The book under review began as a conference at the University of Bonn in 2020. According to the “Introduction” (p. v–vi) the papers orbit around a general question: “whether and how legal texts reflected social differences within the Roman servile community” (p. vi). “The authors all of whom are legal historians hope to bore through the hard technical shell of legal texts in order to get at their social core” (p. v). The collection of articles by German, Austrian, and Italian scholars is translated into English, evidently to make the arguments accessible to English-speaking audiences.

M. Schermaier writes two chapters, in addition to the “Introduction”. The first, “Without Rights? Social Theories Meet Roman Law Texts”, poses an important question (“whether Roman legal texts can provide information about the social reality of Roman slavery”, p. 1) and states the project (“to clarify in outlines how Roman jurists classified slaves”, p. 1). He holds that the terms “slavery” and “slave law” have modern meanings and “have the potential to get in our way as we examine historical conditions” (p. 1). The categorical conclusion that “comparison with transatlantic slavery is misleading” (p. 4) is overstated and singles out one example from the world history of slavery, meanwhile jettisoning important contributions on the history of slave societies (e.g. Berlin’s work 1974 and 1998 on generations of enslaved and different social experiences of enslavement). The justification (“one essential difference is that Roman slavery, unlike its transatlantic counterpart, had no racist basis”, p. 4) dismisses a reality of Roman slavery that came in many ethnicities and indeed phenotypes (e.g. Harris 1979 59 n. 4; Pritchett 1974 5:232-3), and it does not engage with contemporary debates on race (and racism) as an ideology rather than an objective, biological fact or even an idea (e.g. B. Fields 2014 esp. 121, 128; F. Furstenberg 2003; B. Isaac 2004). This limitation is unfortunate because it narrows the potential contribution of the book; but the provocative ideological goal posts (or arguments of exceptionalism) remain distant for much of the book.

T. Finkenauer (“Filii naturales: Social Fate or Legal Privilege”) discusses Roman agnatic family structure to explore legal accommodations, especially economic practices (sale, wills) for persons whose blood relationships are not recognized at law. The discussion of pietas regulating behavior among enslaved persons in their familial relations is lexicographically careful and reveals an important argument about a communally prized virtue displayed by enslaved persons. Finkenauer notes the privileging of these persons in Augustan manumission legislation but does not pursue the category into literature to imagine the social experience of enslaved women impregnated by slave-holders or the children. I missed here discussion of the legal debate (2nd century BCE) about the classification of enslaved children as “fructus” in the usufruct of a widow (Cic. Fin. 1.12 ; Dig. 7.1.68).

P. Buongiorno (“Social Status ‘Without’ Legal Difference”) investigates the status of the enslaved persons and freedmen who worked for the emperor and were understood as part of the household (familia Caesaris). The privileged, politically powerful imperial freedmen under Claudius, who were critiqued especially by imperial authors such as Tacitus, were ultimately replaced by equestrian officers during the reign of Hadrian. Alongside these B. emphasizes a larger group who worked as financial managers of imperial properties, including exercising jurisdiction over the familia Caesaris itself. A Hadrianic edict and subsequent senatorial decree regulating theft of materials in shipwreck (Dig. 49.9.7) Buongiorno reveals a diminution of social status of those working for the emperor. Buongiorno observes that the Senate—he argues under Pertinax—sanctioned interference in the recovery of shipwrecked materials by liberti servive prinicipis implying “a social status but without legal difference” (p. 78). The history of familia Caesaris thus becomes part of the development of the imperial bureaucratic state, with financial managers subordinated to the law even in their work for the emperor.

