing men within a
context of relations of power and domination, taking subaltern and marginalised
masculinities into account, and rethinking sources and methods of analysis. These
challenges, according to Hall, enable us to construct a new hermeneutic gaze for
interpreting the legacy of material fragments that the ancient world has left behind
for modern societies.4
The central goal of this chapter is to explore the different types of masculini-
ties that could be found at the beginning of the Roman Principate. For these pur-
poses, my starting point is postcolonial theory. This perspective enables me to
demonstrate the importance of rethinking the power relations, then I move on
from there to show how a gender studies perspective that informs archaeological
debate is fundamental for our understanding of marginalised masculinities within
the Roman Empire. For such purposes, I seek alternative analytical methods for
the study of sexual practices between men, as well as between men and women,
focusing on the daily life of common people and exploring the diversity of human
passions. Thus, what I present here is a very specific case study, a reading of the
walls of Pompeii in the lupanar region, including its graffiti and its tituli picti.
From a ‘written space’ perspective, I seek to capture how the diversity of encoun-
ters can allow us to think about masculinities and the complexity of social relations
in the Roman past.5

Masculinity, power and marginality

There are many ways to understand the relationships between masculinity, power
and marginality. In order to define the theoretical perspective that undergirds the
chapter, I take up issues that I have discussed elsewhere.6 I refer here particularly to
considerations on power, colonialism and elite men informed by the work of Rich-
ard Hingley.7 Hingley states that over the last two centuries, scholars have largely
understood the consequences of Roman imperialism as beneficial, given the mate-
rial improvement it allegedly afforded indigenous societies. Through interpretations
primarily based on the written sources left by elites, some scholars argued that
becoming a Roman citizen could be considered a sign of progress. The so-called
nativist approach—that took place in the 1970s due to decolonisation and social
changes—had a key role to challenge this way of perceiving the Roman Empire as
it pointed to the importance of material culture in the study of local communities.
This scholarship not only focused on elite interests but also balanced the latter with
an awareness of the existence of negotiation and cultural interaction in different
regions of the empire.8 This approach emphasised that native people were not only
‘assimilated’ into the Roman order but also participated in the creation of new ones.
This debate is interesting because it inspired Richard Hingley’s critical approach
to the Roman past. Hingley deconstructed an aspect of the notion of citizenship
 Subaltern masculinities 177
that had previously been taken for granted among many scholars of the Roman
Empire: the idea of Romanisation, or becoming Roman, as it had been elaborated
from an elite male point of view.9 He argued that, notwithstanding the diversity
of approaches developed throughout the twentieth century, classical studies main-
tained a focus on elite male writings and material culture. Hingley stated that
although some scholars may have examined different identities and contributed
to a more pluralistic understanding of the relationship between Roman and native
peoples, the fundamentally elite, male-centred approach had not been challenged.
He suggested that the predominant modern idea of the Roman Empire as a political
and cultural unit is based on a Roman colonial image which, derived from literary
sources, tended to obscure differences.
Hingley did not develop a gender-sensitive approach to understanding the effect
of the Roman Empire on native peoples. Yet his scholarship encourages us to seek
alternative models with which to construct a more balanced interpretation of the
Roman Empire and its peoples. Inspired by his attitude of questioning narratives
on the empire that focused exclusively on the texts of elite males, I found in a
specific field of archaeology—epigraphy—sources for the study of masculinities
in different contexts.
From a conceptual point of view, theories of masculinity have an important
role in challenging monolithic and essentialist views of ‘the male.’ Such theories
provide tools to re-examine masculinity and to consider it as multidimensional
and socially constructed. Gilchrist emphasises that gender archaeology offers a
more comparative perspective, grounded in a critical approach to culture across
societies, over time and through individual lives. It helps us to rethink naturalised
approaches to masculinity, reminding us that categories are neither absolute nor
static; rather, they are constituted according to varied, changing and historically
specific societal patterns.10 The methodology she suggests, based upon case stud-
ies, provides insight into varying gender and social arrangements. Considering that
material culture has a unique role to play in telling the history of people rendered
invisible or misrepresented in written sources,11 my intent here, then, is to focus on
the walls of Pompeii and how they enable us to rethink our perceptions of Roman
masculinity. I shall argue that Pompeii’s wall graffiti and tituli picti can promote
what Lucy Grig signals in her research on popular culture: moving beyond top-
down categories and constructing a more authentic portrait of the Roman context
of the early Principate.12

Why should scholars read the walls of Pompeii?

What has been written or etched on ancient walls is one of the oldest registers of
humanity that we have, a component of the forms of communication and visual
representation that people have used since the distant times of our first available
records of rock art.13 Old as this may be, the symbolic and cultural meanings of
the act of writing or drawing on walls and the content they deal with change over
time and place: we need only to consider how today, writing on walls may result
in criminal prosecution, whereas in other times in history this would have been
178 Renata Senna Garraffoni
unthinkable. This cultural diversity of ways of seeing and signifying the world, as
well as their ephemeral nature, are factors that led me to more detailed study of
the graffiti on the Pompeiian walls. In other words, as incomplete texts, phrases
that may or may not have been in dialogue with one another, I was enchanted by
their de-stabilising potential. Thus, classicists, frequently accustomed to discuss-
ing principles of philosophy or of Western thought through the texts of Roman
orators, historians, philosophers and rhetoricians may be surprised by the concise
critique of a local politician or reflections on life, death and love provided by graf-
fiti. It is precisely their fragmentation, quantity and diversity that constitute the
major challenge for people who desire to study them.
Graffiti, as well as tituli picti, have been recorded through the CIL (Corpus
Inscriptionum Latinarum) since the nineteenth century. However, as they do not
necessarily follow the patterns of conventional or scholarly writing, they have
rarely become objects of study, tending to be relegated to a secondary level as
a ‘less relevant’ category of ancient inscription.14 Nonetheless, there are several
important exceptions to this pattern that date back to the early twentieth century.
Certain scholars, observing the specificities of wall inscriptions, and graffiti in par-
ticular, drew attention to aspects that some 80 years later were to become important
parameters for those who delved more deeply into their study. I refer here to the
linguistic characteristics of graffiti and the way in which they brought out aspects
of people’s daily lives. Abbott, for instance, stressed that graffiti are important for
the study of the language of the common people. The crux of his argument is that
although we know very little about the commoners, they made up the large major-
ity of populations under Roman rule. In a similar vein, Tanzer, who believes that
Pompeiian graffiti are fundamental for a wider perspective on Roman daily life
and its passions, resorts to Rostovtzeff to defend her position. To assert the value
of and disseminate her work on graffiti, Tanzer is uninterested in the criticisms
of grammatical mistakes that other scholars have directed towards them; instead,
she focuses on the diversity of those who used the walls for their writing, and the
themes they addressed.15
Even at a first glance, the common elements in the analyses of these two authors
stand out: they seek evidence that can aid their study of popular culture and foment
ways to approach Roman history from a non-elitist perspective. For these pur-
poses, they resort to Marxist studies. Diversity, daily life and people of humble
background emerge as themes and characters in their studies. The language and
forms of expression of the commoners were recognised and validated through
a tradition that Funari renewed and widened at the end of the 1980s and early
1990s.16 In Funari’s earliest papers, written decades after Abbott and Tanzer’s
pioneering contributions, new themes came to the forefront: the social history
of culture, the circulation of ideas and the possibility of thinking about a popular
ethos on the basis of these graffiti, that is, the constitution of a particular form of
expression, with its own views and forms of feeling. This is something he returns
to some years later, pointing out that although the graffiti do not provide theoretical
ponderings on existence—coming as they do from the practical context in which
common folk think about the world and its situation—they give us a window into
 Subaltern masculinities 179
commoners’ takes on life.17 Following this logic of subaltern or marginal positions,
other researchers go on to examine the potential of graffiti. Williams points out
that these inscriptions provide important documentation for the study of Roman
homoeroticism, and Feitosa expands our understanding of them through her dis-
cussion of love and sexuality.18
The quick overview that I have provided here encourages us to think about some
of the issues that are relevant for studies of Pompeiian wall graffiti. Yet there is still
little study on this theme. More prevalent are notes or records. Baird and Taylor
mention Funari’s key role in defining graffiti as an object for the study of daily
life within the realm of popular culture. They note that his focus on caricature, for
example, seeks alternatives to official versions of history and constructs a theo-
retical and methodological approach which allows us greater proximity to com-
mon folk. The aforementioned authors also highlight the way in which Funari’s
approach connects certain graffiti to specific social groups.19
Baird and Taylor’s book encompasses various researches and refines graffiti
studies, defining them as a form of handwriting which may or may not include
drawing and which should be understood as a type of social discourse. Since
inscriptions take on different forms, they may be seen as a system of communica-
tion in which texts and drawings come together to produce a particular kind of
textuality, and for that very reason, require consistent analysis within archaeo-
logical context. Furthermore, it is worth noting that Baird and Taylor’s statements
differ from those of scholars from the early twentieth century in several respects.
Like Abbott and Tanzer, they argue that graffiti should be considered as important
evidence for access to non-elite culture (slaves, poor persons who were not slaves,
those who were not considered citizens, women, children, people from urban and
rural areas), thereby joining Funari, Grig and others in the notion that material
and visual culture are fundamental for a more varied study of Roman society.
However, they also bring greater scope to this field of study through their discus-
sion of language, and of the graffiti found in other locales that can be attributed to
the wealthy strata of society. In short, graffiti today are considered of relevance to
linguists, historians and archaeologists, a rich source of material to bring us closer
to antiquity, and attention must be paid to the different contexts in which the graffiti
appear, as well as to their meanings.

Reading the walls of Pompeii

Laurence and Sears alert us to the fact that public spaces containing wall inscrip-
tions have been scantly studied, calling for their more detailed analysis.20 In the
case of antiquity, as societies in which oral forms of memory prevail, this is espe-
cially important.21 Thus, inscriptions can be seen not only as ways of recording the
past but as means for defining individual and group rights, identities and percep-
tions of the world. In the case of the Roman Empire, the aforementioned authors
assert that writing is constitutive of public space and marks city life. Inscriptions
can be lasting, such as the official writing on public buildings or tombstones, or
ephemeral, such as electoral propaganda and graffiti. The fact is that Romans wrote
180 Renata Senna Garraffoni
a lot, making it possible to perceive the relationship between the places and social
groups involved, with emphasis placed on the deeds of members of the elites yet
also recording the way in which children and slaves saw the world. Thus, writ-
ten spaces have a lot to tell us, widening or even subverting earlier studies of the
Roman past.
In his classic study, MacMullen defined this Roman impulse to record infor-
mation on hard surfaces as the ‘epigraphic habit.’22 There is of course immense
variety in the forms and types of inscriptions to be found in urban contexts at
the end of the Republic and throughout the entire Roman imperial period, and
although this type of writing also appears in many other moments or societies of
antiquity, the amount of data provided in this particular period represents a very
special corpus. Pompeii’s wall inscriptions, for instance, the object of this chapter,
have been disseminated through publications since the nineteenth century. The
graffiti alone constitute a corpus of more than 11,000 inscriptions.23 In addition
to this, there is a wide variety of painted inscriptions, or tituli picti, ranging from
electoral propaganda (2,500, according to Viitanen and Nissinen),24 to announce-
ments of gladiatorial combat.25 These inscriptions tell many different stories,
including those of individual men, many of whom do not belong to elite strata,
and of women.26 Graffiti in particular, which represent the writing of common
people who sought to express their opinions, were voluntarily inscribed. They
were varied in content and embroiled in a process of production and reception
that could be modified.27
Pompeii is especially relevant insofar as its walls, buried underground as a result
of the historic eruption of Mount Vesuvius, have survived the passage of time in
a relatively preserved state. Nonetheless, the habit of writing on walls and monu-
ments was so common throughout the different regions conquered by the Romans
that it is featured in the works of Plutarch and Pliny the Younger, just to mention
two examples. Hillard notes its presence in Plutarch.28 He claims that it is possible
to perceive how, in Tiberius Gracchus’ vita, Plutarch lists the inscriptions on walls
and monuments that can be attributed to people who are politically disadvantaged.
It is undoubtedly for this reason that writing on the walls becomes a way of dem-
onstrating dissatisfactions. Graffiti, in his reading via Plutarch, are a channel for
the expression of public opinion.
Just as Plutarch comments on political disputes, Pliny the Younger, in his Let-
ter 8.8 to Romanus, expresses his concerns on how one is to read graffiti while
‘maintaining one’s composure.’ In this letter, Pliny asks his friend if he is famil-
iar with the source of the Clitumno river, a place that lies at the foot of a small
mountain, a spot surrounded by trees. Pliny ends his descriptions of the beauty
of this villa and its surroundings by asserting that the constructions that can be
found there may be quite entertaining: there Romanus will encounter inscriptions,
made by many different hands along columns and walls, to celebrate the source
itself, or the gods. He ends with the phrase, plura laudabis, non nulla ridebus;
quamquam tu vero, quae tua humanitas, nulla ridebis, ‘many will praise what
they find there, while others will laugh; but not you, who in your politeness, will
make fun of nothing.’29
 Subaltern masculinities 181
These two examples, from celebrated authors who belonged to the Roman elite,
express several important issues that I would like to highlight here. Plutarch com-
ments on an urban context while Pliny refers to the rural, but both suggest that,
rather than censorship, an intense relationship with writing prevailed, whether as
a vehicle for expressing dissatisfaction or sense of humour. Pliny comments on
Romanus’s politeness dissuades inappropriate behaviour while reading the inscrip-
tions, suggesting that there was greater concern for the reaction to reading them
than to the contents of the writing. Both authors correlate places with types of
writing. This is a very pertinent question, as in antiquity such a relationship was
very clear to people, although in modern epigraphy many scholars have paid more
attention to the content of inscriptions than to the context in which they were writ-
ten. This is exactly the type of tension I would like to give salience to: Hillard’s
work on Plutarch can be found in a book in which researchers address the chal-
lenge of understanding writing in its context, as well as in terms of its contents.
Such a proposal, as mentioned earlier deals with the study of written spaces.30
Thus, since these ancient peoples both read and commented on inscriptions, a fun-
damental challenge that researchers who study these inscriptions have faced over
the last decade involves taking the place where writing is inscribed into account,
also bringing the issue of how people circulated through such places to light. Such
concerns have ushered in deep changes in the dynamics of projects designed to
collect data, also affecting the type of results that have been obtained and generat-
ing a much more plural perspective on the circulation of persons through urban
spaces or through the Roman villae.
Considering that graffiti and tituli picti are ephemeral, and not all have been
recorded by researchers, yet those that have are scattered throughout the CIL,
situating them within their original spaces has become a monumental task, and
one that is only possible to carry out through research networks. Thus, the organ-
isation of debates and projects are important initiatives in bringing together this
rich and plentiful material, well-known, albeit scantly studied. If, on the one hand,
workshops have been helpful in defining the state of the art, promoting debate
and taking steps forward, collective projects have re-signified the theme and in
doing so, attracted young scholars to the topic. I am thinking precisely of the
Inscribed Texts in their Spatial Contexts in Roman Italy (University of Helsinki
2011–2013), Scripta Pompeiana31 and the Ancient Graffiti Project.32 Another
example that comes to mind is the graffiti catalogue organised by Hunink which
helps to cover important lacunae, presenting inscriptions and drawings together.33
I highlight these initiatives, which can most certainly be considered the fruit of
recent perceptions and theoretical debate: although studying graffiti in a mate-
rial context was recognised, earlier forms of compilation did not correspond to
new demands. Thus, as I have already stated, although all graffiti were compiled
through the CIL, those volumes—as Baird and Taylor remind us—do not provide
us with a precise topographical distribution of where these inscriptions are to be
found. This makes their spatial perception difficult.34 Furthermore, the CIL usu-
ally register only inscriptions and not the drawings that accompany them, which
are simply mentioned. Drawings appear more frequently when they are a part of
182 Renata Senna Garraffoni
a text. Where this is not the case, figures appear on plates, scattered throughout
a number of different publications. Langner tries to improve this by publishing a
very complete catalogue of drawings, and Hunink attempts to move beyond the
text/image dichotomy.35
While Langner and Hunink made an important contribution in terms of dissemi-
nating the material, an archive such as the Ancient Graffiti Project or the results
of a project such as Inscribed Texts in their Spatial Contexts in Roman Italy or
Scripta Pompeiana become pivotal, enabling scholars from different parts of the
world to engage in research and to debate their methods. This also represents an
attempt at the spatial reconstitution of the places where inscriptions are located. In
this regard, the recent initiatives I have mentioned are indicative of the new paths
being taken within the field, in which the reconstruction of spatial contexts has
become a central component.
But what is the specific contribution of drawing attention to spatial dimensions?
In my view, providing knowledge, whenever possible, of the place where inscrip-
tions were engraved expands our potential to apprehend dimensions of daily life
in antiquity. In other words, as Viitanen, Nissinen and Kohronen argue, a more
holistic approach to space enables us to combine different elements—graffiti, tituli
picti, topography, type of building (house, bar, temple . . .) of the place where par-
ticular inscriptions are found—creating connections that shed light on the social
groups that were involved there, as well as the more general dynamics of the urban
space of the city.36
This means it becomes possible to acquire knowledge of pedestrians and
their interaction with their surroundings. On the basis of Michel de Certeau’s
writings, Keegan examines the ways in which inhabitants of a city come to
relate to urban space on the basis of their own experiences as pedestrians.37
In his approach, it is the act of walking that connects people to the sparse
writing on the walls of the city. To read the writing on the walls and answer
with one’s own comments becomes a form of creating language and marking
memory; to inscribe graffiti becomes an act linked to lived experiences, the
desire to leave the marks of one’s own existence and life choices on the places
one has passed through. This allows graffiti writing to be seen as a cultural
practice that creates discourse and brings together many actors for whom
the condition of participation in this ongoing conversation is some minimal
knowledge of writing.
Keegan’s approach advances in the directions of bringing orality, writing
and memory together, exploring aspects of daily life in Pompeii, as well as the
stories of those who lived or passed through there. To adopt the position of the
pedestrian—the person who goes about on foot—seems particularly interesting to
me, since it expands upon an issue that Keegan left out of his work, yet one which
is highly fruitful: it allows us to position ourselves as scholars and producers of
discourse. It also becomes clear that the corpus a scholar selects is borne of his or
her own eagerness to walk through the remains of the ancient city of Pompeii. This
leads to new studies and approaches, bringing renewed meaning to circulation and
experiences with language, a topic to which I will now turn.
 Subaltern masculinities 183
Case study: masculinity and excluded memories
The case study that I present here seeks to relate the diverse elements that I have
discussed earlier, in an attempt to provide tools for more pluralist readings of male
experiences in the city of Pompeii. This has led to very precise selection of locale:
the lupanar area (Reg. 7.12.18–20). The choice is justified by a very concrete
question: it is here, and in the immediate surroundings, that we find three distinct
types of inscriptions—graffiti and two types of tituli picti—gladiatorial announce-
ments and electoral propaganda. Graffiti, appearing in a prostitution district, are
largely sexual in content, whereas the tituli picti make reference to members of the
elites, whether those who financed the fights or those who sought election to public
posts. This in turn signifies that we have before us, examples of both hegemonic
and subaltern masculinities.
Each one of these types of inscriptions has its own characteristics. Franklin pro-
vides us with an extensive and differentiated typology of graffiti—incisions made
with a stylus, small cuts that can only be read up close—and tituli picti, painted
with brushes by professionals and meant to be discernible from afar, comprising
both announcements for gladiator fighting (edicta munerum) and electoral propa-
ganda (programmata). Franklin’s study allows us to differentiate between the two
types of inscriptions, and we take such differentiations as our point of departure,
although the author is more inclined towards cataloguing typologies and pondering
the ability of common people to write. He mentions only that these three different
types of inscriptions are found in different parts of the city, and thus goes on to
assert that some are less relevant that others—such as an alphabet graffiti—while
others represent information exchange, such as announcements, propaganda, and
graffiti of sexual connotation.38
Since research on wall inscriptions had, for a long time, neglected to take into
account the physical location of the writing, studies on these inscriptions were
infrequent and ran along a parallel track. To cite a few examples, I highlight
Savunen on electoral propaganda, whose work comments on women who sup-
ported particular candidates, Sabbatini Tumolesi’s survey and study of gladiatorial
announcements, as well as Williams’ and Feitosa’s aforementioned work on graffiti
that were sexual in connotation.39 On another occasion, I wrote a brief essay on the
fact that these inscriptions were studied separately, yet could be found close to one
another in the lupanar district.40 My objective had been to avoid superimposing
canonical Roman texts on the city of Pompeii, and for that reason I brought out
the corner of the lupanar and its inscriptions as a way to defend the importance
of situating the inscriptions in the context of the city, thereby avoiding perspec-
tives such as those presented by Wallace-Hadrill. Based upon Seneca’s idea that
cities had a moral geography that attributed different types of value to particular
buildings and monuments, Wallace-Hadrill argued that a scale that ranged from
virtue to vice could be applied to Pompeii.41 That scholar then proceeded to divide
Pompeii into spaces of vice or virtue, associating brothels and bars to dark back
streets populated by an underclass of actors, prostitutes and all people of ‘abject
condition.’ In his urban model, the public life of decurions and magistrates, public
184 Renata Senna Garraffoni
honours and ceremony were held in the best part of the city, the forum. Activities
seen as least appropriate for the forum, such as sex, drinking and eating, were
spatially located along dark and narrow streets of ill repute.
Although the lupanar mentioned here is located on a narrow street that is close
to the bars, what is missing from Wallace-Hadrill’s account is the fact that it is
situated only some blocks from the forum. This suggests that in practice, the
moral division must have been much less strict. Although my earlier discussion
of the matter was meant as an initial exploration, I argued, based on Barbara
Voss’ work, that it was crucial to discuss sexuality as an interconnected dimen-
sion of social and cultural systems.42 In this regard, relating the lupanar to the
inscriptions and proximity to the forum became a way to foster a more dynamic
approach to Roman social relations. I recently discovered two papers that encour-
aged me to return to this theme from a slightly different perspective. I refer here
to the aforementioned writings of Viitanen, Nissinen and Korhonen and Viitanen
and Nissinen. In the former text, which takes off from studies of inscriptions
from the perspective of written spaces, the authors discuss the importance of the
dynamics of people on the streets. Since many houses were very small, a part of
the population had a very intense street life, frequenting cauponae or tabernae, in
addition to water fountains and shrines. They dethrone Wallace-Haddrill’s argu-
ment with their own critical argument that even if the Romans exerted some type
of moral control over the population, prostitutes also frequented busy places that
were not far from the forum. The authors adopt a wider view of urban space
and combine a number of different elements in their analyses—in this case, the
distribution of electoral propaganda in homes and bars and the graffiti that make
reference to prostitution—drawing the conclusion that residential and commer-
cial areas in Pompeii were interconnected. In their understanding, the social and
political practices of the rich could attract members of subaltern groups, yet shops
and bars benefitted from the intensity of people’s circulation. In a more recent
work, Viitanen and Nissinen stress the importance of comparing different types
of inscriptions on the same site, since they believe that this dynamic is revealing
of how people made their way through the city. Places with a greater number of
inscriptions would have been the busiest, giving origin to that which the authors
denominate as loci celeberrimi, that is, strategic places for the distribution of
information.43
It is my understanding that these two papers take us beyond Wallace-Hadrill,
particularly insofar as they defend the analysis of different types of inscriptions
at the same location. This affords us more knowledge of the neighbourhood and
its dynamics. Their focus, however, is on the distribution of wall inscriptions
and the topography of the places where they are found, that is, more on elec-
toral propaganda and less on the graffiti. Although the latter are not completely
neglected, I would argue that aligning the issue of space to the field of gender
studies, additional contributions are gained. For such purposes, I go back to the
lupanar corner, keeping the three types of inscriptions I have mentioned in mind,
and with the intention of contrasting the different types of masculinities they may
be indicative of.
 Subaltern masculinities 185
I return here to Franklin, one of the first scholars to study this particular spot. He
notes that at the corner of the ‘Via degli Augustali’ and the ‘Vico del Lupanare,’
there are 9 electoral posters and 4 gladiatorial announcements. In fact, the ‘Vico
del Lupanare’ turns south from the ‘Via degli Augustali’ at an obtuse angle where
there is a bar. Only two doorways from its entrance is the famous lupanar. As
Franklin noticed, this place was near the Via Stabiana, one of the main roads and
one which, despite initial impressions, was well-located and attractive to passers-
by. He also argues that the triangular plot was in itself an important space—not
only as an open space with a wall that could be written on but also because the
corner and the square served as the social centre of the neighbourhood.44
More recently, Viitanen and Nissinen also stressed that a lot of the electoral
propaganda to be found there is written on the outer walls of bars, in close proxim-
ity to the doors of the establishment, and could thus be read by both people who
were passing by in carts and those who walked inside. It is worth noting that, since
propaganda was erased from time to time, what remains dates back, according to
the authors, to AD 50–79. The data from this propaganda is much used by proso-
pographical studies, since they primarily refer to candidates for public posts in the
city, and for aedilis and duumvir in particular.45 The format is repeated: candidates’
names, the post they are running for and the names of their supporters, whether
a specific person or a group. Gladiatorial propaganda, such as those studied by
Sabbatini Tumolesi, provide another type of information. They give us general
information on spectacles, such as the dates they are scheduled to take place, who
their sponsors were, the reason behind the combat, the number of pairs of gladia-
tors who would be fighting, venationes or other types of activities.46 Thus, this data
provides information on Roman citizens, while gladiators or hunters are always
introduced collectively, that is, namelessly. This in turn shows that such data are
useful for approaches to the political and economic history of elite males, but are
of little help for our understanding of non-elite men.
However, while the outer walls of the corner boast 13 tituli picti that allow
us insight into the public life of leading citizens, their political pretensions and
donation of public spectacles to the city, inside the lupanar there are 140 graffiti
which all focus on sexual intercourse. There is a huge diversity of graffiti on sexual
encounters, thereby introducing us to a particular type of relation between text and
image. Some are simple little drawings of men’s phalluses without a single writ-
ten word, while others are composed only of inscriptions and no drawings. This
heterogeneity implies a type of information that is rarely explored by scholars on
Roman sexuality, as Feitosa reminds us. Many of these graffiti include the writers’
names (male or female) and as Franklin noted, they denote different social and
ethnical origins.47
There are many examples with the verb futuere, which, in polished English
means ‘to have sexual intercourse with’ and in colloquial terms means ‘to fuck.’
In the lupanar there are 30 graffiti that include this verb. Feitosa has stated that
there is much discussion and controversy about the meaning such graffiti might
have had in Roman society. For Varone, these frequent citations are part of the
erotic pulse and express an uncontrollable need to write about the sexual encounter
186 Renata Senna Garraffoni
and to share with others the pleasure that was taken in it. Thus, to write about the
encounters would be the continuation of pleasure itself. Adams considers that
the most frequent meaning of these graffiti had to do with the demonstration or
enhancement of an author’s virility. Yet more recent readings, such as Prina’s,
point out that graffiti of sexual content are diverse. There are many that reinforce
notions of virility, yet others, which refer to homoerotic encounters, are also spread
throughout the city. Prina argues that graffiti studies have tended to privilege those
inscriptions that depict or make reference to sex between men and women, while
those that are homoerotic in content gain less attention.48
Besides the term futuere, the expression cunnum lingere—that is, the act of cun-
nilingus, also appears. There is just one inscription of this sort in the lupanar,
although there are many others spread throughout different places in Pompeii.
Could such citations be offensive allusions towards particular individuals, as Adams
states?49 Some inscriptions may indeed suggest that the scribbler sought to make
a moral attack on the person mentioned.50 But this is not a general rule. Garraffoni
and Laurence have noted that sexual insults in graffiti are a rare phenomenon, when
compared to descriptions of ships, gladiators, birds or any other category. The char-
acterisation of others as cocksuckers or cinaedi was a more common phenomenon
in linguistic graffiti, rather than those containing graphic caricature.51
There were, of course, those who practised prostitution, as demonstrated by
the indication of the prices in some entries in the lupanar. We find, for example,
seven graffiti in which the verb fello is present, such as Ismenus felattor.52 Was
Ismenus a male prostitute whose served male or female searches for satisfaction?
Who might purchase his services? These questions have no easy answer, but they
do incite us to question established interpretations of Roman sexuality. After all,
these inscriptions of practices and prices make reference to pleasures that were
accessible to men and women.
The 140 lupanar graffiti seem to indicate having been written by people of
humble origin—many of them signed in ways that express different ethnic
origins—and refer to intimate encounters in a sexual discourse meant to be read
by anonymous people who frequented the lupanar. Their words give visibility to
aspects of life that have been little commented in academia, mired as it is in the
taboos of modernity. Yet many graffiti are open to more than one interpretive pos-
sibility, and could therefore help to question models based on typical and flawed
assumptions regarding heteronormativity. In their ambiguities, practices between
people of the same sex may or may not be gleaned, yet the possibility of under-
standing sexual experience in terms of diversity is there.
To conclude, the corner where the lupanar is located is an interesting part of the
city and it provides us with intriguing sources of information. It was a public place
where people could get together and relax in nearby bars. Passers-by encountered
a written space adorned with a variety of inscriptions: electoral posters, gladiato-
rial announcements and sexual graffiti. While electoral posters and the gladiatorial
announcements suggest the occurrence of public encounters, the sexual graffiti sug-
gests the occurrence of intimate ones. It is also a written space that brings under-rep-
resented sexualities into archaeological discourse. As the inscriptions were found
 Subaltern masculinities 187
in a populated area of the city, they attest to intense social and personal interaction.
They allow us to study people’s intercourse within urban spaces, as well as their
expression of political support and public display. There is evidence of professional
inscriptions (i.e. the painted ones) as well as common people’s graffiti. These are
walls that provide food for thought on politics and pleasures and show us something
about the different types of passions for life (gladiatorial combats, hunters or sex)
that existed in that time and place. Furthermore, these walls invite us to rethink
Wallace-Hadrill’s approach: although the lupanar is located on a narrow street,
the inscriptions on its inner and outer walls inside and surrounding neighbourhood
seem to demonstrate the interaction of many people. This corner and its inscriptions
allow us to rethink spatial analyses based on moralistic textual approaches and ask
us to look to material evidence to construct less normative models for understanding
the relationship between intimate and public encounters. They also challenge us to
avoid binary interpretation and recognise the complexity of urban space.

Conclusions
There is a long tradition of studies that defines the writings of the male elite as
the major source of our understanding of Roman culture and society, whether
expressed in literature or epigraphy. From this limited perspective, these memories
of rulers and their worldviews are taken as shaping Roman identity as a whole. The
corner studied in this chapter challenges this perspective. There are significant ele-
ments present—two types of inscriptions, tituli picti and graffiti, with the former
further divided into two types, electoral propaganda and gladiatorial announce-
ments. While those of the first type speak of local politicians or citizens who
demonstrate their generosity and memory by organising spectacles for the general
public to attend, the latter give voice to men and women of different ethnic origins
who made their living working in bars and taverns as well as providing sexual
services. Although the propaganda is placed outside of establishments, as Viitanen
and Nissinen tell us,53 we are able to assume that there were negotiations between
owners of small businesses, candidates and supporters in order to have inscriptions
done there by professionals. Thus, to leave marks for posterity through gladiatorial
announcements or electoral notices engaged people of different social conditions.
The second case, that of graffiti of sexual content, allows us to think about intimate
encounters from the perspective of diversity. The locale, typography and the num-
ber of inscriptions in a demarcated space suggest this was the site where people of
different social conditions and origins circulated, functioning much more as a site
of encounter and negotiation than a distant corner of the city.
In drawing my chapter to conclusion, I return to a well-known graffiti that
appears in different parts of Pompeii and reads as follows:

ADMIROR O PARIENS TE NON CECIDISSE RVINIS QVI TOT SCRIP-

TORVM TAEDIA SVSTINEAS54
‘I admire you, oh wall that has not fallen, you who must bear the boredom
of writers.’
188 Renata Senna Garraffoni
This graffiti, in its concise irony, seems to fluently express some of the themes I
have dealt with above. In the first place, it becomes evident that the person who
wrote it understood the wall as a locus for many different types of writing. In the
second place, it seems to indicate that whoever wrote it knew well the milieu and
those whom it brought together, thus understanding that his or her phrase would
be read by other pedestrians. In the third place, in an irony of fate that escapes
that writer from so long ago, the phrase has lived on, on walls that have withstood
earthquakes, the successive eruptions of Mt Vesuvius and the passing of time itself.
It is this persisting material legacy that enables us to return to the streets of Pompeii
to read its walls again. In doing so, we gain insights not only on members of the
elite but on people of humble origins, their language, experiences and worldview,
inviting us to ponder what type of history of Rome we ourselves want to write.

