Anna Shamory

CAMS 400W

Dr. Hanses

12/20/19

Final Research Paper

Social Death and Liminality in the Lives of Ancient Female Slaves

Did the dichotomy of slavery and freedom truly exist or did ancient people live their lives

somewhere in the middle? Both men and women were enslaved and forced into obscurity in

history, but limited sources have survived that even mention slaves. Furthermore, our sources

mainly come from the free male perspective in the patriarchal societies of the ancient

Mediterranean. It is hard enough to reconstruct the daily lives of ancient slaves, but the lives of

women who were enslaved and those who were manumitted are even further obscured by ancient

sources that come almost entirely from the male point of view. Social death and thus liminality

affected slave women in harder ways than slave men in ancient societies. As there is more

evidence available about the lives of slaves who lived in the cities with their masters, I will focus

on them, as opposed to those in rural slavery.

According to Patterson, a slave is born or brought into a marginal state of social death,

where he or she is stripped of community and personhood, then placed into a master’s

community without being fully integrated into it (38). This social death places slaves into a

liminal state where they are in a society but remain apart from it, placed in a state of perpetually

being in between (Patterson, 46). A slave exists but she is basically invisible to the free world

around her. Manumission may release a slave from social death, but inclusion into regular free
society may not fully bring an ex-slave from a state of liminality, as one is still bound by

obligations and relationships to former slavery.

While both slave men and women were socially dead, slave women were more restricted

due to gender roles and their occupations inside and outside of their masters’ households. Gender

roles between slave women and men divided them within slave society, as evidenced in the

material and literary record. Women in general were cloistered away from the public sphere of

ancient society. Slave women, who were already socially dead by nature of enslavement, were

further pushed into a state of liminality by their professions, in opposition to slave men who had

more options and freedom in their professions. Records of what professions slaves were trained

in and which jobs they performed in their masters’ households show that slave women were

more limited in their roles and inclusion into society. Slave women were delegated to domestic

tasks and prostitution, as seen in Demosthenes’ Against Neaira, and Plautus’ Pseudolus. On the

other hand, slave men could work jobs outside the home and had more opportunity to gain

wealth and prestige in society, which could lead to manumission and therefore becoming less

socially dead or residing in a state of liminality. Upon manumission, men gained more freedoms

than women, as women’s position in the domestic sphere was impacted little by manumission

and they had more continued obligations and family ties to slavery than men. Social death and

liminality, as defined by Orlando Patterson, affected the lives of ancient slave women in stronger

ways than slave men, as women were further ostracized in the patriarchal systems of ancient

Mediterranean societies.

To start, slave women had different roles within the home than slave men. Inside the

home, slave women did tasks such as cooking, weaving, and taking care of the children, among

other things (Golden, 134). While male slaves could have performed the same domestic tasks,
women were more likely to do these gendered tasks. These jobs kept slave women sequestered

more often than slave men in the private sphere of the home, which gave them less time out in

public sphere of social life.

Additionally, slave women were used sexually in their household by their fellow slaves

and masters. A slave woman could be gifted as a ‘wife’ to a slave man, without any regard to her

consent (Hunt, 99). But slave men were not reciprocally given to slave women as gifts for their

good behavior (Hunt, 113). Furthermore, literary works evidence the commonality that slave

women were sexually controlled in more ways than slave men by their masters. A vast amount of

information regarding the lives of slave women comes from literary works such as speeches and

plays, but they have to be read with a grain of salt as they were written by men. Slave women

were used as a plot device in plays, but were not the main characters. For example, in Sophocles’

Women of Trachis and Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, they were used as the trope where a husband

brings back from war a beautiful slave woman of his enemy, causing his wife to plot against her

in a wave of jealousy (Golden, 148). Examples such as these may not provide realistic depictions

of the lives of slave women, but do show how the male writers were used to the idea that women

were to be used sexually by their masters (and could cause marital strife within the household).

Thus, slave women were more likely to be involved in sexual tasks than slave men, which further

degraded their sense of bodily autonomy and sexual freedom.

Subsequently, slave women were also seen as sexual objects outside of the home, too.

