Herodas , or Herondas ( Ancient Greek : Ἡρώδας or Ἡρώνδας – the name is spelt differently in the few places where he is mentioned), was a Greek poet and the author of short humorous dramatic scenes in verse, probably written in Alexandria during the 3rd century BC.
130-484: Apart from the intrinsic merit of these pieces, they are interesting in the history of Greek literature as being a new species, illustrating Alexandrian methods. They are called Mimiamboi ( ‹See Tfd› Greek : μιμίαμβοι , "Mime- iambics "), or mimes. Mimes were the Dorian product of South Italy and Sicily , and the most famous of them – from which Plato is said to have studied the drawing of character – were
260-421: A familia , the body of a household's dependents—a word especially, or sometimes limited to, referring to the slaves collectively. Pliny (1st century AD) was nostalgic for a time when "the ancients" lived more intimately in a household with no need for "legions of slaves"—but still imagined this simpler domestic life as supported by the possession of a slave. All those belonging to the familia were subject to
390-504: A fugitive slave managed to be elected praetor, his legal acts would remain valid if his true status were discovered, because the Roman people had chosen to entrust him with power. Limitations were placed only on the former slaves themselves and did not apply to their sons. During the early Imperial period, some freedmen became very powerful. Those who were part of the emperor's household (familia Caesaris) could become key functionaries in
520-419: A peculium had a far better chance of obtaining liberty. With this business acumen, certain freedmen went on to amass considerable fortunes. Slaves were released from their master's control through the legal act of manumissio (" manumission "), meaning literally a "releasing from the hand" (de manu missio) . The equivalent act for the releasing of a minor child from their father's legal power ( potestas )
650-502: A Roman citizen enjoyed not only passive freedom from ownership, but active political freedom ( libertas ), including the right to vote. A slave who had acquired libertas was thus a libertus ("freed person", feminine liberta ) in relation to his former master, who then became his patron ( patronus ). Freedmen and patrons had mutual obligations to each other within the traditional patronage network , and freedmen could “network” with other patrons as well. An edict in 118 BC stated that
780-577: A basis for coinages: anthropology , photography , telephony , isomer , biomechanics , cinematography , etc. Together with Latin words , they form the foundation of international scientific and technical vocabulary ; for example, all words ending in -logy ('discourse'). There are many English words of Greek origin . Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient language most closely related to it may be ancient Macedonian , which, by most accounts,
910-582: A church, in AD 316 and 323, though the law was not put into effect in Africa till AD 401. Churches were allowed to manumit slaves among their membership, and clergy could free their own slaves by simple declaration without filing documents or the presence of witnesses. Laws such as the Novella 142 of Justinian in the 6th century gave bishops the power to free slaves. A male slave who had been legally manumitted by
1040-434: A crime, imprisoning them, or sending them involuntarily to a gladiatorial school ( ludus ) or condemning them to fight with gladiators or wild beasts —if manumitted were counted as a potential threat to society along with enemies defeated in war, regardless of whether their master's punishments had been justified. If they came within a hundred miles of Rome, they were subject to reenslavement. Dediticii were excluded from
1170-558: A fairly stable set of consonantal contrasts . The main phonological changes occurred during the Hellenistic and Roman period (see Koine Greek phonology for details): In all its stages, the morphology of Greek shows an extensive set of productive derivational affixes , a limited but productive system of compounding and a rich inflectional system. Although its morphological categories have been fairly stable over time, morphological changes are present throughout, particularly in
1300-560: A faster, more convenient cursive writing style with the use of ink and quill . The Greek alphabet consists of 24 letters, each with an uppercase ( majuscule ) and lowercase ( minuscule ) form. The letter sigma has an additional lowercase form (ς) used in the final position of a word: In addition to the letters, the Greek alphabet features a number of diacritical signs : three different accent marks ( acute , grave , and circumflex ), originally denoting different shapes of pitch accent on
1430-478: A fluent tongue, complaining of hard times, who bluffs and wheedles by turns. The sexual undertones which we have come to expect from his involvement in VI are only realised at the end when Metro's friends have left the shop. Opens with the poet waking up his servants to listen to his dream; but we have only the beginning, and the other fragments are very short. Within the limits of 100 lines or less Herodas presents us with
SECTION 10
#17327910128381560-540: A foreign language. It is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, " Homeric Greek is probably closer to Demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English ". Greek is spoken today by at least 13 million people, principally in Greece and Cyprus along with a sizable Greek-speaking minority in Albania near
1690-451: A growing body of laws, in the imperial period a master could face penalties for killing a slave without just cause and could be compelled to sell a slave on grounds of mistreatment. Claudius decreed that if a slave was abandoned by his master, he became free. Nero granted slaves the right to complain against their masters in a court. And under Antoninus Pius , a master who killed a slave without just cause could be tried for homicide. From
1820-429: A heterosexual union with a partner that was intended to be lasting or permanent, within which children might be reared. Such a union, either arranged or approved and recognized by the slave's owner, was called contubernium . Though not technically a marriage, it had legal implications that were addressed by Roman jurists in case law and expressed an intention to marry if both partners gained manumission. A contubernium
1950-456: A highly entertaining scene and with characters definitely drawn. Some of these had been perfected no doubt upon the Attic stage, where the tendency in the 4th century had been gradually to evolve accepted types—not individuals, but generalizations from a class, an art in which Menander 's was esteemed the master-hand. Their effect is achieved by true dramatic means, with touches never wasted and
2080-578: A message that soldiers should fight to victory or die. Hannibal then sold these prisoners of war to the Greeks, and they remained slaves until the Second Macedonian War , when Flamininus recovered 1,200 men who had survived some twenty years of slavery after Cannae. The war that most dramatically escalated the number of slaves brought into Roman society at the same time had exposed an unprecedented number of Roman citizens to enslavement. In
