Abstracts
Explore the tabs below to view the abstracts for each paper.
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Eléonore Favier (Université Lumière Lyon II): “Social Hierarchy and Work Hierarchy: Indistinct Status within the Manual Production Workshop. Slaves’ Example.”
The study of slavery and slaves in the world of ancient Greece has been largely developed around the question of their social status. As far as the slaves’ work is concerned, we know that a large number of slaves, a majority of them perhaps, would have worked in the agricultural sector. Others, we imagine would have been mainly assigned to manual production. When we attempt to study the slaves workplaces, we face a distinct lack of existing sources. We have no direct information about the identity or the status of these workers: we are indeed almost exclusively dependent on textual information, either epigraphical or literary. We are aware that the classical Athenian authors, who have provided a very large part of the documentation, would have had a negative view of both slaves, and of manual work. Applying epigraphy to our different written sources allows us to consider a new perspective, albeit incomplete, of the slaves’ position within the workplace. These would have been places in which their social hierarchy may have been different, making way for a new hierarchy, independent from their pre-existing, based on their abilities, their techniques, and the quality of their work. This applicable hierarchical scale would have enabled slaves to be producers, even leaders, and not be solely restricted to repetitive and physical work, as has long been believed.
Giacinto Falco (Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa): “Athenian Bank: A Glowing Example of Labour Specialization”
The Greek term for banker (τραπεζίτης) appears both in the list of occupation terms of classical Attica drawn up by Edward Harris (2002) and in the one compiled by David Lewis (2020), who, playing the role of advocatus diaboli, trims down Harris’s list to demonstrate that, notwithstanding, the amount of individual specialized occupations in classical Athens was still quite impressive. Banking was certainly an occupation requiring remarkable skills; accordingly, bankers were beyond doubt specialized people. However, we know that some τραπεζῖται also engaged in activities different from those linked to the τράπεζα (e.g. Phormion was also a shipowner: Dem. 45.64). It is thus legitimate to wonder whether banking was practised full-time and whether this activity really fitted into the extensive horizontal economic specialization which characterized ancient Greece, as compellingly shown by scholars such as Harris, Ober, Lewis.
My paper aims to demonstrate that the Athenian bank, far from constituting an exception in the panorama of ancient labour specialization, perfectly fits within it. A scrutiny of the extant sources (e.g. Dem. 36; [Dem.] 49 and 52; Isocr. 17) will highlight three important points: a) the other activities bankers engaged in were fully compatible with banking or at times even complementary to it; b) within the same bank there was a clear division of labour, to the extent that every employee had his own task, thus creating a sort of ‘vertical integration’; c) several bankers even had some or all of the features that Harris (2020) has shown to be typical of professions as opposed to mere occupations.Christopher Motz (University of Cincinnati): “A New Understanding of the Division of Specialized Labor in the Roman Building Industry”
A recent trend in the study of ancient crafts has been to employ an emic approach to defining them. Roman craftspeople characterized themselves in terms of their specialized knowledge and the activities they engaged in; thus, we should define their crafts and trades in the same way. Such a framework lends itself to interdisciplinary studies of chaînes opératoires, which emphasize the materials, tools, processes, knowledge, and actors involved in a set of related tasks.
Following this model, I examine both textual and material markers of specialization in order to contribute to conversations about the division of labor and knowledge in antiquity, particularly in the context of collaborative, multi-craft processes. I first review epigraphic and literary evidence to discern the nature of specialization within the Roman building industry, as defined by practitioners’ activities and knowledge. Nearly all architects and many redemptores (contractors) were generalists who worked on a variety of structures and across many areas of a project. Some redemptores and all skilled building craftsmen, however, specialized in one of two areas: parts of buildings and types of materials. Next, I use archaeological evidence to reconstruct a heretofore unidentified specialty that aligns with these textually attested categories. By analyzing the remains of vats, cisterns, and other waterproof features from across the Roman world, I identify shared techniques in their design and construction. Some basic techniques may have been widely known, but I argue that the complete body of knowledge belonged to a specialization in building hydraulic features, now attested only archaeologically.Alex Cushing (Independent Scholar): “The Selection and Recruitment of Freed Agricultural Procuratores in Roman Italy”
The Romans had a sophisticated hierarchy of agricultural managers who oversaw larger private estates (Carlsen, 1995; Schäfer, 1998). The private procurator, however, remains a mysterious figure in estate administration. Although there are a number of references in literary sources to the position, there is no consensus among the agronomists about the precise remit of the procurator and epigraphic attestations of the title are rare (Schäfer, 1998; 2001).