One of the few occupations outside of the household for slave woman seems to have been

prostitution. Their masters were legally allowed to sell the bodies of their slave women to

outsiders in exchange for money or goods. In ancient Greece, there were two levels of

prostitutes: the pornai and the hetairae. A porne was a lower-class prostitute, who men mainly
paid just for her sexual services. A hetaira was a high-end prostitute, who was educated and

taught specific skills, and often bought or rented for elite symposiums (Golden, 149). To

understand what the life of a hetaira entailed, a speech attributed to Demosthenes, called Against

Neaira, highlights the struggles of a hetaira named Neaira. Neaira was bought as a small child by

a freedwoman, Nikarete, who trained girls in sexual arts (59.18-21). “Though she was too young

as she had not yet reached puberty” she was hired out to men who paid for her (59.22-23). In

Corinth, she was sold to two lovers before later purchasing her freedom with the help of

Phrynion, her Athenian lover (59.29-32). He abused her and even “had intercourse with her in

public anywhere whenever he pleased” (59.33). This caused her flight to Megara where she

became the mistress of Stephanos (another Athenian). She “continued to carry on the same trade

no less than before” even while living in marriage with Stephanos, as they had no other income

to live off of (59.41). From this, we see how slave women were used as prostitutes even before

sexual maturity and abused by their so-called lovers. And even after Neaira obtained freedom,

she was still subject to her lover’s whims and continued to sell herself to men.

In later Roman comedy as well, there is evidence of slave women vulnerable to the urges

of their masters. Roman comedy used stock characters like prostitutes, pimps, slave women, and

trickster slaves. In Plautus’ Pseudolus, the hetaira Phoenicium is the reason behind the ensuing

antics of Pseudolus. But she is a non-actor, a character only mentioned in the play but has no

speaking part. At the beginning, Pseudolus makes fun of Phoenicium’s love letter to freeborn

Calidorus, where she asks him to buy her freedom or else she is going to be sold to a foreigner

(1.28-72). She writes “please save my life. I write with tears, trembling in my heart and soul”

(1.43-44). Calidorus fancies himself in love with her, and enlists Pseudolus to help him come up

with a plan to get her. At the end of the play, Phoenicium is freed, but her position in society
does not really change, she’s like a hetaira “on the couch with” Calidorus (20, 1310-1315). Slave

women could be involved with prostitution that offered limited benefits like gifts and attention

from their suitors, but prostitution caused a further loss of women’s sexual freedom. While men

could be courtesans or porne like Phoenicium or Neaira, examples of the prostitution of slave

women (and later freedwomen) were more common. And outside of the household, slave women

and freedwomen had to rely on men to live their lives, like Neaira and her multiple lovers, and

Phoenicium with Calidorus.

On the other hand, slave men had more opportunities than slave women to obtain

lucrative jobs and occupations beyond their master’s household. These outside jobs afforded

more autonomy, and the ability to gain wealth and prestige that could not be found by working in

their master’s household all of the time. For instance, in both Babylonia and Athens, male slaves

had agreements with their masters to work independently and pay them a fee from the wages

they earned, keeping the rest of the money for themselves (Lewis, 235). These mandattu and

apophora agreements, respectively, could pay off well for male slaves. In ancient Babylonia

during the Neo-Babylonian period, “loan-sharking” slaves were able to become rich, legally

marry, have their own slaves, and attain power through connections with powerful free persons

(Snell, 15). One of these slaves, named Madanu-bel-usur, was so successful that he was recorded

in 524 BCE because he got into a verbal and physical dispute with a less successful freeborn

businessman who was jealous of Madanu-bel-usur’s prosperity (Lewis, 235). In a similar

manner, male slaves in ancient Rome could work as semi-independent agents, managers,

salesmen, financiers or other jobs, and gain notable wealth and status, which may have given

them an opportunity to buy their own freedom (Morley, 279). By working outside of the home,

these successful slave businessmen made connections with free society which placed them
further from the liminal state that slaves experienced with separation from society. There was no

equivalent documentation to show that female slaves had similar opportunities to work outside

the home.

In ancient Israel, manumission was not even guaranteed in equal ways for Hebrew female

slaves versus Hebrew male slaves. The early books of the Bible contain legislation about

extrusive slavery, the enslavement of Hebrews by their own countrymen. Whether or not these

laws were actually followed is debatable, but either way they provide insight to their thoughts

about the intersection of gender and manumission. In the book of Exodus, the Covenant Code

puts forth legislation for specifically Hebrew slaves in the land of Israel (Ex. 21:1-11). For a

male Hebrew slave, he was to be released without payment, after serving his master for six years

(Lewis, 205). However, in the case where a man sells a Hebrew girl, she becomes a concubine to

her Hebrew master. She has certain rights: her master cannot sell her to outsiders or withhold the

necessities of food or clothing, nor deny her conjugal rights. If her master fails in these regards,

she can leave without payment, and return to her father’s household (Lewis, 206-7). Lewis

explains that she cannot be freed after six years like the males, because her “sexual services

make her ‘damaged goods’ from the perspective of this patriarchal society” (207). Therefore, it

may have been impossible for a female Hebrew slave to ever leave her master if he adhered to

the law.