Notes
1 Foucault 1978, 1985, 1986; Dover 1978; Johns 1982; Richlin 1983.
2 Clarke 2003, 11.
3 Garraffoni and Sanfelice 2014.
4 Hall 2012.
5 Sears, Keegan and Laurence 2013.
6 Garraffoni 2012, 214–9.
7 Hingley 1996, 2000, 2001, 2005.
8 See Delgado and Ferrer 2012.
9 Hingley 2005.
10 Gilchrist 1999.
11 See Voss and Schmidt 2000.
12 Grig 2017, 2.
13 Baird and Taylor 2012.
14 More recently scholars have also been considering how Della Corte proposed CIL 4
made it difficult to read. See Courrier and Dedieu 2012.
15 Abbott 1912; Tanzer 1939.
16 Funari 1986–7, 1989, 1993.
17 Funari 2003, 113.
18 Williams 1999; Feitosa 2005.
19 Baird and Taylor 2012, 12.
20 Laurence and Sears 2013, 1.
21 See Corbier 2006 and 2017.
22 MacMullen 1982.
23 Feitosa 2005, 61.
24 Viitanen and Nissinen 2017.
25 Sabbatini Tumolesi 1980.
26 Benefiel 2012.
27 Taylor 2012.
28 Hillard 2013.
29 Plin. Ep. 8.7, my translation.
30 Hillard 2013; Laurence and Sears 2013.
31 Courrier and Dedieu 2012.
32 http://ancientgraffiti.org/Graffiti/
33 Hunink 2014, expanded edition, first published in 2011.
34 Baird and Taylor 2012, 5–6.
35 Langner 2001; Hunink 2014.
 Subaltern masculinities 189
36 Viitanen, Nissinen and Kohronen 2013.
37 Keegan 2012.
38 Franklin 1991.
39 Savunen 1995; Sabbatini Tumolesi 1980. For a more recent work, see Prina 2018.
40 Garraffoni 2010.
41 Wallace-Hadrill 1996.
42 Voss and Schmidt 2000, 7.
43 Viitanen, Nissinen and Korhonen 2013; Viitanen and Nissinen 2017.
44 Franklin 1985.
45 Viitanen and Nissinen 2017.
46 Sabbatini Tumolesi 1980.
47 Feitosa 2005; Franklin 1985.
48 Feitosa 2005; Varone 2000, 79; Adams 1996, 161; Prina 2018, 45.
49 Adams 1996, 114.
50 CIL 4.2081, 4304, 1331, 3925.
51 Garraffoni and Laurence 2013.
52 CIL 4.2169.
53 Viitanen and Nissinen 2017.
54 CIL 4.1904, 1906, 2461, 2487.

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Part 4

Politics from below

Subaltern agency and collective action
9 Metics, slaves and citizens in
classical Athens
Rethinking the polis from below
Fábio Augusto Morales

Introduction
The myth of classical Athens as the cradle of freedom and reason is well known.
It is based on a supposed historical continuity between ancient Greece and
the modern, capitalist Western societies, self-proclaimed as the prime heirs of
(their) antiquity, whose mission, consequently, is to spread freedom and reason
to the rest of the world. Recent scholarship has demonstrated the absurdity of
this proposition, which reifies the modern European construction of antiquity as
its own (and exclusive) past, obscures the many other ways the Greek cultural
features were transmitted to non-Western societies, and isolates the ancient
Greek-speaking societies from their complex historical contexts. 1 One could
expect that studies on Athenian slavery would have unsettled this myth; how-
ever, as N. Lenski recently observed, the success of Finley’s widespread list
of ‘genuine slave societies’ (classical Athens, ancient Rome, ante-bellum US
South, the Caribbean islands and pre-abolition Brazil) have had the opposite
effect:

Not only does it link cultural practices shared between Western societies
across the longue durée, it also sets the West apart as uniquely capable of sys-
tematizing the use of slavery into a social and economic driver that propelled
‘our’ culture to the forefront of history—albeit at tremendous cost to human
life. . . . The implication seems to be that Greece and Rome were the only
premodern societies capable of the rationalism, efficiency, and complexity
necessary to orchestrate coordinated cruelty at this level. The same sense of
superiority—imbued with all due remorse—can also be found in the work of
modern Western historians.2

This rather ambiguous status of classical Athens—the cradle of freedom as well

as ‘rational’ mass slavery—led to the reification of two discordant approaches to
Athenian society. According to the ‘polis approach,’ Athens was a polis, and a
polis was a community of citizens. Athenian citizens exercised their civic rights
in opposition to the mass of (totally or partially) excluded women, metics and
slaves; political issues such as participation, civic ideology and institutional

DOI: 10.4324/9781003005148-13
196 Fábio Augusto Morales
arrangement are expectedly central.3 In turn, according to the ‘slave-society
approach,’ Athens was a society composed by a community of rational mas-
ters that controlled and explored a mass of chattel slaves; accordingly, economic
issues such as slave labour productivity, elite and sub-elite dependence on slave
labour and slave demography have been the main topics of studies on Athenian
slavery/slave system.4
In this chapter, I argue that a history of Athenian society from below, rather
than a history of those below, should combine these two approaches, and that
for two main reasons. Firstly, though each society separated its social activi-
ties in distinctive spheres through rituals and representations, social reproduc-
tion presupposes their imbrication: Athenian citizens in the Assembly do not
become translucid political beings without economic needs, equally Athenian
slave-owners do not abandon the polis, its institutions and safeguards, while
extracting surplus from slaves’ labour. Secondly, and consequently, treating
separately political or economic boundaries between citizens and non-citizens
prevents a comprehension of the social reproduction as a totality, leaving aside
the dialectic relationship of structure and agency. The aim of this chapter is
to offer a way to approach the social reproduction of classical Athens from
below—that is, from the viewpoint of the relations between dominant and domi-
nated according to the multifarious ways in which they interact. Who is below,
certainly, could not be defined outside the power relations of concrete agents
in specific circumstances: combinations of gender, ethnic, class and cultural
boundaries produced and were produced by different relations in which indi-
viduals simultaneously shared and disputed power.5 Therefore, and to avoid an
anachronistic neoliberal image of a society with no boundaries, 6 a history of
classical Athens from below must consider the complexity of its social relations
as well as the structures produced by them. Among these structures, the polis
itself is certainly prominent.
Here, rather than define the polis as city, state or community,7 I will take
it as the arena where power relations between inhabitants are performed, dis-
cussed and provisionally regulated. The history of the polis and the history
of citizens and non-citizens relations are inseparable: rather than change the
focus from citizens to non-citizens or even to ‘unthink’ the polis, we should
rethink the polis by considering the disputes over its meaning and boundaries.
The main hypothesis is that, besides the citizen/non-citizen and master/slave
relations, a complex citizen/inhabitant dialectic was central to the polis repro-
duction itself and, in specific contexts, was engaged in the disputes over its
boundaries. To explore this hypothesis, I address the question of the polis’ def-
initions and its internal boundaries, and then I discuss two specific contexts,
both based on speeches written by the metic logographer Lysias: the participa-
tion of metics in the restoration of 403 BC and a judicial accusation of a metic
master by his slaves, dated probably to the early fourth century BC. In the
conclusion, I address the issue of the non-citizens’ support of democratic res-
toration by discussing the conditions democracy created for slave and metic
agency.
 Metics, slaves and citizens in Athens 197
The polis and its others
What was a polis? In a chapter on ‘Civic ideology and citizenship’ published in
2009, P. J. Rhodes wrote:

Greek city-states (poleis, sing. polis) and states of other kinds were commu-
nities of citizens (politai, sing. polites). Except when a ‘tyrant’ had usurped
power and ruled (as some but not all tyrants did) not through the regular
institutions but autocratically, these citizens were entitled and expected to play
a part in the running of the state. At the beginning of book 3 of his Politics
Aristotle asks, ‘What is the polis?’ and he proceeds to say that ‘the polis is a
body of citizens, so we must investigate who ought to be called a citizen and
what a citizen is.’8

The definition of polis as a ‘community of citizens,’ with the obvious implied

exclusions of non-citizens, has a long history in modern scholarship. The main
criterion which identified the citizen community varied from religion,9 land-own-
ing10 and civic institutions11 to self-awareness12 and prestige competition.13 Non-
citizens were excluded from the polis and its historiographical representations by
not sharing ancestors, not owing land and not being to hold civic offices to exer-
cise public speech or to compete for public honours. Models which focused on
the economic sphere, such as the modernist approaches to the polis,14 though more
inclusive, often relegated non-citizens to the economic sphere, leaving politics to
the exclusive citizen community.
The equation polis/citizens also deeply informed studies devoted to the excluded
groups, often built upon normative approaches.15 The list of exclusions and obliga-
tions has been an unavoidable topos: Athenian metics had to pay a special annual
tax of 12 drachmas for men and six for women (the metoikion), men had to perform
military service in segregate detachments and both needed a citizen procurator
to judicial procedures (the prostates); they could not participate directly in civic
institutions such as the courts, the Assembly, the Council or the magistratures,
and if charged by supposedly passing as citizens, they could be put to death or
reduced to slavery; they could not marry citizens, could not own land (unless with
special concession, enktesis) and crimes committed by metics against citizens were
punished much harder than offenses of citizens against metics.16 Slaves, in turn,
were legally a property, subject to his/her master’s will: they could be bought,
sold, beaten, tortured, sexually abused and eventually killed by their master, with
minor, if any, judicial consequences; they were obliged to work on whatever the
master wishes, from the Laurion mines to domestic service, from agriculture to
banking, and if they worked autonomously, they had to pay a sum to the master
(the apophora), and if the master had a debt which he could not pay, the slave
could be seized by the creditor.17
Less normative studies on the last decades have shown the limits of the exclu-
sion-centred histories of non-citizens. Influenced by the complex social and
political movements of the late twentieth century,18 these studies have taken the
198 Fábio Augusto Morales
ubiquity of non-citizens in Athenian society as support for the research on the
many ways they have contributed to community life or, more emphatically, played
their agencies under, against and/or through the state exclusion structures.19 Stud-
ies on Athenian metics, for example, have emphasised their participation in the
religious, cultural and military spheres: metic interventions on public sphere (esp.
Aristotle and Lysias) or metic participation in polis religious rituals and Athenian
army, as well as economic activities with strong ties to the political and military
reproduction of the community, became common topics in recent scholarship.20
Studies on Athenian slavery, in turn, have explored the social breaches created
by the multifarious economic integration of Athenian slaves: slaves were able to
develop successful careers in banking, slave traffic and slave management, gain
or buy manumission through many ways (reward from the master or the com-
munity, personal savings from slave-loan activities, social support from networks
such as eranoi, efforts of family members, etc.), marry or sexually manipulate
masters, run away when circumstances allowed, be recruited along with citizens
in war times with potential derived honours, try to change masters, sabotage
skill-needed activities, lie, steal and give false-testimony on masters, etc.21 Greek
manumission studies, in turn, have shown the complexity of the burdens and
breaches in the sociability of freedmen and freedwomen, from the continuity
of obligations towards the former master to a more independent exercise of the
acquired freedom.22 Metic and slave status were deeply intertwined by status-
change through manumission or, on the opposite direction, enslaving as judicial
penalty, as well as by metic slave-owning, and by joint participation of metics and
slaves in manumission eranoi.23 Finally, the very existence of judicial procedures
against false allegations of citizenship, as well as the widespread use of the ‘ser-
vile invective,’ a rhetorical topos by which the opponent is accused of be a slave
or have a slave origin, points to the importance of ‘fake citizenship’ strategies in
Athenian society.24
The gaps of citizen-centred histories of classical Athens, highlighted by
studies focused on the agency of non-citizens, have led some scholars even
to prefer to leave aside the polis as the main conceptual tool to deal with
Athenian society. Alternatives spans from Cohen’s proposal to define Athens
as an ethnos, rather than a polis, considering its ‘anomalous’ size and internal
complexity in contrast to ‘normal’ poleis,25 to Vlassopoulos’ proposal of tak-
ing the sets of communities and networks as unities of analysis for the Greek
history, rather than (exclusively) the polis. 26 As recently put by Taylor and
Vlassopoulos,

communities are fluid, malleable, and subjective: nobody belongs to a single

community and no single community incorporates all of the same people all
of the time. Communities and networks form (and disband) in a variety of
settings for different reasons and have different temporalities; they are not
fixed entities. Although some are created through the institutions of the polis
(for example, citizen communities and their subdivisions), others are not and
often are formed with very little reference to them.27
 Metics, slaves and citizens in Athens 199
The study of communities and networks that crossed Greek History’s fabric have
shown the complexity of the relations obliterated in polis-centered histories. This
decentring, nonetheless, maintains the traditional identification of the polis to the
community of citizens. But, was it? After all, what was a polis?

Citizens and inhabitants

Rather than try to define the polis, it seems more fruitful to pursue the ‘polis ques-
tion’ as it appeared in ancient sources. Here, let’s go back to Aristotle, the metic
and philosopher,28 who framed the question as follows:

When we are dealing with constitutions, and seeking to discover the essence
and the attributes of each form, our first investigation may well be directed to
the city itself; and we may begin by asking, ‘What is the city?’ (τί ποτέ ἐστιν
ἡ πόλις). This is at present a disputed question—while some say, ‘It was the
city that did such and such an act,’ others say, ‘It was not the city, but the
oligarchy or the tyrant.’ All the activity of the statesman and the lawgiver is
obviously concerned with the city, and a constitution is a way of organizing
the inhabitants of a city (πολιτεία τῶν τὴν πόλιν οἰκούντων ἐστὶ τάξις τις).
A city belongs to the order of ‘compounds,’ just like any other thing which
forms a single ‘whole,’ while being composed, none the less, of a number of
different parts. This being the case, it clearly follows that we must inquire first
about the citizen. In other words, a city is a multitude of citizens (ἡ γὰρ πόλις
πολιτῶν τι πλῆθός ἐστιν) and so we must consider who should properly be
called a citizen and what a citizen really is.29

Before offering his own solution—‘the polis is a multitude of citizens’—Aristotle

lists six others. The first of them is the very condition of the reasoning: the polis is
a disputed question. As such, the polis could be interpreted as a politically disputed
concept in the Athenian public sphere, which is not limited to the civic institutions;
Aristotle’s Politics was itself a piece in that dispute. The second, third and fourth
solutions varied upon the problem of agency: the polis as the proper agent, in a
whole-part metonymy; the polis as the platform for rulers’ agency over the world;
the polis as the object or reference of administrative and legislative actions. The
fifth solution, rather tangentially, defines the politeia as a form of ordering the
inhabitants, oikountes, citizens or not, and accordingly the polis was an inhabited
space ordered by any politeia. The sixth treats the polis as a philosophical object,
which must be analysed according the usual method of disentangling its compos-
ing parts, specifying its internal relations and discerning its core. This leads Aris-
totle to give the seventh and last solution, the polis as the multitude of citizens.
Each solution mentioned by Aristotle could be developed with more detail,30
but here I will stress the first and the fifth ones. The ‘polis as a question’ solu-
tion is an evidence of what C. Pébarthe, drawing from Castoriadis, called the
‘interrogation illimitée,’ the ‘unlimited questioning’ permitted by democratic
political practice;31 although Pébarthe limited this feature to citizens, the very
200 Fábio Augusto Morales
existence of the Aristotelian Politics demonstrates that a metic could participate
in it. The fact that Aristotle raised the core question of political activity should
alert the modern reader that the polis was in fact an open concept. Therefore,
rather than choosing (and reifying) one definition over others, we must explore
how the different solutions—or different polis concepts—were constructed both
in theory and in social practice, and by which ways the disputes between essen-
tially precarious concepts were performed. Aristotle is not a colleague, it must
be repeatedly stressed.32
The fifth solution, the polis as a community of inhabitants ordered by a politeia,
points towards a less juridical and more spatial concept of polis, where citizens
and non-citizens shared the community’s social reproduction as residents. By
social reproduction, it should be noted, I don’t mean the traditional reduction of
non-citizens’ agency to economy and demography. The spatial concept of polis
mentioned by Aristotle relates politeia to dwelling, regardless of the political and
social (real or imagined) limitations some inhabitants’ segments suffered. By shift-
ing the emphasis from juridical status to spatial experience of dwelling, Aristotle’s
fifth solution puts this category, the inhabitant, at the core of the polis concept.
However, a polis defined by its inhabitants appeared incongruent to him. In fact,
loyal to the civic concept of polis, Aristotle addressed a supposed contradiction of
a concept of citizenship defined by the place of residence, which would erase the
distinction between citizens and non-citizens. Aristotle preferred the definition of
citizen as one who ‘shares in the administration of justice and the holding of office’
(Aristotle, 1275a). As metics and slaves could not do this, participation in courts
and civic offices were a most definitive criteria than residence. A citizen was a
citizen because he does what a non-citizen couldn’t do; what defined the citizen,
rather than his agency through civic institution, was the very exclusion they can
exercise over non-citizens. The polis, besides being a set of institutions and their
legitimate holders, was the act of exclusion itself.
In that sense, the citizens’ polis, built upon the dialectics between citizens (those
who had power enough to exclude non-citizens) and inhabitants (anyone who
dwells in the polis), was in crisis whenever the practices of inhabitants’ polis clash
with the citizens’ polis, a structural contradiction.33 The history of the polis, then,
was dotted by ‘moments of danger’—a concept I borrow from Benjamin’s VI
thesis on the concept of history34—brought forth by the movement of the social
reproduction itself, because the ‘polis of the citizens’ depended on the ‘polis of the
inhabitants’ to exist, both materially and symbolically.35
Along the fifth century BC, Athens became a new powerful, silver rich centre
in the world of empires,36 attracting a mass of freeborn immigrants as well as
importing numerous slaves.37 The unsettling concerns posed to citizens by the
influx of newcomers, especially the immigrant women,38 were deeply discussed
in the public sphere (especially on dramatic festivals) and supported laws such as
the famous Periklean restriction of Athenian citizenship to sons of Athenian fathers
and mothers.39 However, the law didn’t resolve ambiguities raised in everyday life:
the anomalously large population of Attica was a visual reminder of the fragility
of the citizen-polis ideology.40
 Metics, slaves and citizens in Athens 201
Athens was anything but a homogeneous polis; its heterogeneity, instead, cre-
ated breaches in Athenian citizens’ exclusivity. Metics, slaves and citizens work-
ing, worshiping and eventually fighting side by side multiplied the threats of the
inhabitants’ polis against the civic exclusivist ideology. The resultant porosity was
at the basis of the well-known complaint of Old Oligarch in relation to the alleg-
edly licentiousness of non-citizens under Athenian democracy:

‘But again the slaves and the metics at Athens enjoy extreme license, and it
is not possible to strike them there, nor will a slave step aside for you.’ Well,
I shall tell you the reason why this is their local practice. If it were legal for
the slave or the metic or the freedman to be beaten by a free-born citizen, he
would often strike an Athenian by mistake, thinking that he was a slave. For
the demos there are no better dressed than the slaves and the metics, nor are
they any better in their appearance. If anyone is also surprised at the fact that
they allow the slaves to live luxuriously there and, some of them, in a grand
style, it will become clear that they do this too with good reason. For where
there is a naval power, economic reasons make it necessary for us to be slaves
to our slaves in order that we may take their earnings, and to manumit them.
‘But in Lacedaemon my slave fears you.’Yes, but if your slave fears me, there
will be a risk that he will also offer me his money so as not to be in physical
danger. And in a state where there are rich slaves it is no longer to my benefit
as a master there that my slave should fear you. This then is the reason why
we have established equality of free speech as between slaves and free men;
and also as between metics and citizens, since the city needs metics because
of the great number of their skills and the requirements of the fleet. So that
is why we have, naturally, established equality of free speech for the metics
too (διὰ τοῦτο οὖν καὶ τοῖς μετοίκοις εἰκότως τὴν ἰσηγορίαν ἐποιήσαμεν).41

This passage, as usual, was used to support very conflicting interpretations. Vlasso-
poulos, for instance, relates the alleged difficulty to differentiate citizens and non-
citizens by appearance to the shape of Athenian socioeconomical citizenship and
economic structure: on the one hand, ‘Athenian lower classes . . . possessed sig-
nificant political rights’; on the other, there was a ‘lack of distinction between free
and slave in most professions.’42 Paiaro and Requena, contrarily, argue that this
supposedly ‘undifferentiation’ was one of the many rhetorical exaggerations of the
text, paralleling the Old Oligarch’s reference to non-citizens isegoria to Plato’s
Republic passages referring non-citizens’ isonomia with citizens; as such, they
should not be taken at its face-value.43 Here, rather than address the problem of
the Old Oligarch’s reliability, I would like to stress the reasons the author gave to
what he (supposedly) believes happened in Athens.
The author’s main complaint is that metics, freedmen and slaves (a differentia-
tion to which I will return) enjoyed rights similar to those that should be exclusive
to citizens: physical protection, access to wealth and free-speech. Although the first
reason for the non-citizens’ right to physical protection is a practical one—they
dressed similarly and one could beat a citizen by mistake—the main reasoning
202 Fábio Augusto Morales
is sociopolitical: the thalassocratic Athenian democracy conceded rights to non-
citizens because it was profitable. But for whom? Marr and Rhodes, in their com-
mentary to the text,44 argue that the main profit was made by the lower-class citizen
slave-owners: the part destined to the masters from the earnings (apophorai) slaves
received in their autonomous activities, such was woodwork for and rowing in the
Athenian fleet (paid by the polis), as well as the fee charged for manumission, cre-
ated a considerable income for poor masters. Since richer slaves could pay greater
apophorai and manumission charges, Athenian citizens didn’t prevent slaves from
enriching themselves. However, the Old Oligarch states that in order to avoid vio-
lence from freeman in general, rich slaves could pay those other than their master.
To solve this problem, Athenian freeman didn’t instill fear of violence in slaves,
and that is why they are so licentious and even have isegoria. The fearful, poor
and quiet Spartan helots, here, offered a perfect contrast. What about the metics?
Since they do not have to pay apophorai to any master, Marr and Rhodes argue
that metics were profitable to the polis in function of their specialised skills.45
Thus, rich slaves gave profit to their masters, whereas skilled metics gave profit
(indirectly) to the polis.
The spectrum of non-citizens’ social relations considered by the Old Oligarch,
according to Marr and Rhodes’ reconstruction, went from those with an individual
master (who enabled slave enrichment) to those with the community of masters
(who didn’t instil fear on slaves) and later to the polis in general (who attracted
metics). However, the fact that the Old Oligarch complains about not being able
to strike both slaves and metics is revealing of the proximity, in his mind, between
metics and slaves. On a recent work on Athenian demography and economy,
Akrigg argues that, rather than the ‘economic immigrant,’ the figures of Athenian
metic population is better understood by considering manumission as the main
source.46 Considering this and appropriating Old Oligarch’s individual-community
spectrum, we can consider the metoikion as the conversion, to the polis, of the
former apophora paid by slaves to their individual master. We will return to this
later; here, it must be noted that the imperial and democratic rationality of the
concession of ‘licentious’ conditions to slave and metics (freeborn and freedmen)
created unbearable pains for rich oligarchs, already obliged to treat respectfully
their fellow lower-class citizens.
From this shouldn’t emerge an all-inclusive picture of Athenian democracy: the
summary execution of non-citizens caught participating in civic institutions is a
reminder that ultimate violence was the corollary of civic ideology’s fragility.47 To
access the complexity of the citizen/inhabitant dialectic, I will discuss with more
detail two specific contexts: the restoration of democracy in 403 and a charge of
slaves against their metic master.

The asty and the Piraeus

The regime of the Thirty in Athens, which ruled the polis between 404 and 403
BC, persecuted hundreds of democracy’s supporters, with especial cruelty towards
metics. The regime was overthrown by a restoration army assembled in Megara
 Metics, slaves and citizens in Athens 203
under the command of Thrasyboulos. The army counted with the substantial finan-
cial and military support of exiled Athenian metics such as Lysias, who managed to
flee Athens after the execution of his brother Polemarchus. The restoration begun
with the take over of the fortress at Phyle, in north Attica, and proceeded with the
conquest of the Piraeus, from where the army, increasingly composed of citizens
and non-citizens, marched to the asty. After the final victory, the restoration army
allowed the Thirty and all the citizens who preferred oligarchy to settle on Eleusis,
converted in an independent polis (a measure revoked in 401/0). To those who
remained in the asty and desired to stay in Athens, and consequently to live under
democracy, an amnesty agreement set the imperative of me mnesikakein, ‘do not
recall the bad things.’48 To reward the metics who supported the restoration, Thra-
syboulos himself proposed a collective enfranchising, a measure soon put down
as illegal. However, a decree dated to 401/0 conceded honours to non-citizens,
distinguishing three groups: those who fought with Thrasyboulos since Phyle,
those who fought since Mounikhia in the Piraeus, and those who remained in the
Piraeus during the siege of the asty. The nature of the privileges is debated, but
probably involved concessions of citizenship to the first group and of isoteleia to
the second and third.49
As we could expect, the ‘bad things’ of the Thirty’s regime were not forgotten,
especially by those who were personally—or had family members who were—
harmed by the regime, as was the case of Lysias. Many speeches attributed to
him refer directly to the persecutions of that time, and often the Athenian concept
of citizenship itself was at stake.50 The fundamental questions were: where did
the defendant stayed during oligarchy, and what was his attitude towards it? In
the well-known speech Against Erathosthenes (Lys.12)—according to tradition
delivered by Lysias himself during the short period when Thrasyboulos decree was
valid—Lysias describes vividly many aspects of the Thirty’s regime, especially
the involvement of Erathosthenes, one of the Thirty, in the execution of his brother
Polemarchus. The two exordia that end the speech stressed a spatial opposition of
‘those who stayed in the asty’ and ‘those from Piraeus,’ which respectively meant,
then, supporters and opponents of the Thirty’s regime:

In the first place, all you of the town party (ἐξ ἄστεώς) should consider that
you were so oppressed by the rule of these men that you were compelled
to wage against your brothers, your sons and your fellow-citizens a strange
warfare in which your defeat has given you equal rights with the victors,
whereas your victory would have made you the slaves of these men. They
have enlarged their private establishments by means of their public conduct,
while you find your’s reduced by your warfare against each other: for they did
not permit you to share their advantages, though they compelled you to share
their ill-fame. . . . And all you of the Peiraeus party (ἐκ Πειραιῶς), remember
first the matter of the arms,—how after fighting many battles on foreign soil
you were deprived of your arms, not by the enemy, but by these men, in a
time of peace; and next, that you were formally banished from the city which
your fathers bequeathed to you, and when you were in exile they demanded
204 Fábio Augusto Morales
your persons from the various cities. In return you should feel the same anger
as when you were exiles.51

The contradiction implicated in the defeat/liberty and victory/slavery equations

makes clear the costs of the decision to remain in the asty or to fight for oligarchy.
Only the condemnation of Erathosthenes could resettle both the allegiance of those
who stayed in the asty to democracy and the reconstruction of the social fabric—
despite the remaining bad reputation. Meanwhile, to those from the Piraeus, the
speaker urges a mnemonical return to the condition of exiles in order to revive
the anger which will fuel vengeance; they must, above all, never forget, in order
to never forgive.
Delivered in the wake of democratic restoration, the speech Against Era-
thosthenes stresses the boundary defined by the place where someone stayed dur-
ing the oligarchy. In the following years, a more nuanced boundary emerged,
defined by the adherence to democracy, which eventually overcame the spatial
one. This is made clear in the speeches against Evandros and Philon. Submitted
to a dokimasia, the judicial scrutiny of qualification for public office, both were
accused of past undemocratic behaviour. Against Evandros counts the fact that he
has held office during the oligarchy: the speaker anticipates the argument that the
me mnesikakein agreement should protect the accused, but counter-argues that ‘the
people do not take the same view of all those who remained in the city, but regard
those who commit offences like his with the feelings that I say they ought, while
towards the rest they feel the opposite.’52 Against Philon, conversely, counts the
fact that he has left Athens during the oligarchy not to support democracy, but to
pursue his private businesses as a metic in the neighbouring polis of Oropus: the
speaker reflects on the meaning of citizenship, observing that ‘those who, though
citizens by birth (φύσει μὲν πολῖταί εἰσι), adopt the view that any country in which
they have their business is their fatherland, are evidently men who would even
abandon the public interest of their city to seek their private gain.’53 Citizenship,
rather than defined by descent, depended here on behaviour. Nevertheless, the
spatial marker remains: as the defendant of the speech Against the accusation of
subverting democracy, a man who stayed at the city but claims to have not sup-
ported oligarchy, describes his behaviour as similar to what ‘the best citizen in the
Peiraeus would have done, if he had remained in the city.’54
The Piraeus was not alone as spatial reference to the post-restoration democratic
memory; Lysias and other orators also use ‘those from Phyle,’ referring to the first
step of the restoration war. As argued by Loraux, there was a subtle difference in
the choice of Phyle or Piraeus: while ‘those from Phyle’ referred to a more homo-
geneously citizen army, ‘those from Piraeus’ stressed the presence of non-citizens
among the troops.55 The strong presence of metics and slaves among the residents
in Piraeus, where Lysias’ family dwelled, stresses the point.56 The double exor-
dium at the end of Against Erathosthenes attests the speaker’s disagreement with
the amnesty terms; the urge for remembering is the opposite of me mnesikakein.
Remembering, in that case, meant to update the spatially based polis’ stasis, which
could be healed only by the institutional reckoning with those who subverted
 Metics, slaves and citizens in Athens 205
democracy—a claim particularly telling to contemporary post-dictatorial societies,
I must add. The Piraeus, thus, became a symbol of democracy, an idea echoed in
Aristotle’s description of the port demos as particularly adherent to democracy.57
In post-403 BC Athens, the scrutiny over the past was at the core of citizen-
ship itself, approaching oligarchical or individualist citizens to non-citizens, from
whom active political support for democracy was not expected. Inversely, metics
who have supported democracy, such as Lysias himself, could be portrayed as
behaving better towards democracy than citizens. As Lysias states in the speech
Against Erathosthenes:

This [persecution] was not the treatment that we deserved at the city’s hands,
when we [metics] had produced all our dramas for the festivals, and con-
tributed to many special levies; when we showed ourselves men of orderly
life, and performed every duty laid upon us; when we had made not a single
enemy, but had ransomed many Athenians from the foe. Such was their reward
to us for behaving as resident aliens far otherwise than they did as citizens
(οὐχ ὁμοίως μετοικοῦντας ὥσπερ αὐτοὶ ἐπολιτεύοντο)!58

The ‘metics better than citizens’ argument presented here is linked to the finan-
cial contributions and lawful and quiet sociability which one could expect of rich
citizens. Athenian metics, indeed, could surpass the allegiance of citizens towards
democracy also by supporting the restoration movement, as stated by the speaker
of the speech Against Philon, who justifies a necessary punishment to unfaithful
citizens such as him by remembering the honours the polis gave to ‘our resi-
dent aliens for having supported the democracy beyond the requirements of their
duty.’59 Through the concession of honours, the polis asserted a citizenship con-
cept; honouring metics who went ‘beyond the requirements of their duty’ logically
demanded dishonouring citizens who didn’t meet the minimum required from their
title. Lysias’ speeches eloquently reveal the conversion of courts in democracy’s
places of memory, where the civic wounds could be, and often were, reopened.
The polemics on the concession of honours to metics in the years just after res-
toration show the open nature of the citizenship question: what does it mean to be a
citizen? The participation of slaves in the restoration movement60 stretched the ques-
tion to its limit: slaves could be better than citizens? The revocation of Thrasyboulos’
decree and the much less wide concession of honours to non-citizens in 401/0 indi-
cate the partial victory of the civic ideology; nevertheless, the central role of metics
in Plato’s Republic, for example, reveals the depth of the trauma.61 In what follows,
I will discuss another way slaves could push the polis to its limits: the charge slaves
made against their metic master, preserved in Lysias’ speech For Kallias.