R. Gamauf’s chapter on the peculium („Peculium: Paradoxes of Slaves with Property“) tracks a problem, the distinction between assets used by enslaved (peculium) and assets of the free (bona, patrimonium), alongside a lack of distinction between enslaved and free persons (Gaius Inst. 1.9; Dig. 41.3.44 pr.). He surveys the history of peculium (p. 109–113), the structural hierarchy of enslaved persons themselves owning slaves, and the imagined experience of an enslaved person using the peculium to engage in business, excel, and even own other enslaved persons. G. does not imagine the self-conception of the successful slave, perhaps a bridge too far. The chapter illustrates the strengths of a legal historical approach and its weaknesses (most of the sources date from 2nd century CE and later). Closer attention to literary sources could have helped here, e.g. Plautus, Rudens 112, an enslaved person interrupts a slave-holder speaking with another free man and is called out for transgressing his status as if he were authorized by his peculium, suggesting an experience of status dissonance.

Gamauf’s chapter on the Dispensator („Dispensator: The Social Profile of a Servile Profession in the Satyrica and in Roman Jurists’ Texts”) puts a literary representation of the domestic financial manager in Petronius’ novel in conversation with Roman legal texts: the dispensator receiving payments in loco domini; the sexual roles of enslaved males (active and passive); the hierarchy of enslaved labor in the household; manumission and rewards for service; legal protections of the communal reputation of a successful slave. His qualification of the use of fiction treats non-literary sources as somehow neutral and not ideologically formed. His discussion (esp. of sexual roles) is the volume’s greatest attention to slave consciousness and to the bias of the sources: the jurists “assumed that […] he always followed detailed instructions” (p. 161) while the literary sources offer exempla of “outstanding loyalty in extreme situations” (p. 163). Gamauf shows, though he does not state, that both legal and literary texts about slavery are products of ideology.

W. Buchwitz (“Giving and Taking: The Effects of Roman Inheritance Law on the Social Position of Slaves”) studies the effects of inheritance law on the enslaved person who was legally defined as a res (and so unable to make a will or institute an heir) and as a person (who could receive legacies). Epigraphic and literary material show the enslaved as heirs and as naming heirs, both lawfully and informally. B. repeatedly uncovers the strategic interests of slave-holders who used legal rules for their own benefit, benefitting the enslaved only as a secondary effect. His analysis of Digest 28.7.21 is textbook for reading through the terms of the law for history: freedmen used the law to institute as heirs their natural children who were still in slavery and jurists in the early second century CE interpreted the law to respect the freedman testator’s intention to benefit his natural children even to the financial detriment of the slave-holder. He recognizes the social significance of appointment as heir, although his study shows the precarity of the enslaved whose inheritance was under legal control of the slave-holder.

A. McClintock („Servi poenae: What Did It Mean to be ‘Condemned to Slavery’’) confronts the question of penal slavery, slavery inflicted as punishment for a crime, both the legal and social meaning of the category of “servi poenae”. Linking Poena with Nemesis, she connects Roman law with the culture of the arena, and we get the legal back story of the criminals whose deaths made the games. She concludes with a nod to the influence of this Roman category across time, from the jurists to Thomas Jefferson and William Blackstone.

Finally, J. Stagl (“Favor Libertatis: Slaveholders as Freedom Fighters”) examines the legal principle of “favor libertatis”, with two questions: “what is the legal basis for the tendency to privilege liberty?” and “what is the rationale of this privilege” (p. 207). To explicit references to favor libertatis in the sources, he adds “texts where decisions are based on favor libertatis without explicit reference to it” (p. 208). Favor thus allows interpretation of spirit rather than letter of the law. He aligns changes in slave law and so favor libertatis with the larger Augustan trend to make matters of private law into an institution of public law.

Individual chapters confront major topics in the study of slavery. All are informative; some provocative. The book misses two essential elements of social and legal reality for enslaved persons: the precarity of status, indeed existence, with respect to the community; and the violence, experienced physically and psychically, that underpinned the institution.

Moreover, the ideology of a sixth-century text (Justinian’s Digest) quoting from second-third century CE authors is a slippery guide for historical realities that changed over time. We can question whether laws about slaves and their family members, about a slave’s control of resources, about the sexual integrity of a slave’s body indicate daily reality, that slave families were respected and not separated, that their resources were their own and not confiscated, that they controlled their bodies and were not raped, that in practice enslaved persons had access to law and legal remedies.