This paper will aim to explain some of these evidentiary problems and to suggest a recruitment source and rationale for procuratores. Based largely on the assertions of Columella (I, viii, 2; XI, i, 13), it’s been thought that estate-holders treated their urban and rural workforces as discrete labour units, but a closer examination of the epigraphic sources suggests that many freed procuratores were drawn from domestic enslaved staff. More surprising is that the previous occupational titles of these freedmen are entirely “lower-tier” domestic positions – child-minders, cubicularii, and others whose jobs kept them in close contact with their domini and immediate family. These enslaved persons were surely literate but had no special legal or agricultural training or managerial experience. This suggests that slave-holders valued a time-tested, reliable understanding of their own economic and administrative decision-making, rather than specialized technical expertise. This encourages us to rethink how Roman slave-holders evaluated and managed expertise when selecting agricultural administrators from among their freedmen. By exploiting manumission as an incentive, they recruited from their domestic enslaved workforce to cultivate and ensure reliable representation in decision-making. -
Daniel Silvermintz (University of Houston – Clear Lake): “One Man, Two Jobs: The Justice of Moneymaking in Plato’s Republic”
Socrates famously affirms in the Republic that justice is when each person within the city performs a single job (R. 433a). Despite his insistence that the salvation of the city is contingent on the strict adherence of this solitary principle (R. 370c, 374a–c, 397e, 433a, 443c). Socrates institutes an economic system that requires all craftsmen within the city to violate it by performing a second occupation as moneymakers. Although the noble lie attempts to inculcate a sense of the common good within the citizens (R. 415d), the wage-earning art threatens the integrity of the other arts by encouraging its practitioners to place their own interest before the interest of others. Despite the obvious threat to the political order posed by moneymaking and acquisitiveness, there remains insufficient scholarly attention to the Republic’s understanding of business ethics and the economic order. In what follows, I first establish Socrates’ conception of the arts as a model of justice and then proceed to clarify how the necessary second art of moneymaking threatens the artisans’ commitment to justice.
Katherine Dennis (Princeton University): “Quin tu aliquid saltem potius, quorum indiget usus: Poetry at Work in Vergil’s Eclogues”
That pastoral, of all genres, is productive of an analysis on specialized labor is surprising; seen especially through the lens of its Renaissance reception, pastoral is concerned with precisely the opposite: songs about and by “idle shepherds” (Johnston and Papaioannou 2013:138) in “undisturbed otium” (Putnam 1970:320), which contrast the Georgics’ “practical science” of labor (Ross 1990:62). This caricature of the genre forces a reader to ignore or explain away the many moments where rural labor is brought to the fore.
My paper integrates the two themes: avoiding the trap of seeing the poems’ depiction of labor simply as metapoetic allegory, I explore Vergil’s ventriloquy of rustic voices in the Eclogues. By bringing the text into dialogue with the agronomists (particularly Varro, writing contemporaneously with the Eclogues), I demonstrate the shifting dynamics of labor in the collection. When compared with the (already understated) infrastructures of mastery on display in Varro, the image of agro-pastoralist labor-cum-otium that we receive in Vergilian pastoral is a conspicuous sublimation of the systematic exploitation that workers, both enslaved and free, experienced, and into which elite domini were habituated. The specialized laborers in the margins of the collection (frondatores, magistri pecoris, messores, etc.) instantiate a vision of land as property, an understudied transformation of the genre’s Theocritean roots.
Pastoral song, though unquestionably removed from the lived experience of poor and enslaved workers, thus becomes legible as a kind of “innocent amusement,” part of a model for absolute control which “troubled distinctions between leisure and labor” (Hartman 1997:43).Sara Rumberg (Independent Scholar): “The Invisible Thread: The Evidence for Social Context and Gender in Textile Production in Roman Britain”
Textile production was the second most significant economic sector of the Roman Empire and made a significant contribution to the Romano-British economy. However, the perceived paucity of evidence for the textile industry has impeded the study of textile production in Roman Britain. In contrast, interpretation of an apparently higher level of textile tool finds from the Western Roman Empire has produced scholarship on the identity, experience and contribution to the economy of textile-producers, highlighting the role of female workers.