Interestingly, the later slave laws from Deuteronomy (15:12-18) changes the Covenant

Code’s law of serving six years to include male and female Hebrew slaves. Then in Leviticus

(25:39-46), the female gender is not mentioned at all, as the passage was written in terms of

“kinsman” and he/him pronouns (Lewis, 209). The transition from gender inequality in the

manumission of their fellow Hebrew slaves to more general terms that imply no preferential
treatment may come from historical changes that the Bible does not contextualize for the reader.

Nonetheless, the first slave laws of the ancient Israelites made it easier for a Hebrew male to be

freed from slavery than the Hebrew female who stayed in the household of her master.

Upon manumission, both slave men and women were freed from the burden of social

death and released into free society. Yet freed persons did not always become full citizens. In

ancient Rome, manumitted slaves were called libertus/liberta and gained the citizenship status of

their ex-master (Finley, 126 and Bradley, 254). In ancient Athens, slaves became metics, as

citizenship status was only for those born of freeborn Athenian parents (Hunt, 123). Availability

for ex-slaves to become citizens varied cross-culturally, which kept slaves from fully

experiencing release from social death and the liminal state. Release from slavery changes one’s

level of liminality for the better, but it was easier for a freedman to achieve some level of status

where he gained more identity and was then less stuck in a liminal state. It was harder for women

to escape the social separation between slavery and freedom due to their gender, as they were

confined to domestics and still under the ‘protection’ of men.

Even after manumission, gender roles still dictated the positions of freedwomen in

society. To ease out of social death into free society, former slaves had the tendency to conform

to society’s gender roles. In gravestones from the Roman Republic, ex-slaves emulated upper-

class ideals in funerary imagery that depicted them as stoic husbands in togas and matronly

wives in pallas (Bradley, 257). Though the names on the gravestones may reveal their former

slave pasts, their depictions concentrated on their present state of freedom. One gravestone has

the inscription “Q. Servilius Q. l. Hilarus pater, Sempronia C. l. Eune uxor, P. Servilius Q. f.

Globulus f.” (Bradley, 257). There was a father named Hilarus and a mother named Sempronia,

both who were former slaves, as the abbreviation of “l” indicated their statuses as libertus and
liberta. Their son, Globulus, was born free. The stone reliefs followed typical elite conventions:

Hilarus had stoic features, was clean-shaven, and clothed in toga, and Sempronia was a rich

conservative Roman matron with her veil, 2 rings, and palla. Hilarus had his hand on his chest,

signifying his participation in politics, while Sempronia’s veil indicated her married status and

motherhood. This exemplar inscription shows how a man can go from having no political rights

as a slave, to being involved with politics as a freedman, while the ex-slave woman was

relegated to life as a matron and mother. Roman gender roles kept women in the house as slaves

and as freed women, where they were still not fully part of society and thus kept in a liminal state

more than freedmen.

Gender roles also affected the sexual division of labor for freed persons after

manumission. Economic disparity between the genders continued into manumission. Freedmen

could continue to work as agents for their former masters and gain remarkable wealth. For

example, a number of freedmen from the Statilii Tauri family commemorated their manumission

and economic success in their gravestone inscriptions (Morley, 279). Freedmen enjoyed

prosperity from high paying jobs in business and trade more so than freedwomen. We see this in

how freedwomen continued to perform specialized jobs they learned in their enslavement. For

example, freedwomen held job titles such as “guest announcer,” “mirror woman,” “dresser,” and

“keeper of the pearls” in the houses of Roman aristocrats (Hunt, 128). Those specialized jobs,

obviously performed within the household, would not have paid as much money (if at all) as the

business or trade jobs that freedmen were able to do outside of the home. Because of this,

freedwomen continued to stay in their ex-master’s household and were less removed from their

slave lives. Freedmen were further removed from their liminal state and social death in their

opportunities as men to get outside jobs and social life beyond their former slave society.
 Also, freed slaves often had continued obligations to their masters post-manumission,

which tended to be unequal. One unique way for female slaves to obtain freedom was through

the cohabitation mode of manumission (Patterson, 219). Female slaves could gain favor with

their master through love, sex, and bearing children, which could lead to manumission (Hunt,

109). Notably, in ancient Rome, a master was allowed to manumit a female slave so he could

marry her. Slaves could not legally marry, so he had to free her beforehand. But this path to

freedom came with a cost: in order to stay free, the woman had to marry her ex-master. She was

not allowed the right to divorce him, as her freedom was based on their marriage (Hunt, 110).

That was contrary to how freeborn women had the right to divorce their husbands because their

freedom was not attached to their marital status. Thus, a female slave could be freed this way,

but she had the continued obligation in a place of submission as her ex-master’s spouse. She was

not entirely free -- as she was still caught in this liminal state in attachment to her former master.

