Thread by @NevilleMorley

In many respects, starting conference sessions at 08:30 is cruel and unusual punishment, especially as my hotel’s coffee is slightly less caffeinated than ditchwater, but I have now worked out the Göteborg trams well enough to get to a decent cafe beforehand… #ESSHC2023

It might be tempting to stay in the cafe, if not for the fact that the first session is on New Approaches to Ancient Slavery, kicking off with David Lewis' study of the importance of Syrians within data for the origins of enslaved people in classical and esp. Hellenistic Greece.

Interesting distinction - okay, ideal types so more of a spectrum - between slaving and non-slaving zones; Athens as paradigm of latter (no enslavement of citizens!), lots of examples of former. Reflects state formation, or power of demos to protect itself against predation?

Moving on to Myles Lavan on the demography of Roman manumission, and general rejection of Alföldy's belief in almost automatic freedom (there are no old slaves in epigraphy), compared with the Spanish Americas - along with tendency for each scholarly tradition to cite the other.

Problem: current accounts are negative, qualitative not quantitative, vague. Lavan suggests analogy to demography of marriage: 100% of women who live to c.44 will have been married at least once (Roman Egypt), or only 42% of all women ever born married. Was manumission the same?

What we need, Lavan suggests, is a sense of the manumission curve: what proportion of enslaved population was manumitted by age 30, 40 etc. C19 Virginia or Barbados, 10% or fewer even by age 60. Roman Egypt: 45% by 40, 90% before 60?

Finally in this session, Lisa Eberle on woman enslavers in Rome. Less neglected/obscure topic than in case of American South - key examples of enslaved numbers include Melania the Younger - but still not widely discussed. Tendency to downplay Roman women having power over others?

For example, there is quite substantial dossier of examples of women brutalising enslaved people - trope of women being unable to control themselves - which are barely mentioned in standard accounts of violence against the enslaved in Rome.

Nomenclature of freed people includes the former enslaver - C.l., 'freedman of Caius' rather than C.f., 'son of Caius' in freeborn citizen form. Over 3000 examples of use of retrograde 'C' followed by l. to indicate 'freedman/women of Caia'.