This paper considers the possible under-recording of specialist textile tools in the Romano-British archaeological record and whether this has resulted in the under-representation of textile workers in socio-economic terms. Potential reasons for this include whether textile-tool finds have been mis-classified and whether the designation of this craft as ‘domestic’ has undermined the presentation of the economic contribution of the predominantly female labour force. Close examination of the tools and technologies of specialised textile production; mapping the spatial distribution of textile-processing in both urban (Silchester) and rural sites (Silchester environs); a gendered assessment of the finds contexts; and a detailed re-assessment of the small finds from these sites explore these questions.
The paper concludes that the frequency of textile-processing tools may be under-reported by approximately 33% and that this has potentially contributed to the under-representation of female labour in Romano-British textile production, attested to by the presence of often unclassified spindlewhorls in urban and rural settlements.J. LaRae Cherukara (University of Oxford): “Favour or Debt: The Ciceronian Prejudice against Contract Labour in Paul’s Letter to the Romans”
‘Illiberal and sordid is the occupation of all hired workers, who are remunerated for their labour and not for artistic skill; in their case the wage itself is the contract of their servitude’. Scholars today debate the degree to which Cicero’s prejudice against contract labour pervaded Greco-Roman society as a whole. Similar expressions of distaste from a variety of social positions, however, indicate that it was not the exclusive reserve of the “upper-crust”. One slightly later attestation of a similar prejudice has yet to be noted in modern scholarship: that of Paul, in his letter to the house churches in Rome.
In Romans 4, Paul uses the analogy of a day-labourer as a foil for the human response to divine favour that he is propounding: ‘For the worker, the payment is calculated not according to favour but to debt’. This analogy has often been misconstrued as a purely theological claim; and when its economic overtones have been recognised, Paul’s reference specifically to contract labour, and the negativity that he shares with Cicero towards it, have been invariably missed. My paper contextualises Paul’s analogy within the trend of prejudice against contract labourers in his day, notes similar expressions of distaste from Paul’s other letters and his surprisingly contrasting treatment of the subject of slavery, and reflects briefly on the theological use to which Paul puts the contrasting analogies of the day-labourer and the slave in the context of his broader argument in the letter to the Romans. -
Florencia de Graaff (Universidad de Buenos Aires): “The Housewife in the Funerary Monument: Why Domestic Work was Considered Specialized Labor in Classical Athens”
When it comes to the study of ancient labor, the traditional historiography of women has sought to fill in the gaps by searching for the female counterparts to the male roles we already know. This method has strengthened the ideology that states that something can be considered work if it is done outside the house. Domestic labor has been the most performed activity throughout history but has received scant attention because is so general and commonplace that we tend to believe it’s an ahistorical matter of common sense or general agreement, something that stands on natural and not ideological grounds. That’s why women are perceived as a rather inactive group that performed repetitive, unimportant and un-specialized tasks. However, in this paper I propose a comprehensive study of ancient domestic labor through the portrayal of women and their sophrosyne, taking into account the multi-vocality of the symbols and phrases found in selected Classical funerary monuments and epigrams. While comparing material and literary sources I will show that the Athenian gendered ideology of work considered domestic labour as a form of specialised labour that could even be bequeathed by the woman to the members of her oikos and her polis. This analysis will allow us to compose a more complete picture of the economic and social contribution of women in Ancient Greece.
Selena Ross (Rutgers University): “Pastorum Convenarumque: The Mythic Herdsman and Roman Identity”
The story of Romulus, Remus and the foundation of Rome is strongly colored by the fact that these men, their adoptive father Faustulus, and their companions are said to be herdsmen. For the Romans, for whom farmer-soldier figures such as Cincinnatus play such an important role in their identity, it is notable that their founders and earliest population were, as Livy tells us, pastorum convenarumque. In this context as elsewhere, pastor is most commonly translated into English as ‘shepherd’, generating a certain set of assumptions about these people and, by association, Rome itself. Informed by knowledge of animal husbandry in Roman Italy, I argue that this tendency to favor the translation ‘shepherd’ over ‘herdsman’ not only obscures the specialized nature of animal husbandry, but also leads to assumptions that weaken our understanding of how the Romans viewed themselves and their origins. Looking at the references to Faustulus, Romulus, and Remus throughout Latin and Greek literature, I suggest ways in which decoupling the word pastor from ‘shepherd’ enables us to revisit these familiar stories with a fresh eye, asking questions such as, what does it mean if Romulus was a cowherd?