Masters and slaves

The speech For Kallias is the shortest of the corpus, with only 292 words—Lysias’
speeches normally have between 1,220 and 2,500 words. The speech’s fragmen-
tary state is due to the loss of two sheets of the twelfth century manuscript: the
206 Fábio Augusto Morales
lost part would have contained about 1,000 words, but from that number should
be discounted those related to the next speech, maybe about 250 words.62 The
title, For Kallias, defense speech on a charge of hierosulia, was attributed by
the manuscript’s author (or his antecessors), even though, as argued by Todd, he
would hardly have made reference to a hierosulia (‘theft of sacred things’), and
not to the broader asebeia (‘impiety’), if the lost pages did not have more precise
information.63 The dating, if its inclusion in the Corpus Lysiacum indicates Lysias’
authorship, should be placed between the late fifth and early fourth century. As
the remaining material shows, the case is about a denunciation made by slaves
against their master, a metic named Kallias. The central issue addressed by schol-
ars was: what was the crime? Hypotheses range from the lack of payment for the
use of sacred lands or deviation of resources from public treasure, to mystery cults
profanation or irregularities in the lease of sacred properties.64 The religious nature
of the suit, however, is more consensual: slave complaints were admitted only in
extreme cases, such as offences against the gods.65 The reference at the fragment’s
end to the possible manumission of the accusers reinforces the exceptional nature
of the case.
The speech reveals that the case is heard at a normal court, not the Areopagus,
that could be explained by the juridical status of accusers and accused. The speaker
didn’t present himself as Kallias’ prostates, but stresses his social connections with
him: friendship and business. After that, the speaker points to the positive con-
nection of Kallias with the polis through the metic status and the ‘much good’ he
has done to the community, although the content of that ‘good’ was not specified.
Kallias, then, was a ‘good’ metic in both his social and institutional relations, as
is evidenced by the fact that he was never judicially charged before. The accusers,
in turn, are featured as the opposite: untrustworthy slaves and sycophants, whom,
by accusing a good metic, reverse the judicial order by making the life of lawful
individuals more dangerous than that of criminals. Until now, the normative social
roles were safe: the good metic, accused by his quisling slaves, was supported by
his citizen friends. The next argument, however, points in another direction:

I am not surprised [with the accusation]: they know that if they are shown to
be lying, they will suffer nothing worse than their existing situation, whereas
if they deceive you successfully, they will be released from their present trou-
bles. . . . It seems to me appropriate to view the trial not as the private concern
of these men, but as the common concern of all those who are in the polis.
For these are not the only people who have slaves, but so does everybody else
(οὐ γὰρ τούτοις μόνοις εἰσὶ θεράποντες, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις ἅπασιν): they
will concentrate on the plight of these men, and will no longer consider how
they might become free by having performed services for their masters, but
by having made false denunciations about them.66

By referring to the profit the accusers will enjoy, the speaker sought to delegiti-
mise the charge: potentially self-harming statements should be more trustful than
interested ones, and no profit would be greater than manumission for the slaves.67
 Metics, slaves and citizens in Athens 207
Consequently, the case surpassed the limits of the private sphere: what was at
stake were the manumission practices which regulated the individual’s change
of status. The eventual victory of the accusers would put at risk the manumission
system based on the slave’s good services, which was conducted individually by
each master. This type of judicial manumission debased master–slave relations in
favour of the public court–slave relation: slaves would use the polis to surpass,
legitimately, their master’s authority.68 This is an example of the intervention of
the free/slave dialectics in the master/slave dialectics, in Vlassopoulos’ terms,69
but was driven by slaves’ agency.
The speaker, then, makes the problem more concrete: everybody had slaves, and
consequently everybody would be at risk if Kallias’ slaves succeed. Scholars have
debated the extent of that statement, but, as Lewis has recently sustained, slavery
was widely disseminated in both the Athenian elite and sub-elite and through a
wide range of economic activities, a situation created mainly by the low prices of
slaves derived from the city’s proximity and access to the main sources of slave in
Thracia and Phrygia.70 What was at stake were not only the manumission system
but the slave system as a whole as well.
The judicial breach created by the possibility of slave institutional denunciation,
therefore, demanded the rhetorical suspension of the frontiers between citizens and
metics: Kallias was as much a slave-owner as any citizen at the court, thereafter
the case threatened the polis as a ‘community of slave-owners.’ This rhetorical
metonymy—Kallias represented all masters—corresponded, thus, to a boundary
displacement: the civic exclusivism should be suspended in favour of the repro-
duction of master/slave opposition. Sadly, there is no evidence for the case’s out-
come, but surely the speaker’s fear was not materialised: Athenian slavery was not
abolished through mass denunciations; the master/slave dialectics remained safe.

Conclusions
When approached from the non-citizens’ agency point of view, the relations
between democracy and slavery become more complex. The narrative based on
the exclusions list, which relegates to metics and slaves only economic roles,
cannot encompass the multiple ways in which non-citizens were involved in the
reproduction of the polis itself. In the last decades, ancient historians have shifted
the emphasis of citizenship studies from institutions to kinship and religion, and
of slavery studies from normative models to social experiences. These two paths
must be articulated to construct a more comprehensive understanding of the polis.
The questioning of the fundamentals of citizenship after the Thirty’s regime in
Athens offered a rich case to explore this venue. A history of Athenian society
from below, thus, by focusing simultaneously on the non-citizens’ agencies and
the consequences they have to the exclusivist civic ideology in danger, offers new
perspectives on the social and political structure itself.
A telling example is the question of the support non-citizens gave to the resto-
ration of 403. In his pioneering study on Athenian metoikia, Clerc answered that
question by stressing the metics’ democratic allegiance to a society where they
208 Fábio Augusto Morales
shared rights very close to those of the citizens.71 K. Dover, in his study on the
Corpus Lysiacum, chose the ‘personal relations’ as the main variable to explain
Lysias support to the restoration.72 Whitehead, in turn, strongly rejected Clerc’s
inclusive paradigm; nonetheless, he characterises the Thirty’s regime and its perse-
cution over the metics as the opposite of ‘open society and all its corollaries, such
as freedom of movement,’73 and, though he didn’t address the question directly,
one could suppose that metics were supporters of that ‘open society.’ González-
Román represented Athenian metics as a class sufficiently aware of itself to oppose
an oppressing oligarchy—but not enough to oppose an oppressive democracy.74
Bazlez stressed the metics’ contractual indifference towards politics, leaving the
question of their support to democracy aside.75
The best answer to that question, I believe, resides in the particular shape
the relations between democracy and slavery took in late fifth century Athens,
according to three main features. Firstly, Athenian democracy was a popular
democracy, with clear (although variable) hegemony of lower-class citizens.76
The public financing system of liturgies, eisphorai and other contributions,
created an arena where rich people, citizens or not, could compete and dis-
play their allegiance to the community, configuring a reciprocal relationship
between the rich and the polis: the polis received resources for the financing of
its religious, political, military and redistributive activities, the rich gained the
‘benefaction argument’ to be used before popular courts when (just or unjustly)
charged. Secondly, the status stratification in classical Athenian democracy,
which distinguished more clearly citizens, metics and slaves, had a subtler
distinction: as D. Kamen has pointed out, the existence of a specific termi-
nology for freedman (apeleutheron), the additional tax (triobolon) freedman
should pay along with the metoikion, and the arguable presence of the former
master as prostates and as eventual heir in case the freedman died childless,
all point to a distinction between freeborn immigrants metics and freedman
metics.77 Thirdly, Athenian metoikia and slave systems embedded practices
through which non-citizens could negotiate their condition and their participa-
tion in civic life. Slave strategies to obtain manumission, from the ‘good ser-
vices reward’ system to judicial denunciation, could lead to outcomes ranging
from the maintained obligation towards the former master to the execution of
a master by the polis. Metic strategies to participate in civic life, in turn, from
officialised foreign cults to donations in the polis’ public financing system,
could generate responses that ranged from clear xenophobia to the creation of
strong social ties with citizens.
These three features, combined in the citizen/inhabitant dialectics, favoured the
stability of the democratic regime. For wealthy freeborn or freedman metics, popu-
lar democracy allowed them to distinguish themselves from slave associations by
displaying, alongside citizens, their allegiance through liturgies and other financial
contributions. By that, wealthy metics could both reinforce their social links with
upper-class citizens and acquire moral capital to eventually use in popular courts.
Oligarchy, in turn, by reducing metics to quasi-slaves (as in the Old Oligarch’s
utopia) or even banning them, limited public munificence competition to wealthy
 Metics, slaves and citizens in Athens 209
citizens, as well as allowing confiscation of metic property insofar as metics were
kind of citizen-polis’ slaves.
For poor freeborn and freedman metics and slaves, on one hand, popular democ-
racy maintained the importance of naval power, which multiplied economic oppor-
tunities for social and economic mobility through autonomous activities, and on
the other, the relative accessibility to manumission through personal relations
or economic resources presented ways to make everyday life less unbearable.
The economic pressure over poor citizens created by competition in the labour
market with poor metics and slaves, in turn, was softened, collectively, by the
polis-mediated practices of redistribution made possible by the public financing
system and empire, and, individually, by the exploitation of slaves (through direct
appropriation of labour, apophora or manumission charge) and freedman (in case
of maintained dependence under paramone). For the slave-owners as a whole, the
manumission openness surely helped to soften social tensions potentially catalysed
by urban contexts, such as the Piraeus, where huge contingents of slaves were
concentrated.
In that sense, the gradual and subtle differences in Athenian metoikia and slav-
ery could be interpreted in terms of social control. As Akrigg correctly observed,
the fact that the metoikion was levied on the persons ‘have made [metics] vul-
nerable to identification with slaves.’78 The metoikion, I believe, constituted a
kind of apophora to the polis, part of a spectrum between slavery and freedom
defined by different forms of appropriation of surplus (produced by the person
or others): servile total appropriation by the master, partial appropriation by the
master (apophora), servile-like partial appropriation by the polis (metoikion plus
triobolon or metoikion only), and civic partial appropriation by the polis (isoteleia
accompanied by liturgies).
Of course, this doesn’t mean that democracy was an open society where citizens
and non-citizens could live in harmony; the boundaries of class, gender and status
were not suspended, and in the same way that democracy created breaches and
softened pressures on poor citizens and wealthy or poor non-citizens, it nonethe-
less reinforced multiple forms of violence, as R. Kennedy pointed in his discussion
on metic women.79 My argument is that, in comparison to oligarchy, democracy
was a better regime for non-citizens, although in different ways according to the
boundaries related, but not subsumed, to the civic status.
Conversely, democracy was unbearable to wealthy, pro-oligarchy citizens: they
could not beat poor metics and slaves, had to compete with wealthy metics in public
munificence instances, if they marry wealthy foreigners their children would lose
citizenship, and eventually would find themselves in a court composed of poor citi-
zens. The sufferings of Athenian rich oligarchs were well represented in the slave
inversion argument in Plato’s Republic. Socrates opposes two situations: a master
who doesn’t fear his slaves because the entire polis would defend him, and a solitary
master, away from the polis, with five or more slaves. In that case, asks Socrates:

would he not forthwith find it necessary to fawn upon some of the slaves and
make them many promises and emancipate them, though nothing would be
210 Fábio Augusto Morales
further from his wish? And so he would turn out to be the flatterer of his own
servants.80

To oligarchs, Athens was dangerously near the rich solitary master situation: manu-
mission is the main strategy to pacify slaves when there is no state to protect the
masters—a state that according to Plato and the Old Oligarch gave citizen-like rights
to metics and slaves. This exaggerated response makes sense considering the stable
relationship between democracy and manumission, the basis of Athenian social
stability. Thus, oligarchs reflected on the nature of citizenship and the polis itself
in the same vein non-citizens did—and facing their agency—in crucial moments
such as the restoration of 403 or through breaches such as slave legal denunciation
of masters (citizens or metics). After all, democratic Athens was crossed by the
contradictions and porosities of a society that included through exclusion: the polis
was not a substance, a thing, but the product and vector of the relationship between
agents. Athens was a slave and metic polis as well as a citizen polis.

Notes
1 Vlassopoulos 2007; Fillafer 2017; Morales and da Silva 2020.
2 Lenski 2018, 24–25.
3 See, e.g., Rhodes 2004.
4 See, e.g., Rihl 2011; Lewis 2018.
5 Thompson 1963, 9–10, Cerutti 2015.
6 Cohen 2000.
7 Hansen 1998.
8 Rhodes 2009.
9 Fustel de Coulanges 1864.
10 Marx 1993, 471–9.
11 Glotz 1928; Hansen 1984.
12 Vernant 1962; Meier 1980.
13 Weber 1966; Finley 1973.
14 Rostovtzeff 1926, 262–347; Cohen 2000.
15 E.g., on the Athenian metics, see Clerc 1893; Whitehead 1977; González-Román 1979;
Baslez 1984.
16 Whitehead 1977; for updated bibliography and debate, see Kamen 2013, 43–61.
17 Finley 1980; for updated debate, see Lewis 2015.
18 See Introduction, this volume.
19 See, e.g., Joly, this volume.
20 Mansouri 2011; Morales 2014; Kennedy 2014; Wijma 2014.
21 Rihl 2011; McKeown 2011; Ismard 2014 and 2017; Lewis 2018, 167–96; Hunt 2018;
Vlassopoulos 2016 and 2018.
22 Zelnick-Abramovitz 2005; Kamen 2012 and 2014; Sosin 2015; Vlassopoulos 2018.
23 Vlassopoulos 2018; Akrigg 2019.
24 Kamen 2009; Vlassopoulos 2009; Ismard 2019.
25 Cohen 2000.
26 Vlassopoulos 2007.
27 Taylor and Vlassopoulos 2015, 9. See also Vlassopoulos 2007 and Vlassopoulos, this
volume.
28 Whitehead 1977.
29 Arist. Pol. 1274b–1275a; Ernest Baker’s translation, adapted.
 Metics, slaves and citizens in Athens 211
30 See, especially, Vlassopoulos 2009, 85–96.
31 Pébarthe 2012.
32 Blok 2017, 37–41.
33 Morales 2009.
34 Benjamin 1980, 695.
35 Loraux 1981; Ober 1996, 161–88; Kasimis 2018.
36 Vlassopoulos 2007, 147–55 and 2013.
37 On the proportion of freeborn immigrants and slaves, see Akrigg 2019, 89–138.
38 Kennedy 2014.
39 Manville 1994; Lape 2010; Kennedy 2014; Blok 2017; Jacome Neto 2020.
40 Andrade 2011; Kasimis 2018.
41 Xen. [Ath. pol.] 10–12, Marr and Rhodes’s translation.
42 Vlassopoulos 2009, 359.
43 Paiaro and Requena 2015.
44 Marr and Rhodes 2008, 73–80.
45 Marr and Rhodes 2008, 80.
46 Akrigg 2019, 89–138.
47 Kasimis 2018, 89–96.
48 Carawan 2012.
49 IG 22.10. Cf. Kamen 2013, 111–2; Kears 2014, 164–6.
50 Vagios 2018.
51 Lys. 12.92–3, 95–96, Lamb’s translation.
52 Lys. 26.16–7, Lamb’s translation.
53 Lys. 31.5–7, Lamb’s translation.
54 Lys. 25.2, Lamb’s translation.
55 Loraux 2005, 256.
56 Von Reden 1995; Kasimis 2018, 51–83.
57 Arist. Pol. 1303b.
58 Lys. 12.20, Lamb’s translation.
59 Lys. 31.29.
60 Arist. [Ath. Pol.] 40.1–2.
61 Kasimis 2018.
62 Todd 2007, 385–6.
63 Todd 2007, 387.
64 Todd 2007, 387.
65 Todd 1993, 307–10; Osborne 2000; Gagarin 2001; Parker 2005.
66 Lys. 5.3–5, Todd’s translation.
67 Compare with Lysias’ speech Defense concerning the Sekos, when the defendant stresses
the implausibility of having committing a sacrilege before his slaves, by arguing that
would put in their hands ‘both to get revenge on me and to gain their own freedom by
denouncing me’ (Lys. 7.16).
68 Kamen 2014, 282–5.
69 Vlassopoulos 2018, 8–9.
70 Lewis 2018 and Taylor, this volume.
71 Clerc 1893, 230–1.
72 Dover 1968, 47–56.
73 Whitehead 1977, 155.
74 González-Román 1979.
75 Baslez 1984, 147–8.
76 Wood 1995, 161–237; Ober 1996, 18–31.
77 Kamen 2013, 88–89.
78 Akrigg 2019, 134.
79 Kennedy 2014.
80 Pl. Resp. 578d-579a, Shorey’s translation.
212 Fábio Augusto Morales
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CHOL9780521840668.005.
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10 What is below?
The case of the Athenian riot
of 508/7 BC
Alex Gottesman

Riots in Athens?
Practitioners of history from below have long been interested in crowds. Riots,
protests and uprisings: such are the subjects that occupied pioneering historians
like George Rudé and Edward P. Thompson.1 For these scholars, pre-modern riots
were not simply knee-jerk responses to external or economic stimuli. Instead,
they were the expressions of a ‘popular ideology’ (Rudé) or a ‘plebeian culture’
(Thompson) with its own values, often opposed to the elite ones, that was a fore-
runner of the nineteenth-century working-class movement. The historian looking
for analogous events in ancient Greece will find the pickings quite slim, especially
for classical Athens, where, judging from the sources, it seems riots were practi-
cally unheard of.2 It has been accordingly argued that Athens lacked the kind of
‘popular culture’ that E. P. Thompson saw as the necessary background to the
politics of riot.3 Simply put, Athenian culture was popular culture, so we should not
be surprised if Athens lacked the crowd actions that result when ordinary people
feel they lack power or a say in government policy. Why would Athenians raise
a riot, if they could raise their voices in the Assembly whenever they wanted or
bring their disputes to a resolution through the courts?
There is undoubtedly some truth to this. And yet outbreaks of what we would
call ‘riots’ did occur in Athens. There are three reasons why we have not seen
them as such. The first reason has to do with how our sources conceived of and
talked about collective, public action. Greek did have a word that comes close to
the English ‘mob,’ ochlos, and a writer like Thucydides deploys it liberally, but it
is normally to characterise the irrational behaviour of an assembly, not a crowd in
the street. This is because, as Hunter notes, ‘crowd, assembly and collective as a
whole, or city, are identical in Thucydides’ mind.’4 As I argued in my Politics and
the Street, extra-institutional political action was far from uncommon, especially
before the fourth century. Our sources shared Thucydides’ tendency to conflate
the crowd with the assembly; to ascribe to the demos a singular identity whether
it was to be found in the assembly, the court or the street. From this perspective,
there was a sense that extra-institutional politics were illegitimate and dangerous,
because they could corrupt the orderly chain of communication between speakers
and audiences.5

DOI: 10.4324/9781003005148-14
 What is below? 217
Our sources’ concept of collective action is one problem for history from
below. A related problem is our own concept of collective agency. Simona
Cerutti has recently called attention to this problem.6 She argues that the spa-
tial metaphor of ‘above/below’ that Thompson embraced tends to foster an
unduly bipolar view of society: above is the elite whose perspective produced
(and is reproduced in) our sources, and below is the mass, the common people
or plebs whose lives and minds we strain to glimpse. This view assumes that
these identities are constant and well-defined. In fact, this has been one of the
most trenchant criticisms of Thompson’s view of late eighteenth-century riots
and society more generally.7 In Athens (as I argued in Politics and the Street),
many of the same actors who were active in the institutions also engaged in
extra-institutional action, for instance the kinds of actions I called ‘publicity
stunts.’ People took to the street not necessarily because they were excluded
from the central institutions but because it allowed them to communicate with
a broader public in pursuit of their aims. It makes little sense to imagine
Athenian riots as the province of an excluded or marginal class. Instead, it
makes better sense to think of it as a marginal way of acting that was deeply
problematic.
The final reason why we have not noticed riots in ancient Athens is related to the
first two reasons but should be kept distinct. When Athenians rioted, they were not
rioting against the crown or a government in parliament; they were rioting against
themselves. Riot thus overlapped uncomfortably with the phenomenon they called
stasis. Riot’s conflation with stasis means that there is a bias in our sources against
remembering it. After the riot passed, the process of coming to terms with it would
necessitate the creation of a cathartic and reassuring narrative that prioritised the
reintegration of the city by portraying the riot either as the act of a few or as tak-
ing place between the demos and a foreign enemy. The simplest way I can put it is
that Athenians did not like to talk or think about occasions when it would seem to
them that the demos was turning against itself. The Civil War of 403 and its legal
prohibition against ‘remembering wrongs’ is the best-known example of this, but it
is not the only one.8 Euphemism and omission surround collective acts of violence
in our sources. Only by reading between the lines of our sources will we be able
to see past, or rather below, them.
If I am right that events that would have looked a lot like riots to us did occur
in Athens, and the main reason we do not know about them is because of how
Athenians talked about them after the fact, then it should be possible to go
through the historical record and to identify possible riots. Riotous violence was
probably more frequent in the archaic period—at least there are more signs of
it in the sources. But the classical period was no stranger to it. Incidents involv-
ing what we would call ‘riot’ might include the stoning of Lycidas and his wife,
possibly the murder of Ephialtes, the murders of Androcles and Phrynichus, as
well as whenever someone threatened to or in fact did ‘hand over’ someone to the
Eleven for execution without a trial.9 More work needs to be done to tease out the
lineaments of crowd actions and the way they intersected with the legal system.10
Here, instead, I will offer a proof of concept by focusing on the one occasion
218 Alex Gottesman
when historians generally agree there was in fact a riot in Athens, in 508/7 BC.
The debate around this incident has turned on the issues of its leadership and
how it related to subsequent democratic reforms. These are big questions that go
to the heart of the Athenian democratic revolution, and I will only touch upon
them here. My main focus is on how the sources remembered the event and how
they thought about its significance. I will suggest that, whatever it actually was,
we can see our sources coming to terms with it over time by slowly altering its
contours so that it resembled not a riot at all, but the demos rising up against an
occupying force.

The major sources

Historians have long suspected that a politics of memory was at work around
the end of the tyranny and the Athenian democratic revolution.11 Although
the reforms of Cleisthenes were clearly important in the history of Athenian
democracy, it was only Herodotus who suggested that Cleisthenes ‘set up
the tribes and the democracy for the Athenians’ (6.131.1). Isocrates knew
him as ‘the one who kicked out the tyrants and restored the demos’ (7.16;
cp. 15.306). Pausanias saw his grave monument in the Cerameicus, but he
only names him as a tribal reformer (Paus. 1.29.6). In antiquity Athenians
tended to credit their democracy to the mythical Theseus, the quasi-mythical
Solon or the mythologized tyrant-slayers, rather than Cleisthenes.12 Only the
1891 publication of the Athenaion Politeia alerted scholars to the singular
importance of Cleisthenes’ reforms for the history of democracy, although
there continues to be much debate about it.13 In an oft-cited paper Ober criti-
cised the scholarly consensus for making the opposite mistake and focusing
too much on Cleisthenes, a tendency he rightly attributed ‘to the uncritical
. . . acceptance of a view of history that supposes that all advances in human
affairs come through the consciously willed actions of individual members of
an elite.’14 Ober suggests that Cleisthenes’ reforms grew out of a brief, popular
riot that ‘made democracy possible by changing the terms of discussion, by
enlarging the bounds of the thinkable, and by altering the way citizens treated
one another.’15 Before, the Athenians had been in thrall to powerful aristo-
cratic families. But after 508 Athenians were filled with a political energy
that set the city on a new path. A leaderless riot was the catalyst. As he notes,
‘Democracy comes into existence with the capacity of a demos to act as a
collective historical agent.’16
Ober shares a tendency to imagine the Athenian democratic revolution as a
relatively bloodless and smooth process. As Anderson sums up: ‘The Acropolis
siege aside, the process lacked the popular activism, the violence, and the terror
one usually associates with radical progressive change.’17 Rather, a close reading
of our narrative sources, along with a recently unearthed inscription, suggests
that the sources have significantly downplayed and even effaced the signs of civil
violence. I will suggest that starting at the time of the events or very soon after
Athenians sought to remember the riot as anything but what it was: the culmination
 What is below? 219
of an especially intense and bloody period of civil violence. This memory faded
over time as the riot became defined as a battle between a united demos and its
(mostly foreign) enemies.
Our two major sources about the riot are Herodotus (5.66, 69–78) and the
Athenaion Politeia (20–2). It has been long recognised that the Aristotelian author
(hereafter A.) follows Herodotus closely, probably because Herodotus was the
best source he could find about archaic Athens.18 A. breaks off when Cleisthenes
returns to Athens, after the siege of the Acropolis. He then discusses the constitu-
tional details of his reforms, for which he drew on a different source.19 Herodotus
goes on to discuss Cleomenes’ return to Attica and the subsequent hostilities
with Boeotia and Euboea. The divergence between the two texts at this point has
caused much chronological dispute, with some scholars arguing that Herodotus
dates the reforms immediately before Isagoras’ appeal to Cleomenes, whereas A.
dates them some years after his expulsion from the Acropolis.20 Here I am not
interested in the events’ chronology but rather in how our two sources imagine
they occurred. Their differences are not minor. Herodotus tells a story about how
Athens became powerful. A. tells a story about how Athens became democratic.
A.’s story fits a pattern of conflict between the forces of aristocracy and those
of democracy. In good Aristotelian fashion he has organised his treatise around
the concept of metabolē, change or transformation (28, 41).21 Cleisthenes’ is the
‘Fifth Transformation’ that Athens underwent on its way to the radical form it had
at the time of the text’s composition (41.2).22 He goes through each stage of the
democracy as it featured a ‘champion of the demos’ and an opposing ‘champion
of the nobles’ (28.2). His view is, as Rhodes notes, ‘naïvely over-simple in its
assumption of a permanent opposition between γνώριμοι and πλῆθος, with each
party acquiring a new leader at the same time.’23 Naïve it surely is, but A.’s polar
view of Athenian history has shaped his reading of Herodotus.24 Demos-protec-
tors pursue policies that gratify the demos and increase its power. These diminish
the nobles, and vice versa. For example, Ephialtes’ reform of the Areopagus was
in keeping with his role of demos-protector (25.1, 28.2), while the aristocratic
Cimon was his counterpart. A. suggests Cleisthenes was the third ‘protector of
the demos,’ after Solon and Peisistratus, and Isagoras opposed him, at least for
a time (28.2).
Both accounts start from the expulsion of the Peisistratids. They agree that it led
to a power struggle between two men:

(Hdt. 5.66.1–2) Ἀθῆναι, ἐοῦσαι καὶ πρὶν (Ath.Pol. 20.1)

μεγάλαι, τότε ἀπαλλαχθεῖσαι τυράννων καταλυθείσης δὲ τῆς τυραννίδος,
ἐγίνοντο μέζονες· ἐν δὲ αὐτῇσι δύο
ἄνδρες ἐδυνάστευον, Κλεισθένης τε ἐστασίαζον πρὸς ἀλλήλους Ἰσαγόρας
ἀνὴρ Ἀλκμεωνίδης . . . καὶ Ἰσαγόρης ὁ Τεισάνδρου φίλος ὢν τῶν τυράννων,
Τισάνδρου οἰκίης μὲν ἐὼν δοκίμου, καὶ Κλεισθένης τοῦ γένους ὢν τῶν
ἀτὰρ τὰ ἀνέκαθεν οὐκ ἔχω φράσαι· Ἀλκμεωνιδῶν
θύουσι δὲ οἱ συγγενέες αὐτοῦ Διὶ
Καρίῳ. οὗτοι οἱ ἄνδρες ἐστασίασαν περὶ
δυνάμιος,
220 Alex Gottesman

‘Athens, though powerful before, became ‘When the tyranny was abolished, there
even more powerful when it got rid of engaged in civil strife against each other
its tyrants. In it two men were in charge: Isagoras son of Teisander, a friend of
Cleisthenes the Alcmaeonid and Isagoras the tyrants, and Cleisthenes from the
son of Teisander. He was from a good Alcmaeonid genos.’
family but I cannot comment on his
ancestors. They sacrifice to Carian Zeus.
These men were engaged in civil strife over
power.’

Herodotus writes that both Cleisthenes and Isagoras were powerful men who
‘engaged in a stasis over control.’ A. turned that into ‘they engaged in a stasis
against each other.’ This is a subtle change but not an insignificant one. More
tellingly, whereas Herodotus says that he was unable to find much information
about the family of Isagoras, A. confidently makes of Isagoras ‘a friend of the
tyrants.’25 This is contrary to Herodotus, who involved Isagoras in Cleomenes’
earlier attack against the Pisistratid tyrants—hardly the work of a ‘friend.’ He
tells us it was during that attack that the two met and got very familiar with each
other, and he repeats some scurrilous gossip about Cleomenes’ over-familiarity
with Isagoras’ wife (70.1). A. strikes out all of that and decorously states only
that the two were guest-friends, xenoi (20.2). He thus clears the way for Isago-
ras to be a friend of the tyrants and a ‘protector of the nobles.’ If one of the
two was a ‘friend of the tyrants,’ it was Cleisthenes, who apparently held the
office of archon in 525/4 BC (IG 13.1031a; cp. Thuc. 6.54.6).26 Furthermore,
for Herodotus the Alcmaeonid Cleisthenes had a better claim to aristocracy
than Isagoras, about whose family Herodotus says he could find no information,
except that ‘it was of a fine house [οἰκίης μὲν ἐὼν δοκίμου],’ albeit with a hint
of foreign extraction.27
A. is on slightly firmer ground in reading Herodotus’ Cleisthenes as a ‘protec-
tor of the demos.’ But it is instructive to see how A. has altered Herodotus’ text.

(Hdt. 5.66.2) (Ath. Pol. 20.1)

ἑσσούμενος δὲ ὁ Κλεισθένης τὸν
δῆμον προσεταιρίζεται, μετὰ δὲ
τετραφύλους ἐόντας Ἀθηναίους
δεκαφύλους ἐποίησε
‘Cleisthenes was losing, and so he
“got clubby” with the demos, and
later he turned the Athenians’ four
tribes to ten.’
ἡττώμενος δὲ ταῖς ἑταιρείαις ὁ
Κλεισθένης, προσηγάγετο τὸν δῆμον,
ἀποδιδοὺς τῷ πλήθει τὴν πολιτείαν
‘Cleisthenes was losing in the clubs,
and brought over the demos, giving
the state over to the crowd.’

Herodotus states that Cleisthenes allied himself with the demos in his conflict
with Isagoras (cp. 5.69.2). He does not explain what form that alliance took. He
simply says that Cleisthenes ‘later’ reformed the tribes; this was Cleisthenes’
 What is below? 221
claim to fame. A. takes him to mean that Isagoras was besting Cleisthenes in
the ‘clubs’ (hetaireiai), so he had to turn to the demos. He apparently did not,
or chose not to, understand what Herodotus meant by προσεταιρίζεται. His
ἡττώμενος δὲ ταῖς ἑταιρείαις is a gloss and not a very good one. 28 He then
connects the second part of Herodotus’ sentence to the first using a coordinat-
ing participle where Herodotus had used a finite verb. Herodotus did not write
that the tribal reforms were a populist appeal for support, as A. clearly takes
him to mean.29 Herodotus’ interpretation of the reforms actually precludes the
possibility of the reforms as populist. He goes on to explain that they were
similar to those of Cleisthenes’ grandfather, Cleisthenes the tyrant of Sicyon,
who changed the traditional names of the tribes to humorously insulting ones
out of spite, while reserving the name of Archelaoi or ‘Leaders of the People’
for his own tribe (5.68.1).
A. continues to read Herodotus closely, but always through the same lens that
obscures the civil side of the conflict:

(5.72.1) (20.3)
Κλεομένης δὲ ὡς πέμπων ἐξέβαλλε Κλεισθένεα ὑπεξελθόντος δὲ τοῦ Κλεισθένους,
καὶ τοὺς ἐναγέας, Κλεισθένης μὲν αὐτὸς ὑπεξέσχε, <ἀφικόμενος ὁ Κλεομένης>
μετὰ δὲ οὐδὲν ἧσσον παρῆν ἐς τὰς Ἀθήνας ὁ μετʼ ὀλίγων,
Κλεομένης οὐ σὺν μεγάλῃ χειρί, ἀπικόμενος δὲ
ἀγηλατέει ἑπτακόσια ἐπίστια Ἀθηναίων, τά οἱ ἡγηλάτει τῶν Ἀθηναίων
ὑπέθετο ὁ Ἰσαγόρης. ἑπτακοσίας οἰκίας
‘Cleomenes sent word to expel Cleisthenes and ‘When Cleisthenes departed<,
the accursed, and Cleisthenes himself departed. Cleomenes arrived> with a few,
But nonetheless Cleomenes later arrived with no and drove forth 700 Athenians’
large a band. When he arrived he drove forth 700 households.’
Athenians’ epistia, which Isagoras pointed to him.’