2210-415: A more privileged tier of servitude and could hope to obtain freedom through one of several well-defined paths with protections under the law. The possibility of manumission and subsequent citizenship was a distinguishing feature of Rome's system of slavery, resulting in a significant and influential number of freedpersons in Roman society. At all levels of employment, free working people, former slaves, and
2340-471: A perpetual minor. A slave could not be sued or be the plaintiff in a lawsuit. The testimony of a slave could not be accepted in a court of law unless the slave was tortured—a practice based on the belief that slaves in a position to be privy to their masters' affairs should be too virtuously loyal to reveal damaging evidence unless coerced, even though the Romans were aware that testimony produced under torture
2470-447: A reward, slaveholders could navigate the moral issues of enslaving people through placing the burden of merit on slaves—"good" slaves deserved freedom, and others did not. Manumission after a period of service may have been a negotiated outcome of contractual slavery , though a citizen who had entered willingly into unfree servitude was barred from full restoration of his rights. There were three kinds of legally binding manumission: by
2600-515: A slave's use was called a peculium . Isidore of Seville , looking back from the early 7th century, offered this definition: “ peculium is in the proper sense something which belongs to minors or slaves. For peculium is what a father or master allows his child or slave to manage as his own.” The practice of allowing the slave a peculium likely originated on agricultural estates in setting aside small parcels of land where slave families could grow some of their own food. The word peculium points to
2730-609: A solid, profitable business began during enslavement. A few freedmen became very wealthy. The brothers who owned the House of the Vettii , one of the biggest and most magnificent houses in Pompeii , are thought to have been freedmen. Building impressive tombs and monuments for themselves and their families was another way for freedmen to demonstrate their achievements. Despite their wealth and influence, they might still be looked down on by
SECTION 20
#17327910128382860-478: A stop to creditors enslaving a defaulting debtor as a private action, though a debtor could still be compelled by a legal judgment to work off his debt. Otherwise, the only means of enslaving a freeborn citizen that the Romans of the Republican era recognized as lawful was military defeat and capture under the ius gentium . The Carthaginian leader Hannibal enslaved Roman war captives in large numbers during
2990-399: A wealthy household or country estate might be given a small monetary peculium as an allowance. The master's obligation to provide for the slave's subsistence was not counted as part of this discretionary peculium . Growth of the peculium came from the slave's own savings, including profits set aside from what was owed to the master as a result of sales or business transactions conducted by
3120-423: A will at times also received a bequest , which might include transferring ownership of a contubernalis (informal marriage partner) to him or her. Heirs might choose to complicate testamentary manumission, as a common condition was that the slave had to buy his freedom from the heir, and a slave still fulfilling the condition of his freedom could be sold. If there was no rightful heir, a master might not only free
3250-403: Is admirably painted in a few slight strokes. The jealous woman accuses one of her slaves, whom she has made her favourite, of infidelity; has him bound and sent degraded through the town to receive 2,000 lashes; no sooner is he out of sight than she recalls him to be branded "at one job". The only pleasing person in the piece is the little maidservant permitted liberties as a verna brought up in
3380-804: Is also found in Bulgaria near the Greek-Bulgarian border. Greek is also spoken worldwide by the sizable Greek diaspora which has notable communities in the United States , Australia , Canada , South Africa , Chile , Brazil , Argentina , Russia , Ukraine , the United Kingdom , and throughout the European Union , especially in Germany . Historically, significant Greek-speaking communities and regions were found throughout
3510-773: Is an Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic branch within the Indo-European language family. It is native to Greece , Cyprus , Italy (in Calabria and Salento ), southern Albania , and other regions of the Balkans , Caucasus , the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor , and the Eastern Mediterranean . It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system
3640-479: Is an Indo-European language, but also includes a number of borrowings from the languages of the populations that inhabited Greece before the arrival of Proto-Greeks, some documented in Mycenaean texts ; they include a large number of Greek toponyms . The form and meaning of many words have changed. Loanwords (words of foreign origin) have entered the language, mainly from Latin, Venetian , and Turkish . During
3770-516: Is designed as proper to the part, with the most naked coarseness of expression. The scene of the second and the fourth is laid at Cos , and the speaking characters in each are never more than three. In Mime I the old nurse, now the professional go-between or bawd, calls on Metriche, whose husband has been long away in Egypt, and endeavours to excite her interest in a most desirable young man, fallen deeply in love with her at first sight. After hearing all
3900-447: Is doing in another manner – casting old material into novel form, upon a small scale, under strict conditions of technique. The method is entirely Alexandrian: Sophron had written in a peculiar kind of rhythmical prose; Theocritus uses the hexameter and Doric , Herodas the scazon or "lame" iambic (with a dragging spondee at the end) and the old Ionic dialect with which that metre was associated. That, however, hardly goes beyond
4030-519: Is protected and promoted officially as a regional and minority language in Armenia, Hungary , Romania, and Ukraine. It is recognized as a minority language and protected in Turkey by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne . The phonology , morphology , syntax , and vocabulary of the language show both conservative and innovative tendencies across the entire attestation of the language from the ancient to
Herodas - Misplaced Pages Continue
4160-512: Is recognized by the ius gentium in which someone is subject to the dominion of another person contrary to nature" ( Institutiones 1.3.2, 161 AD). Ulpian (2nd century AD) also regarded slavery as an aspect of the ius gentium , the customary international law held in common among all peoples ( gentes ). In Ulpian's tripartite division of law, the "law of nations" was considered neither natural law , thought to exist in nature and govern animals as well as humans, nor civil law ,
4290-519: Is scant that they were. As the Roman Empire was becoming Christianized, Constantine II (emperor AD 337–340) barred Jews from owning Christian slaves, converting their slaves to Judaism, or circumcising their slaves. Laws in late antiquity discouraging the subjection of Christians to Jewish owners suggest that they were aimed at protecting Christian identity, since Christian households continued to have slaves who were Christian. In Roman law,