Allan B. Daoust (Thorneloe University at Laurentian): “Forging Specialization: Tool Imagery and Identity on the Funerary Monuments of Roman Blacksmiths”
With their portrayal of tools and other related craft imagery, funerary reliefs provide an important resource for the study of Roman craftsmen, offering a fascinating window into craft specialization and the construction of professional identities within the Roman world. An interesting example of this can be seen in the shared use of a common motif on the funerary monuments of blacksmiths. This motif presents the core toolkit of the blacksmith within a pedimentary space, with a hammer and pair of tongs symmetrically arranged on either side of a central anvil. There are currently five extant examples of this motif, consisting of a relief panel, two stelae, and two cinerary urns, all of which were constructed in Italy during the first half of the first century CE. While they each have been described as the funerary monument of a blacksmith in some capacity, that is generally where the conversation ends. Yet each of these examples presents a distinct, personalized version of this motif, portraying different types of hammers, anvils, and tongs that were selected to commemorate a unique individual and their particular professional identity. The differences seen in these examples reflect the multi-faceted nature of Roman craft specialization, indicating that the individuals memorialized by these reliefs saw themselves as more that just blacksmiths, and wished to be remembered as such.
Madison Rolls (University of Edinburgh): ” Educating Slaves: Who Were the Educators of Rome’s Youth? A Survey of the Representation of (Former) Slave Educators in Funerary Epigraphy from the Latin West”
Suetonius’ accounts of the Roman grammarians in his De Grammaticis sheds light on the potential for grammarians of servile background to reach social and financial heights normally unattainable even for free Romans. However, this lifestyle was not a guarantee for all involved in the education of Roman youths, and many died with less impressive stories to tell. Thus, in contradistinction to the upward and outward looking (life) stories of the individuals whom Suetonius has immortalized, the surviving epigraphic record of Roman educators paints a distinctly more mundane image of their lives, recording not only those who were noteworthy or infamous in such a way as to warrant literary commentary on their character, but ordinary figures who were commemorated in often simple ways. Still, the limited extant inscriptions are enormously important in allowing even the most minor insight into the real lives of these individuals, both in terms of personal as well as professional lives. Thus, the small insights into their relationships with themselves and others (i.e. how they describe themselves/others), and the data detailing their varied ages, legal statuses, and locations, offers us a tiny but worthwhile snapshot of the lives of Roman educators. On the one hand, there are the wealthy social climbers of Suetonius; on the other, there are those who existed in the sphere below the wealthy but still not destitute. Both, it is important to stress, need to come along when we want to understand properly the role that educating slaves took up in Roman society.
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Mattia D’Acri (University of Missouri): “What Kind of Specialization? The Archaeological Indicators of Pottery Production Specialization in Pre-Roman Central Tyrrhenian Italy (8th-6th c. BCE)”
Between the 8th and the 6th centuries BCE, Latium and Etruria experienced a period of technological innovation and expansion of wealth. Rich grave good assemblages, indicators of urban formation, and growing processes for monumentalization are clear evidence of this. It is also a period of innovations in pottery production such as the wheel and new pottery classes. However, in pre-Roman Central Tyrrhenian Italy, the degree of specialization in ceramic production is still debated. According to Carafa (1995), major changes in the craft production occur around Rome’s traditional foundation date. He interprets these trends toward standardization as a sign of specialized workshops, correlating them with the new system of political establishment. Instead, Nijboer (1997), who examines the kilns and final products of different central Tyrrhenian Italy sites (e.g., Murlo, Acquarossa, and Satricum), argues that small-scale workshops remained the predominant production model throughout the 7th century BCE. Only starting with the 6th century BCE, the degree of specialization changes, linked to political stabilization and the process of urban formation. Brandt (2001), analyzing the case of Ficana, offers the intermediate position that in the most ancient phases of the site, specialized and small-scale productions coexist.
