WEEK SIX

SLAVE RESPONSES TO SLAVERY

Sources: The main sources for the Roman revolts are: Diodorus Siculus Books 34 and 36 (for Sicily 1 and 2); Plutarch, Life of Crassus and Appian, Civil Wars (for Spartacus). These can be read in editions of the authors (e.g. Loeb; Penguin Classics) or from the source books: thus Wiedemann chs. 10 and 11, plus no. 80 pp. 84-6; or Yavetz 1988; or Shaw 2001 [Shaw is especially good and comprehensive]

What sort of problems are there in trying to use these sources?

NOTE: you will ALL be expected to have read the accounts of the revolts and be able to talk about them in class

Questions to think about:

How frequent were slave revolts in antiquity? What governed their frequency? Were they typical of certain times and/or places? What factors were the principal causes of revolts? Were there any common features in the character and progress of revolts? What aim or aims did such revolts have?

How many other slaves responses to, or strategies for coping with, slavery can you identify? What is the importance of the concept of “resistance”? Can slave responses/revolts be matched to those of any other groups in the ancient world?

To what extent can comparative evidence from other slave societies be used to throw light on revolts and other slave responses in antiquity?

Bibliography:

General: Urbainczyk 2008f (and in Katsari/Dal Lago 2008); Pétré-Grenouilleau in Dal Lago/Katsari (2008) ch. 8 (comparative)

Greece: Fuks 1968; Cartledge 1985 (also available on library “digital readings” list); Brown 1992

Rome: Bradley 1989, and 1994 ch. 6; Callahan and Horsley 1998; Thompson 2002 ch. 8; Grünewald 2004

On Spartacus including modern perspectives: Urbainczyk 2004, Winkler 2007, Strauss 2009, Fields 2009

‘Flight’ in ancient Near East: Snell 2001

New World: Genovese 1979; da Costa 1994; Franklin and Schweninger 1999; Orser and Funari in Mitchell 2001 (=World Archaeology 33.1)