4420-884: Is sometimes called aljamiado , as when Romance languages are written in the Arabic alphabet. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Greek: Transcription of the example text into Latin alphabet : Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English: Proto-Greek Mycenaean Ancient Koine Medieval Modern Slavery in ancient Rome Slavery in ancient Rome played an important role in society and
4550-526: Is spoken by at least 13.5 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey , and the many other countries of the Greek diaspora . Greek roots have been widely used for centuries and continue to be widely used to coin new words in other languages; Greek and Latin are the predominant sources of international scientific vocabulary . Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around
4680-763: Is still used internationally for the writing of Ancient Greek . In Greek, the question mark is written as the English semicolon, while the functions of the colon and semicolon are performed by a raised point (•), known as the ano teleia ( άνω τελεία ). In Greek the comma also functions as a silent letter in a handful of Greek words, principally distinguishing ό,τι ( ó,ti , 'whatever') from ότι ( óti , 'that'). Ancient Greek texts often used scriptio continua ('continuous writing'), which means that ancient authors and scribes would write word after word with no spaces or punctuation between words to differentiate or mark boundaries. Boustrophedon , or bi-directional text,
4810-650: Is the Greek alphabet , which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary . The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin , Cyrillic , Coptic , Gothic , and many other writing systems. The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with
4940-400: The domus , the "house" of his extended family, as master (dominus) ; patriarchy was recognized in Roman law as a form of household-level governance. The head of household was entitled to manage his dependents and to administer ad hoc justice to them with minimal oversight from the state. In early Rome, the paterfamilias had the right to sell, punish, or kill both his children ( liberi ,
5070-405: The paterfamilias , the "father" or head of household and more precisely the estate owner. According to Seneca , the early Romans coined paterfamilias as a euphemism for the relationship of a master to his slaves. The word for "master" was dominus as the one who controlled the domain of the domus (household); dominium was the word for his control over the slaves. The paterfamilias held
5200-414: The toga praetexta , ordinarily reserved for those of higher rank, for ceremonial functions and their funeral rites. In the towns ( municipia ) of the provinces and later in towns with the status of colonia , inscriptions indicate that former slaves could be elected to all offices below the rank of praetor —a fact obscured by elite literature and ostensible legal barriers. Ulpian even holds that if
5330-490: The Battle of Edessa in AD 260. According to hostile Christian sources, the aging emperor was treated as a slave and subjected to a grotesque array of humiliations. Reliefs and inscriptions located at the sacred Zoroastrian site of Naqsh-e Rostam , southwest Iran, celebrate the victories of Shapur I and his successor over the Romans, with emperors in subjection and legionaries paying tribute. Shapur's inscriptions record that
Herodas - Misplaced Pages Continue
5460-495: The Eastern Mediterranean , in what are today Southern Italy , Turkey , Cyprus , Syria , Lebanon , Israel , Palestine , Egypt , and Libya ; in the area of the Black Sea , in what are today Turkey, Bulgaria , Romania , Ukraine , Russia , Georgia , Armenia , and Azerbaijan ; and, to a lesser extent, in the Western Mediterranean in and around colonies such as Massalia , Monoikos , and Mainake . It
5590-456: The Etruscan city of Veii in 396 BC. Defensive wars also drained manpower for agriculture, increasing the demand for labor—a demand that could be met by the availability of war captives. From the sixth through the third centuries BC, Rome gradually became a “slave society,” with the first two Punic Wars (265–201 BC) producing the most dramatic surge in the number of slaves. Slavery with
5720-511: The Imperial era , when individual escape was a more persistent form of resistance. Fugitive slave-hunting was the most concerted form of policing in the Roman Empire. Moral discourse on slavery was concerned with the treatment of slaves, and abolitionist views were almost nonexistent. Inscriptions set up by slaves and freedpersons and the art and decoration of their houses offer glimpses of how they saw themselves. A few writers and philosophers of
5850-516: The Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ), but little definitive evidence has been found. In addition, Albanian has also been considered somewhat related to Greek and Armenian, and it has been proposed that they all form a higher-order subgroup along with other extinct languages of the ancient Balkans; this higher-order subgroup is usually termed Palaeo-Balkan , and Greek has a central position in it. Linear B , attested as early as
5980-617: The Roman military standards lost at Carrhae motivated military minds for decades, “considerably less official concern was expressed about the liberation of Roman prisoners.” Writing about thirty years after the battle, the Augustan poet Horace imagined them married to "barbarian" women and serving the Parthian army, too dishonored to be restored to Rome. Valerian became the first emperor to be held captive after his defeat by Shapur I at
6110-497: The Second Punic War . Following the Roman defeat at the Battle of Lake Trasimene (217 BC), the treaty included terms for ransoming prisoners of war. The Roman senate declined to do so, and their commander ended up paying the ransom himself. After the disastrous Battle of Cannae the following year, Hannibal again stipulated a redemption of captives, but the senate after debate again voted not to pay, preferring to send
6240-492: The nominal and verbal systems. The major change in the nominal morphology since the classical stage was the disuse of the dative case (its functions being largely taken over by the genitive ). The verbal system has lost the infinitive , the synthetically -formed future, and perfect tenses and the optative mood . Many have been replaced by periphrastic ( analytical ) forms. Pronouns show distinctions in person (1st, 2nd, and 3rd), number (singular, dual , and plural in
6370-470: The 3rd millennium BC, or possibly earlier. The earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the world's oldest recorded living language . Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now-extinct Anatolian languages . The Greek language is conventionally divided into
6500-519: The Coan judges not to be unworthy of their traditional glories. The whole oration is a parody of Athenian legal speeches. Metrotimé, a desperate mother, brings to the schoolmaster Lampriscos her truant son, Cottalos, with whom neither she nor his incapable old father can do anything. She narrates his misdeeds and implores the schoolmaster to flog him. The boy accordingly is hoisted on another's back and flogged; but his spirit does not appear to be subdued, and