Herodotus has Cleomenes arrive οὐ σὺν μεγάλῃ χειρί, ‘not with a large
force.’ A. says he arrived μετʼ ὀλίγων, ‘with a few.’ He had already dealt with
Cylon, the source of the curse, in the lost beginning of the treatise, so along
with the gossip about Cleomenes and Isagoras’ wife, he also omits Herodotus’
brief recap of the Cylon Affair immediately before the passage just quoted
here (5.71). He does adopt Herodotus’ ἀγηλατέει, literally ‘drive out the pol-
lution,’ despite its incongruously tragic tone. Clearly, Herodotus’ ἐπίστια was
too much for him. He replaces the term with οἰκίας, although that is prob-
ably not what Herodotus intended. As Cromey argues, Herodotus probably
thought these were Cleisthenes’ political supporters, not just the descendants
of the Alcmaeonidae.30 Herodotus explains that these ἐπίστια were the ones
that ‘Isagoras pointed out to him [τά οἱ ὑπέθετο ὁ Ἰσαγόρης],’ that is, they
were people he considered his political enemies. A. omits that detail as well,
presumably because households are self-evident, whereas political opponents
are not.
222 Alex Gottesman
A. now follows Herodotus very closely, to a point that today we would consider
plagiarism:

(5.72.1–3)
ταῦτα δὲ ποιήσας δεύτερα τὴν βουλὴν
καταλύειν ἐπειρᾶτο, τριηκοσίοισι
δὲ τοῖσι Ἰσαγόρεω στασιώτῃσι τὰς
ἀρχὰς ἐνεχείριζε. ἀντισταθείσης δὲ τῆς
βουλῆς καὶ οὐ βουλομένης πείθεσθαι,
ὅ τε Κλεομένης καὶ ὁ Ἰσαγόρης καὶ οἱ
στασιῶται αὐτοῦ καταλαμβάνουσι τὴν
ἀκρόπολιν. Ἀθηναίων δὲ οἱ λοιποὶ τὰ
αὐτὰ φρονήσαντες ἐπολιόρκεον αὐτοὺς
ἡμέρας δύο· τῇ δὲ τρίτῃ ὑπόσπονδοι
ἐξέρχονται ἐκ τῆς χώρης ὅσοι ἦσαν αὐτῶν
Λακεδαιμόνιοι.
‘After doing that, next he tried to dissolve
the council, and tried to hand over the
magistracies to three hundred of Isagoras’
partisans. When the council resisted
and did not wish to go along with it,
Cleomenes and Isagoras and his partisans
occupied the Acropolis. The rest of the
Athenians with one mind besieged them
for two days. On the third day under a
truce came out those among them who
were Lacedaemonians.’
(20.3)
ταῦτα δὲ διαπραξάμενος, τὴν μὲν
βουλὴν ἐπειρᾶτο καταλύειν, Ἰσαγόραν
δὲ καὶ τριακοσίους τῶν φίλων μετʼ
αὐτοῦ κυρίους καθιστάναι τῆς
πόλεως. τῆς δὲ βουλῆς ἀντιστάσης
καὶ συναθροισθέντος τοῦ πλήθους,
οἱ μὲν περὶ τὸν Κλεομένην καὶ
Ἰσαγόραν κατέφυγον εἰς τὴν
ἀκρόπολιν, ὁ δὲ δῆμος δύο μὲν ἡμέρας
προσκαθεζόμενος ἐπολιόρκει, τῇ δὲ
τρίτῃ Κλεομένην μὲν καὶ τοὺς μετʼ
αὐτοῦ πάντας ἀφεῖσαν ὑποσπόνδους.
‘After managing that, he tried to
dissolve the council, and to make
Isagoras and three hundred of his
friends masters of the city. When
the council resisted and the crowd
assembled, the associates of Cleomenes
and Isagoras took refuge on the
Acropolis. The demos sat down and
besieged them for two days. On the
third, they let go Cleomenes and all
those with him under a truce.’

These closely parallel passages are the ones that Ober relied on for his theory
of a popular insurrection. Taking the agent from A. (‘the demos’) with the
action from Herodotus (‘thinking the same things’), he finds ‘a highly devel-
oped civic consciousness among the Athenian masses—a generalised ability
to formulate a popular consensus and act upon common knowledge.’ 31 But
Herodotus did not mention ‘Athenian masses’ or even ‘the demos’ gathering
against Isagoras and Cleomenes. He wrote instead ‘the rest of the Athenians.’
The rest of the Athenians—as opposed to whom? Who is it below here? The
answer should be obvious: it was not the demos, as opposed to the elites (as
Ober takes him to mean), but it was the Athenians, as opposed to the Athe-
nians on the Acropolis. Herodotus clearly conceives this incident as a stasis,
while A. consistently and systematically rejects that view. Herodotus calls
Isagoras’ 300 supporters stasiotai, ‘partisans.’ For A., they are simply ‘associ-
ates.’ Herodotus says that Isagoras sought to install his partisans in ‘official
posts,’ archai. A. more vaguely says that he tried to make his ‘friends’ into
‘masters of the city.’ Along those lines, Herodotus imagines that Cleomenes
and Isagoras ‘occupied’ the Acropolis as a way to assert control over the city,
perhaps as he imagines Peisistratus did previously (cp. 1.59.6). A. instead
 What is below? 223
has them ‘take refuge’ there. Herodotus was his only narrative source, so this
is his interpretation of Herodotus’ text.32 Why does he change the story? My
suggestion is that he has Cleomenes and Isagoras flee to the Acropolis rather
than occupy it because he imagines the entire demos uniting against them and
chasing them there.
It is not surprising that A. left out Herodotus’ story about Cleomenes run-in with
the priestess on the Acropolis (72.3–4). That kind of story fits Herodotus’ style but
would be jarring in A.’s account. But his version of what happened next cannot be
merely a stylistic difference. Herodotus wrote:

ὑπόσπονδοι ἐξέρχονται ἐκ τῆς χώρης ὅσοι ἦσαν αὐτῶν Λακεδαιμόνιοι

under a truce came out those among them who were Lacedaemonians

In A. this becomes:

Κλεομένην μὲν καὶ τοὺς μετʼ αὐτοῦ πάντας ἀφεῖσαν ὑποσπόνδους.

they let go Cleomenes and all those with him under a truce.

Herodotus is quite clear that it was only the Spartans who left the Acropolis
under treaty. A. states instead that everyone left the Acropolis. 33 I cannot
agree with Rhodes that A. ‘probably . . . has simply been careless in his
paraphrase.’34 A.’s paraphrase is consistent with his purpose throughout this
passage. He emphatically rejects Herodotus’ claim that non-Spartans (i.e.
Athenians) who took part in the unsuccessful occupation of the Acropo-
lis were executed. Herodotus repeats this claim emphatically: ‘The Athe-
nians tied up the rest for death [τοὺς δὲ ἄλλους Ἀθηναῖοι κατέδησαν τὴν
ἐπὶ θανάτῳ]’ (72.4). ‘They perished in bondage [οὗτοι μέν νυν δεδεμένοι
ἐτελεύτησαν]’ (73.1). He even names one of those victims, the athlete
Timesitheus of Delphi.35 The fact that he names a Delphian athlete does not
mean that Herodotus did not think that Athenians shared his fate. It probably
means that Herodotus knew of his participation independently of what he
heard in Athens. Hence, he notes: ‘about [Timesitheus’] deeds of strength and
courage I could say a lot’ (72.4).36 Pausanias also tells us that Timesitheus
was a champion pancratiast who had won twice at Olympia (where he saw
his statue) and three times at Delphi. He too attests to his execution at the
hands of the Athenians after the siege ended, as ‘one of those left behind
on the Acropolis [τῶν ἐγκαταληφθέντων ἐν τῇ ἀκροπόλει]’ (6.8.6). A. else-
where contradicts Herodotus explicitly, noting that the demos in the post-
Peisistratid period showed ‘its characteristic restraint [χρώμενοι τῇ εἰωθυίᾳ
τοῦ δήμου πρᾳότητι]’ (22.4).37
224 Alex Gottesman
A.’s selective use of Herodotus’ text should be clear from the following chart,
where he concludes his use of Herodotus and turns to another source of information:

(72.3–73.2)
τῇ δὲ τρίτῃ ὑπόσπονδοι ἐξέρχονται ἐκ τῆς χώρης
ὅσοι ἦσαν αὐτῶν Λακεδαιμόνιοι. ἐπετελέετο
δὲ τῷ Κλεομένεϊ ἡ φήμη etc. . . . τοὺς δὲ
ἄλλους Ἀθηναῖοι κατέδησαν τὴν ἐπὶ θανάτῳ,
ἐν δὲ αὐτοῖσι καὶ Τιμησίθεον τὸν Δελφόν, τοῦ
ἔργα χειρῶν τε καὶ λήματος ἔχοιμʼ ἂν μέγιστα
καταλέξαι. οὗτοι μέν νυν δεδεμένοι ἐτελεύτησαν,
Ἀθηναῖοι δὲ μετὰ ταῦτα Κλεισθένεα καὶ τὰ
ἑπτακόσια ἐπίστια τὰ διωχθέντα ὑπὸ Κλεομένεος
μεταπεμψάμενοι πέμπουσι ἀγγέλους ἐς Σάρδις,
συμμαχίην βουλόμενοι ποιήσασθαι πρὸς Πέρσας.
‘On the third day under a truce the Lacedaemonians
among them departed the territory. Thus was
the prophecy of Cleomenes fulfilled etc [i.e. the
prophetic utterance of the priestess when he first
entered the sanctuary on the Acropolis]. The rest
the Athenians tied up and condemned to death,
including among them Timesitheus of Delphi,
about who feats and character I could say a great
deal. These died in bonds. Later the Athenians
summoned back Cleisthenes and the 700 epistia
which had been expelled by Cleomenes, and sent
word to Sardis because they wanted to make an
alliance with the Persians.’
(20.3–4).
τῇ δὲ τρίτῃ Κλεομένην μὲν καὶ
τοὺς μετʼ αὐτοῦ πάντας ἀφεῖσαν
ὑποσπόνδους,
Κλεισθένην δὲ καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους
φυγάδας μετεπέμψαντο.
κατασχόντος δὲ τοῦ δήμου τὰ
πράγματα, Κλεισθένης ἡγεμὼν ἦν
καὶ τοῦ δήμου προστάτης.
‘On the third day they released
Cleomenes and all those with him
under a truce,
and they summoned back
Cleisthenes and the other fugitives.
Then the demos took over matters.
Cleisthenes was the leader and
champion of the demos.’

He adopts Herodotus’ grammatical structure and vocabulary, except that he

turns his string of connectives into a neat men/de structure. This is not mere care-
lessness. The careful effect is to compress the time frame in order to erase the
executions. Without executions, he is able to present the siege as the spontaneous
response of the united demos to a foreign invader. With that aim in mind, he turns
Herodotus’ participle μεταπεμψάμενοι to the finite verb μετεπέμψαντο. He thus
puts a hard stop right where Herodotus goes on to the uncomfortable topic of the
Athenians’ appeal to Persia (which Ober also omits). If A. had included the Athe-
nians’ overtures to Persia, it would put a very different light on his narrative.38 It
would suggest that the Spartans’ exit from Athens was not the end of the matter.
That would mean that the Athenians continued to fear Spartan involvement in their
internal politics, which would further suggest that the unrest that accompanied
Spartan intervention did not end when Cleomenes and his ‘friends’ withdrew from
the Acropolis.
Elsewhere A. refers to this period as tarachai or ‘troubles’ (22.4). His intent,
it seems, is to portray it as anything but as factional conflict or stasis. Elsewhere
he even suggests that ‘[Cleisthenes] had no factional opponent, since the group of
Isagoras had fallen [τούτῳ μὲν οὐδεὶς ἦν ἀντιστασιώτης, ὡς ἐξέπεσον οἱ περὶ τὸν
Ἰσαγόραν]’ (28.2). This comment is odd. He had already characterised Cleisthenes
 What is below? 225
and Isagoras in terms of the categorical opposition between ‘protector of the
demos’ and ‘protector of the nobles.’ Why would he mention the two opponents
as instances of a categorical difference only to deny that they fit it? Furthermore,
according to Herodotus, Isagoras had not fallen. The Spartans tried again to install
him in power (74.1). But A. ignores the sequel of Herodotus’ story completely.
Pro-nobility, pro-tyranny forces were behind the Acropolis siege. Once they failed,
the field was clear for Cleisthenes, as ‘protector of the demos,’ to put in place his
pro-demos reforms (21). Executions of Athenians and proposed alliances with
Persia would only complicate his neat narrative about the arc of democracy.
I don’t want to suggest that Herodotus’ account is true and that A.’s is false—
although A.’s omissions suggest that Herodotus was perhaps closer to the truth. It
is only because we are lucky to have both texts available to us, and that A. follows
Herodotus so closely, that we can see the ‘deleted scenes’ that he left on his cutting
room floor. When Herodotus for his part spoke to his informants, no less than 60
years had passed.39 They did not tell him the whole story behind the reforms of
Cleisthenes. In lieu of an explanation for the reforms, he relates an amusing story
about the tribal reforms of Cleisthenes’ grandfather at Sicyon, suggesting that
perhaps the Athenian’s reforms were similar; note his introductory δοκέειν ἐμοί
(5.67.1), suggesting this was his personal opinion, not something he was told. The
next section will suggest that A.’s version of the events surrounding the reforms
was actually closer to what most Athenians believed, or wanted to believe, prob-
ably by the time of Herodotus’ visit to Athens ca. 440, and perhaps even earlier.
A veil of silence had already started falling on the events. It is to Herodotus’ great
credit that he was able to pierce it as much as he did.

The minor sources

When Aristophanes’ chorus of old men in his Lysistrata hear that women have
occupied the Acropolis, they find inspiration in their siege of Cleomenes. If they
could dislodge an honest-to-goodness Spartan king from the Acropolis, they
should have no trouble with some women. They race to the city, singing:

Not even Cleomenes, who occupied it first, went away un-molested,

but, though huffing Laconically, he departed surrendering his arms to me,
wearing a tiny little cloak, hungry, dishevelled, unplucked,
unwashed for six years.
That’s how I besieged that man: rough,
seventeen shields deep by the gates—napping’
[οὕτως ἐπολιόρκησʼ ἐγὼ τὸν ἄνδρʼ ἐκεῖνον ὠμῶς
ἐφʼ ἑπτακαίδεκʼ ἀσπίδων πρὸς ταῖς πύλαις καθεύδων]
(273–82)

It would be naïve to expect Aristophanes to give a reliable account of the siege.

After all, a hoplite assault would probably not be the best way to besiege the
Acropolis. As far as the chorus know, Cleomenes had ‘occupied’ the Acropolis,
226 Alex Gottesman
like Herodotus wrote, rather than fled there, as in A.’s version. It is impossible to
say if that is what Aristophanes believed or if that version simply works better
as an analogy for Lysistrata’s action. More crucially, the chorus believe that the
Spartans withdrew under a treaty. The old men imagine that if they set fire to the
gates the women will run away, and as they come out they can molest them just
as they once ‘molested’ a much tougher occupier. As they ‘remember’ the event,
they simply showed up with their shields and the Spartans ran away. Regardless of
whether Cleomenes occupied the Acropolis or sought refuge there, the joke would
not work if the audience remembered Herodotus’ version of what happened while
the old men were napping. The joke only works if the audience thought that all
the occupiers of the Acropolis withdrew, humiliated and manhandled perhaps, but
very much alive.40
As Thomas has shown about Athenians’ knowledge about the end of tyranny,
divergent accounts could exist at the same time. As she notes, ‘Oral tradition can
accommodate different tales or versions with contradictory implications.’41 An
ancient scholar commenting on Aristophanes’ passage hit upon evidence of such a
different version of the aftermath of Cleomenes’ siege. The evidence not only fills
in Aristophanes’ silence about what happened after the siege ended, but, interest-
ingly, it also reveals a gap in Herodotus’ text. This is what he found in his source:

Cleomenes: Lacedaemonian general. Campaigned in Attica with some Athe-

nians for tyranny, occupied the Acropolis, besieged by the Athenians and
released under a treaty, on his way home again he occupied Eleusis. The
Athenians destroyed the houses and confiscated the property of those who
occupied Eleusis alongside Cleomenes, and condemned them to death. Writ-
ing it up on a bronze stele they placed it in the city near the Old Temple.
(sch. ad Ar. Lys. 273)

It should be obvious that Athenians fought on the side of Cleomenes because

he was fighting on the side of Isagoras. But both A. and Aristophanes present
the event primarily as a conflict between Athenians and Spartans, not as one in
which Athenians faced off against Athenians. Athenian partisans do not feature in
either account. If all we had was A. and Aristophanes, we would not have known
that Athenians fought on the losing side and paid a steep price. The scholiast’s
source makes clear that Athenians were executed, just as Herodotus tells us.42
He goes beyond Herodotus in stating that the punishment included razing their
houses, confiscating their property and writing their names on a bronze stele
on the Acropolis. The razing of the house ‘was clearly a very severe action,’
reserved for ‘murders . . . tyranny . . . and betraying one’s country for profit.’43
Forsdyke has argued that its carnivalesque atmosphere would have engaged
the entire community in a dramatic and impactful experience, akin to ston-
ing.44 House razing was an attempt to display or create a broad consensus in the
community about a crime. Furthermore, bronze seems to have been a preferred
medium for commemorating the punishment of especially serious crimes against
the community or of those offenders whose punishment the community saw fit
 What is below? 227
to make especially prominent and memorable.45 The scholiast’s source is very
specific about the stele commemorating this event. Its placement on the Acropolis
suggests that shortly after the events there was a clear desire to punish the ‘col-
laborators’ and to memorialise the fact of their punishment.
The most surprising part of the scholiast’s information is how it differs from
Herodotus’ account. While the scholiast agrees with Herodotus about the execution
of Cleomenes’ Athenian partisans, his information does not line up with Herodo-
tus.’ He is quite clear that the executed partisans cooperated with Cleomenes in
Eleusis. He does not mention executions of those who occupied the Acropolis.
He also says that Cleomenes occupied [κατέσχε] Eleusis on his way home. If
Cleomenes only had a small group of Spartan soldiers with him, as Herodotus tells
us, then either these must have been a select group indeed or many local partisans
must have actively participated in its occupation. By contrast, Herodotus suggests
that Cleomenes came back to Eleusis after gathering an army. He says it was a big
army (74.2), in contrast to the earlier group (72.1). This army was entirely Pelo-
ponnesian. But amazingly, after the armies have assembled, the Peloponnesians
simply dispersed (5.74.1–75.3). Herodotus’ version of the story suggests that not
only were there no executions after the battle of Eleusis but there was also no
battle of Eleusis!
To believe Herodotus, this was at the same time a remarkably well-organised
assault and a complete shambles. Cleomenes, according to Herodotus, could
orchestrate a simultaneous attack from three fronts but could not convince his
own countrymen to follow him. Regardless what kind of alliance the Pelopon-
nesians had with their allies at this point (or the Boeotians or Euboeans for that
matter), it is not believable that the Spartans did not know what they were up to.
Careful readers of Herodotus have long suspected the historicity of this passage
because it aligns very closely with later passages.46 The talk the Corinthians
share among themselves anticipates the anti-tyranny speech of the Corinthian
Socles (5.92). The falling-out between Demaretus and Cleomenes clearly looks
forward to the dynastic intrigue that Cleomenes will conduct against Demare-
tus (6.64). It is safe to say that both those elements were not part of the story
Herodotus heard. An Athenian story would hardly have included an aition about
the rule that both Spartan kings may not both lead one expedition. But the belief
that nothing worthwhile happened at Eleusis must have come from Herodotus’
informers. Herodotus would not have mentioned Eleusis if it did not figure
in some way in the tradition. Perhaps, his informers told Herodotus that the
Spartans came to Eleusis but nothing happened there, and Herodotus helpfully
supplied the reason behind Spartan inaction. Regardless of what Herodotus
heard or tells, something did happen at Eleusis.47 The scholiast did not make
up the bronze stele he cites; he read about it somewhere. The specificity about
the stele, including its material and its location, is a strong indication that it
existed.48
A recent discovery in Thebes supports the scholiast’s suggestion that there was
in fact violence in Eleusis. It also suggests that it did not go well for the side of
Cleisthenes. In 2001, excavators in Thebes found a small fluted column buried
228 Alex Gottesman
about half a mile north of the Cadmea, the Acropolis of Thebes. Its form suggests
that it was originally the base for a modest dedication. Other objects found with it
suggest that it once may have stood in a sanctuary. It was inscribed in a late sixth-
century/early fifth-century script as follows:

. . . . Oenoe and Phylae

. . . . capturing Eleusis as well
. . . . rescuing Chalcis
. . . . they dedicated

. . . . ος ϝοινόας καὶ Φυλᾶς

. . . . ἑλόντες κἐλευσῖνα
. . . . αι Χαλκίδα λυσάμενοι
. . . . μοι ἀνέθειαν
(SEG 56.521).49

It is impossible to say how much text has been lost. But enough text remains to
indicate that the original dedication related to the Boeotian and Chalcidian invasion
of Attica at the end of the sixth century. The combination of the place names fits the
events almost perfectly. We do not know who dedicated the monument. Perhaps . . .
moi are the last three letters of a plural masculine grammatical subject. If so, the dedi-
cators cannot be the Boiotoi, who Herodotus puts on the scene (5.77.1). It could be a
clan or group that took part in the events. It was not a very big monument, nor placed
in a particularly prominent place (as far as we know). Alternatively, . . . moi could be
the end of a deity’s name in the dative case to whom the dedication was made.50 All
that we can say is that whoever dedicated it apparently did so in the belief that the
events were worth remembering. It was not normal to give thanks for military defeats.
Assuming with most scholars that the stone relates to the same events in Herodotus,
it gives us a shockingly different view of them. According to Herodotus, Thebans, in
coordination with Spartans and Chalcidians, swept into Attica and took Hysiae and
Oenoe. These were both villages or demes on the border region between Athens and
Thebes. The new inscription mentions Oenoe. It suggests that the Thebans, or whoever
dedicated the monument, also captured the border stronghold of Phyle, which Herodo-
tus does not mention. Quite contrary to Herodotus, who says that nothing happened at
Eleusis, its dedicators further claim that they captured it. They are closer to Herodotus
when they claim they λυσάμενοι or ‘rescued’ Chalcis.51 Herodotus also has the Boeo-
tians ‘coming to the aid [βοηθέουσι]’ of the Chalcidians on the Euripus (5.77.1). But
here the two versions diverge sharply once again. While the new column seems to
suggest that its dedicators were victorious in all their battles, Herodotus tells us:

When the Athenians saw the Boeotians they decided to deal with them
before the Chalcidians. The Athenians attacked the Boeotians and they easily
defeated them, they killed many and took 700 of them as prisoners. On the
same day the Athenians crossed over to Euboea and attacked the Chalcidians,
and defeating them as well they left four thousand clerouchs, or settlers, on
 What is below? 229
the land of the hippobotai, or horse-breeders, who were the wealthy (lit. ‘fat
ones’) in Chalcis. The prisoners they took they put in chains with the Boeotian
prisoners they had previously captured. Eventually they released them at a
price of 200 drachmae each (5.77.1–3).

In his telling, Herodotus insists that not only did the Athenians win the day, they
completely routed their enemies at the border, giving the clear impression that they
did not get very far into Attica. His stirring account glides past some inconsisten-
cies that are jarring once one notices them. For instance, what were the Chalcidians
doing, who had already entered Attica (74.2), while the Athenians ran off to crush
the Thebans who had come to their aid? Was it really possible for the Athenians to
slaughter the Thebans coming to the aid of the Chalcidians who had entered Attica
(while they seeming stood idly by) and then sail ‘on the same day,’ as Herodotus
insists, to Euboea to punish all the Chalcidians there? Of course it is not impossible
that the Athenian army, newly reformed under Cleisthenic lines,52 could wage a
two-front offensive while simultaneously dealing with a potential third-front threat
from the south; but it is implausible.
Herodotus’ intent in extending his narrative to include the battles against Boeo-
tia and Chalcis is to illustrate the power of isēgoria (5.78).53 For Herodotus, these
first post-tyranny clashes show the sudden jolt of confidence and ambition that
liberation can give to those formerly in tyranny’s grip. But he had good reason
to suggest that the battles against the Thebans and Chalcidians marked a decisive
break in Athenian history. And that is because the Athenians themselves made
every effort to portray those events as a decisive break in their history. Athenians
wanted to believe that after their tyrants fell they were free, democratic, and above
all else, united. Herodotus goes on to tell us that the very chains those captive
Boeotians and Chalcidians once wore were still hanging on the Acropolis in his
day, ‘on walls burned in fire by the Mede [ἐκ τειχέων περιπεφλευσμένων πυρὶ ὑπὸ
τοῦ Μήδου]’ (77.3). Not far from those chains, ‘on the left hand side as you enter
the Propylaea,’ Herodotus also saw a four-horse chariot commemorating these
events, inscribed as follows:

The nations of the Boeotians and the Chalcidians they subjugated,

The sons of the Athenians, in deeds of war,
And quenched their arrogance in a painful bond of iron.
They dedicated these mares as tithe to Pallas.

ἔθνεα Βοιωτῶν καὶ Χαλκιδέων δαμάσαντες

παῖδες Ἀθηναίων ἔργμασιν ἐν πολέμου,
δεσμῷ ἐν ἀχνυόεντι σιδηρέῳ ἔσβεσαν ὕβριν·
τῶν ἵππους δεκάτην Παλλάδι τάσδʼ ἔθεσαν
(77.4).

Fragments of the inscription have been found (IG 13.501A). They seem to cor-
respond closely to what Herodotus recorded. Interestingly, an older inscription
230 Alex Gottesman
has also been found. It seems to date to around 505, shortly after the battle it com-
memorates (IG 13.501B). The second inscription features the same language as
the original inscription, except it transposes the first and third lines. The original
monument emphasised the chains, the second the fact that it was the Thebans and
Chalcidians who wore them. Herodotus could not have known it from his vantage
point but this monument, as Anderson suggests, ‘seems to have been the very first
commemoration in Athens of a collective military achievement.’54 The over-the-
top character of this chauvinistic monument dovetailed with the over-the-top story
that Herodotus told. Why did the Athenians feel the need for such a monument,
and such a story, at this time? The usual way it is interpreted is as the expression
of a desire to ennoble the Athenians collectively: hence a four-horse chariot and
the Homeric ‘sons of the Athenians.’ I propose that the reason for the monument is
that by encouraging Athenians to remember Thebes and Chalcis they could forget
about what happened at Eleusis and the Acropolis.
As Shrimpton notes, ‘Substitutions occur at a critical moment . . . when it
becomes apparent that something has happened that will be difficult to forget,
but has such disturbing aspects that reporting the details would scarcely meet
with general approval.’55 In the sources we see a slow and progressive erasure
of the past taking hold over time. Herodotus’ telling makes clear that by his time
the events at Eleusis had been erased. The Thebans who dedicated the small col-
umn drum tell us that they fought in a battle there, and that they won. We know
from Herodotus that the Thebans were on the side of Cleomenes and Isagoras,
who ultimately lost. The scholiast also tells us that Cleomenes attacked Eleusis,
and held it with the help of his Athenian allies. He cites as proof the stele com-
memorating their punishment for this treasonous act. Apparently, Herodotus did
not notice this stele when he visited the Acropolis. He explicitly tells us that no
battle happened in Eleusis! The Spartans just went home ἀκλεῶς, literally ‘with-
out doing anything worth hearing about.’ The real action happened up north. No
Athenians could have fought in a battle that did not happen. All the ‘sons of the
Athenians’ were busy elsewhere, crushing the Thebans and sailing to conquer
the Chalcidians ‘on the same day.’ A more complicated, and indeed more trau-
matic, story involving foreign alliances between competing aristocratic families
and their followers fanning the vicious circle of violence between Athenians
could be told instead as a stirring tale of the birth of the Athenian nation out of
the crucible of battle. With this story in his mind, it is not surprising that when
the author of the Athenaion Politeia read in Herodotus about stasis and execu-
tions, he erased them completely. By his time, the erasure had extended beyond
Eleusis to include the Acropolis. In Athenian tradition, the conflict had become
one between Spartans and the last vestiges of the tyrants against the united
demos. Over time the story that Herodotus heard of a bloody stasis between
the supporters of Cleisthenes and those of Isagoras lost out to the official one.
Every time someone literally went ‘above,’ to the Acropolis, and saw the very
chains there that restrained the first (foreign) enemies of tyrant-free Athens,
the official story would efface the story ‘below.’ The trauma of civil violence
 What is below? 231
could transform into jingoistic pride. The official story was evidently so impor-
tant to remember that after the Persians sacked and burned the Acropolis in 480
BC, the Athenians remade the monument that commemorated their first post-
tyranny victory. In all likelihood they also rehung or perhaps even reforged the
prisoners’ chains that Herodotus saw on the scorched walls.

Implications for history from below

Some time ago, Hobsbawm cautioned that practitioners of history from below (or
‘grassroots history,’ as he called it) ‘cannot be positivists, believing that the questions
and answers arise naturally out of the study of the material.’56 My argument here bears
out this warning. Not only do our literary sources conceive of collective action differ-
ently than we do, and use different language to talk about it, but they also, deliberately
or not, obscure important aspects of it. Herodotus, our main source about the events
under consideration here, based his account on the stories he was told. It would be a
mistake for practitioners of history from below to simply accept our sources at face
value simply because they are ancient, or because Herodotus collected them when
he visited Athens. After all, as he famously noted, he repeated what he was told, but
he was not obligated to believe it.57 By the time of his visit to Athens, the pressures
of social reconciliation and harmony had shaped the narrative he heard about the riot
and its aftermath. Here the task of history from below is to read between the lines to
recover the perspective of those who lost the battle for memory and for legitimacy,
who were either consigned to oblivion or remembered as something other than what
they were. As Cerutti notes, this is a kind of ‘salvage operation’:

un travail de rachat d’autres systèmes de significations qui, ayant perdu leur

bataille pour la légitimité, ont été “oubliés.” C’est donc un travail sur la mémoire
et sur le pouvoir, sur tout ce que nous avons oublié ou qu’on nous a fait oublier.58

This kind of approach will not allow us to answer the questions that historians
have asked about the riot. For instance, was it a Bastille-like moment? Was it a
spontaneous uprising of the demos, or was it led by members of the elite? What
my argument here has shown is that such questions are premature. Before we
come to grips with the agents and meaning of the events, we first have to come
to terms with how our sources transmitted them and how they shaped them to fit
their interests and agendas. We may not yet know who is below in this case, but
hopefully I have shown that there is more below than meets the eye.