In the same vein, ex-slaves from ancient Babylonia, Rome, and Greece had more general

obligations that kept them tied to their former masters. These continued obligations kept freed

persons in submissive relationships akin to the former master-slave relationship, thus limiting

their escape from the liminal state of slavery. In ancient Babylonia, freedom for ex-slaves came

with attached obligations to stay in their master’s household and continue to serve their ex-

master (Lewis, 235). In ancient Rome, a patronus was the former master who could ask for

services from ex-slaves who he manumitted (Morley, 281). Ex-slaves could have a generic

obligation to reciprocally respect and maintain a close relationship with their former master

(Hunt, 128). Former slaves could also have a contractual agreement to work a certain number of

days per year for their former master (Hunt, 128). Either way, continued obligations brought a

close relationship and the benefits to having a freeborn man’s support, but with the price of
limited freedom from a state of liminality. Freedmen and freedwomen often kept working

directly within their former master’s household, and never really left. And as discussed above,

freedwomen had limited roles in their ex-master’s household when compared to freedmen.

Even more concerning than in ancient Babylonia and Rome, continued obligations in

manumission clauses from Delphi were harsher and pertained specifically to freedwomen. At

Delphi, paramone, “deferred,” freedom clauses were common in manumission agreements for

female slaves. In this stipulation, a woman would not gain full freedom until she gave birth to a

“free” child to be a slave in her place (Lewis, 106). Two manumission inscriptions, from the

Hellenistic period at Delphi, tell the story of Eisias, a woman in a paramone contract, and

Kleomantis, her master. The first inscription had harsh stipulations for Eisias, but in the second

inscription she was generously released from her paramone in thanks for giving the childless

Kleomantis a son, who he freed and named after himself (Lewis, 107). These two connected

inscriptions had a fairly good ending for the slave woman, but not all cases of paramone would

have been so lucky. Paramone agreements guaranteed a woman would leave at least one

member of her family back in slavery. Eisias could have just as easily been horrified to give her

child in payment for her own freedom, not knowing Kleomantis would eventually end up freeing

her son. This Greek obligation was uniquely horrible to female slaves, and placed them in a

liminal state between slavery and true freedom.

Beyond obligations like paramone, which tied a freedwoman back to her former master’s

household, she would have also had ties to other family members or friends who were still

enslaved. During a freedwoman’s life as a slave, she could have built a relationship with another

slave and started a family. Her children would have inherited her slave status and lived with her

(unless they were sold for some reason), while the father could have been from a different
household (Hunt, 112). Thus, a slave woman would have had a deeper connection to her children

than a slave man did as a father. To illustrate, in ancient Rome there were more male than female

slaves (Hunt, 115). This gender ratio would have made it more likely for slave women to have

who they considered to be spouses (even though slave marriages were not legally recognized

unions). Thus, upon a slave woman’s manumission, she had more family connections that kept

her tied to former slavery than a male ex-slave. She would not be able to take her slave children

with her unless they had also been freed. The mother-child bond was not recognized for slaves,

who cannot have families since they are socially dead (Hunt, 100). Therefore, any children left

behind were at risk of being sold without her consent (Edmondson, 350). While a freedman

could have been a parent to slave children too, a freedwoman was more likely to have stronger

ties back to the slave community, especially with any children. Caught between starting new

relationships in free society and old relationships with slaves, a freedwoman would have been

stuck in a difficult position between these two worlds, held back from social rebirth and kept in a

liminal state by this connection to her former slave life. Freedom would be a bittersweet freedom

when family and friends were not there to share it.

In the end, the lives of slaves in the ancient Mediterranean varied in regards to their

gender and culture. But female slaves had to live under more strenuous circumstances than slave

men in the patriarchal systems. Their social death and liminality, as defined by Orlando

Patterson, was more pronounced in female than male slaves, both before and after manumission.

Slave women were limited to domestic and sexual tasks in the home more often than slave men.

This continued in their lives outside the home, where slave men had more opportunities to obtain

jobs that granted them wealth and prestige. Slave women could be involved with prostitution that

offered limited benefits but caused a further loss of sexual freedom. As for manumission, some
people like Hebrews of ancient Israel, were selective against female slaves. Otherwise,

manumitted slaves followed the continued gender roles that dictated the limited positions of

freedwomen in society. Freedmen continued to have more opportunities to branch out from their

ex-master’s households. Additionally, freedwomen had unique obligations back to their former

masters that freedmen were not subject to. They were also more likely to have connections back

to their former slave lives, limiting their social rebirth in attaining freedom. In all these ways,

ancient slave women and freedwomen were more subjected to social death and liminality than

their male counterparts.

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