6630-486: The Greek alphabet since approximately the 9th century BC. It was created by modifying the Phoenician alphabet , with the innovation of adopting certain letters to represent the vowels. The variant of the alphabet in use today is essentially the late Ionic variant, introduced for writing classical Attic in 403 BC. In classical Greek, as in classical Latin, only upper-case letters existed. The lower-case Greek letters were developed much later by medieval scribes to permit
SECTION 50
#17327910128386760-425: The Greek language are often emphasized. Although Greek has undergone morphological and phonological changes comparable to those seen in other languages, never since classical antiquity has its cultural, literary, and orthographic tradition been interrupted to the extent that one can speak of a new language emerging. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than
6890-495: The Greek language was the Cypriot syllabary (also a descendant of Linear A via the intermediate Cypro-Minoan syllabary ), which is closely related to Linear B but uses somewhat different syllabic conventions to represent phoneme sequences. The Cypriot syllabary is attested in Cyprus from the 11th century BC until its gradual abandonment in the late Classical period, in favor of the standard Greek alphabet. Greek has been written in
7020-629: The Greek verb have likewise remained largely the same over the course of the language's history but with significant changes in the number of distinctions within each category and their morphological expression. Greek verbs have synthetic inflectional forms for: Many aspects of the syntax of Greek have remained constant: verbs agree with their subject only, the use of the surviving cases is largely intact (nominative for subjects and predicates, accusative for objects of most verbs and many prepositions, genitive for possessors), articles precede nouns, adpositions are largely prepositional, relative clauses follow
7150-685: The Greek-Albanian border. A significant percentage of Albania's population has knowledge of the Greek language due in part to the Albanian wave of immigration to Greece in the 1980s and '90s and the Greek community in the country. Prior to the Greco-Turkish War and the resulting population exchange in 1923 a very large population of Greek-speakers also existed in Turkey , though very few remain today. A small Greek-speaking community
7280-581: The Mediterranean at risk of illegal enslavement, to which the children of poor families were especially vulnerable. Although a law was passed to ban debt slavery quite early in Rome's history, some people sold themselves into contractual slavery to escape poverty. The slave trade, lightly taxed and regulated, flourished in all reaches of the Roman Empire and across borders. In antiquity, slavery
7410-645: The Roman era were former slaves or the sons of freed slaves. Some scholars have made efforts to imagine more deeply the lived experiences of slaves in the Roman world through comparisons to the Atlantic slave trade , but no portrait of the "typical" Roman slave emerges from the wide range of work performed by slaves and freedmen and the complex distinctions among their social and legal statuses . Classical , 2nd century BC–2nd century AD Imperial 27 BC–AD 313 Christianization beginning AD 313 From Rome's earliest historical period, domestic slaves were part of
7540-454: The Roman troops he had enslaved came from all reaches of the empire. A Roman enslaved in war under such circumstances lost his citizen rights at home. His right to own property was forfeited, his marriage was dissolved, and if he was head of a household his legal power (potestas) over his dependents was suspended. If he was released from slavery, his citizen status might be restored along with his property and potestas . His marriage, however,
7670-404: The acute during the late 20th century, and it has only been retained in typography . After the writing reform of 1982, most diacritics are no longer used. Since then, Greek has been written mostly in the simplified monotonic orthography (or monotonic system), which employs only the acute accent and the diaeresis. The traditional system, now called the polytonic orthography (or polytonic system),
7800-463: The addition of livestock ( pecus ). Any surplus could be sold at market. Like other practices that encouraged agency among slaves in furthering their skills, this early form of peculium served an ethic of self-sufficiency and might motivate slaves to be more productive in ways that ultimately benefitted the slave owner, leading over time to more sophisticated opportunities for business development and wealth management for enslaved people. Slaves within
7930-402: The ancient language; singular and plural alone in later stages), and gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and decline for case (from six cases in the earliest forms attested to four in the modern language). Nouns, articles, and adjectives show all the distinctions except for a person. Both attributive and predicative adjectives agree with the noun. The inflectional categories of
SECTION 60
#17327910128388060-420: The arguments Metriche declines with dignity, but consoles the old woman with a glass of wine. This is a monologue by the "whoremonger" prosecuting a merchant-trader for breaking into his establishment at night and attempting to carry off one of the inmates, who is produced in court. The whoremonger, remarking that he has no evidence to call, proceeds to a peroration in the regular oratorical style, appealing to
8190-551: The choice and form of words; the structure of the sentences is close-knit Attic . Herodas did not write his mimiambics in the contemporary Greek koine of his period. Rather, he affected a style that imitated the Greek spoken in the 6th century BC. The metre and language suit the tone of common life that Herodas aims at realizing; for, as Theocritus may be called idealist, Herodas is an unflinching realist. His persons talk in vehement exclamations and emphatic turns of speech, with proverbs and fixed phrases; and occasionally, where it
8320-477: The compendium of Roman law known as the Digest . A master who left his rural estate to an heir often included the workforce of slaves, sometimes with express provisions that slave families—father and mother, children, and grandchildren—be kept together. Among the laws Augustus issued pertaining to marriage and sexual morality was one permitting legal marriage between a freedwoman and a freeborn man of any rank below
8450-562: The consequences for status from war (bellum) and from banditry ( latrocinium ) may be reflected in the similar Jewish distinction between a “captive of a kingdom” and a “captive of banditry,” in what would be a rare example of Roman law influencing the language and formulation of rabbinic law . The legal process originally developed for reintegrating war captives was postliminium , a return after passing out of Roman jurisdiction and then crossing back over one's own “threshold” (limen) . Not all war captives were eligible for reintegration;