Notes
1 See Rudé 1980, 1981 [1964]; Thompson 1971, reprinted and with responses to critics
in Thompson 1993, 185–351.
2 As noted by Herman 2006, 213. The best attempt to recover Greek popular culture
on Thompsonian lines is Forsdyke 2012, who interestingly did not find riots or much
relevant in Athens.
232 Alex Gottesman
3 Canevaro 2017.
4 Hunter 1989, 22. See also Karpyuk 2000, who looks beyond Thucydides to note, ‘There
is no evidence to prove any serious involvement of the crowd into the political life of
the Greek cities in the archaic and classical periods’ (102).
5 Gottesman 2014.
6 Cerutti 2015, see also the Introduction to this volume. My thanks to the editors for call-
ing my attention to this paper.
7 See especially Williams 1984. When Thompson revised his essay ‘Patricians and Plebs’
he dismissed Williams’ criticism with characteristic mordancy that should not conceal
the fact that he had taken the criticism to heart. In a new passage he offered a metaphor
for his view of pre-modern British society: ‘I am thinking of a school experiment (which
no doubt I have got wrong) in which an electrical current magnetized a plate cov-
ered with iron filings. The filings, which were evenly distributed, arranged themselves
sketchily as if directed toward opposing attractive poles. This is very much how I see
eighteenth-century society, with, for many purposes, the crowd at one pole, the aristoc-
racy and gentry at the other, and until late in the century, the professional and trading
groups bound down by lines of magnetic dependency to the rulers, or on occasion hiding
their faces in common action with the crowd’ (Thompson 1993, 73, my emphasis). This
is not how he portrayed eighteenth century society in 1974.
8 Loraux 2002 [1997] and Shear 2011 are fundamental here. But as far as I know, only
Shrimpton 2006 has appreciated the extent of this phenomenon.
9 See the catalogue of violence in Riess 2016. For akriton apokteinai see Carawan 1984,
who does not believe that it ever actually happened, being ‘noteworthy only as a legal
curiosity’ (121).
10 For starters, see Forsdyke 2012, 144–70.
11 See especially Lavelle 1993 on the tyranny, although he does not consider the immediate
aftermath. On the aftermath, Flaig 2004 is excellent, focusing on the displacement of
stasis through the myth of the tyrannicides.
12 See Anderson 2003, 197–211, who suggests that Cleisthenes himself obscured his role
to make his reforms more palatable.
13 The general scholarly consensus about Cleisthenes is that by winning over the demos
by means of his reforms, he (probably inadvertently) set the stage for subsequent demo-
cratic development. Ostwald 1969, 137–73 lays out this view cogently. For a recent,
balanced discussion of Cleisthenes and his reforms, see Osborne 2009, 276–97.
14 Ober 1996, 35.
15 First set forth in Ober 1993, republished in Ober 1996, and in revised form in Ober 2007
(quote on 90).
16 Ober 2007, 84.
17 Anderson 2003, 197.
18 See Wade-Gery 1933, 18–9; Keaney 1969, 418–21; Ste. Croix 2004, 130.
19 According to Wade-Gery, from the laws of Cleisthenes themselves.
20 Historians have used this difference of opinion to suggest that the proposed reforms
themselves might have prompted Isagoras to call in Cleomenes. This puts a lot of weight
on Herodotus’ expression μετὰ δὲ, which can mean ‘next’ in a sequence, but can also
mean ‘later,’ as in at ‘at some point subsequently.’ It does not appear that Herodotus
knew, or cared about, the chronology of Cleisthenes’ tribal reforms. One source dates
the reforms themselves to the archonship of Alcmaeon, which scholars date to 505 or
501 BC (see Develin 2003, 53). On the chronology see, most recently, Badian 2000.
21 See Trott 2014, 37–40, on how Aristotle applies this physical concept to politics.
22 See most recently Bertelli 2018, who wisely takes a middle position on the question of
how much influence Aristotelian theory has on A.
23 Rhodes 1993, 346–7.
24 See Ghinatti 1970, 47–55; Stahl 1987, 66–69; Rhodes 1993, 179–88. His reading of
Herodotus’ account of Peisistratus shows a similar interest (13.4–15.5; Hdt. 1.59–60).
 What is below? 233
25 Stanton 1970 suggests that this term derives from Alcmaeonid propaganda in the context
of the first ostracism.
26 I do not find persuasive the arguments of Dillon 2006 against the standard restoration
of the archon fragment.
27 Plutarch thought this was the sugar before the spice: παραμιγνὺς πίστεως ἕνεκα τοῖς
ψόγοις ἐπαίνους τινάς . . . εἰς Κᾶρας ὥσπερ εἰς κόρακας ἀποδιοπομπουμένου τὸν
Ἰσαγόραν (De malig. Her. 830e). Bicknell 1972, 84–88; 1974, 153–4 suggested that
Isagoras’ family was connected to the Cimonids. Most scholars think that if that were
the case Herodotus would have said so. But Herodotus’ inability to discover a con-
nection could also be due to the Philaids’ desire to conceal it. ‘That Isagoras son of
Teisander? Not one of ours, must be from a foreign Teisander. . . .’ Ghinatti 1970, 101
similarly see ‘un palese desiderio di oscurare la fama di Isagora.’ On Herodotus and the
Cimonids see now Samons 2017, especially: ‘Herodotus felt compelled to include even
many uncomfortable tales, while nonetheless providing the explanations that sought to
mitigate blame when such explanations were available’ (34).
28 See Ghinatti 1970, 14, 94, who argues that Herodotus merely meant ‘take into alliance,’
which A. interpreted through the lens of fifth century hetaireiai.
29 A.’s grasp of the reforms is muddled at best. He suggests they were a populist measure
that also gave citizenship to people who did not have it before (21.1–2).
30 See Cromey 2000. I cannot follow his suggestion that these were the so-called neopoli-
tai, non-citizens that owed their franchise and support to Cleisthenes.
31 Ober 2007, 93.
32 As is pointed out by Ober 1993, 223; 2007, 93.
33 As noted by Wade-Gery 1933, 17. Ostwald 1969, 144, n. 6 and Chambers 1990, 223
disagree that the difference is meaningful or intentional.
34 Rhodes 1993, 246.
35 ‘The fact that Hdt. 5.72.4–73.1 mentions Timesitheus of Delphi as one of the executed
guarantees the accuracy of that part of the story’ (Ostwald 1969, 144, n. 7).
36 As Gray points out, Herodotus’ ‘I could say a lot’ strikes a somber note: ‘The assertion
that he could tell many stories of the strength of his hands and his spirit suggest the
pathos of one who was now bound and unable to use his hands or his spirit in his final
appearance in life’ (2007, 208).
37 His basis for this belief is that the first known victim of ostracism was Hipparchus, son
of Charmus, which he evidently found surprising because it conflicted with his belief
that the Pisistratids had been decisively defeated and expelled. He rationalised this
with the statement that ‘They permitted to dwell in the city all those who had not been
implicated in the troubles [ὅσοι μὴ συνεξαμαρτάνοιεν ἐν ταῖς ταραχαῖς, εἴων οἰκεῖν τὴν
πόλιν]’ (22.4). For a similar praise of the demos’ restraint after the civil war of 404/3,
see 40.3.
38 See Hornblower 2013, 218–9, on why the attempted outreach to Persia cannot be dis-
missed out of hand.
39 On Herodotus’ visit to Athens, see Ostwald 1991. On his use, and criticism, of Athenian
traditions see Blösel 2013.
40 For the complicated engagement of the Lysistrata with the popular tradition of liberation
from tyranny, see Thomas 1989, 242–51.
41 Thomas 1989, 250.
42 ‘[P]erhaps Hellanikos,’ according to Bicknell 1972, 85, n. 10.
43 Connor 1985, 86; see for collection of evidence and discussion.
44 Forsdyke 2012, 158–63.
45 E.g., like the traitor Arthmius of Zelea (Dem. 19. 27, 9. 41), or the blasphemer Diagoras
of Melos (Melanthius FGrH 342 F 3), or—most relevantly—the oligarch Antiphon
([Plut.] Vit X Or. 834b). For inscriptions on bronze, see Stroud 1963, 138, n. 1.
46 Schachermeyr suggests that it might be a ‘dittographie,’ where Herodotus was unsure
where to put his Socles speech (Schachermeyr 1973, 213, n. 2).
234 Alex Gottesman
47 Oral tradition recalls some kind of glorious battle at Eleusis. Herodotus puts the death
of his paradigmatic good citizen Tellus there, interestingly in a battle fought against
the ‘city-neighbors [πρὸς τοὺς ἀστυγείτονας]’ (1.30.5). Isaeus has a speaker claim that
his great-grandfather also died in a battle there, much to his glory (Isae. 5.42). On the
historical indeterminacy of this battle, see Thomas 1989, 116–7.
48 Most historians have dismissed the stele because it contradicts Herodotus. For a voice
of dissent see Tritle 1988.
49 The editio princeps is Aravantinos 2006.
50 As suggested by Aravantinos 2006, 376.
51 Aravantinos 2006, 376, followed by Berti 2010, 17–9, suggests that it commemorates
ransoming the Chalcidian prisoners. While lyo in the middle voice does usually mean
‘to ransom,’ it does not always mean that (see LSJ 2b).
52 As argued, among others, by Anderson 2003, 148, with n. 3.
53 On isēgoria in Herodotus, see Nakategawa 1988.
54 Anderson 2003, 156; see also Rausch 1999, 120–5.
55 Shrimpton 1997, 91.
56 Hobsbawm 1988, 17.
57 Hdt. 7.152.3. For Herodotus himself as interested, in a way, in history from below, see
Lang 1984.
58 Cerutti 2015, 952, original emphasis. Relevant here also is Assmann’s concept of
‘mnemo-history’ (see Assmann 1997, 8–17).

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11 Slave agency in Livy’s history
of Rome
Between rebellion and
counterconspiracy
Fábio Duarte Joly

Introduction
Ancient historiography presents some challenges for the study of the experiences
and agencies of subaltern groups, particularly with regard to slaves and freedmen.
Although freedom and slavery (at the political and philosophical levels) consti-
tute one of the main guidelines of the narratives of Greek and Roman historians,1
slaves and freedmen, and their material and social lives, did not attract the atten-
tion of those authors. The Roman historian Tacitus offers a clear example of this
fact, when, in his Annals, he compares the slaves of various origins and religions
in Rome to a heterogeneous and disordered mob, as if they formed a kind of mud
in need of control by fear.2 Slaves and freedmen are cited in historical narratives
almost exclusively when they rebel, individually or collectively, or when, con-
versely, they are loyal and devoted to their masters and patrons, even at the cost of
their own lives.3 Modern scholarship for a long time adopted a similar view that
shares the elitist bias of the ancient sources. Ronald Syme, for instance, followed
his biographed Tacitus when he stated that ‘though no man of station and inde-
pendence could help despising the slave in bondage or emancipated, aristocratic
families acknowledged the loyal devotion of slaves and dependents in evil days.’4
However, a closer analysis of ancient historiography may reveal a perspective
to approach the agency of servile groups beyond the Graeco-Roman historians’
prejudices,5 as I intend to suggest by means of a study of the theme of slave agency
in Livy’s work.
Livy’s history of Rome is an important source for any study on the develop-
ment of Roman slavery, especially in the political-military context of the early
Republic. Not by chance, most of the references to slaves by Livy invariably
refer to the practice of enslaving war captives.6 But slavery is not only a synonym
exclusive to war captivity in Livy’s account. The master–slave relationship is also
present as a powerful metaphor for qualifying non-slave social relations as well as
political regimes. Monarchy, for instance, is depicted by Livy as a regime which
has imposed ‘slavery’ on the Roman people. In Book 1, he portrays the slow and
continuous degradation of the monarchy towards the rising of the res publica and
libertas despite the individual contributions of each monarch for the creation of
Roman institutions.7 Even after the end of the monarchy, tension between servitus

DOI: 10.4324/9781003005148-15
238 Fábio Duarte Joly
and libertas is still pervasive in the narrative of the so-called ‘Struggle of the
Orders’ between patricians and plebeians. In the discourses of the tribunes of the
plebs, the image of the plebeians is repeatedly depicted as not that of full citizens
but rather as that of slaves in relation to aristocrats who disregarded the common
good.8
The metaphor of slavery is further present in the narration of the strategies
adopted by individuals and communities involved in the process of the Roman
military expansion in the Italian Peninsula. In his study of the language of Roman
imperialism in Latin literature from the middle of the first century BC to the
beginning of the third century AD,9 Myles Lavan has shown that accusations of
enslavement by Rome are an important component in the discourses Livy and
other writers attribute to unsatisfied Italian allies, barbarian leaders and hostile
kings, who depict their position to Rome as ‘slavery’ (servitus). This notion is
also present from the Roman conqueror’s viewpoint in which slavery appears as
a legitimate form of domination of non-Romans.10
These groups of evidence are relevant for an in-depth understanding of how
Livy dealt with the issue of slavery in his historical writing. However, as my
concern in this chapter will be restricted to the theme of slave agency, it should
be noted from the start that ‘agency’ usually appears in the studies on ancient
slavery related to ‘resistance’ in its diverse forms, such as individual flights, col-
lective rebellions or the adoption of specific cultural and religious practices. 11
Therefore, the emphasis is on what Peter Hunt has called ‘contrary strategies,’
that is, those actions that were clearly against the interests of slaveholders. This
methodological choice thus leaves aside what Hunt defines as ‘collaborative
strategies,’ those that could reinforce the authority of masters or even those
strategies that benefited slaves as individuals due to their relationships with other
people than their owners.12 An approach that only discusses resistance in order
to try to ‘give back to the oppressed their agency,’ in Walter Johnson’s words,
diverts us from inquiring about the political dimension of slave agency, which
encompasses the internal politics of slave community as well as how slaves
interacted with other members and institutions of the community at large.13 The
aforementioned individual strategies of slaves, as delineated by Hunt, are intrin-
sically interrelated in servile agency, so that enslaved people could transform
and give new meanings to their lives in the struggle against alienation generated
by slavery.
Taking this theoretical framework into account, the argument here is that Livy
is notably concerned in discussing the limits of the loyalty (fides) of slaves in view
of their positions not just in the domus, but in the res publica as well. His main
idea is that loyalty to the state should prevail over loyalty to one’s own master or
mistress. In this sense, slave agency could at the same time disrupt an important
sphere of Roman society—being a contrary strategy, in Hunt’s words—the private
one, to preserve public order, thus being a collaborative strategy in regard to the
state. Livy stresses this latent socio-political tension in the res publica throughout
his treatment of slave agency in the context of conspiracies, so that his view of
this matter permits an insight into the servile strategies of exploring aspects of the
 Slave agency in Livy’s history of Rome 239
same political system, which legitimised the coercion of slavery, to achieve the
slave’s own objectives, as freedom.
In the first section I discuss how Livy recounts what he calls ‘slave conspiracies’
in Rome or other Italian cities. My analysis here will focus on how the historian
regards his contemporary audience, when dealing with the theme of slavery, manu-
mission and public order, in the Augustan context when the enrolment of ex-slaves
in the civitas was a crucial question as illustrated by the enactment of a legislation
concerning manumission and the status of freedmen. In the second section, I take
into account the role of slaves as counterconspirators in aristocratic conspiracies
and, in the conclusion, I point out how this case study of slave agency in Livy
can be related to some central issues of the writing of history from below, as the
relationship between structure and agency.

‘An enemy in his own household’: slaves as conspirators

Unfortunately, it is not possible to obtain from Livy’s narrative many details about
the motivations and strategies of slaves in episodes of social turmoil. In general,
he just succinctly mentions the outbreak and repression of slave revolts, noting if
any slaves denounced the plots and if they were rewarded with freedom and money
afterwards. However, it is significant that he usually employs the word coniuratio
to describe the collective actions of slaves who caused some unrest in Rome or
other Italian cities.
Debra Nousek notes that:

all together, of the more than 70 instances where Livy uses coniuratio or its
cognates in his History, all but three (22.38.4, 26.25.11, 45.2.2, which indicate
the swearing of a military oath) refer to plots hatched to subvert the legitimate
or established authority.14

Coniuratio has thus a dual nature, or, as Thomas Habinek puts it, a Janus-like
character. On the one hand, it refers to a moment of extraordinary conditions: when
the city is endangered, a tumultus is declared and soldiers are sworn altogether in
a procedure known as coniuratio. On the other hand, the same word may be used
to refer to an external attack by foreigners or an internal attack by citizens and
slaves.15
Livy adopts this latter meaning since he presupposes that the slave population in
Rome should be taken as a kind of internal enemy. This point first appears in the
story of a certain Appius Herdonius (perhaps of Sabine ancestry), who, in 460 BC,
with thousands of followers, captured the Capitoline hill as part of an attempt to
dominate Rome. His army is described by Livy as being made up of 2,500 exiles
and slaves (exsules servique).16 Livy thus stresses—more clearly than Dionysius
of Halicarnassus, for instance—the servile status of part of Herdonius’ followers.17
He is also more concerned than the Greek author with the impact of this attempted
coup in the Roman households, mainly because he seems to portray the event as
an internal insurrection.18
240 Fábio Duarte Joly
Whereas Dionysius quickly dismisses the possibility of the slaves joining
Herdonius despite his promise of granting freedom to them,19 Livy narrates the
increasing tension in Rome which led the consuls to not know how exactly to
organise a reaction. They were:

afraid either to arm the plebs or to leave them unarmed, not knowing whence
this sudden attack upon the City had come, whether from without or from
within, from the hatred of the plebs or the treachery of slaves (ab servili
fraude).20

Herdonius, whose characterisation by Livy is reminiscent of Sallust’s Catiline,21

emphasises the fear that slaves leave their masters to obtain the freedom offered
by Herdonius (Servos ad libertatem Ap. Herdonius ex Capitolio vocabat; . . . et
servitiis grave iugum demeret), who places himself as a redeemer of the most
miserable in Rome (se miserrimi cuiusque suscepisse causam).22 In consequence
of these affairs of state, the situation in the city is described by Livy as becoming
even more strained in view of the risk of a slave revolt:

Men’s fears were many and various; above all the rest stood out their dread of
the slaves (terror servilis). Everybody suspected that he had an enemy in his
own household (ne suus cuique domi hostis esset), whom it was safe neither to
trust, nor, from want of confidence, to refuse to trust, lest his hostility should
be intensified.23

Due to the vital military support provided to Rome by the Tusculans, the insur-
rection was crushed and the rebels were punished according as they were free or
slave.24 Although Livy pinpoints in this story of Herdonius a gradual crescendo
of a fear of slave uprising in Rome, his same narrative indirectly suggests that the
slaves’ loyalty to their masters had remained unshaken: the slaves of Herdonius
stayed with him until death as did the slaves of the Roman citizens who did not
rush to side with the rebels.25
After the story of Herdonius, Livy continues to narrate cases of slave conspira-
cies, but he begins to mention the strategy of the Roman state in granting freedom
and money to those slaves who denounce conspirators. The following episode,
placed in 419 BC, exemplifies his narrative pattern:

It was a year remarkable, thanks to the good fortune of the Roman People, for
a great danger but not a disaster. The slaves conspired to set fire to the City at
points remote from one another (Servitia urbem ut incenderent distantibus locis
coniurarunt), and, while the people should be busy everywhere with rescuing
their houses, to seize the Citadel and the Capitol with an armed force. Jupiter
brought their wicked schemes to naught, and on the evidence of two of their
number, the guilty were arrested and punished. Each informant was rewarded
from the public treasury (ex aerario) with ten thousand pounds of bronze—
which passed for wealth in those days—and with freedom (libertas).26
 Slave agency in Livy’s history of Rome 241
In his comments about this event, Ogilvie remarked that the rewards ‘would not
at this date have been paid from the aerarium,’27 but perhaps what is at issue here
is the interest of Livy in putting emphasis on the need of a political strategy to
weaken the solidarity between slaves by means of rewards to those who acted as
counterconspirators. This same logic is hinted at when Livy mentions two other
slave revolts. In his narrative of the year 216 BC, he briefly cites that 25 slaves
were crucified in Rome on the charge of having conspired in the Campus Martius
and that ‘the informer was rewarded with freedom and twenty thousand sesterces’
(Indici data libertas et aeris gravis viginti milia).28 Livy does not give details about
the slaves involved in this rebellion, such as if their slavery derived from war cap-
tivity or not. However, in his account of a slave revolt (servilis tumultus) that took
place in Sestia in 198 BC this latter fact is a determinant one. Carthaginian hos-
tages were being kept under guard at the Latin colony following a Roman policy
of removing the elite of a defeated enemy from their home town, thus turning
them into a kind of prisoners of the state. By detaching them from their previous
network of formal and informal relations, it would ensure against organising rebel-
lions against Rome.29 According to Livy, many of these hostages were children of
dignitaries accompanied by a large body of slaves (ut principum liberis magna vis
servorum erat).30 The number of slaves was further increased as the inhabitants
of Setia began purchasing many Carthaginian war prisoners as slaves, and these
started a conspiracy (coniuratio).31 The rebels first tried to incite rebellion with the
slaves in the territory of Setia and later with those around Norba and Cerceii. Livy
says ‘Sestia was captured in the bloody and unforeseen uproar’ (Setia per caedem
et repentinum tumultum capta), and then the slaves turned to Norba and Cerceii.32
The Roman military reaction started after two slaves denounced what the rebels
had done as well as what was likely to come to the urban praetor Lucius Cornelius
Lentulus. As a reward, the denunciators received freedom and money:

Sterling service had thus been provided by two slave informers and one free
man (egregia duorum opera servorum indicum et unius liberi fuit). The senate
ordered the latter be awarded 100,000 asses, and the slaves 25,000 asses each
plus their freedom (libertas); their masters were reimbursed their price from
the public purse (ex aerario).33

Two years later in 196 BC, another slave conspiracy (coniuratio servorum)
occurred in Etruria. The praetor Manius Acilius Glabrio defeated some of the
rebels in battle, and ‘many were killed and many taken prisoner. Some—those
who had been ringleaders in the conspiracy—he flogged and crucified, others he
returned to their masters (alios verberatos crucibus adfixit, qui principes con-
iurationis fuerant, alios dominis restituit).’34 Livy also records a slave uprising
(magnus motus servilis) in Apulia in 185 BC named by the author as a conspiracy
of herdsmen (pastorum coniuratio). The praetor Lucius Postumius condemned
about seven thousand men.35
A common feature of Livy’s account of the above slave revolts is that the grant-
ing of freedom to individual slaves who helped the Roman state overcome the
242 Fábio Duarte Joly
rebellions is not followed by Roman citizenship, even though it was possible in a
slave society such as that of Rome. Libertas, for the historian, does not immedi-
ately imply nor necessarily entail civitas. The story of the siege of Artena in 404
BC is even more exemplary in this sense. Livy narrates that the Romans almost
gave up in their attempts to take the city by assault due to its garrison and sufficient
amount of grain in the fortress. However, a local slave admitted some soldiers
inside by way of a steep approach, and they captured the citadel. Livy writes
that ‘the traitor was given the property of two families as a reward, besides his
liberty, and was named Servius Romanus’ (Proditori praeter libertatem duarum
familiarum bona in praemium data; Servius Romanus vocitatus).36 The episode is
perhaps a reflection of how the Romans once named freedmen of the state.37 Ogil-
vie, in his commentary, is skeptical about any historical value of the story, arguing
that it should be compared with the legend of Servius Tullius’ origins, whose name
is also explained by servus.38
Notwithstanding the insufficient evidence to verify Livy’s account about this
slave in particular and about the slave revolts in general, these episodes may be
interpreted considering the message about slavery and manumission that Livy
wants to deliver to his contemporary audience. The author is very critical of an
immediate connection between manumission and citizenship since he emphasises
in some passages of his work the need of carefully granting citizenship to allies and
freedmen. The speech of Camillus, in 337 BC, to the Senate on how the Roman
state should conduct itself towards the conquered Latin peoples, and the Senate’s
response to him, is an illustration of Livy’s concern with the issue of a selective
distribution of Roman citizenship. Whereas the consul asked if the Senate would
follow the example of its ancestors and augment the Roman state by receiving its
conquered enemies as citizens (Voltis exemplo maiorum augere rem Romanam
victos in civitatem accipiendo?),39 the leading senators argued that ‘since the Latins
were not all in like case, his advice could best be carried out if the consuls would
introduce proposals concerning the several peoples by name, as each should seem
to merit’ (cum aliorum causa alia esset, ita expediri posse consilium dicere, si, ut
pro merito cuiusque statueretur).40 Full Roman citizenship should thus be a reward
according to the merit of the recipient state.41 Still in this context, Livy also men-
tions that in 177 BC some allies (socii) ‘in order to evade the requirement that
they should leave offspring at home, they would give their sons to any Romans
whatsoever in slavery, on the condition that they should be manumitted and thus
become citizens of freedman condition’ (Nam et ne stirpem domi relinquerent,
liberos suos quibusquibus Romanis in eam condicionem ut manu mitterentur man-
cipio dabant, libertinique ciues essent).42 A senatus consultum was furthermore
passed to prevent Latins from fraudulently enslaving themselves to Romans to
obtain citizenship by manumissio censu.43
Livy, therefore, shows in his historical narrative a concern regarding the inter-
relationships between manumission, freedom, and citizenship. The latter could
only be granted after weighing the merits of those who deserved to enter in the
Roman civic community. It should be noted that the historian wrote his work in
the Augustan context of an intense political debate about the place of freedmen in
 Slave agency in Livy’s history of Rome 243
Roman society that gave rise to a specific legislation to manage this issue.44 The
lex Iunia (probably enacted in 17 BC) regulated and assigned a legal personal-
ity to freedmen who previously were informally manumitted and yet remained
as slaves before civil law. They now become Latini Iuniani, freedmen without
Roman citizenship.45 Junian Latins did not have the right of conubium and they
could not transmit property to their natural heirs. Upon death, their possessions
were reverted to their patrons as a slave’s peculium. At the same time for Junian
Latins to acquire the status of Roman citizens, they depended either on the will
of their masters or on an imperial grant, or they had to marry a Roman or a Latin,
and have children, or perform services for the Roman state: in the case of Rome,
serving in the cohorts of vigiles, building ships to transport wheat, or making bread
for the state. In sum, they had to strive to become citizens by means of actions
considered beneficial to the res publica.46 Besides the creation of this new legal
status, the practice of manumission as a whole became regulated by the state since
it established criteria of age (of masters and slaves) for manumission (by the lex
Aelia Sentia, of AD 4) and stipulated the allowed number of slaves to be freed by
will (by the lex Fufia Caninia, of 2 BC).47
In short, following the Augustan laws on manumission, personal freedom and
civic freedom were no longer necessarily combined in the status of freedmen. This
development somehow underlies the way Livy portrays the practice of manumis-
sion to his audience.48 The denunciation of a conspiracy, the main agency that the
author attributes to slaves as a possibility of changing their social position, did not
invariably result in a conferment of citizenship. Libertas and civitas are not inter-
related notions. As it will be seen below, only once does Livy draw attention to the
granting of such privilege for a slave, and precisely for one who has denounced a
conspiracy of nobles against the Republic that put the libertas rei publicae at risk.

Slaves as counterconspirators: Livy and the idea of libertas

The possibility of slaves betraying their masters is a fundamental assumption for
Livy although his approach to the issue is an ambivalent one since the negation
of fides towards masters can also be praiseworthy when the state is threatened by
conspiracies arising among the aristocracy.
In Book 2, Livy describes a conspiracy led by two brothers of the Aquillii fam-
ily and two of the Vitellii family, who planned the return of Tarquinius, the king
who had recently been cast out of Rome. The conspiracy had the support of the
sons of Brutus, who played a main role in freeing the Roman people from the
tyranny of Tarquinius. A slave belonging to the Vitellii learned of the negotiations
and denounced the plot to the consuls. In the repression that followed, the sons of
Brutus were executed. The slave, in turn, was rewarded with freedom.49 According
to the author:

When the guilty had suffered, that the example might be in both respects a
notable deterrent from crime, the informer was rewarded with money from
the treasury, emancipation, and citizenship (Secundum poenam nocentium,
244 Fábio Duarte Joly
ut in utramque partem arcendis sceleribus exemplum nobile esset, praemium
indici pecunia ex aerario, libertas et civitas data).50

Livy further uses this episode as an etiological explanation of the manumission

vindicta since the slave’s name was Vindicius.51 First of all, this account is part of
the more general theme of political libertas in Book 2: it is an individual deprived
of personal freedom, the one who helps to save the freedom of the res publica.52
The conduct of Vindicius is presented as a counterpoint to that of the sons of
Brutus, who although noble and freeborn, preferred to choose monarchy, which is
equated with ‘slavery.’ Secondly, this same portrait of the slave can be understood
as an inquiry about the slave agency to obtain freedom. Marc Kleijwegt noted the
expression ut in utramque partem, which referred to a typical rhetorical device
used by the schools of declamation at the end of the Republic through which the
student had to argue against and in favour of a certain theme. Therefore, Livy
could be problematising the question of whether the slave’s conduct was right or
wrong in denouncing the conspiracy to the authorities.53 Livy does not mention
what the slave had in mind by denouncing the conspiracy,54 nor does he mention
any lack of fides, but the question inherent to the disputatio focuses on the quali-
ties required from a slave to be a citizen. While Livy believed that Vindicius had a
commendable attitude in saving the Republic thus deserving his freedom, he also
points out to the problems of immediate and generalised granting of citizenship to
all slaves. In this sense, the historian seems to be, in general, very cautious about
the possibilities available to the social mobility of slaves despite the fact that their
agency could be fundamental in moments of rupture of public order.55
In Book 8 Livy recounts another aristocratic conspiracy, but differently from
that above described, and even from the slave revolts cited in the previous section,
slave women had an important role in its development. In 331 BC, a slave woman
accused a group of women of poisoning which had caused several deaths in Rome:

When the leading citizens were falling ill with the same kind of malady, which
had, in almost every case the same fatal termination, a certain serving-woman
(ancilla) came to Quintus Fabius Maximus, the curule aedile, and declared
that she would reveal the cause of the general calamity, if he would give her
a pledge that she should not suffer for her testimony (si ab eo fides sibi data
esset haud futurum noxae iudicium). Fabius at once referred the matter to the
consuls, and the consuls to the senate, and a pledge was given to the witness
with the unanimous approval of that body. She then disclosed the fact that
the City was afflicted by the criminal practices of the women; that they who
prepared these poisons were matrons, whom, if they would instantly attend
her, they might take in the very act.56

Twenty women were brought to the forum, and two of them, Cornelia and Sergia,
asserted that the drugs were salutary. The ancilla challenged them to drink the
cups, and after deliberating among the others, the women openly, in the sight of all,
drank the poison and died.57 The slaves of other women betrayed their mistresses;
 Slave agency in Livy’s history of Rome 245
in all, 170 were found guilty.58 According to Livy, this was the first time that a case
of poisoning had ever been brought in Rome. The entire affair struck the Romans
as unusual, and they attributed the matter to madness rather than criminal intent.59
So, on the basis of a precedent from the olden times of the secession of the plebs,
the people decided to elect a dictator to drive in a nail (clavi figendi causa).60 Once
Gnaeus Quinctius performed this ritual, he resigned.61
Livy does not allow us to think about the motives that led to the slave’s action
although he implicitly considers her strategy of denouncing a positive one. The
episode, however, is constructed, as Victoria Pagán has noted, either to refer
the reader to the deeds of the gens Quinctia, marked by a devotion to the res
publica,62 or to reinforce the stereotype of women as conspirators. In her words,
‘patrician women were concocting poisons in secret and killing citizens. In a
counterconspiracy, slave women, as agents provocateurs, provided the informa-
tion leading to the arrest of the poisoners, thereby preserving the state from an
internal threat.’63
Nonetheless, the central point is how to foster a collaborative agency of slaves
towards the Roman state, even if it means putting loyalty to masters at risk. For
Livy, the mere concession of freedom (and, more rarely, of citizenship) and pay-
ment of money are strategies that are not ultimately enough because they presup-
pose that slave agency is concerned above all with achieving personal freedom and
not so much with safeguarding the freedom of the Roman state. A real allegiance
to the welfare of the res publica must not be one that has to be bought, but it has
to be an inherent individual trait of citizens and slaves alike. It is ultimately a
matter of virtus.64
This problem is clearly illustrated by Livy in narrating the enrolment of slaves,
the so called volones, by Tiberius Gracchus in the Roman army against the Car-
thaginians in 214 BC.65 On that occasion, Gracchus, authorised by the Senate,
promised to grant freedom to the slaves who fought with valour (virtus) against
the Carthaginians and brought the head of an enemy back to the camp. However,
in the course of the battle near Beneventum, as soon as the slaves succeeded in
obtaining a head, they stopped fighting and returned to the camp. Gracchus was
compelled to exhort them to fight until the final defeat of the enemy, so that only
then would freedom be granted. Victory achieved, he fulfilled his promise by
granting freedom to both the valiant and those, about 4,000, who had retreated
to a hill fearful of punishment as they did not fight properly in battle. However,
Gracchus warned them that:

Before making you all equals by the right of freedom, . . . to prevent the loss
of every distinction between valour and cowardice (ne discrimen omne virtutis
ignaviaeque pereat), I shall order the names of those who, remembering their
refusal to fight, . . . and summoning them one by one I shall make them swear
that, excepting men who shall have illness as an excuse, they will take food
and drink standing only, so long as they shall be in the service. This penalty
you will bear with patience, if you will reflect that you could not have been
marked with any slighter sign of cowardice.66
246 Fábio Duarte Joly
This division between worthy and unworthy was kept at the banquets offered by
the people of Beneventum to the troops, so that ‘wearing caps or white woollen
headbands, the volunteers feasted (Pilleati aut lana alba velatis capitibus volo-
nes epulati sunt), some reclining, and some standing served and ate at the same
time.’67 Gracchus, on his return to Rome, commissioned a representation of that
day of festivity to be painted in the Temple of Liberty to be built on the Aventine.
As Koortbojian points out, the conditions Gracchus had imposed on some of his
soldiers’ newly acquired freedom had compelled them to comport themselves as
if such freedom had never been granted, so that:

for Rome’s citizens, and above all, the aristocratic class, the message of Grac-
chus’ painting was clear: to fight for Rome was a privilege and a responsibil-
ity, and those who failed in their obligations to the state were not real Romans;
they were to be considered no better than slaves.68

The tension between individual and state freedom is thus central to Livy and
largely determine how the historian presents slave agency to his audience.

Conclusions
The analysis of slave agency in Livy’s history of Rome, as exemplified by the
selected passages in the previous sections, reveals, on the one hand, the difficulty
of extracting more precise information about the social diversity of slaves, their
aspirations and daily strategies for survival and resistance. But, on the other hand,
this same analysis may also allow some insight, even if indirect, to the agency of
slaves, making possible a history from below despite the limits imposed by the
ancient literary genre of history.
A possibility inspired by the study of the Livian vision of servile agency is that
the action of slaves cannot be framed by a rigid dichotomy between strategies
of resistance and strategies of collaboration. As Livy’s narrative of conspiracies
indicates, the denunciation, by some slaves, of subversive plots to the Roman
authorities proves to be both a resistance to slavery, as a strategy for obtaining
individual advantages by other ways than by the will of the master, and a form of
collaboration, once the denunciation of rebellious slaves or aristocrats ultimately
reinforces the very political structure that keeps slaves, as a group, subdued. Put
in these terms, this is a question directly linked to the relationship between agency
and structure, since the slaves, in an ambivalent manner, demonstrated that they
pursued their own interests exploring alternatives opened by the Roman structure
of domination, and thus could profit from its repressive policies or from excep-
tional circumstances due to war times (as in the case of the volones) to achieve
their ends.69
Furthermore, the theme of slave agency in Livy equally refers, as Kostas Vlasso-
poulos has remarked, to the ‘ways in which subaltern people made use of institu-
tions and processes in which they did not have an independent voice of their own,’
by taking part ‘in conflicts that were in theory an affair among the members of the
 Slave agency in Livy’s history of Rome 247
elite.’70 The Roman historian allows us to indirectly observe this process since his
historical account shows a Roman state pervaded by an intrinsic instability due to a
fierce aristocratic competition for honour and prestige, and the aristocratic conspir-
acies were sharp examples of this state of affairs. Slaves, in this context, became
active agents by denouncing conspiracy leaders and thus participated someway in
the political struggles of the Roman Republic.
In sum, ancient historiography has privileged narratives of events that, to a large
extent, are related to the action of elite men and women, and consequently it has
transmitted an image of slaves according to an ideology in which they mostly appear
as internal enemies to be controlled for the public good. However, it is still possible
to recur to these same narratives to write how slaves used conflicts within the elite to
carry out their own personal interests, as the quest for freedom. Ancient historiogra-
phy, with its stereotype of the slave as counterconspirator, can open us a window to
aspects of the ‘politics of survival’71 of slaves in the Graeco-Roman world.