In this paper, I will analyze the archaeological indicators suggesting a correlation with degrees of specialization in pottery production through the lens of the development of socio-economic complexity of the region. The paper is part of a broader dissertation project that analyzes the relationship between pottery production and social complexity in Archaic Rome and Latium.Lavinia Maria Silvia Fallea (Scuola di Specializzazione in Beni Archeologici, Università degli Studi di Catania): ” Builders for the Gods. Trophonius and Agamedes. The Oracular Cult in Lebadea”
The definition of “architect” in antiquity is quite controversial. We still wonder what in the ancient sources is meant by τέκτων and its derivated words (ἀρχιτέκτων in primis). However, since remote times, authors refer to artisans known for their impressive and successful building skills, attributing to them the introduction of a new world order. These figures are sometimes promoted to the rank of heroes or deities, as in the case of Amphion, Daedalus, and many others.
It is interesting to observe how their cults interact with the development of archaic Greek architecture. This lecture stresses the myth of Trophonius, whose oracular cult was established in Lebadea, Boeotia. He and his brother Agamedes were acknowledged for the construction of buildings commissioned by famous people of the Homeric Past, like the Temple of Apollo in Delphi, the Temple of Poseidon in Mantinea, Hyrieus’ Treasure, and the thalamos of Alcmena and Amphitryon in Thebes, “dear to the immortal gods” (h. Hom. 21).
Trophonius’ myth is connected here to the flourishing architectural development that took place in Boeotia already in the Mycenaean Late Bronze Age, where we may intercept the buildings commissioned by Minyas, king of Orchomenus. Stories handed down through Pindar, Plutarch, Cicero, and Pausanias, in fact, agree in attributing the role of builders to Trophonius and his brother. Once died, Trophonius obtained immortality and became the holder of a incubatory cult set in the sacred forest of Lebadea.David Lewis (University of Edinburgh): ” Theophrastus and the Door-Makers of Athens”
Theophrastus’ Historia Plantarum contains a number of remarks (HP 3.14.1; 5.3.5; 5.4.2; 5.5.2; 5.5.4; 5.5.6; 5.6.4; 5.7.6; 5.9.8) about the fabrication of doors. Although originally from little Eresus on Lesbos, Theophrastus must have learned of these details from artisans of Athens where he was long resident, first as Aristotle’s student, then as his successor at the Lyceum. Xenophon (Cyr. 8.2.5) indeed wrote that in small poleis doors were made by jacks-of-all trades, not specialists, whereas the opposite was true of large cities; he likely had his native Athens in mind. Aristomenes, an Athenian comic poet active in the 87th Olympiad (432-428 BC) (Testimonia i-ii K-A), was known as the thuropoios (‘door maker’), presumably after his family business; and Pollux (Onom. 7.111) – whose collection is mainly Atticist – notes the very same word. The specialism, then, is quite securely attested at Athens. Though a mere footnote in the economic history of the city, door-making is important for two reasons. First, it illustrates how sufficient demand can enable specialisation in the manufacture of fairly niche products: in a large city like Athens, every house needed a front door; and for the rich, a fine door was a status symbol – Theophrastus indeed notes certain expensive kinds of door (HP 3.14.1; 5.5.4), and such doors sometimes appear in vase painting. Secondly, it illustrates how specialization leads to the accumulation of particular skills and trade secrets – something for which, in relation to door-making, Theophrastus provides detailed evidence (HP 5.3.5; 5.5.2; 5.5.4; 5.5.6; 5.6.4).
Simone Ciambelli (Università di Bologna): “The Fenomeno Associativo and the Specialized Labour in Two Trade Hubs of the Roman West: Ostia and Lugdunum (II-III C. AD)”
Within the urban context of the Roman West, labour reached high specialization when stimulated by extensive and fast trade networks. This is due to two main trade needs: a wide range of goods and, above all, the demand for different services. This is well attested in two of the major trade hubs of the Roman West: Ostia and Lugdunum. Here, the presence of several inscriptions and the opportunity to analyse the archaeological remains allow us to observe the phenomenon clearly and thoroughly. This paper aims to observe the specialized labour that flourished in Ostia and Lugdunum during the II and III century AD by analysing the inscriptions of the professional associations. Indeed, the presence of several highly specialised collegia, unlike any other city of the Roman West, shows the extreme labour vitality of these two towns. Moreover, the establishment of very specific associations with a semi-public character reflected the importance reaches by the specialized labour in the eyes of the whole civitas. I will subdivide my intervention into three parts. First, I will briefly introduce the collegial context in Ostia and Lugdunum. I will then focus on highly specialized harbour services in Ostia and on several associations involved in the wine trade in Lugdunum. I will conclude with considerations about the collegial identity and their public action.