8580-400: The disposal of the peculium -holder; in this sense, inscriptions not infrequently record that a slave "belonged to" another slave . Property otherwise could not be owned by the dependents of a household, defined as someone subordinate to the potestas of the paterfamilias —including not only slaves, but adult sons who remained minors by law until their father's death. All wealth belonged to
8710-404: The early 19th century that was used for literary and official purposes in the newly formed Greek state. In 1976, Dimotiki was declared the official language of Greece, after having incorporated features of Katharevousa and thus giving birth to Standard Modern Greek , used today for all official purposes and in education . The historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of
8840-399: The economy. Unskilled or low-skill slaves labored in the fields, mines, and mills with few opportunities for advancement and little chance of freedom. Skilled and educated slaves—including artisans, chefs, domestic staff and personal attendants, entertainers , business managers, accountants and bankers, educators at all levels, secretaries and librarians, civil servants, and physicians—occupied
8970-399: The enemy were brought back into possession and restored to their former slave status under their Roman owners. Fundamentally, the slave in ancient Roman law was one who lacked libertas , liberty defined as “the absence of servitude." Cicero (1st century BC) asserted that liberty “does not consist in having a just master (dominus) , but in having none.” The common Latin word for "slave"
9100-543: The enslaved mostly did the same kinds of jobs. Elite Romans whose wealth came from property ownership saw little difference between slavery and a dependence on earning wages from labor. Slaves were themselves considered property under Roman law and had no rights of legal personhood. Unlike Roman citizens , by law they could be subjected to corporal punishment, sexual exploitation, torture, and summary execution. The most brutal forms of punishment were reserved for slaves. The adequacy of their diet, shelter, clothing, and healthcare
9230-567: The epics of Homer , ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting importance in the European canon . Greek is also the language in which many of the foundational texts in science and philosophy were originally composed. The New Testament of the Christian Bible was also originally written in Greek. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world , the Greek texts and Greek societies of antiquity constitute
9360-483: The existence of which is taken as a given. But there are mentions of manumission and the status of freedmen, who are referred to as cives Romani liberti , "freedmen who are Roman citizens," indicating that as early as the 5th century BC, former slaves were a significant demographic that the law needed to address, with a legal path to freedom and the opportunity to participate in the legal and political system. The Roman jurist Gaius described slavery as "the state that
9490-441: The father's governance of his children and of his slaves is put bluntly by Cicero: the master can expect his children to obey him readily but will need to "coerce and break his slave." Although slaves were recognized as human beings ( homines , singular homo ), they lacked legal personhood (Latin persona) . Lacking legal standing as a person, a slave could not enter into legal contracts on his own behalf; in effect, he remained
9620-452: The following periods: In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia : the coexistence of vernacular and archaizing written forms of the language. What came to be known as the Greek language question was a polarization between two competing varieties of Modern Greek: Dimotiki , the vernacular form of Modern Greek proper, and Katharevousa , meaning 'purified', a compromise between Dimotiki and Ancient Greek developed in
9750-401: The freedman was legally responsible only for services or projects (operae) that had been spelled out as stipulations or sworn to in advance; money could not be demanded, and certain freedmen were exempt from any formal operae . The Lex Aelia Sentia of AD 4 allowed a patron to take his freedman to court for not carrying out his operae as outlined in their manumission agreement, but
9880-567: The government bureaucracy. Some rose to positions of great influence, such as Narcissus , a former slave of the emperor Claudius . Their influence grew to such an extent under the Julio-Claudian emperors that Hadrian limited their participation by law. More typical among freedmen success stories would be the cloak dealership of Lucius Arlenus Demetrius, enslaved from Cilicia, and Lucius Arlenus Artemidorus, from Paphlagonia , whose shared family name suggests that their partnership toward
10010-458: The greatest chance for manumission, allowing her to marry and bear legitimate, free children, though in general women might not have expected manumission until their reproductive years had passed. A slave who had a large enough peculium might also buy the freedom of a fellow slave, a contubernalis with whom he had cohabited or a partner in business. Neither age nor length of service was automatic grounds for manumission; "masterly generosity
10140-472: The head of household except for that owned independently by his wife, whose slaves might operate with their own peculia from her. The legal dodge of peculium enabled both adult sons and capable slaves to manage property, turn a profit, and negotiate contracts. Legal texts do not recognize a fundamental distinction between slaves and sons acting as business agent ( institor ) . However, legal restrictions on making loans to unemancipated sons, introduced in
10270-467: The house whose ready tact suggests to her mistress an excuse for postponing execution of a threat made in ungovernable fury. A friendly chat or a private conversation. The subject is a domestic one; Metro has arrived at Koritto's house to ask her where she acquired a dildo , but the dialogue is as clever and amusing as the rest, with some delightful touches. Our interest is engaged here in a certain Kerdon,
10400-439: The infinitive entirely (employing a raft of new periphrastic constructions instead) and uses participles more restrictively. The loss of the dative led to a rise of prepositional indirect objects (and the use of the genitive to directly mark these as well). Ancient Greek tended to be verb-final, but neutral word order in the modern language is VSO or SVO. Modern Greek inherits most of its vocabulary from Ancient Greek, which in turn
10530-467: The late 15th century BC, was the first script used to write Greek. It is basically a syllabary , which was finally deciphered by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick in the 1950s (its precursor, Linear A , has not been deciphered and most likely encodes a non-Greek language). The language of the Linear B texts, Mycenaean Greek , is the earliest known form of Greek. Another similar system used to write
10660-727: The later Republic and during the Imperial period, thousands of soldiers, citizens, and their slaves in the Roman East were taken captive and enslaved by the Parthians or later within the Sasanian Empire . The Parthians captured 10,000 survivors after the defeat of Marcus Crassus at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BC, and marched them 1,500 miles to Margiana in Bactria , where their fate is unknown. While thoughts of returning