Notes
* This chapter is part of the ‘Slavery, Freedom, and Citizenship, from Augustus to Nero’
project, funded by the CNPq, National Council for Scientific and Technological Develop-
ment (grant number 302301/2018–6). I thank the editors and the conference participants,
especially Fábio Faversani, for their suggestions and criticism of an earlier draft of this
text. I am also grateful to Brenda Lalicker for her revision of my English text. Unless
otherwise stated, all translations of ancient authors are taken from the Loeb editions.
1 For slavery in Tacitus, see Joly 2004. Schwitter 2017 provides a brief overview of
slavery in Livy. There is no comprehensive study about slavery in the Roman historians
comparable to that of Tamiolaki 2010 concerning Greek historiography.
2 Tac. Ann. 14.44: postquam vero nationes in familiis habemus, quibus diversi ritus,
externa sacra aut nulla sunt, conluviem istam non nisi metu coercueris.
3 See Vogt 1975 on the theme of slave loyalty (fides) in Latin literature.
4 Syme 1967, 532.
5 Knapp 2011, 110, for whom ‘the standard elite sources can be used if care is taken to
account for their social point of view.’
6 Livy particularly provides information on mass enslavement in the period from 218 to
167 BC, whether or not citing specific numbers (see Bradley 1990, 63, with the respec-
tive references).
7 Liv. 1.46.3. See also 1.17.3–4, 1.57.2–3 and 2.1.4–6. Cf. Vasaly 2015, 219.
8 See, e.g. the episode of the decemvirs in Book 3, which points out to a kind of reversion
to monarchy (3.36.5), as well as the episode of the preparations for the siege of Veii, in
Book 5, when the Roman generals proposed a strategy of winter campaigns. Livy says
that it was a novelty for the soldiers, so that the tribunes argued that this would be an
insult to the freedom of the plebs, and that the soldiers were free men and citizens, not
slaves (5.2.11: liberos et cives eorum, non servos).
9 Lavan 2013.
10 In Livy, for instance, such theme is exemplified in the discourse of Publius Scipio before
a battle against Hannibal, when the Roman commander says to the troops ‘to fight not
just with the spirit you show against other enemies but with outrage and anger, as if you
were seeing your slaves suddenly taking up arms against you’ (non eo solum animo quo
adversus alios hostes soletis, pugnare velim, sed cum indignatione quadam atque ira,
velut si servos videatis vestros arma repente contra vos ferentes) (Liv. 21.41.10), cf.
Lavan 2013, 89.
248 Fábio Duarte Joly
11 Keith Bradley, one of the leading authorities on the study of slave resistance in the
Roman world, concedes that ‘consent, coercion and resistance were threads woven
inextricably together all of a piece’ (Bradley 2011, 379), although he does not deal in
detail with the problem of consent.
12 Hunt 2016.
13 Cf. Johnson 2003. See also Morales 2014 (and this volume) for a defence of a broader
concept of politics to incorporate the non-citizens (as slaves and metics) as inhabitants
of the community who had a political agency. See Hunt 1998 for an insightful study of
the military role of slaves in classical Greece, a fact disregarded by Greek historians
due to the preeminence of a civic ideology that associated warfare only with the citizen
body of the Greek city-states.
14 Nousek 2010, 161.
15 Habinek 1998, 76–77 and Pagán 2004, 13.
16 Liv. 3.15.5.
17 Dionysius mentions that Herdonius gathered 4,000 followers (Ant. Rom. 10.14–17)
among clients and servants (συνήθροιζε τοὺς πελάτας καὶ τῶν θεραπόντων οὓς εἶχε τοὺς
εὐτολμοτάτους). But note that therapon, although it could be used to denote a chattel
slave, may also be applied to free persons, as simply ‘servant’ (cf. Zelnick-Abramovitz
2005, 27). Dionysius elsewhere in his narrative of the episode uses the term doulos to
refer to the slaves in Rome to whom Herdonius wished to grant freedom if they joined
him (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 10.14.3, 15.1).
18 Forsythe (2005, 205) notes that, differently from Livy, ‘Dionysius describes the
seizure as a military expedition originating upstream from Rome in the Sabine terri-
tory.’ However, as Cornell 1989, 286 concludes, ‘there can be no certainty about the
incident, which remains a mystery.’ The attempted coup by Appius Herdonius and
his followers in 460, anyway, is an illustration, among others, of the continuation
of a strong tradition of personal, gens-based armies in central Italy that dates back
to the seventh and sixth centuries BC (Armstrong 2016, 71; see also Cornell 1995,
143–5).
19 Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 10.15.1.
20 Liv. 3.15.7.
21 On the depiction of Herdonius as similar to Catiline, see Apostol (2016, 122), for whom
‘by repeatedly alluding to Sallust’s hostile description of Catiline and his co-conspir-
ators, both in specific language and by making Herdonius’ demands and programme
basically the same as Catiline’s (freedom for slaves, return of exiles, threat of armed
intervention from abroad, etc.), Livy essentially states that they are members of the same
category and class of criminal.’
22 Liv. 3.15.9. For discussion of this social aspect of the revolt, see Capozza 1966, 37–64.
23 Liv. 3.16.3.
24 Liv. 3.18.10.
25 This latter fact is implied in the discourse of the consul Publius Valerius to the tribunes
of the plebs, motivating them to counterattack the movement led by Herdonius: ‘Has he
who could not arouse the slaves been so successful in corrupting you?’ (Tam felix vobis
corrumpendis fuit qui servitia non commovit auctor?) (Liv. 3.17.2). See also Ogilvie
1965, 424–5 for the Catilinarian overtones introduced by Livy.
26 Liv. 4.45.1–2.
27 Ogilvie 1965, 603.
28 Liv. 22.33.2.
29 Roselaar 2012, 190–2.
30 Liv. 32.26.5–6.
31 Liv. 32.26.7.
32 Liv. 32.26.8.
33 Liv. 32.26.14.
34 Liv. 33.36.3.
 Slave agency in Livy’s history of Rome 249
35 Liv. 39.29.8–9. This same praetor repressed large-scale conspiracies of herdsmen in
southern Italy in 184 BC. Livy relates this action to the repression of the Bacchanalian
conspiracy at Rome in 186 BC. See Shaw 2001, 69.
36 Liv. 4.61.10.
37 Easton 2019, 26. See also Eder 1980, 115–6.
38 Ogilvie 1965, 623. On Servius Tullius’ origins, Liv. 1.39.5.
39 Liv. 8.13.16.
40 Liv. 8.14.1.
41 See Sherwin-White 1980, 59–60, for discussion. For the author, ‘in this chapter, one of
the most careful in the whole of Livy, the distinction between the two forms of civitas is
most jealously observed.’ The distinction is between civitas optimo iure, which included
the right to vote in Rome (suffragium), and civitas sine suffragio.
42 Liv. 41.8.9–10.
43 Treggiari 1969, 27.
44 This is also the case of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who wrote his Roman Antiquities
in the Augustan Age. The Greek author praises the Roman principle of incorporating
slaves as citizens in the political community through manumission, dating this practice
from the time of king Servius Tullius. But he also argues (more explicitly than Livy,
for instance) against the indiscriminate granting of citizenship to slaves. In his opinion,
this practice ended up being a prize for those who had a bad behaviour, and hence the
need for an intervention by the censors or consuls to examine the merits of those who
would be manumitted (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 4.24.5–6). The topic of manumission
in Dionysius of Halicarnassus is a common concern for Greek intellectuals who are
worried about the demographic decline of Greek cities and its political consequences.
Dionysius criticises the narrow conception of citizenship in cities like Sparta, Athens or
Thebes, which in the end jeopardised their hegemonies, causing a shortage of soldiers.
Rome, on the contrary, though a deliberate policy, followed a different path, renewing
its body of citizens with former slaves, and consequently maintaining an army of its
own. See Briquel 2000.
45 On Junian Latins, see Koops 2014.
46 As remarked by Perry (2016, 5), ‘all these pathways emphasize two components of good
citizenship, childbirth and civic service, and characterize manumission as a citizen-
building enterprise.’
47 For an overview of the Augustan legislation on manumission, see Mouritsen 2011,
80–92.
48 In taking into account the Augustan context for interpreting Livy’s references to manu-
mission, I follow Kleijwegt, for whom it was a ‘period in which many authorities,
including the emperor himself, had serious misgivings that manumission and citizenship
were bestowed on undeserving slaves’ (2009, 324).
49 On Vindicius as the stereotype of the virtuous slave who denounced a conspiracy and
saved the Republic, see Millot 2013, 150. I have argued elsewhere (Joly 2018) for a
probable Tacitean allusion to Livy’s Vindicius in his depiction of the freedman Milichus,
who denounced to emperor Nero the conspiracy of Piso in AD 65 (Ann. 15.54). Cogitore
2002, 43–45 notes the recurrence of the theme of slave loyalty in the conspiracy narra-
tives of the Julio-Claudian dynasty.
50 Liv. 2.5.9–10.
51 Dionysius of Halicarnassus does not mention this point. It should be noted that Livy’s
narrative differs from those of Dionysius and Plutarch. For more details, see Ogilvie
1965, 241–3 and Oakley 2018, 144–8.
52 Kleijwegt 2009, 324.
53 Kleijwegt 2009, 323–4.
54 Liv. 2.4.6.
55 Roller 2001, 232 also notes that Livy, ‘describing the first manumissio vindicta, pres-
ents the fact that citizenship was conferred at the same time as freedom as striking and
250 Fábio Duarte Joly
precedent setting.’ Livy equally seems to be critical of the social ascension of slaves to
citizenry. This issue may be glimpsed in the way the historian rejects the tradition that
attributed a servile origin to the sixth king of Rome, Servius Tullius. Livy stresses that
Servius ‘turned out to be of a truly royal nature, and when Tarquinius sought a son-in-
law there was no other young Roman who could be at all compared to Servius; and the
king accordingly betrothed his daughter to him. This great honour, for whatever cause
conferred on him, forbids us to suppose that his mother was a slave and that he himself
had been in a state of servitude as a child’ (Hic quacumque de causa tantus illi honos
habitus credere prohibet serva natum eum parvumque ipsum servisse) (Liv. 1.39.5). Livy
follows here a tradition in which Servius Tullius was a posthumous son of Servius Tullius,
notable of Corniculum, and his wife, Ocrisia. After the seizure of the city by the Romans
and her husband’s death, Ocrisia, who would be made a slave like all other women, is
spared because of her noble origin. Queen Tanaquil then considered her as a friend and
took her to the court where Servius was born. Ocrisia and the son escaped, therefore, from
the infamous condition of slaves. This account differs from those of Cicero and Plutarch,
and even from that of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who took for granted the servile origin
of Servius, even if it was a temporary one. This version is of no interest for Livy, since he
preferred to highlight an aristocratic tradition attached to the image of Servius Tullius, in
opposition to another one, democratic, which presented him as a Roman parallel to Solon,
a legislator devoted to popular causes. For both literary traditions, see Fromentin 2002.
56 Liv. 8.18.4–7.
57 Liv. 8.18.8–10.
58 Liv. 8.18.11.
59 Liv. 8.18.11–2.
60 Liv. 8.18.13.
61 I follow here the account of Pagán 2008, 36. See Gaughan 2010, 77–79, for the legal
aspects of this event.
62 On this image of the Quinctii, see the more detailed analysis of Vasaly 1999.
63 Pagán 2008, 39. This gender stereotyped portrayal of conspirators and counterconspira-
tors alike also determines how slave agency is presented by Livy: whereas men do not
fear to denounce conspiracies and are rewarded with freedom and money, women act
with fear of being punished (as was common in the case of evidence given by slaves
since it was usually valid only if taken under torture) and receive neither freedom nor
money.
64 For the essential role of virtus in Livy, see Balmaceda 2017, 83–128.
65 Liv. 24.14–6.
66 Liv. 24.16.11–4.
67 Liv. 24.16.18–9.
68 Koortbojian 2002, 43. See also Arena 2012, 38–9.
69 See Port 2015, 111 for the relationship between agency and structure considering the
ambiguities and ambivalences of behaviour in oppressive regimes, an important issue
to history from below, the history of everyday life, and microhistory.
70 See Vlassopoulos in this volume.
71 I take this expression from Vincent Brown (2009, 1246), for whom it is imperative to
supplant the idea of ‘social death,’ as proposed by Orlando Patterson (1982), to get a
fuller understanding of how ‘the struggles of slaves were not simply beset by the depre-
dations of slavery but were shaped and directed by them.’

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12 The crowd in late antiquity
Problems and possibilities of
an inquiry
Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira

Introduction
Ancient urban social history has often succumbed to what E. P. Thompson called
‘a spasmodic view of popular history,’ according to which the interventions of the
common people in the historical scene are interpreted as occasional and compul-
sive reactions to external stimuli.1 This is especially the case of the study of crowds
in late antiquity. Modern scholars have long debated the magnitude and impact of
urban violence in the period. Much of the discussion, however, has tended to turn
around questions whether the supposed stability of the classical city would have
persisted in the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries and whether Christianity would be
responsible for the transformation of this equilibrium.2 Scholars have also disputed
whether Christian leaders were actually able to rouse large crowds or only engaged
more manageable numbers of clients and thugs.3 Otherwise, the tendency of the
scholarship until recent years was simply to juxtapose (or classify) dissociated
episodes (or types) of disorder.4 Despite differences of approach, what all these
studies have in common is a persistent focus on the role of leadership, on the gen-
eral level of tension in society or on the broad features of riots, to the detriment of
the motivations of participants and their reasons for acting.5
Within the two last decades or so, this has begun to change. A number of ancient
historians, and not only those studying late antiquity, have begun to pay far more
attention to ancient crowds in their own terms. Thus, Sara Forsdyke has studied the
ritualised and theatrical aspects of crowd action in archaic and classical Greek city-
states, focusing on the methods of popular justice as a crucial context for the sym-
bolic interaction of elites and masses.6 Cyril Courrier has explored exhaustively
the political culture of the plebs in the city of Rome, from the late Republic to the
early Empire, with a particular focus on its collective actions, group consciousness
and motivation.7 As for late antiquity, Carlos Galvão-Sobrinho, Leslie Dossey and
Brent D. Shaw have brought new and insightful contributions to our understanding
of the motivations and logic of participants in religious riots and peasant rebel-
lions.8 Peter Bell used an array of modern theories to understand the nature of
social conflict in the Justinian Age, particularly of the religious and circus faction
riots.9 More sceptical about the use of modern approaches, Peter Van Nuffelen has
focused on the moral dimension of disturbances, as evoked by ancient sources,

DOI: 10.4324/9781003005148-16
 The crowd in late antiquity 255
to highlight the agency of crowds.10 Although the late Marianne Sághy observed
how rare studies ‘on crowd dynamics, crowd empowerment, ingroup dynamics,
crowd psychology, intergroup contacts or crowd politics’ remain to this day, recent
projects have begun to handle exactly these questions.11
At the time of this writing, at least two major research projects on ancient crowds
and riots over a long period of time were being conducted in the Netherlands and
France. I am referring here, respectively, to Daniëlle Slootjes’ project on urban crowd
behaviour in pre-modern Europe, 500 BC–AD 1500, and to Sylvain Janniard and
Anna Heller’s project on popular riots in the Roman East, from the second century
BC to the seventh century AD.12 Although the focus of these projects is not necessarily
on history from below (Slootjes’ project is indeed focused on crowd control), they
testify to a growing interest in the study of crowds in antiquity. As we have seen in the
introduction to this volume, this interest is, at least in part, derived and will be surely
fuelled by recent political developments that have brought the themes of urban riots
and civil commotion to the forefront of contemporary reflection, from the Arab Spring
in North Africa and the Middle East to the ‘Occupy’ movement in the West, from
the massive protests of June 2013 in Brazil to the yellow vests movement in France.
As the field of crowd studies was in the late 1950s and 1960s the crucial labora-
tory for what then came to be called ‘history from below,’ it is fair to assume that
a close examination of the possibilities and challenges involved in the study of
crowds in terms of the common people’s own experiences and aspirations will be
essential for the objectives of this book, as Alex Gottesman has already highlighted
in his chapter.13 In this chapter, I would like to discuss the main problems I have
had to deal with and the approaches I have adopted in my own investigations into
late antique crowds in the past two decades.14 I will then exemplify some of the
possibilities of analysis through a case study, the riot of AD 354 in Antioch. I will
conclude with a wider discussion of the implications of these approaches for the
writing of history and for the critical reflection about our own time.

The crowd and its problems

Sources
The first problem involved in any study of crowds in the ancient world is how to
begin our investigation given the nature of our sources. Historians have tended to
start with the available descriptions of crowd behaviour and violence in ancient
literate sources and then to discuss the emerging features of the events. Nicholas
Purcell has appropriately compared this situation to ‘the temptation of the person
who has lost something in a shadowy room to look for it not where it was lost,
but where the light is.’15 And this is not how an ancient history from below can
be written. As Eric Hobsbawm pointed out, even for better documented periods:

the grassroots historian finds only what he is looking for, not what is already
waiting for him. Most sources for grassroots history have only been recognized
256 Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira
as sources because someone has asked a question and then prospected desper-
ately around for some way—any way—of answering it.16

In the case of ancient history, there are additional problems in restricting our
approaches to the exegesis of the available accounts of popular protest and riot-
ing. Ancient accounts rarely allow us any insight on what George Rudé called the
‘faces in the crowd.’17 As Cyril Courrier and Nicolas Tran have already noted in
this volume, descriptions of urban populations by ancient authors are often vague
and highly moralising accounts. Terms like plebs, populus, multitudo, turba, vul-
gus, in Latin, or demos, ochlos, hoi polloi, plēthos, in Greek, are frequently used
in these texts synonymously to describe the objectionable habits of the masses,
the infamy of their condition or the inconstancy of their positions.18 Despite some
important changes in late antiquity, this elite perspective remains dominant in
our period and with it the tradition of despising the crowd. Descriptions of urban
violence by Christians also carry their own biases. Christian preachers and polemi-
cists, for example, always depicted the actions of crowds mobilised by their sectar-
ian enemies in the most negative light but portrayed their own crowds as the true
‘people of God.’
This is not to ignore the possibilities offered by the late antique source materi-
als, especially by contrast with previous centuries. The evidence of the law codes,
for instance, offers insights, in ways that are completely new, not only on some of
the incentives to popular manifestation and measures devised to contain it but also
on many aspects of the life of the underclasses. Our narrative sources also focus
on public disorder in a way that earlier texts did not, sometimes even transcribing
in detail the sequence of rhythmic slogans that accompanied episodes of popular
contention. Similarly, the disapproving and normative documents of the Christian
Church can offer insights on popular practices and conceptions in ways that are
unparalleled for earlier periods, which is due to the very fact that clerics were
trying to transform popular habits and attitudes. ‘This fact,’ as Lucy Grig rightly
observed, ‘brings about its own not insubstantial methodological challenges, but it
also marks a striking change: for almost the first time in the Mediterranean world
we can see the elite taking a sustained interest in the activities of the non-elite.’19
There is no need, therefore, to exaggerate the distortions of the (late) ancient
literate sources. As Carlo Ginzburg put it in a similar context, ‘The fact that a
source is not “objective” (for that matter, neither is an inventory) does not mean
that it is useless. . . . [E]ven meagre, scattered, and obscure documentation can be
put to good use.’20 A hostile account can still furnish precious testimony about a
crowd in revolt, its targets and its forms of action, and when this testimony is con-
fronted with other sources of various origins and genres, we can identify patterns
that cannot be attributed to the descriptive tradition of the objectionable habits of
the ‘mob.’ Moreover, we can discern the very process of distortion involved in
the construction of these kinds of sources and then turn them upside down.21 The
dialogical nature of some kinds of texts also means that we are able to identify
‘the marks of the communicative processes in which they are engaged.’22 This is
especially the case of the sermons of bishops like Augustine, which have been
 The crowd in late antiquity 257
suggestively called ‘dialogues with the crowd.’23 Submitting these texts to the
practice of ‘symptomatic reading’ or ‘reading against the grain,’ we can recover
the traces of the opinions, the arguments and even the voices of the members of
the multitude the preacher addresses.

Definitions, preconditions and frameworks

My point, however, is that to select and approach our sources we need previ-
ously to set out our agenda and establish some basic definitions and frameworks.
Despite the tendency of our sources to use the same terms to describe three differ-
ent groups, namely the urban population, the demos of entitled plebeians and the
crowd, this latter collective was never the exact microcosm of the whole popula-
tion, nor was it restricted in all circumstances to the adult male citizens.24 A crowd
can better be defined as ‘a changeable coalition composed of different categories
. . . whose frontiers could vary according to the successive conjunctures that crys-
talized it.’25 Since the pioneering work of Georges Lefebvre in the 1930s, however,
generations of historians and sociologists have also emphasised that a crowd—any
crowd—in the sense of a group of people capable of acting collectively, is never
the result of the ephemeral aggregation of atomised individuals. On the contrary,
its very existence presumes a prior culture, shared experiences and social bonds.26
Already in his masterful Great Fear, Lefebvre drew attention to the need of ‘a
deeper contextualization of popular life, a profounder understanding of the sub-
merged history of the common people of which riots were but one manifestation.’27
Consequently, to understand the processes of crowd formation in late antiquity, we
need to start by taking fully into account the formative experiences in the life of
the urban populace, the networks that joined urban subaltern social groups and the
culture that shaped their actions. Hence, it is necessary to study (1) the levels and
changing composition of urban populations in the different regions and localities
under study, (2) the economic activities and living conditions of the urban subal-
tern social groups, (3) their connections and various relations with urban leaders
or holders of power and wealth, (4) the daily habits and associations that, indepen-
dently of such vertical relations, enabled the formation of subaltern networks and
communities, and (5) the institutional and non-institutional roles of ‘the people’
(however defined) in local cultural, religious and political life (in ceremonies,
festivities, elections, decision-making processes), which offered occasions, refer-
ences and models for various forms of crowd action.
Levels of urban population are certainly an important factor in any analysis of
collective action, although not in the sense it was usually conceived. There is little
doubt, for instance, that the mobilisation of a crowd was easier in the most popu-
lous cities of the Mediterranean than in small towns. As Richard Alston observed,
a ‘crowd consisting of 10 per cent of adult males in a city of about 20,000 was
probably around 500, whereas 500 men in Alexandria was probably less than
0.5 per cent of the male population.’28 This, however, does not allow us to see
violence as a natural consequence of living in crowded cities, like ‘filth, disease,
fire and earthquake.’29 There is also no direct correlation between immigration,
258 Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira
poverty, underemployment and violence, as it used to be thought. In a classic state-
ment of this position, Évelyne Patlagean postulated that, from the fourth through
the seventh centuries, an unprecedented immigration of the destitute from the
countryside to the cities of the Roman East would have resulted in massive under-
employment, unprecedented impoverishment and increasing urban violence.30
Now it is clear that mobility between the countryside and the towns was constant
at all times.31 Nor is a static view of the Roman economy sustainable in the light
of recent archaeological research. The regions that witnessed an urban population
growth from the fourth to the sixth centuries, notably Egypt, the Near East and
Asia Minor, were precisely those regions that witnessed at the same time a real
economic boom.32
Of course, the general prosperity of a region does not mean that the major-
ity of its urban population was never economically in trouble. Quite the reverse:
the greater the importance of the manufacturing and trading sector in a city, the
greater the sensitivity of its population to economic changes and the vagaries of the
market.33 From the fourth to sixth centuries, the majority of city-dwellers, at least
where dense populations remained important, continued to be engaged in the urban
economy of production, distribution and services, rather than in the cultivation of
the surrounding fields or as domestic employees of the great houses.34 The truly
destitute, homeless and often starving, who were certainly numerous in the biggest
cities, remained a minority in the total urban population.35 It is true that levels of
intensive, specialised production and exchange—and, therefore, the possibilities
of urban employment—varied greatly across Europe and the Mediterranean.36 But
there is little doubt that the main manpower for riots in late antique cities was pro-
vided by men and (eventually) women actively and permanently engaged in this
urban economy, rather than by outsiders or the truly destitute.37
The occasional insights offered by our sources on the composition of urban
crowds in the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries always point to the presence of arti-
sans, shopkeepers and petty traders, if not of individuals of a better sort, and even
the unskilled wage labourers involved seem to have had some stake in their com-
munity. Thus, the pauperes and the plebs infima who, according to the historian
Ammianus Marcellinus, put on fire the house of the prefect of Rome Lampadius in
365 turn out to be shopkeepers who protested against the unjust requisition of iron,
lead and bronze determined by the prefect.38 Likewise, the lynching of an imperial
official accused of systematic extortions in the North African port of Hippo (Bône/
Annaba, Algeria) in 412, which we know through one of Augustine’s sermons,
resulted from the alliance between merchants practising maritime commerce and
the pauperes. Once again, these ‘poor men,’ on close inspection, turn out to be
artisans and shopkeepers who were at the port to purchase their raw materials or
products for resale.39 This is to be expected. Protests and riots, in all historical peri-
ods, always depend on existing community structures and goals to occur, which
means also that the poorest, most marginalised sectors of the population can rarely
mount collective action.40
What is beyond doubt is that the vast majority of the urban population, despite
its differences, remained in an unmistakable subaltern condition in relation to the
 The crowd in late antiquity 259
landowning aristocracies. In late Roman society, quite as much as in previous cen-
turies, wealth was inextricably linked to privilege and to power, and, throughout
the empire, the patterns of landowning continued to structure local politics.41 Yet
an ambiguity that had for centuries marked the relations between the local notables
and the urban populace became more apparent from the fourth century onwards:
the contradiction between how aristocrats extracted and accumulated their wealth
and how they justified their domination.42 As major landowners in their regions, the
senators of Rome and the local notables elsewhere owed much of their income to
the selling of the products of their estates to captive urban markets. This naturally
means that the majority of the urban population was not only dependent on its
own rulers for the supply of staple food but also vulnerable to the elite practices
of hoarding and speculation.43 Some aristocratic landowners also had overarch-
ing interests in trade and manufacture, even if they distanced themselves publicly
from these activities. This is evident not only in the cases of business run by their
agents (slaves, freedmen or clients) but also in the ways they managed to extract
profits even from the activities of independent artisans and shopkeepers, either by
making loans or by constructing and renting to them shops and workshops.44 At
the same time, however, urban notables had traditionally justified their domination
by projecting a very different image. Since the Hellenistic period, local elites had
justified the oligarchic regime set in place in their cities by showing their concern
for the common good, distributing benefits, such as handouts, public buildings
and games, that only the wealthy could provide to the community.45 Yet, from the
beginning of the fourth century, the increasing centralisation of the imperial power
and the expansion of the bureaucratic function encouraged many provincial aristo-
crats to transfer their ambitions towards the imperial service. Local elites became
more fragmented, while new leaders, such as the Christian bishops, competed for
the support of the populace.46 As I have argued elsewhere, these transformations
had important consequences because they made urban rulers more vulnerable to
challenges from below.47 In fact, while the fragmentation of the elites exposed
the weak points of local power, the fact that many magnates ‘now felt that they
no longer needed to cut a figure by showing love for their own city’48 made the
traditional justifications for domination more difficult to maintain.
For many historians, however, the rise of a more arrogant elite empowered by
its connections with the imperial administration and the supposed deterioration of
the condition of hoi polloi in late antiquity would only have resulted in the expan-
sion of the ties of clientship and in the increasing difficulty for the majority of the
urban population to assert its rights.49 Consequently, even when they rioted, so it
is argued, the populace would inevitably be ‘subservient to, and directed by, elite
interests.’50 The main problem with this view is that it supposes that subordinates
are unable to develop their own horizontal ties of solidarity and social interactions
outside the control of social superiors and are, therefore, incapable of resisting or,
at least, negotiating the terms of their domination. Here lies the importance of the
investigation of the daily habits and associations that joined urban subalterns. As I
have shown in my book and in other contributions, based mainly on the rich North
African evidence, there is no indication in the archaeological record that most
260 Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira
craftsmen and shopkeepers had to live and work under the direct control of their
social superiors.51 On the contrary, there are numerous references in the textual
sources to the many occasions in which the common people could gather together
in the streets, taverns, shops and places of entertainment to hear and discuss the
latest rumours and news, read or hear the reading of a text, chant their chansons
and mutualise their sentiments and opinions.52 As Kostas Vlassopoulos observed
in his contribution to this volume, even if not exclusively subaltern, the substantial
subaltern membership in these networks and communities was what made pos-
sible the identification of common interests, the sharing of experiences, stories and
values, and the practical mastery of forms of collective expression and deliberation
that were essential for any form of autonomous crowd action.53
Another common assumption in the scholarship was to attribute the riotous
behaviour of crowds in the later Roman Empire to the absence or the decline
of institutional forms of political participation.54 This view is now difficult to
maintain, and this for several reasons. Firstly, riots in the ancient world occurred
whether people were regularly consulted or not. As Gottesman showed in this
volume, riots were a feature even of democratic Athens. Secondly, even in the
late Roman Empire, the collectivity of citizens still had a role to play in the public
polity, in municipal elections and decision-making processes, at least until the
first half of the fifth century.55 As Carlos Machado recently showed for the case of
Italy through a careful study of the epigraphic documentation, the members of the
populus, the plebs, the city regions or the collegia still voted and awarded honours
according to their own objectives and their own political priorities, playing a role
parallel to that held by the town councils and the magistrates.56
One important change in the forms of popular political participation, however,
was the prevalence of expressions of popular will by acclamation (the rhythmic
shouting of slogans), in either formal or informal occasion.57 Viewed as an expres-
sion of unanimity and divine inspiration, acclamations were increasingly valued
as a source of authority for both secular and ecclesiastical leaders. Constantine
(emperor from 306 to 337) and his successors further encouraged this develop-
ment with their authorisation to the local populations to send the emperor a copy
of the acclamations they have issued for or against a governor, thus according to
the verbatim recording of these opinions an administrative value.58 Another change
was that, in a context of increasing fragmentation of the elite and continuous dis-
putes between rival religious groups, urban leaders came to look more and more
towards sheer numbers as a barometer of their social power and religious success.59
In the long run, these changes will tend to efface the distinction between citizen
and city-dweller. But the immediate consequence, as Charlotte Roueché pointed
out, was that ‘public gatherings for the purpose of entertainment or of ceremony
were endowed with a new importance.’60
Taking into account all these occasions, institutional and non-institutional, in
which ‘the people’ (however defined) were invited to occupy the public space
as representatives of the community, is crucial because, as several scholars have
noted, ‘crowds frequently operated under conventions that were implicitly sanc-
tioned by authority.’61 Historians of medieval and early modern Europe have also
 The crowd in late antiquity 261
shown that ceremonies and festivities not only offered the occasion for the expres-
sion of popular discontent but also shaped popular political activity. While Eman-
uel Le Roy Ladurie famously showed in his Carnival in Romans how a festive
revelry could be turned into protest, Peter Burke and others observed that rituals of
popular justice in early modern Europe adopted numerous features of Carnival.62
Although it might be argued that the evidence for the Greco-Roman antiquity is not
as unequivocal as in the late medieval and early modern periods, there are various
indications that ancient urban lower classes also used festive rituals and symbols
to give voice to their political discontent, not only during ceremonies, festivities,
theatre shows and games but also when rioting outside these contexts.63 In late
antiquity, the frequent participation of crowds in festivities and official events held
at theatres, circuses, streets and churches enabled ordinary people to express their
discontent based on the principles and conventions learned on these occasions,
sometimes even mimicking or mocking official rituals and processions.64
This brings us to the last and most decisive questions of our inquiry: how, why
and when did the common people engage in a contentious action in the period
under study? Three features of collective action should guide this investigation:
the repertoires of contention, which enable the collective expression of discontent
according to learned modes of action; the cultural frameworks, which justify and
give meaning to collective action; and the political opportunities and threats, which
open windows for contentious politics. I have spoken extensively about this in a
recent article published on the pages of Past & Present,65 and I do not intend to
repeat myself here except to underline the contributions of this approach to an
understanding of ancient crowds from below. Taking into account the repertoire
of contention—that is, the ‘whole set of means [a group] has for making claims
of different types on different individuals’66—is a way to observe the options that
the common people had, even in the absence of any guidance, to coordinate their
actions and express their discontent. Analysing the shared stories or inherited
understandings through which people define their situation as unjust or immoral
or mark themselves off from their opponents is a way to discover what inspired
the lower-class participants in late antique protests and riots to engage in these
claim-making processes, even when mobilised by a bishop or a member of the
elite. Finally, paying attention to the ‘political opportunities and threats’67 is a way
to explore not only the wider changes that increased or lessened the collective
capacity of lower-class groups to resist control or even challenge those in power,
as we have already seen earlier, but also how in specific occasions ordinary people,
by perceiving opportunities, managed to achieve their own goals.

