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Slavery in Roman and Germanic Society

Slavery continued to be a common condition in the late Roman Empire, and the Germanic tribes were also slave-owning cultures. In both societies, slavery was based not on racial distinctions, but on one’s personal status as free or unfree, which was increasingly regulated by law. How could a person cross the border between slave and free in these two societies, and what larger social values do laws regarding slavery reflect?

If a father, forced by need, shall sell any freeborn child whatsoever, the child cannot remain in perpetual slavery, but if he has made compensation by his slavery, he shall be restored to his freeborn status without the repayment of the purchase price. . . . It is established that children born from the womb of a slave woman are slaves, according to the law. . . . We have subjected the Scyrae, a barbarian nation, to Our power. Therefore We grant to all persons the opportunity to supply their own fields with men of the aforesaid race. . . . If any person should take up a boy or girl child that has been cast out of its home with the knowledge and consent of its father or owner, and if he should rear this child to strength with his own sustenance, he shall have the right to keep the said child under the same status as he wished it to have when he took charge of it, that is, as his child or as a slave, whichever he should prefer. . . . We exhort slaves, that as soon as possible they shall offer themselves for the labors of war, and if they receive their arms as men fit for military service, they shall obtain the reward of freedom. . . . [In the case of deserters] if the slave should surrender such a deserter, he shall be given his freedom.

Liberty is the natural power of doing whatever anyone wishes to do unless he is prevented in some way, by force or by law. Slavery is an institution of the Law of Nations by means of which anyone may subject one man to the control of another, contrary to nature. Slaves are so called for the reason that military commanders were accustomed to sell their captives, and in this manner to preserve them, instead of putting them to death. . . . Slaves are brought under our ownership either by the Civil Law or by that of Nations. This is done by the Civil Law where anyone who is over twenty years of age permits himself to be sold for the sake of sharing in his own price [that is, for debt]. Slaves become our property by the Law of Nations when they are either taken from the enemy, or are born of our female slaves. . . . Where a fugitive slave betakes himself to the arena [as a gladiator], he cannot escape the power of his master by exposing himself to this danger, which is only that of the risk of death; such a slave must, by all means, be restored to his master, either before or after the combat with wild beasts.

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If anyone shall buy another’s slave from the Franks [with whom the Burgundians were at war], let him prove with suitable witnesses how much and what sort of price he paid and when the witnesses have been sworn in, they shall make oath in the following manner, “We saw him pay the price in our presence, and he who purchased the slave did not do so through any fraud or connivance with the enemy.” . . . If anyone wishes to manumit a slave, he may do so by giving him his liberty through a legally competent document; or if anyone wishes to give freedom to a bondservant without a written document, let the manumission thus be conferred with the witness of not less than five or seven native freemen.

In the case of a natural son who is born to another man’s woman slave, if the father purchases him and gives him his freedom by the formal procedure he shall remain free. But if the father does not free him, the natural son shall be a slave to him to whom the mother slave belongs. . . . He who renders false testimony against anyone else, or sets his hand knowingly to a false charter, and this fraud becomes evident, shall pay restitution, half to the king and half to him whose case it is. If the guilty party does not have enough to pay restitution, a public official ought to hand him over as a slave to him who was injured, and he [the offender] shall serve him as a slave. . . . If a man who is prodigal and ruined, or who has sold or dissipated his substance, or for other reasons does not have that with which to pay restitution, commits theft or adultery or a breach of the peace, or injures another man and the restitution for this is twenty solidi or more, then a public representative ought to hand him over as a slave to the man who committed such illegal acts. . . . If a freeman has a man and woman slave, or freedman and freedwoman, who are married, and inspired by hatred of the human race, he has intercourse with that woman whose husband is the slave or with the freedwoman whose husband is the freedman, he has committed adultery and we decree that he shall lose that slave or freedman with whose wife he committed adultery and the woman as well, for it is not pleasing to God that any man should have intercourse with the wife of another.

If a man, through [being found guilty of] an accusation of stealing, forfeits his freedom and gives up his person to his lord, and his kinsmen forsake him, and he knows no one who will make legal amends for him, he shall do such servile labour as may be required and his kinsmen shall have no right to his wergeld [if he is slain].

ANALYZING THE EVIDENCE

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Using the sources above, along with what you have learned in class and in Chapters 5, 6, and 7, write a short essay that analyzes ways in which the boundary between slave and free was established, protected, and traversed in Roman and Germanic society. How could a person cross the border between slave and free in these two societies, and what larger social values do laws regarding slavery reflect? How did the laws regarding slavery differ in Roman and Germanic society, and how were they similar?

Sources: (1) Clyde Pharr, ed., The Theodosian Code (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1952), 3.3.1, 5.6.3, 5.9.1, 7.13.16, 7.18.4; (3) S. P. Scott, trans., The Civil Law (Cincinnati: The Central Trust Company, 1932), vol. 2, p. 228; vol. 4, p. 82; (4) Katherine Fischer Drew, trans., The Burgundian Code (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972), Constitutiones Extravagantes 21.9; (5) Katherine Fischer Drew, trans., The Lombard Laws (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1973), Rothair 156, Luitprand 63, Luitprand 140, Luitprand 152; (6) F. L. Attenborough, Laws of the Earliest English Kings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922), Laws of Edward the Elder 6.