10790-440: The legal code particular to a people or nation. All human beings are born free ( liberi ) under natural law, but since slavery was held to be a universal practice, individual nations would develop their own civil laws pertaining to slaves. In ancient warfare, the victor had the right under the ius gentium to enslave a defeated population; however, if a settlement had been reached through diplomatic negotiations or formal surrender,
10920-582: The legal right to break up or sell off family members, and it has sometimes been assumed that they did so arbitrarily. But because of the value Romans placed on home-reared slaves ( vernae ) in expanding their familia , there is more evidence that the formation of family units, though not recognized as such for purposes of law and inheritance, was supported within larger urban households and on rural estates. Roman jurists who weigh in on actions that might break up slave families generally favored keeping them together, and protections for them appear several times in
11050-455: The magistrate confirmed it. The owner might also free the slave simply by having him entered in the official roll of citizens during census-taking; on principle, the censor had the unilateral power to free any slave to serve the interests of the state as a citizen. Slaves could also be freed in their owner's will ( manumissio testamento ), sometimes on condition of service or payment before or after freedom. A slave rewarded with manumission in
11180-414: The maker of the dildo and who hides this trade by the front of being a cobbler. On acquiring the information she desired, Metro leaves to seek him out. The same Kerdon and Metro whom we see in VI appear, Metro bringing some friends to Kerdon's shoe shop (his name, which means "profiteer", had already become generic for the shoemaker as the typical representative of retail trade); he is a little bald man with
11310-534: The manumission of slaves younger than thirty years of age, with some exceptions. Slaves of the emperor's own household were among those most likely to receive manumission, and the usual legal requirements did not apply. By the early 4th century AD, when the Empire was becoming Christianized, slaves could be freed by a ritual in a church, officiated by an ordained bishop or priest. Constantine I promulgated edicts authorizing manumissio in ecclesia , manumission within
11440-640: The membership of Greece and Cyprus in the European Union, Greek is one of the organization's 24 official languages . Greek is recognized as a minority language in Albania, and used co-officially in some of its municipalities, in the districts of Gjirokastër and Sarandë . It is also an official minority language in the regions of Apulia and Calabria in Italy. In the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages , Greek
11570-514: The mid 1st century AD, made them less useful than slaves in this role. Slaves with the skills and opportunities to earn money might hope to save enough to buy their freedom. There was a risk to the still-enslaved person that the master would renege and take back the earnings, but one of the expanded protections for slaves in the Imperial era was that a manumission agreement between the slave and his master could be enforced. While very few slaves ever controlled large sums of money, slaves who managed
11700-403: The mid to late 2nd century AD, slaves had more standing to complain of cruel or unfair treatment by their owners. But since even in late antiquity slaves still could not file lawsuits, could not testify without first undergoing torture, and could be punished by being burnt alive for testifying against their masters, it is unclear how these offenses could be brought to court and prosecuted; evidence
11830-441: The modern period. The division into conventional periods is, as with all such periodizations, relatively arbitrary, especially because, in all periods, Ancient Greek has enjoyed high prestige, and the literate borrowed heavily from it. Across its history, the syllabic structure of Greek has varied little: Greek shows a mixed syllable structure, permitting complex syllabic onsets but very restricted codas. It has only oral vowels and
11960-604: The more delightful often because they do not clamour for attention. The execution has the qualities of first-rate Alexandrian work in miniature, such as the epigrams of Asclepiades possess, the finish and firm outlines; and these little pictures bear the test of all artistic work – they do not lose their freshness with familiarity, and gain in interest as one learns to appreciate their subtle points. Greek language Greek ( Modern Greek : Ελληνικά , romanized : Elliniká , [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek : Ἑλληνική , romanized : Hellēnikḗ )
12090-614: The mother resorts to the old man after all. This is a visit of two poor women with an offering to the temple of Asclepius at Cos . While the cock is being sacrificed, they turn, like the women in the Ion of Euripides , to admire the works of art; among them a small boy strangling a vulpanser – doubtless the work of Boethus of Chalcedon that we know – and a sacrificial procession by Apelles , "the Ephesian", of whom we have an interesting piece of contemporary eulogy. The oily sacristan
12220-399: The noun they modify and relative pronouns are clause-initial. However, the morphological changes also have their counterparts in the syntax, and there are also significant differences between the syntax of the ancient and that of the modern form of the language . Ancient Greek made great use of participial constructions and of constructions involving the infinitive, and the modern variety lacks
12350-536: The objects of study of the discipline of Classics . During antiquity , Greek was by far the most widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world . It eventually became the official language of the Byzantine Empire and developed into Medieval Greek . In its modern form , Greek is the official language of Greece and Cyprus and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union . It
12480-706: The older periods of Greek, loanwords into Greek acquired Greek inflections, thus leaving only a foreign root word. Modern borrowings (from the 20th century on), especially from French and English, are typically not inflected; other modern borrowings are derived from Albanian , South Slavic ( Macedonian / Bulgarian ) and Eastern Romance languages ( Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian ). Greek words have been widely borrowed into other languages, including English. Example words include: mathematics , physics , astronomy , democracy , philosophy , athletics , theatre, rhetoric , baptism , evangelist , etc. Moreover, Greek words and word elements continue to be productive as
12610-403: The people were by custom to be spared violence and enslavement. The ius gentium was not a legal code , and any force it had depended on "reasoned compliance with standards of international conduct". Although Rome's earliest wars were defensive, a Roman victory would still result in the enslavement of the defeated under these circumstances, as is recorded at the conclusion of the war with