A case study: the riot of AD 354 in Antioch

Let me now exemplify how these methods and approaches can be concretely
applied through a case study. My purpose here is to examine one of the most
memorable episodes of popular violence in the fourth century by placing it in the
broader context of popular life and the political dynamics of a major Mediter-
ranean urban centre. I am referring to the lynching of Theophilus, the governor
262 Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira
of Syria, and the burning down of the house of a leading notable during a food
shortage in 354 at Antioch. The events are reported by the historian Ammianus
Marcellinus (330–395) and the rhetor Libanius (314–393), two Antiochenes born
to wealthy families who, certainly in the case of the latter and probably in the case
of the former, had been eyewitnesses.
Antioch-on-the-Orontes (Antakya, modern Turkey) was one of the largest and
most densely populated cities of the Eastern Empire. For the time of John Chryso-
stom (Christian priest in the city between 386 and 393), estimations for the total
Antiochene population, including children, slaves and people living in the suburbs,
have varied between 200,000 and 500,000.68 Situated 17 km from the sea and
extending from the banks and an island on the Orontes River to the foothills of
Mount Silpios, Antioch was well located at the intersection of ancient and impor-
tant trade routes and in the middle of a fertile and well-watered landscape.69 Former
capital of the Seleucid royal power, the city remained under the Roman Empire as
an important political, cultural and religious centre. In the fourth century, Antioch
was the capital of the province of Syria, administered by a consular governor, as
well as of the Diocese of the East, administered by the comes Orientis (the ‘Count
of the East’). Given its strategic proximity with the Persian (Sassanian) Empire, the
city also became on several occasions a seat of emperors, as was the case in 354.
The upper class of Antioch was decidedly urban. Unlike their equivalents in
other regions, such as the Gaul of Sidonius Apollinaris, they did not usually retire
to their estates during the months of summer but only to the fashionable suburban
villas of Daphne.70 This also helps to explain why their urban mansions became
at the same time a symbol of power and an easy target of protests. As major land-
owners, however, their wealth ‘was grounded in the economic systems at work in
Antioch’s hinterland.’71 As the surveys of the archaeological remains of the entire
Amuq Valley suggest, the exploitation of this territory of plains and hills was
based on the production not only of cereals for supplying the urban market but
also ‘of olive oil for distant markets as well as for the consumption of cities, above
all Antioch.’72 This is not to say that the Antiochene notables were uninterested
in the profits that they could extract, directly or indirectly, from urban trade and
manufacture—far from it! In a passage of his satirical essay Misopogon, Emperor
Julian blamed some of the town councillors of Antioch for resisting his attempts
to lower prices of basic foodstuffs not to lose their profits in their double condition
of landowners and ‘shopkeepers,’ that is to say, of proprietors of shops run by their
agents or rented to independent traders.73
The dependency on the economic power of these aristocrats and the precarity
of life of most Antiochene artisans, shopkeepers and hired workers are confirmed
by the writings of Libanius and Chrysostom.74 With the exception of the fabri-
censes (craftspeople working in the imperial factories), who formed a privileged
group, the working population as a whole had to submit to numerous abuses.75
Living under the constant threat of impoverishment and aware of their reliance on
the large landowners for the supply of the city with basic foodstuffs, they could
well have agreed with the saying that Libanius attributed to an artisan in explain-
ing how even free persons could be enslaved by the circumstances: ‘the fear of
 The crowd in late antiquity 263
starvation is our master; it makes us worry night and day, threatening us with the
direst death if we are idle.’76 Due to the lack of good archaeological data, we are
almost completely ignorant about the tissu urbain of Antioch, but it seems that
small and independent units of work had prevailed. As Wolfgang Liebeschuetz
observed, even the imperial factories established in the city ‘appear to have been
associations of individual craftsmen.’77 What is clear is that horizontal forms of
cooperation were not unusual among this productive sector: John Chrysostom
noticed, for instance, that even artisans working in different trades within the same
row of shops contributed to a common fund to pay their rents.78 It was in these
conditions that a popular culture of discussions could take root. Libanius noted
that the Antiochene ergasteria (shops serving simultaneously as workshops) were
common centres of social gossip, while Ammianus even portrayed Gallus Caesar
wandering in disguise among the taverns and crossroads of Antioch to find out
what the common people actually thought of him.79 The reaction of governors on
the first rumours that spread through these channels in times of shortage clearly
shows that the Antiochene authorities were well aware of the risk that informal
conversations could lead to more serious protests and uprisings. Thus, in 383, Gov-
ernor Philagrios ordered the scourging of bakers in Antioch after hearing rumours
that he was being accused of having been bought so as not to prevent prices from
rising.80
The crisis that amounted to the murder of Theophilus and the burning down
of the house of the notable Eubulus in 354 was, indeed, only one in a series of
confrontations between the Antiochene populace and the town councillors about
the food supply of the city during the lifetimes of Libanius and Ammianus.81 In all
cases, popular indignation was aroused not by hunger per se but by the perception
that the elite, abandoning their moral obligation to guarantee the supply of the
market, did not hesitate to take advantage of the situation of dependence, which
was the plight of the majority of the urban population.82 Sometimes, this indigna-
tion was expressed in what Thompson defined as a ‘theatre of threat and sedition’:
a set of ritualised acts calculated to frighten the elite.83 Such forms of expression
could take place during or after spectacles, games and festivities and were inevi-
tably shaped by the atmosphere of festive revelry.84 Thus, during the feast of the
Kalends of January of 384, after the chariot race, a mocking parade of young men
gathered in front of the house of a leading notable held responsible for the food
shortages of the previous year. Torches in hand, they called upon him ‘to disgorge
all that he had unjustly consumed.’85
Why, then, in 354 did the urban populace decide to seek redress for their griev-
ances through the much more confrontational methods of lynching and arson? The
reason must be sought in the political context. According to Ammianus, the main
person responsible for the fate of the governor Theophilus was Gallus Caesar (ruler
of the eastern provinces of the Empire from 351 to 354). The co-emperor was then
staying in the city during his preparations for a campaign against the Persians.
At the first signs of the food crisis, Gallus tried to force the general lowering of
prices. Then, facing the resistance of the leading members of the town council of
Antioch, he ordered their imprisonment and execution, but he finally spared their
264 Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira
lives after the intervention of the Count of the East.86 Later, when Gallus was
already preparing to leave with his army for Hierapolis, the populace of Antioch
(Antiochensis plebs) appealed to him to save them from imminent famine. How-
ever, as Ammianus pointed out, he did not bring in supplies from the surrounding
provinces. Instead:

To the multitude, which was in fear of the direst necessity, he delivered up

Theophilus, consular governor of Syria, who was standing nearby, constantly
repeating that no one could lack food if the governor did not wish it. These
words increased the audacity of the most vile populace (vulgi sordidioris
audaciam), and when the lack of provisions became more acute, driven by
hunger and rage, they set fire to the pretentious house of a certain Eubulus, a
man of distinction among his own people; then, as if the governor had been
delivered into their hands by an imperial edict, they assailed him with kicks
and blows, and trampling him under foot when he was half-dead, with awful
mutilation tore him to pieces. After his wretched death each man saw in the
end of one person an image of his own peril and dreaded a fate like that which
he had just witnessed.87

Identifying himself with the town councillors of Antioch, Ammianus had no sym-
pathy for Gallus, and he had nothing but contempt for the crowd. He was, therefore,
deliberately silent about any responsibility of the local aristocracy in manipulating
the prices to their advantage, preferring to emphasise the consequences of Gal-
lus’s tyrannical character.88 Now there is little doubt that the crisis was multifacto-
rial: poor harvests were a probable reason; the need to supply the army stationed
around Antioch was another.89 By dissociating himself from his governor, it is
therefore clear that Gallus was ignoring his own responsibility in this crisis. But
in this sense, he was doing nothing other than following the policy adopted by
all the emperors since Constantine, who had invited the provincial populations
to expose their grievances about their governors.90 The long-term effect of this
imperial ‘populism’ would be precisely to encourage the populace to take the law
into their own hands. Not surprisingly, a significant number among the reported
targets of lynching in late antiquity are of imperial officers accused of the same
crimes punishable by late antique law with a death penalty.91 Anyway, in 354, it
was the governor’s apparent inaction, when the shortages reached their peak, that
led the crowd to believe that Theophilus was an accomplice to the leaders of the
city council held responsible for the rising prices, among whom they undoubtedly
counted Eubulus. Gallus’s saying only increased the popular perception of the
opportunity and urgency of their action by encouraging them to act as surrogates
for the imperial authority.
The crowd in this episode expressed discontent following a well-known pattern
of protest during the food crisis: first by means of a verbal protest (undoubtedly
in the hippodrome) and only later through an open assault on the authorities.92
The very sequence of lynching followed a recurrent model, which almost always
involved the quartering of the victim at the hands of the crowd, dragging the
 The crowd in late antiquity 265
corpse through the streets and disposing of the remains in the sea or a river, or
in the sewage system.93 The festive, satirical and mocking character of this form
of popular action is confirmed for the events of 354 by Libanius’s memories. In
his Autobiography, first written in 374 and then revised throughout his life, he
recalled how on this day his cousin ‘came puffing and panting up the stairs and
reported that the governor was murdered, his body was being dragged along as
sport for the murderers.’ He also remembered that ‘Eubulus and his son had fled
before their brickbats to seek refuge somewhere on the hilltops, while the mob,
cheated of their persons, vented its wrath against his house.’94 This description,
together with another speech where Libanius recollected that Theophilus had been
attacked at the hippodrome during the chariot races, also enables us to illuminate
the topography of the rebellion.95 While the hippodrome was situated at the island
on the Orontes, the house attacked was undoubtedly on the left-bank district, not
far from the mountain that served as refuge for Eubulus and his son.96 This sug-
gests a parade with the body of Theophilus through a large part of the city and a
trajectory of the rioters similar to that we saw in the case of the Kalends of January
of 384: from the hippodrome to the houses of the elite.
Ammianus’s account does not enable us any glimpse into the composition of
the crowd. His vocabulary only betrays his contempt for the urban lower classes:
they were the sordidior vulgus (the most vile populace, the lowest classes) and
the plebs promiscua (the contemptible plebs, the rabble).97 Libanius, however,
observed in one of his speeches that the attack on Theophilus at the hippodrome
was led by five metalworkers.98 There is a strong possibility that these metalwork-
ers were employees of the state arms factories of Antioch.99 John Matthews has
even suggested that, if this was the case, they could have combined ‘the interests
of imperial establishment and populace against the alliance of consularis and the
leading member of the city council whose mansion was burned down.’100 This
view, however, is still too top-down. There is no reason to suppose that working
for the state would necessarily have engaged these employees into the defence of
the imperial establishment. The leadership of the rebellion assumed by these met-
alworkers can rather be explained by their self-confidence as a privileged group.
Gregory of Nazianzus, for instance, observed about ‘the men from the small-arms
factory’ of Cappadocian Caesarea that they were ‘specially hot-tempered and dar-
ing, because of the liberty allowed them.’101
A similar caution must guide our interpretation of a final precision offered by
Ammianus. According to the historian, in the inquiry ordered, after the fall of
Gallus, by Constantius II (emperor from 337 to 361), some ‘rich men’ (divites)
escaped the consequences of their involvement in the murder of Theophilus, while
certain ‘poor men’ (pauperes, probably Libanius’s metalworkers) were executed.102
What role these divites played in the incident is not clear, but there is no reason
to see in them the planners of the whole rebellion who, ‘[m]anovrando un piccolo
gruppo di facinorosi, . . . guidarono la folla a trovare un facile capro espiatorio.’103
There is little doubt that these rich people were supporters of Gallus among the
Antiochene upper class, but they may have been accused either of not having come
to the aid of the governor or of having contributed to the dissemination of the
266 Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira
accusations which had aroused the ire of the plebs. Yet even if this last option was
the case, these divites helped awaken a power they could not control. It is for this
reason that, as Ammianus observed, the assassination of Theophilus remained in
the minds of every member of the elite in Antioch as ‘the image of his own peril.’
And, indeed, it is as a warning to his pairs that Libanius evoked this episode for
decades after the events.
In sum, the riot of 354 was not an irrational reaction to hunger nor even a
response to an order spread through the chains of patronage. What animated and
united the participants in this collective action was rather their indignation with
the attitudes of the authorities and the elite that seemed to abandon their respon-
sibilities in supplying the urban market. The imperial incentives and the splits
between the Antiochene upper class only offered the occasion for a crowd action
and encouraged the populace to choose more confrontational methods to redress
their grievances. But once triggered, this manifestation of popular power would
remain present in the ‘theatre of threat and sedition’ of the crowd and in the mem-
ory of the local elite and governors for decades to come.

Conclusions
Ammianus wrote in a well-known passage of his Histories that non omnia narratu
sunt digna quae per squalidas transiere personas (‘not everything that happened
among persons of the lowest classes is worth to be narrated’).104 Walter Benjamin,
in his Theses on the Concept of History stated a diametrically opposed concep-
tion: ‘nothing that has ever happened should be regarded as lost to history.’ For
the radical philosopher, not doing this means leaving the oppressed classes of past
and present in ‘the danger of becoming a tool of the ruling classes.’ As Benjamin
observed, since ‘all rulers are the heirs of prior conquerors,’ empathising with the
ruling classes of the past ‘invariably benefits the current rulers.’ The only way of
‘fanning the spark of hope in the past’ is to break away with conformism, rescuing
dimensions of history (the tradition of the oppressed) that have been toned down,
obliterated or denied by the winners in the past and the historians identified with
them in the present.105
This conformism has marked many of the studies on urban crowds in the ancient
world. The reason for this is not only that modern scholars have tended to identify
with ancient elites, even though, as Lucy Grig rightly pointed out, much of the his-
tory of the (late) ancient city has actually been written from an unashamedly elitist
viewpoint.106 This conformism is also due to the influence of the predominant socio-
logical models, which have been more preoccupied with explaining the function-
ing of societies than their transformations.107 As Boaventura de Souza Santos has
observed, unlike the emerging ‘epistemologies of the South,’ for which the topics
of social struggle and resistance are essential, Eurocentric social theory, Marxism
excluded, has always treated these themes ‘as a mere subtopic of the social question,
the privileged focus being on social order rather than on social conflict.’108
Most approaches to ancient crowds have indeed ranged from breakdown theories
to an emphasis on elite manipulation.109 In all cases we are dealing with approaches
 The crowd in late antiquity 267
that, even if not explicitly conservative, focus on social order as a given fact,
which therefore contributes to denying, obliterating or toning down the political
character of the actions of the subaltern social groups. While the image of a society
entangled in patronage ties is founded on the supposition that the subordinated
accepted without resistance the superiority and guidance of dominant groups, the
emphasis on collective violence as a result of the breakdown of society is founded
on the assumption that stability characterises societies, rather than conflict, which
is not far from the supposition that the cause of violence is an insufficient or inept
imposition of control, of ‘law and order,’ a central statement (it should be said) in
the discourse of the contemporary right.110 The current revival of psychological
analyses of crowd behaviour is not essentially different. Although its proponents
stress the agency of ancient crowds, their emphasis on the irrational behaviour and
the sense of empowerment of individuals in a crowd to explain why a collective
action turns violent is fundamentally disabling for any attempt to reconstruct the
logic and aims of participants in a contentious action.111 Nor is the emphasis on
the presence of discontent a viable alternative to the effacement of subaltern social
groups as historical agents. Grievance theories, after all, always treat collective
action as merely reactive, ignoring that, as Leslie Dossey put it, ‘What causes
social tensions is often not the appearance of new grievances, but rather a new
ability to articulate grievances in ways those in power find difficult to ignore.’112
Like other contributors to this book and in line with some major interventions
in the field of crowd studies, I have always started from a different position, based
on two theoretical principles: firstly, that ‘conflict is perennial in social life, though
the forms and strength of the accompanying violence vary’;113 and secondly, ‘that
to every oppression corresponds a reaction, that the capacity for intervention
is always present, dynamei, in potential.’114 Of course, I am not pretending that
crowds in history were always independent and, still less, radical. My emphasis
on subaltern agency rather means that, despite all historical and social constraints,
‘ordinary people have at least some command on their lives and social interac-
tion.’115 For this very reason, any attempt to understand the phenomenon of popular
disturbance should pay attention to the logic and aims pursued by the participants
in a crowd, and this even when they were mobilised from above.
As James Scott pointed out, far from being a sign of some political handicap,
swift, direct forms of crowd action can rather be seen as ‘a popular tactical wisdom
developed in conscious response to the political constraints realistically faced.’116
The absence of any formal organisation and the impromptu nature of crowd actions
are often a response to situations in which permanent political opposition is impos-
sible. Their apparent spontaneity, however, conceals other forms of coordination
achieved through the informal networks of community that join members of sub-
ordinate groups. Over time, the repeated forms of action became part and parcel of
a popular culture, forming a repertoire of contention from which people construct
their strategies of action. As we have seen in the episode of 354, the occasion for a
collective action and the choice of a more or less confrontational strategy depend
on the perception of political opportunities or of threats to the interests, values
or the very survival of the group. But as this same episode also illustrates, the
268 Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira
mobilisation process relies ultimately on a collective understanding of the situation
by the participants in a crowd, an understanding that is often based on inherited
conceptions, such as the proper social, economic or religious practices in society,
or shared stories, such as the past offences of the group’s enemies.
Seen in this light, the study of ancient crowds also has much to say to our own
world. The 2007–2008 economic crisis and the worsening austerity of twenty-first-
century neoliberalism have made labour relations more flexible, thus undermining
the permanent workers’ organisations. As a result, we see the emergence of what
anthropologist Rosana Pinheiro-Machado has called ‘ambiguous uprisings,’ pro-
tests whose political content is not univocal and which more often than not take the
form of the riot (barricades, attacks on buildings, car fires). As a characteristic of a
world of precarious workers, these uprisings occur without any centralised or stra-
tegic planning, ‘expressing a feeling of revolt against something concretely expe-
rienced in a daily life marked by difficulties.’117 With their eyes on the different
political world of the twentieth century, a world of solid trade unions, non-violent
strikes and demonstrations, and clear political alternatives, few commentators have
been concerned with understanding these recent revolts in their own terms and in
their own contradiction and complexity. In this context, returning to a world in
which the prevailing modes of collective action were still the riots or other eva-
nescent forms of direct action, such as was the Roman Empire, and understanding
them in the terms of the common people’s own experiences and aspirations can
help us to reflect on this determinant characteristic of our time.
More generally speaking, exploring how subordinate groups in history managed
to achieve their own goals and understand their reasons for acting even when they
were mobilised by religious or political leaders is a way to oppose some of the
contemporary assumptions that have undermined democracy and limited possibili-
ties of more liberating social transformations. In the last decades, throughout the
world, insecure politicians, on both the left and the right, have preferred to blame
‘populism’ and the wrong choices of the electorate, rather than to revivify real
and active democracy nationally and internationally. In their opinion, the people
are only right when they ratify the guidelines already adopted by the ‘decision
makers.’118 In my own country, some sectors of the left have resigned themselves
to explaining their defeats in the same condescending way: the Brazilian people
do not know how to vote because they are ignorant and manipulated. Even after
the historic defeat of 2018, which brought to Brazil’s presidency one of the most
authoritarian, far-right leaders in the whole democratic world, the institutional left
did not fail to blame the popular classes for the political obscurantism to which
we succumbed, deliberately ignoring the reasons for the conservative co-optation
of the people.119 The warning that Brazilian rapper Mano Brown gave to leftist
militants in a memorable speech during that fateful presidential campaign brings
us to the central aspect that I have sustained throughout this chapter:

What kills us is blindness. . . . Whoever failed to understand the people, is

lost. . . . You have to understand what the people want. If you don’t know, go
back to the base and try to understand.120
 The crowd in late antiquity 269
Notes
* I owe thanks to Ben Brown, Cyril Courrier, Éric Fournier, Pedro Paulo A. Funari, Lucy
Grig, Brent D. Shaw and John Weisweiler. I also have to mention the institutional sup-
port of the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), University of São Paulo and
École française de Rome. I am however the only responsible for the ideas expressed
in this chapter.
1 Thompson 1971, 76; Purcell 1999, 157.
2 Liebeschuetz 2001, 249–83; Whitby 2006.
3 MacMullen 1990; McLynn 1992; Lizzi Testa 1995.
4 Gregory 1984. On the problems of drawing strict distinctions between different types
of disturbance, see Greatrex 2020, 392.
5 I have discussed this historiography in Magalhães de Oliveira 2020a, 2020b.
6 Forsdyke 2012.
7 Courrier 2014.
8 Galvão-Sobrinho 2006; Dossey 2010; Shaw 2011.
9 Bell 2013.
10 Van Nuffelen 2007, 2018.
11 Sághy 2020, 117–8. For the trends in recent research on urban violence in late antiq-
uity, see Greatrex 2020, 390–4.
12 Slootjes 2015; Janniard and Heller, personal communication.
13 Gottesman, this volume. For an introduction to the historiography of the field of crowd
studies, see Rogers 1998, 1–17.
14 Magalhães de Oliveira 2004, 2006, 2012, 2014, 2017a, 2018, 2020a, 2020b.
15 Purcell 1999, 135.
16 Hobsbawm 1997, 205.
17 Rudé 1964, 195–214.
18 Courrier and Tran, this volume; Courrier 2014, 489–97.
19 Grig 2014. On the privileged conditions offered by the late antique documentation for
the study of the urban plebs, see also Giardina 1981.
20 Ginzburg 1992, xvii.
21 Magalhães de Oliveira 2020a, 153–6; Gottesman, this volume.
22 Rebillard 2012, 6.
23 Mandouze 1968, 591–663; Brown 2012, 339–58.
24 On these three ways of perceiving a city populace, see Purcell 1999, 135.
25 Anderson 1980, 42. See also Gregory 1984, 138: ‘The crowd, in fact, is likely to have
been a continuously shifting entity whose composition changed with changing issues.’
26 Lefebvre 1932; Thompson 1971; Davis 1973; Tilly 2001.
27 Rogers 1998, 5, discussing Lefebvre 1932.
28 Alston 2002, 234.
29 Gregory 1984, 138.
30 Patlagean 1977, 156–235.
31 Horden and Purcell 2000, 383–91. See also Bowes, this volume, for the archaeological
indications of the constant mobility and change among the rural non-elites.
32 Freu 2012, 389–91.
33 Alston 2002, 234.
34 Bagnall 1993, 78–92. On the importance of the textile production in the urban econ-
omy of late antiquity, see Carrié 2004.
35 According to John Chrysostom, Homily 66 on Matthew 3 (PG 58, 630), ‘the poor who
have nothing at all’ amounted to no more than 10 percent of the total population of
forth-century Antioch. See Brown 2002, 14. On the living conditions of the homeless
in the Roman cities, see Rosillo-López, this volume.
36 Wickham 2005, 693–824; Ward-Perkins 2008.
37 Brown 2002, 53.
270 Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira
38 Amm. Marc. 27.3.8–10.
39 August. Serm. 302, with Magalhães de Oliveira 2004 and 2012, 275–97.
40 Tilly 2001, 191.
41 Wickham 2005, 155–68; Brown 2012, 3–30.
42 Brown 1992, 78–89.
43 Cracco Ruggini 1961, 112–52; Garnsey 1988, 257–68.
44 Liebeschuetz 1972, 61; Giardina 1981; Wilson 2002, 260–1.
45 On this aristocratic ideology of gift-giving, see Veyne 1976, to be read in conjunction
with Andreau, Schmitt and Schnapp 1978. See also Zuiderhoek 2007.
46 Brown 1992, 71–117.
47 Magalhães de Oliveira 2020b, 13–5.
48 Brown 2012, 65.
49 Bang 2007, 22.
50 Van Nuffelen 2018, 236, discussing this model. For some examples of this view, see
Lewin 1995; Lizzi Testa 1995; Cracco Ruggini 1999. The postulate of extensive elite
manipulation behind any form of crowd action was also advanced for earlier periods
of Roman history, for example, by Vanderbroeck 1987 and Kröss 2017. Contra, see
Courrier 2014, 497–546.
51 Magalhães de Oliveira 2012, 43–123.
52 Magalhães de Oliveira 2012, 125–55 and 2017b.
53 Vlassopoulos, this volume.
54 MacMullen 1980, 25: ‘shouting and yelling crowds of partisans in large cities, and
occasional outbursts of mass arson, vandalism and lynching, are perhaps better taken
as signs that the masses were really excluded from choice of all sorts.’ See also Lieb-
eschuetz 2001, 214.
55 Magalhães de Oliveira 2018.
56 Machado 2018.
57 Roueché 1984; Harries 2003.
58 Cod. Theod. 1.16.6–7; 8.5.32.
59 Lim 1999.
60 Roueché 1984, 198.
61 Rogers 1998, 13.
62 Le Roy Ladurie 1979; Burke 1994, 192.
63 Zuiderhoek 2007, 207–11.
64 Van Nuffelen 2007.
65 Magalhães de Oliveira 2020b.
66 Tilly 1986, 2.
67 On the concept, see Tarrow 2011, ch. 8.
68 Downey 1958.
69 Lassus 1976; De Giorgi 2007.
70 Liebeschuetz 1972, 51.
71 De Giorgi 2007, 297.
72 Horden and Purcell 2000, 274.
73 Julian. Mis. 350 a–b; Liebeschuetz 1972, 61; Giardina 1981, 135–6.
74 Evidence summarised in Liebeschuetz 1972, 40–100.
75 Liebeschuetz 1972, 58.
76 Lib. Or. 20.36–7.
77 Liebeschuetz 1972, 57.
78 J. Chrys. Homiliae ad populum Antiochenum 16.6 (PG 49, 172).
79 Lib. Or. 8.4; 31.25; 48.13; Amm. Marc. 28.4.29.
80 Lib. Or. 1.207–8.
81 Lib. Or. 1.103, 205–9, 230; 15.23.
82 Erdkamp 2002.
83 Thompson 1993, 67.
 The crowd in late antiquity 271
84 On the festive satire in Antioch, see Gleason 1986.
85 Lib. Or. 1.230 (ed. Foerster, vol. 1, 184; Loeb trans. Norman, vol. 1, 287–9).
86 Amm. Marc. 14.7.2.
87 Amm. Marc. 14.7.5–6 (Loeb trans. Rolfe, vol. 1, 54–7, revised).
88 On Ammianus’ account of Gallus, see Thompson 1943 and Blockley 1972. On the
conflicting relations between some fourth-century emperors and the municipal elite
of Antioch, see Carvalho and Silva 2017.
89 Matthews 1989, 406; Stathakopoulos 2004, 187–8.
90 Carrié 1998, 28–29.
91 For the targets of lynching in late antiquity, see Magalhães de Oliveira 2014, 2020b,
47–8 (list of cases). For the ‘populist’ features of late antique emperors, see Weisweiler
2017; Cooper 2019.
92 Kneppe 1979, 22–25, 43; Stathakopoulos 2004, 70–72; Filipczak 2017, 328.
93 Magalhães de Oliveira 2020b, 27–28.
94 Lib. Or. 1.103 (Loeb trans. Norman, 169).
95 Attack at the hippodrome: Lib. Or. 19.47.
96 Filipczak 2017, 327–32.
97 Amm. Marc. 14.7.6; 15.13.2.
98 Lib. Or. 19.47.
99 Liebeschuetz 1972, 58. The fabricae clibanaria, scutaria et armorum of Antioch are
mentioned in Not. Dig. Or. 9.21–2.
100 Matthews 1989, 408.
101 Gregory of Nazianzen, Or. 43.57, trans. C. G. Browne and J. E. Swallow.
102 Amm. Marc. 15.13.2.
103 Lizzi 1995, 125.
104 Amm. Marc. 28.1.15.
105 Benjamin 2006, 390–1 (quotations respectively from Theses III, VI and VII). See
Löwy 2005, 34–57.
106 Grig 2013, 564–5.
107 Funari 2001, 14–5.
108 Santos 2018, 63.
109 To give just a few examples: for Haas (1997, 12), acts of popular violence always
‘resulted from some specific breakdown in the normal structures of urban conflict reso-
lution.’ Brown (1995, 49) also sees acts of iconoclasm and arson as ‘departures from
a more orderly norm.’ For Gregory (1984, 155), the main reason for the frequency of
urban violence in late antiquity was the absence of a police force in the cities and the
unwillingness of the state to provoke a massive bloodshed by sending the troops. For
Lizzi Testa (1995, 140), by contrast, riots of the urban plebs and disputes involving the
Christian people ‘non erano niente altro che un indice della capacità di controllo della
popolazione da parte dei potenti, che si spartivano il governo dello spazio urbano.’
Alston (2002, 232–5) also emphasises political manipulation as a cause of ethnic and
religious violence.
110 For critiques of such views along these same lines, see Purcell 1999, 157–8; Funari
2001.
111 For the recent attempts to apply theories of collective psychology to ancient crowds,
see Van Nuffelen 2018, 236; Dijkstra 2020.
112 Dossey 2010, 5.
113 Davis 1973, 90.
114 Garraffoni and Funari 2020, 285.
115 Funari 2018.
116 Scott 1990, 151.
117 Pinheiro-Machado 2018. Clover 2016 has also called our time the Age of Riots. For a
similar logic of action, but now in a more revolutionary context, see Ryzova 2020, a
fascinating account of one of the street battles during the Arab Spring in Cairo.
272 Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira
118 Robert 2003.
119 Pinheiro-Machado 2019, 125–31.
120 Apud Pinheiro-Machado 2019, 129–30.

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Epilogue
Agency, past, present and future
Pedro Paulo A. Funari

Agency is a key concept in contemporary social theory and social life.1 The ques-
tion of independent thinking and action or constraints beyond individual or social
control is present in different guises since the inception of written documents, at
least several thousand years ago.2 Agency (‫בל‬, heart, in the Hebrew Bible) and
constraints have always been challenges.3 Augustine’s De Libero Arbitrio (AD
395) discusses the subject, and free will and predestination4 are both taken into
account. It is only in the past few centuries when philosophy and later scholarly
disciplines considered it beyond a deist frame. Individual or collective agency has
been considered in relation not to God but to society as a whole. It is symptomatic
that those supporting the status quo ante and the powerful are often those stat-
ing that people do not respect social norms and need to be controlled by force.
Disrespect for norms was taken as defiance to the divine order, to be subdued by
physical imposition. Later on, respect for norms was displaced from the divine to
society, and violence was justified in order to keep law and order.
On the other hand, those more open to inequalities were those struck by the
acceptance of norms, even if such norms are contrary to the well-being of people
themselves. This was the case of the ancient speaking truth to power.5 This was
later the concern expressed by several people, as Étienne de la Boétie in his Dis-
cours de la servitude volontaire ou le Contr’un (Discourse on Voluntary Servitude,
or the Anti-Dictator, ca. 1550) referring to consent. Karl Marx explained compli-
ance this way:

Die Gedanken der herrschenden Klasse sind in jeder Epoche die herrschen-
den Gedanken, d. h. die Klasse, welche die herrschende materielle Macht der
Gesellschaft ist, ist zugleich ihre herrschende geistige Macht. Die Klasse,
die die Mittel zur materiellen Produktion zu ihrer Verfügung hat, disponiert
damit zugleich über die Mittel zur geistigen Produktion, so daß ihr damit
zugleich im Durchschnitt die Gedanken derer, denen die Mittel zur geisti-
gen Produktion abgehen, unterworfen sind. Die herrschenden Gedanken sind
weiter Nichts als der ideelle Ausdruck der herrschenden materiellen Verhält-
nisse, die als Gedanken gefaßten herrschenden materiellen Verhältnisse; also
der Verhältnisse, die eben die eine Klasse zur herrschenden machen, also die
Gedanken ihrer Herrschaft.6
 Epilogue 279
The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the
class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling
intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its
disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production,
so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of
mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the
ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material
relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one
class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance.7

The key word here is unterwerfen, subdue, submit, subordinate, literally put or
bend down. It appears as the subject in the given translation, but the subject is
more ambiguous in English, as it may refer to a part of a sentence that contains
the person or thing performing the action (or verb) in a sentence. In British usage,
subject means citizen or national.8 There is no such ambiguity in the original Ger-
man term. Marx thus explained submission, as did several other scholars critical
of inequalities—Gramsci, Foucault or Bourdieu—trying to understand how those
imbalances are kept and accepted. Paradoxically, those defending the status quo
ante seem to stress disrespect, while the social order critics stress compliance.
However, this paradox is only apparent or partial, for all agree on the ubiquity of
resistance, rebellion or other forms of social conflict. The defenders of the status
quo ante propose or accept the use of violence to enforce imposed norms, while
challengers of the social order defend active or passive resistance, individual and
collective.
Agency, resistance and dissent are key in contemporary social movements9 and
surface all over the volume Ancient History from Below. Constraints are not absent
or underestimated, but still the main focus rests on agency, not subjection. Exclu-
sion, injustice, domination, inequality, distress, exploitation and manipulation do
not preclude agency, solidarity, reciprocity, marginality, diversity, riot, rebellion
and counterconspiracy, among others. Agency is also taken beyond the binary
poles, dominant/dominated, powerful/powerless or any other, as city/country,
nomad/settled10 and many more. Gender, race, ethnicity,11 among others, contribute
to understand agency much beyond former simple dichotomies.12 People were and
are indeed exploited, excluded and considered as subaltern but at the same time as
powerful and capable of acting and thinking for themselves as individuals and as
collectives. This is time and again stated in this volume, in the introduction, as the
editors review the historical trajectory of history from below and people agency,
within and without scholarship. Bertold Brecht and Marc Bloch are put in an unex-
pected interaction, as are Walter Benjamin and Lucien Febvre. The relationship
between constraint and agency is given by a second key concept: the relationship
of past, present and future.
Let us start by quoting Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce: ‘ogni vera sto-
ria è storia contemporanea’ (every true history is contemporary history). The
English translation does not bear the amphibology of storia, history and story at
the same time, as both refer to invention, in the original Latin meaning: finding
280 Pedro Paulo A. Funari
and inventing (invenio). Croce emphasises this inevitable disputable character of
telling a story/history, its subjectivity. Truth is thus also related to standpoints,
so that a true story/history is related to the subject, or author, not to diaphanous
objective facts. It must be in tune with the times, ‘bringing together a stretch or
piece of time,’ contemporaneous. The contributors often refer to the historicity of
history writing about the subject, paying attention to how modern historiography
shaped the understanding of the ancient evidence using and abusing of modern
prejudices and engagement with power inside and outside. Elite male viewpoints
prevailed for some time, particularly from the start of historical scholarship in
the nineteenth century. This was a break from pre-modern perceptions, such as
the agency of women as debated in the querelles des femmes, the woman ques-
tion, from the 1400s to the 1700s, the agency of ordinary people in their culture
expressions13 or the bottom-up theological concepts, such as the purgatory.14 Mod-
ern historiography adopted an array of concepts to naturalise the oppression of
women, the blacks, the poor, the colonials, the mob, among others. To dismantle
those tenets, an etymological (sensu Agamben) or archaeological (sensu Foucault)
approach explores the semantics of ancient and modern concepts, such as ancient
penia, egens, pauperes, barbaroi, perioikoi, metics, stasis, on the one hand, and
agency, the subaltern, reciprocity, human rights, ethnicity, the post-colonial condi-
tion,15 social movements, neoliberal concepts, occupy movement, among others,
are studied and considered in tandem.
Interest, inter + est, being in-between present and past, present and future, is
another key for the whole volume. Often mentioned in the volume, Walter Benja-
min states in the 14th thesis on history:

Ursprung ist das Ziel.