12740-465: The possibility of manumission became so embedded in Roman society that by the 2nd century AD, most free citizens in the city of Rome are likely to have had slaves "somewhere in their ancestry." In early Rome, the Twelve Tables permitted debt slavery under harsh terms and made freeborn Romans subject to enslavement as a result of financial misfortune. A law in the late 4th century BC put
12870-519: The possible penalties—which range in severity from a reprimand and fines to condemnation to hard labor—never include a return to enslavement. As a social class, freed slaves were libertini , though later writers used the terms libertus and libertinus interchangeably. Libertini were not entitled to hold the " career track " magistracies or state priesthoods in the city of Rome, nor could they achieve senatorial rank . But they could hold neighborhood and local offices which entitled them to wear
13000-604: The power of life and death (vitae necisque potestas) over the dependents of his household, including his sons and daughters as well as slaves. The Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus (1st century AD) asserts that this right dated back to the legendary time of Romulus . In contrast to Greek city-states , Rome was an ethnically diverse population and incorporated former slaves as citizens. Dionysius found it remarkable that when Romans manumitted their slaves, they gave them Roman citizenship as well. Myths of Rome's founding sought to account for both this heterogeneity and
13130-403: The rod, by the census, and by the terms of the owner's will ; all three were ratified by the state. The public ceremony of manumissio vindicta ("by the rod") was a fictitious trial that had to be performed before a magistrate who held imperium ; a Roman citizen declared the slave free, the owner did not contest it, the citizen touched the slave with a staff and pronounced a formula, and
13260-469: The role of freedmen in Roman society. The legendary founding by Romulus began with his establishment of a place of refuge that, according to the Augustan-era historian Livy , attracted "mostly former slaves, vagabonds, and runaways all looking for a fresh start" as citizens of the new city, which Livy considers a source of Rome's strength. Servius Tullius , the semi-legendary sixth king of Rome ,
13390-513: The senatorial, and legitimizing their heirs. A master could free a slave for the purpose of marrying her, becoming both her patron and her husband. Roman women, including freedwomen, could own property and initiate divorce , which required the intention of only one of the partners. But when marriage had been a condition of the freedwoman's manumission agreement, she lacked these rights. If she wanted to divorce her patron and marry someone else, she had to obtain his consent; provide evidence that he
13520-527: The slave but make him the heir. A formal manumission could not be revoked by the patron, and Nero ruled that the state had no interest in doing so. Freedom might also be granted informally, such as per epistulam , in a letter stating this intention, or inter amicos , "among friends," with the owner proclaiming a slave's freedom in front of witnesses. During the Republic, informal manumission did not confer citizen status, but Augustus took steps to clarify
13650-432: The slave had no kinship —no ancestral or paternal lineage, and no collateral relatives . The lack of legal personhood meant that slaves could not enter into forms of marriage recognized under Roman law , and a male slave was not a father as a matter of law because he could not exercise patriarchal potestas . However, slaves born into the familia and "upwardly mobile" slaves who held privileged positions might form
13780-404: The slave, and anything given to a slave by a third party for "meritorious services". The slave's own earnings could also be the original source of the monetary peculium rather than a grant by the master, and in inscriptions slaves and freedpersons at times assert that they had paid for the dedication "with their own money." The peculium in the form of property could include other slaves put at
13910-422: The status of those so freed. A law created "Junian Latin " status for these informally manumitted slaves, a sort of "half-way house between slavery and freedom" that, for example, did not confer the right to make a will. In 2 BC, the lex Fufia Caninia limited the number of slaves that could be freed through a master's will in proportion to the size of the estate. Six years later, another law prohibited
14040-437: The stressed vowel; the so-called breathing marks ( rough and smooth breathing ), originally used to signal presence or absence of word-initial /h/; and the diaeresis , used to mark the full syllabic value of a vowel that would otherwise be read as part of a diphthong. These marks were introduced during the course of the Hellenistic period. Actual usage of the grave in handwriting saw a rapid decline in favor of uniform usage of
14170-435: The terms of a treaty might permit the other side to retain captives as servi hostium , “slaves of the enemy.” A ransom could be paid to redeem a captive individually or as a group; an individual ransomed by someone outside his family was required to pay back the money before his full rights could be restored, and although he was a freeborn person, his status was ambiguous until the lien was lifted. An investigative procedure
14300-540: The traditional aristocracy as a vulgar nouveau riche . In the Satyricon , the character Trimalchio is a caricature of such a freedman. Although in general freed slaves could become citizens, those categorized as dediticii held no rights even if freed. The jurist Gaius called the status of dediticius "the worst kind of freedom." Slaves whose masters had treated them as criminals —placing them in chains , tattooing or branding them, torturing them to confess
14430-610: The work of Sophron . These were scenes in popular life, written in the language of the people, vigorous with sexual proverbs such as we get in other reflections of that region – in Petronius and the Pentamerone . Two of the best known and the most vital among the Idylls of Theocritus , the 2nd and the 15th, we know to have been derived from mimes of Sophron. What Theocritus is doing there, Herodas, his younger contemporary,
14560-414: The “free ones” in the household) and the slaves of the familia . This power of life and death, expressed as vitae necisque potestas , was exercised over all members of the extended household except his wife — a free Roman woman could own property of her own as a domina , and a married woman's slaves could act as her agents independently of her husband. Despite structural symmetries, the distinction between
14690-454: Was emancipatio , from which the English word " emancipation " derives. Both manumission and emancipation would involve transferral of some or most of any peculium (fund or property) the slave or minor had managed, less the self-purchase cost of the slave buying his freedom. That the two procedures are parallel in undoing the control of the paterfamilias is indicated by the legal fiction through which emancipatio occurred: technically, it