Karl Kraus, Worte in Versen I
Die Geschichte ist Gegenstand einer Konstruktion, deren Ort nicht die
homogene und leere Zeit sondern die von Jetztzeit erfüllte bildet. So
war für Robespierre das antike Rom eine mit Jetztzeit geladene Vergan-
genheit, die er aus dem Kontinuum der Geschichte heraussprengte. Die
französische Revolution verstand
sich als ein wiedergekehrtes Rom.16

‘Origin is the goal [Ziel: terminus]’—Karl Kraus, Worte in Versen I [Words

in Verse].
History is the object of a construction whose place is formed not in homog-
enous and empty time but in that which is fulfilled by the here and now
(Jetztzeit). For Robespierre, Roman antiquity was a past charged with the
here and now, which he exploded out of the continuum of history. The
French Revolution thought of itself as a latter-day Rome.17

The here and now surfaces in references to postcolonialism, social movements,

neoliberal tenets, Arab Spring18 and Occupy movements, human rights, all present-
day concerns mentioned by the contributors looking for a different future. It may
seem unexpected that a volume on ancient history turns to those issues, but it is in fact
 Epilogue 281
symptomatic of the increasing important role of an informed and critical relationship
with the past. François Hartog follows a series of scholars stressing the key role of
the classics, lato sensu, for the bringing up of a critical citizenry, able to transcend the
narrow concern with the present, so strong in general, and in formal education.19 The
role of Hebrew,20 Greek and Latin culture and history is at the heart of such authors as
Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Michael Hardt, Tony
Negri, Giorgio Agamben, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler—none of them a historian nor
classicist, all of them most influential in today’s understanding of today’s challenges.
Focusing only on contemporary culture, confined to national or even subnational
borders, leads to citizens devoid of means of coping with such subjects as climate
change, overcoming a literal understanding of religious texts or even accepting the
most unsubstantiated claims, such as that the earth is flat! While in the United States
it is usual to learn history and geography ‘from coast to coast,’ in Africa and Asia
ancient history and Western history in general are part of formal education syllabus.
To challenge the misuse of the past for the exclusion of others, the only way is to
engage with a scholarly and well-informed knowledge.21 The invention of national
myths excluding diversity is grounded on ignorance of the sutlelties of social life.22
The push against the humanities and social sciences and the so-called emphasis on
practical bringing up is top of the agenda of neoliberal, reactionary governments.
Social agency depends on knowledge of tradition to transcend it.23
This volume is part of the struggle for history, ancient history and culture, as a
way of claiming justice and speaking truth to power, of challenging presentism,
sensu Hartog, the overarching dominance of the present over the past and over a
different future. Contributors come from different quarters, including the Global
South and other peripheral or semi-peripheral areas, including also females and
non-native English speakers. Those ‘from below’ or subaltern include now not
only the workers or enslaved, adult males, but also the indigenous, anticolonial,
antiracist, feminist and anti-war, beyond the original working class of E. P. Thomp-
son.24 This move has been compounded by the inclusion of scholars of differ-
ent backgrounds and social engagement, particularly from the edge, dealing with
such subjects as women,25 freedpersons,26 LGBTQ+ or Queer,27 the infamous,28
children,29 indigenous,30 among others ‘from below.’ Intersectionality may be a
useful concept here.31 History writing ‘from below’ at large, including all kinds
of subjection, must be at the root of the whole ‘history from below’ project. Even
if there is no forgetting of barbarism, sensu Benjamin, there is also a stress on
solidarity, individual and collective agency, conviviality, respect for diversity, in
the past, in the present and aiming at a different future.32 This is no mean task, but
this is a path worth taking.

Notes
* I owe thanks to Marina Cavicchioli, Lourdes Feitosa, Renata Senna Garraffoni, Clau-
diomar dos Reis Gonçalves (in memoriam), Ray Laurence, Julio Cesar Magalhães de
Oliveira, Luciano Pinto, Renato Pinto, Filipe Noé Silva and Glaydson José da Silva. I
mention the institutional support of the Brazilian National Science Foundation (CNPq),
São Paulo State Science Foundation (FAPESP) and the University of Campinas (Uni-
camp). The responsibility for the ideas is my own and I am solely responsible.
282 Pedro Paulo A. Funari
1 Bleiker 2003.
2 Chin 2019.
3 Birch 1994; Steward 2016.
4 Peterson 2017.
5 Boland and Clogher 2017.
6 Marx and Engels 1959 [1845/6], 46.
7 Marx and Engels 1970, 64. Translation by C. J. Arthur.
8 Koessler 1946.
9 Karatzogianni and Schandorf 2016.
10 Magalhães de Oliveira 2020, 33–54.
11 Harding, Pérez-Bustos and Fernández-Pinto 2019.
12 Góes 2014.
13 Bakhtine 1970.
14 Gurevich 1990; Funari 1994.
15 Bhabha 1996.
16 Benjamin 1980, 701.
17 www.marxists.org/reference/archive/benjamin/1940/history.htm. Translation by Dennis
Redmond.
18 Boeddeling 2020.
19 Hartog 2020 following Grafton, Most and Settis 2010.
20 Levinas 1995; Steward 2016.
21 Vianna and Stetsenko 2019.
22 Silva 2008; Funari 2011; Sand 2012.
23 Wight 2004.
24 Batzell et al. 2015.
25 Cavicchioli 2008; Bélo 2020.
26 Gonçalves 2000.
27 Pinto and Pinto 2013.
28 Feitosa and Garraffoni 2010.
29 Garraffoni and Laurence 2013.
30 Silva 2020.
31 Raman 2020.
32 Ombrosi 2008.

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Index

Note: Page numbers in italics indicate a figure and page numbers in bold indicate a table
on the corresponding page.

Abbott, Frank F. 178–179 Appian 36, 108

Abu-Lughod, Lila 17
Acilius Glabrio, Manius 241
Acropolis 223
Agamben, Giorgio 281
agency: of crowds 255; definition
14–15; history of the concept 278–279;
subaltern 15, 35, 39–40, 42, 46–47, 267;
Thompson on 14, 68; see also subaltern
agriculture 122–123; agrobusiness 123;
agronomic literature 124; agronomic
rotation practices 133–134; cereal and
pastoral crops 122, 132, 133; crop
rotational schemes 144; elite villas
or large estates 122–145; field drain
132; filling the gap between elite and
smallholder agriculture 125–130; grape
production 122; investment in animals
145; labour force 13, 49; labourers
41; managing resources 130–139;
production and profit maximisation
124; self-sufficiency 145; smallholder
agriculture of majority 122–145; sowing
123–125; threshing 139–144; triticum
aestivum 136; Villa excavations 143
Aix-en-Provence 56, 61, 67
Ammianus Marcellinus 112, 258,
262–264, 266
ancient historiography 35, 216–219, 237, 247
Anderson, Greg 218, 230
Androtion 83, 95n16
Annales School 4
antichretic loans 87
Antioch 255, 262; artisans 262; bakers
263; populace of 264; riot of AD 354
261–266; town council 263–264
Appius Herdonius 239
Apronius Raptor, C. (nauta and wine
merchant in Lyon) 60
Arab Spring 7, 280
Areopagus 206
aristocracies 37–39, 219–220, 243,
259, 264
Aristophanes 225–226
Aristotle 158–159, 166–167, 199; Politics
159, 168, 187, 199–200
Arles 56–58, 60–61, 71n15; Arlesian
working world 69; freedman 57;
funerary stele of Chia and her patroness
66; funerary stele of M. Iulius Felix 67;
inhabitants of 69; naviculari 63; social
fabric 64
Artena, siege of 242
Asamphamiōtai 161
asebeia 206
Athenaeus 160
Athenian(s) 44, 210; citizens, civic
rights 195–196; democracy 201–202;
democratic revolution 218; metoikia
196, 202, 207–208; penētes 88; slavery
195, 198; slave system 196; slave-
society approach 196; social imaginaire
44; society 88; socioeconomical
citizenship 201
Augustine of Hippo 107, 256–257, 278;
De Libero Arbitrio 278
Avilius Hyacinthus, Q. (freedman from
Nîmes) 57
Baird, Jennifer A. 179
Barbarian 169–170
286 Index
barbaroi perioikoi (Aristotle) 159, 166 citizenship 167; Athenian 201; civic
barley 136 ideology and 197; Greek 167; Roman 9,
Battle of Cunaxa 162 242–245, 247
beggars 105, 107, 112–113 civil wars 35
Bell, Peter 254 classes 12–14, 37–39, 43; class in itself
‘below’, concept 12–13, 55–57; see also 40; concept of 40; formation 40;
history from below Marxist theory of 40; social 39; socio-
Benjamin, Walter 2, 20n5–6, 266, economic 39
279–281 Claudius (emperor) 109
Berlin, Ira 39 Cleisthenes 218–219
Béziers 63 Cleomenes 226
Bhabha, Homi 281 clivus Aricinus (Rome) 114
Black and civil rights movements 175 cognomina 68
Black Guard youth 114 Coin-Longeray, Sandrine 108
Bloch, Marc 4, 279 collaborative strategies 238
boatmen 63 collective actions 239, 254, 258
Boiotoi 228 collegia/corpora (associations) 59, 64, 260
bonus agricola 124 Colle Massari (Cinigiano) 132
Boudon, Jacques-Olivier 7 colonial subaltern groups 159
Bowes, Kim 10, 18 colonies 63; Greek 160; of veterans in
Brazilian historiography 7 southern Gaul 63
Brazilian labour movement 7 Columella 127, 130–132, 137; De re
Brecht, Bertolt 1–2, 20n1, 38, 279 rustica 128, 128
British colonialism 159 Communist Party Historians’ Group 4
British Cultural Studies 5 community formation 41–42; see also
British Marxist historians 4–5, 9 subaltern communities in antiquity
Brown, Mano 268 conflictual relationship 37
Brown, Wendy 281 conspiracy of herdsmen (pastorum
Brunaux, Jean-Louis 92 coniuratio) 241
Brunt, Peter 9 contrary strategies 238
Burke, Peter 261 Contursi, Paola 166, 170n1
businessmen 60 Cornelius Lentulus, L. 241
Butler, Judith 281 Cornelius Scipio, P. 247n10
Cornelius Zosimus, Q. 69
Caldelli, Maria Letizia 55 Corpus Lysiacum 208
Callistratus 160 Courrier, Cyril 18, 254, 256
Camillus, Lucius Furius 242 crafts 56
Cannadine, David 45 Croce, Benedetto 279–280
Carrié, Jean-Michel 107 crowd 55; autonomous crowd actions
Case Nuove (Cinigiano), 138 260; definitions, preconditions and
Cato the Elder 127 frameworks 257–261; depictions by the
centonarii (textile professionals) 57, 60, 63 elite 55, 259; dialogues with the crowd
Cerutti, Simona 12, 66, 68, 217, 231, 257; moral economy 5–6; riot of AD
232n6, 234n58 354 in Antioch 261–266; sources for
children 43, 87–88, 91–93, 113, 116n47, the study 254–257; studies 255, 267;
167, 281 see also riots
Christian communities 43 Cultural Studies movement 5
Christianity 10, 254 culture, defined 5
Christian social language 46 cunnum lingere 186
Christol, Michel 60
Chrysostom, John 262–263, 269n35 Davis, Natalie Zemon 6
citizen community 44 debt bondage 87; children sell, Thracians
citizen-polis ideology 200 93; interpretations 90; poverty and
 Index 287
86–88; and slavery 89–91; and slave Febvre, Lucien 4, 279
trade 91–93; see also slaves/slavery Feitosa, Lourdes M. G. C. 179, 185
debt-bondsman/debt-bondswoman 89 females: pawns 96n67; slaves 92
debt slavery: in Athens 83; defined 91; feminism 175
women and children 92; see also Finley, Moses I. 8–9, 22n63, 124
slaves/slavery floods 113
decolonisation 176 fodder/legumes 133
Decumani Narbonenses 62, 62 food shortages 106, 262–263
Deleuze, Gilles 281 formula provinciae (Pliny the Elder) 62
Democracy (Athens) 201; restoration of Forsdyke, Sara 254
403 196, 202–205, 207–208, 210, 217 Foucault, Michel 7, 66, 175, 279, 281
demos 95n19, 256 Foxhall, Lin 87
dendrophori 64 freeborn 56, 68–69
destitute (ptōchoí) 106 Freedman, Paul 46
destitution 105–106, 112 freedmen 56–57, 62–63, 67–68, 70n2, 208,
Dilthey, Wilhelm 16 237, 239, 242–243, 281
Dionysius (Arlesian slave) 61 freedwomen 66
Dionysius of Halicarnassus 239, 248n17, Freeman, Edward A. 159
249n44, 249n51, 249n55, 250n55 French historiography 4
displacement 113 French Revolution 39–40
distress, language of 46 Frontonius Euporus, M. (navicularius in
domination 38–39, 42 Arles) p 57, 60
Dossey, Leslie 254 Funari, Pedro Paulo A. 178–179
douleia 89 function 45–46
Dover, Kenneth 208 function/work, language of 45
Durkheimian models 8
Gaius (jurist) 108
economic (in)equality 82 Galvão-Sobrinho, Carlos 254
eisphorai 208 Gallus, Caesar, brother of Julian 109–110,
elites 35–38, 41, 43, 45–47; aristocratic 263–264; economic policy 110
norms 69; municipal 57; Roman society Garraffoni, Renata Senna 19, 186
56; of subaltern people 57–58 gay liberation 175
emmer (triticum diococcum) wheats 136 gender 7, 175–177
enchytrismos 166 Geographic Information Software
Erathosthenes 204 124, 131
ethnicity 19, 42, 56, 157–170; incolae 56; Giddens, Antony 14
indigenous populations 56, 63, 157, Ginzburg, Carlo 6, 256
159, 162, 168; pagani 69; peregrini 69; Gladiatorial propaganda 183,
see also Hellenicity 185–187
Eubulus (Antiochene notable) 263–265 Gortyn Code 88
eviction 111 Gottesman, Alex 216
exclusion, language of 45–46 Gracchan crisis 36, 39
experience 15–16, 255–257, 268 graffiti 176–187
exploitation, language of 47 Gramsci, Antonio 6, 13–14, 157–158
grape production 122
fabri 64 Greco, Emanuele 166
fabri tignuarii 59, 63 Greek citizenship/urbanity 167
Fadius Secundus Musa, Sex. (magistrate Greek colonies 160
of Narbonne) 58, 58 Greek communities 36
family, language of 45 Gregory of Nazianzus 265
Farge, Arlette 107 Grievance theories 267
farro 136 Grig, Lucy 11, 56, 177, 256, 266s
fascism 4 Guha, Ranajit 6, 13
288 Index
Haas, Christopher 271n109 Isocrates 171n39
Habinek, Thomas 239 Israel 93
Hadrian (emperor) 170 Italian Marxist historians 8
Hailwood, Mark 12, 56 Iulius Felix, M. (freedman in Arles) 66
Hall, Jonathan 167 Iuventius Celsus, Publius (jurist) 107
Hall, Stuart 5
Hardt, Michael 281 Johns, Catherine 175
heartier durum (triticum durum) wheat 136 Johnson, Walter 15, 238, 248n13
hektemoroi 95n16 Joly, Fábio Duarte 20
Hellenicity 157–170 Julian (emperor), Misopogon 262
Hellenisation 11 Justinianic Code 43
Herdonius, Appius (rebellious Sabine in
Rome) 239–240, 248n17, 248n21 kakoi 95n19
Herodotus 92, 159, 163, 220–221, 229; Kallias’ prostates 206
Histories 89; on Cleomenes 221; Kamen, Deborah 208
grammatical structure and vocabulary kapeloi 85–86
224; interpretation of reforms 221 katakeimenoi 88
Hesiod 46; Ways and Means 46; Works and Kiernan, Victor 4
Days 87 klarōtai 161
hierarchies 68; language of 45; multiplicity Klazomenai 163
of 65; parallel 65; Romans 56, 60, 64 Kleijwegt, Marc 244
Hill, Christopher 4 Kohronen, Kalle 182
Hilton, Rodney 4 Koortbojian, Michael 246
Hingley, Richard 176–177 Kyllyrioi in Syracuse 159, 166
history from below 1–2, 56; ancient history Kyrtatas, Dimitris 47
8–12; in Brazil 7; context 3–20; defined
4–5; objective 5 labour 41–42, 46–47, 57–62, 64–65, 68,
Hitchcock, Tim 107 262–263
Hobsbawm, Eric 4, 9, 55, 144–145, 231, Ladurie, Emmanuel Le Roy 6, 261
255 Lampadius (prefect of Rome) 258
Hoggart, Richard 5, 12–13 landowners 87
hoi polloi 256, 259 languages: of distress 46; of domination
homelessness 104–106, 108, 112–113, 46–47; epigraphy as a discourse 56–57,
defined 105; sanitary conditions 106 60–65, 71n21; invisibility 61, 63, 68, 167;
homeless people 104, 107–108, 111–114, linguistic turn 7, 43, 65–66; of reciprocity
115n11 45; of the social 43–47; wealth 45
homoeroticism 179 Latini Iuniani 243
homosexuality 175 Laurence, Ray 186, 281
housing 104; market 104, 111; Lavan, Myles 238
planning 109; poverty 104 law of Tarentum 109
human capabilities 15 Lefebvre, Georges 4, 257
Hunt, Peter 238 Lenski, Noel 195
hybridisation 160 lex Aelia Sentia 243
lex Fufia Caninia 243
iconoclasm 271n109 lex Iunia 243
Indian Subalternists 6 LGBTQ+ 2, 281
inequality, language of 46 Libanius 262–263, 265–266
injustice, language of 46 libertas 238
Inthatius Vitalis, M. (nauta and wine Liebeschuetz, Wolfgang 263
merchant in Lyon) 59, 60 Linebaugh, Peter 7
Isaac, Benjamin 160 liturgies 208
isegoria 202 Livy 237–247; aristocratic conspiracy
Ismenus felattor (male prostitute?) 186 244; loyalty ( fides) of slaves 238; mass
 Index 289
enslavement 247n6; slave agency, multitudo 55, 256
treatment of 238; slave conspiracies municipal code of Malaca 109
239; Vindicius 244, 249n49 murders: of Androcles and Phrynichus
Lo Cascio, Elio 106 217; of Ephialtes 217; of Theophilus
lupanar (Pompeii) 186 263
lynching of Theophilus 261–262 mythical Theseus 218
Lyon 56–60, 59, 68, 71n17
Lysias 81, 196, 198, 203–206, 208; Narbonne 56–58, 58, 61, 62, 63–65, 68,
Against Erathosthenes 203–205; For 71n17
Kallias 205–206; Against Philon natural slavery 158
204–205 nautae 59–60
navicularius 58, 60, 68
Machado, Carlos 260 negotiatores 58, 60
MacMullen, Ramsey 180 negotiator frumentarius 60
Magalhães de Oliveira, Julio Cesar 20, 42, Negri, Tony 281
64, 71n14 Nicolet, Claude 9, 55, 70n8, 71n10
magistri pagi (southern Gaul) 62 Nîmes 56–57, 63–64, 71n17, 71n26
Malkin, Irad 161, 170n1 Nissinen, Laura 182, 187
Mallon, Florencia 6, 94 North Africa 7, 42, 255, 258–259
manumission 239, 242–244, 249n44, Nousek, Debra 239
249n46 Nuffelen, Peter Van 254
Mariandynoi 160
Marx, Karl 14–15, 278 Occupy Movement 7, 255, 280
Marxism 5, 8, 14, 22n57, 40, 266 ochlos 216, 256
masculinities 19, 175–176; and excluded Ogilvie, Robert Maxwell 241–242
memories 183–187; graffiti on oikountes 199
Pompeian walls 177–183; painted oil and wine production 123
inscriptions 180; power and marginality Old Oligarch 201–202, 208, 210
176–177 Olitius Apollonius, P. (navicularius and
master–slave relationships 127, negotiator in Narbonne) 58, 60
205–207, 237 olive production 122
Mayer, Emanuel 55 oppression, language of 45, 47
meat consumption 134 ordines (Nicolet) 55
Mediterranean migration 160 Osborne, Robin 157
Me mnesikakein (amnesty agreement of
403) 203–204, 217 Paestum 164
Menander, Heros 89 Pagán, Victoria 245
mental universe 6 pagani pagi Lucreti (Arles) 69
Mesopotamia 93 Panegyrikos 169
metabolē 219 panegyris for Apollo 97n80
metanarrative 35, 39–40, 47 Paquius, Pardalas, G. (patron of corpora in
Metoikia (Athens) 196, 202, 207–209; Arles) 60, 63
better democrats than citizens 202; and Patlagean, Évelyne 10
exclusions 197; forms of agency 197, pauperes (Caldelli) 55
199; historiography 197; metics and pawnship 87
slaves 197–198, 201–202, 207–210; peasant 122
population 202; slave owners 202–207 peasant rebellions 6, 10, 254
microhistory 6 Pébarthe, Christophe 199
middle class (Mayer) 55 Peiresc, Nicolas-Claude Fabri de 69
Millar, Fergus 12 Peisistratus 222–223
ministri Laribus (Arles) 61 pelatai 95n16
Mommsen, Theodor 123 Peloponnesian War 36
Morales, Fábio Augusto 19 penētes 44, 95n16
290 Index
penichros 83, 95n17
peregrini 69
Peregrinus (Arlesian slave) 61
perioikoi of Greece 169
Petronius Asclepiades, P. (patron of the
lenuncularii in Arles) 63
Phokaia 163
Phrygia 93
Pickering, Michael 16
pig breed 134
Pinheiro-Machado, Rosana 268, 271n117
Piraeus 202–205, 209
Plato 158–159, 166–167; Laws 158–159,
168; Republic 209
plebeian circles 55
plebeian culture 216; see also Thompson,
Edward P.
plebs 55, 70n3, 256, 260; Antiochensis
plebs 264; plebs frumentaria 106;
incondita 55; infima 258; media (Veyne)
55; promiscua 265; tumultuosa 55;
ventosa 55
plēthos 256
ploughing 130
plousioi 44
Plutarch 36, 83–84, 233n27
polarisation 9
Polis (Athens): Aristotle’s definition
197; citizens and inhabitants 199–202;
civic ideology and citizenship 197;
community of citizens 195, 197;
community of inhabitants 200; defined
by allegiance to democracy 205;
historiography 197–198; its others
197–199; slave-owners 207
politeia 199–200
political opportunities 261, 267
Pompeiian wall graffiti 177–183
Ponte di Ferro: burials at 165; loom weight
worn on a necklet 165
Pontike, Herakleia 160
poor ( penestai) 106; attitudes towards 10;
see also poverty (penia)
popinae ( pervigiles popinae) 112
popular culture 5–7, 11–12, 178–179,
231n2, 263, 267
popular politics 260–261
popular violence 271n109
populism 268
populus 55, 256, 260
Port, Andrew 7
port societies 57, 61, 63, 65
Poseidonia 163
Postumius, Lucius 241
poverty ( penia) 81, 105; ancient and
modern conceptualisations 82;
categorisation 84; and debt 84–86; and
debt bondage 86–93; defined 82–84,
104–105; dependency 81–82; and
dependent labour 93–94; historiography
17–18; poor 81–84, 269n35; precarity
81–82; vulnerability 81–82
Primius, Secundianus, M. (nauta and
merchant of fish-sauces in Lyon) 59
professions: professional hierarchies 69;
professional identity 57, 60–61, 65
property speculation 109
Prostates 197, 206, 208
ptōchoi 85
ptōchoi/ptōcheia 83
public financing system 208
publicity stunts 217
Purcell, Nicholas 255
quarters (Rome) 110
Quinctius, Gnaeus (dictator) 245
reciprocity, language of 45
Rediker, Marcus 7
reforms of Cleisthenes 218
religious riots 6
rental market 107–108, 110, 112–114
repertoire of contention 261, 267
residential property (negotiandi causa)
109
resistance 3, 7, 10, 15–16, 238, 246, 279
restibilis 132
Rhodes, Peter J. 197, 202, 219, 223
Rhône 61
Richlin, Amy 175
riot of AD 354 in Antioch 261–266
riots in Athens of 508/7 BC 216–218;
Athenaion Politeia 219; Herodotus 219;
major sources 218–225; minor sources
225–231; stasis 217
Roller, Matthew 249n55
Roman agriculture see agriculture
Romanisation 10–11, 177
Romans: citizenship 9; corpora in southern
Gaul 56; narrative histories 36; sexuality
185; social heritage 55; villas 128
Rome: allies of 238; difficulties of living
in 108–112; monarchy 237, 244, 247n8;
slavery in 237–250
Rosillo-López, Cristina 18
Rostovtzeff, Mikhail 123, 178
Roueché, Charlotte 260
Rudé, George 4, 55, 216, 255–256

Sabbatini Tumolesi, Patricia 183, 185
Said, Edward 281
Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux 61
Sanctius, Marcus, L. (civis Helvetius) 64
Santos, Boaventura de Souza 17, 266
Saône River 59
Saville, John 4
Scheidel, Walter 107
Scott, James C. 267
Selassie, Haile 9
Sempronius Gracchus, Ti. 47, 180,
245–246
Septimani Baeterrenses 62
servants of Compitalia (Arles) 60
servitus 237
Servius Romanus (in Livy) 242
Servius Tullius 250n55
Sestia 241
Settefinestre 124
Seviri Augustales (southern Gaul) 58–59,
61, 68–69, 71n14
Sextani Arelatenses 62
sexual graffiti 19, 186
sexual intercourse 185, 187
sexuality 7, 175, 179, 184–186; see also
gender; masculinities
Sharpe, Jim 8
Shaw, Brent D. 254
slave agency in Livy 237–239; slaves
as conspirators 239–243; slaves as
counterconspirators 243–246
slave-society approach 196
slaves/slavery 7, 37, 39; Aegean-wide
slave trade 91; agency 198, 207,
237–247; apophora (payment to
the master) 197, 202, 209; Athenian
195, 196, 198; Augustan-period 60;
Brazil 7; community 42; conspiracy
(coniuratio servorum) 241, 243; in
court 200; exclusions 207; family
42; in Greece 9–10; historiography
3, 7, 9–10, 15; katakeimenoi 88;
living conditions 9–10; loyalty
237–238, 240, 245, 247n3, 249n49;
manumission 207–210, 239; market
91; metaphor of 238; owning 140;
peculium 60, 243; religion 17;
resistance 10, 238; revolt (servilis
tumultus) 10, 241; Roman economy
and 9; in Rome 9–10, 61, 237–250;
strategies 208; systems 208; in Tacitus
247n1; in Thracia and Phrygia 207;
trades 91; war prisoners as 167, 241;
women and children 92
Index 291
slums 104–105
small farmer 123
social changes 176
social circles 57
social cohesion 68
social crisis 43
social and economic dependency 86
social exclusion 84
social experience 17
social heritage 55
social identity of workers 71n14
social inequalities 93
social languages 45; distress 46;
domination 46–47; exclusion 45–46;
exploitation 47; family 45; function/
work 45; hierarchy 45; inequality
46; injustice 46; oppression 45, 47;
reciprocity 45; solidarity 45
social mobility 20, 110, 244
Socles (Corinthian citizen) 226
Socrates 209
soil and water management 125
solidarity, language of 45
Solon 89–90, 95n19–23; poor 84; reforms
of 39, 83; seisachtheia 83–84
sordidior vulgus 265
southern Gaul, epigraphy of 55–57, 65–69;
extreme visibility of exceptions 57–61;
subaltern peoples 61–65
South Etruria Project 129
Spartans 224
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty 13, 62, 158,
170n2
Stanton, Greg R. 233n25
stasis 20, 204, 217, 222, 224, 230, 232n11,
280
Ste. Croix, G. E. M. de. 10, 22, 38
stoning of Lycidas 217
Storey, Glenn R. 104
Struggle of the Orders 238
Subaediani, fabri (Narbonne) 58;
negotiantes (Arles) 74n98
subaltern 6–7, 9, 11, 13, 56; agency 20,
42; classes 2, 6, 13; communities 35;
in contradistinction 37, 55; defined 13;
experiences 17; groups 3, 11, 13, 17–20,
47; insurgency 6, 11; people 2, 14; role
in politics 12; Romans 60–65; social
category 13; social groups 13, 23n98,
56, 257, 267; voices 14
subaltern communities in antiquity 18,
35, 47; formation of 41–43; history
from below 38–41; languages of social
43–47; methodological issues 35–38
292 Index
subalternity: in ancient world 19; definition turba 55, 256
6, 13–14, 18–19; reformulation of idea 14 Turner, Victor 16
subalternity and ethnicity 157–158; two-agricultures model 139
archaeological record 163–168;
barbaroi perioikoi 168–169; from Ugernum (Beaucaire) 64
below 157; binary structure 168–169; Ulpian 108
and colonisation 158–163; culture 168; Urban Graveyard Effect 106
ethnic identity 169; gender 169; legal urban population 105, 256–259, 263
status 168; politai 168–169 urban poverty 104–114
subaltern masculinities see masculinities urban riots 10
Subaltern Studies Group 6, 13 urban violence 254, 256, 258, 271n109,
Syme, Ronald 237 273
Syria 17, 262, 264 Urbs 55; see also Rome
utricularii (transport professionals) 57, 64
Tacitus 108, 113, 237, 247n1
Tanzer, Helen H. 178–179 Vernant, Jean-Pierre 8
Tarquinius Superbus 243, 250n55 Veyne, Paul 55, 71n10
Tarragoni, Federico 12 Viitanen, Eeva Maria 182, 187
Taylor, Claire 10, 18, 41, 179, 198 villa of Horace at Vacone 138–139
Temple of Liberty 246 villa rustica 128
Testa, Lizzi 271n109 Vindicius (slave) 244, 249n49
Testart, Alain 92 Vitruvius 126; Vitruvius’ villa urbana 128
Thebans, slaughter 228 Vlassopoulos, Kostas 3, 8, 18, 89, 160,
Thébert, Yvon 10 170n7, 198, 201, 207, 210, 246, 260
Theodosian Code 43, 108 voices from below 7
Theophilus (governor of Syria) 261, 263–266 volones 245–246
Theophrastos 86 vulgus 55, 256
thēteia 87
Thirty’s oligarchy (Athens) 203–204, Wallace-Hadrill, Andrew 187
208–209 wealth 37–38, 41, 44–46, 63, 65, 67–69
Thompson, Dorothy 4 Weber, Max 123
Thompson, Edward P. 3–5, 7, 11–12, 16, Weberian models 8
55–56, 66, 68, 216, 254, 263 Williams, Raymond 5, 15, 232n7
Thracians 91–93, 97n90 wine 122
Thracian slaves 92; see also debt slavery women 8, 11, 22n87, 86–87, 92–93, 111,
Thratta (in Aristophanes) 92 113, 162–163, 168–169, 183, 200,
threshing 139–144 244–245, 281; enslaved 9; immigrant
Thucydides 216 200; kapeloi 86; skilled 87; slave 245;
Tiber Valley 131 suppress the voices of 2; Thracians
tituli picti 180 92; upper and upper-middle classes 2;
Toutius, Incitatus (nauta, centonarius vulnerability 93
honoratus and negotiator frumentarius working poor in Rome 110–111
in Lyon) 60 written space 180–181, 184, 186
trades 57–58, 61, 63, 68–69
traders, long distance 58 Xenophon 161–162; Anabasis 161
Trajan 170
Tran, Nicolas 18, 256 Yavetz, Zvi 9, 55
transhumant subsistence strategies 167
Tresques 64 Zeleia 161
Trevizam, Matheus 126 zooarchaeological work 134
triticum aestivum 136 Zuchtriegel, Gabriel 19, 170