14820-446: Was not mentally competent to form intent; or show that he had broken their commitment by planning to marry someone else or taking a concubine . Because they were themselves property (res) , as a matter of law Roman slaves could not own property. However, they could be allowed to hold and manage property, which they could use as if it were their own, even though it ultimately belonged to their master. A fund or property set aside for
14950-567: Was servus , but in Roman law , a slave as chattel was mancipium , a grammatically neuter word meaning something "taken in hand," manus , a metaphor for possession and hence control and subordination. Agricultural slaves, certain farmland within the Italian peninsula, and farm animals were all res mancipi , a category of property established in early Rome's rural economy as requiring a formal legal process ( mancipatio ) for transferring ownership. The exclusive right to trade in res mancipi
15080-404: Was a defining aspect of Roman citizenship in the Republican era; free noncitizen residents ( peregrini ) could not buy and sell this form of property without a special grant of commercial rights. The Roman citizen who enjoyed liberty to the fullest extent was thus the property owner, the paterfamilias who had a legal right to control the estate. The paterfamilias exercised his power within
15210-574: Was a distinct dialect of Greek itself. Aside from the Macedonian question, current consensus regards Phrygian as the closest relative of Greek, since they share a number of phonological, morphological and lexical isoglosses , with some being exclusive between them. Scholars have proposed a Graeco-Phrygian subgroup out of which Greek and Phrygian originated. Among living languages, some Indo-Europeanists suggest that Greek may be most closely related to Armenian (see Graeco-Armenian ) or
15340-441: Was a sale ( mancipatio ) of the minor son three times at once, based on the archaic provision of the Twelve Tables that a son sold three times was freed of his father's potestas . Slaves of the emperor's household (the familia Caesaris ) were routinely manumitted at ages 30 to 35—an age that should not be taken as standard for other slaves. Within the familia Caesaris , a young woman in her reproductive years seems to have had
15470-568: Was also used as the official language of government and religion in the Christian Nubian kingdoms , for most of their history. Greek, in its modern form, is the official language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population. It is also the official language of Cyprus (nominally alongside Turkish ) and the British Overseas Territory of Akrotiri and Dhekelia (alongside English ). Because of
15600-557: Was also used in Ancient Greek. Greek has occasionally been written in the Latin script , especially in areas under Venetian rule or by Greek Catholics . The term Frankolevantinika / Φραγκολεβαντίνικα applies when the Latin script is used to write Greek in the cultural ambit of Catholicism (because Frankos / Φράγκος is an older Greek term for West-European dating to when most of (Roman Catholic Christian) West Europe
15730-497: Was dependent on their perceived utility to owners whose impulses might be cruel or situationally humane. Some people were born into slavery as the child of an enslaved mother. Others became slaves. War captives were considered legally enslaved, and Roman military expansion during the Republican era was a major source of slaves. From the 2nd century BC through late antiquity , kidnapping and piracy put freeborn people all around
15860-418: Was normally a cohabitation between two slaves within the same household, and contubernia were recorded along with births , deaths, and manumissions in large households concerned with lineage. Sometimes only one partner (contubernalis) obtained free status before the death of the other, as commemorated in epitaphs. These quasi marital unions were especially common among imperial slaves . The master had
15990-409: Was not automatically renewed; another agreement of consent by both parties had to be arranged. The loss of citizenship was a consequence of submitting to an enemy sovereign state; freeborn people kidnapped by bandits or pirates were regarded as seized illegally, and therefore they could be ransomed, or their sale into slavery rendered void, without compromising their citizen status. This contrast between
16120-426: Was not the driving force behind the Romans' dealings with their slaves." Scholars have differed on the rate of manumission. Manual laborers treated as chattel were least likely to be manumitted; skilled or highly educated urban slaves most likely. The hope was always greater than the reality, though it may have motivated some slaves to work harder and conform to the ideal of the "faithful servant." Dangling liberty as
16250-416: Was put in place under the emperor Hadrian to determine whether returned soldiers had been captured or surrendered willingly. Traitors, deserters, and those who had a chance to escape but made no attempt were not eligible for postliminium restoration of their citizenship. Because postliminium law also applied to enemy seizure of mobile property, it was the means by which military-support slaves taken by
16380-431: Was said to have been the son of a slave woman, and the cultural role of slavery is embedded in some religious festivals and temples that the Romans associated with his reign. Some legal and religious developments pertaining to slavery thus can be discerned even in Rome's earliest institutions. The Twelve Tables , the earliest Roman legal code , dated traditionally to 451/450 BC, do not contain law defining slavery,
16510-454: Was seen as the political consequence of one group dominating another, and people of any race, ethnicity, or place of origin might become slaves, including freeborn Romans. Slavery was practiced within all communities of the Roman Empire, including among Jews and Christians. Even modest households might expect to have two or three slaves. A period of slave rebellions ended with the defeat of Spartacus in 71 BC; slave uprisings grew rare in
16640-580: Was under the control of the Frankish Empire ). Frankochiotika / Φραγκοχιώτικα (meaning 'Catholic Chiot') alludes to the significant presence of Catholic missionaries based on the island of Chios . Additionally, the term Greeklish is often used when the Greek language is written in a Latin script in online communications. The Latin script is nowadays used by the Greek-speaking communities of Southern Italy . The Yevanic dialect
16770-587: Was unreliable. A slave was not permitted to testify against his master unless the charge was treason ( crimen maiestatis ) . When a slave committed a crime, the punishment exacted was likely to be far more severe than for the same crime committed by a free person. Persona gradually became "synonymous with the true nature of the individual" in the Roman world, in the view of Marcel Mauss , but " servus non habet personam ('a slave has no persona'). He has no personality. He does not own his body; he has no ancestors, no name, no cognomen , no goods of his own." Owing to
16900-673: Was written by Romaniote and Constantinopolitan Karaite Jews using the Hebrew Alphabet . In a tradition, that in modern time, has come to be known as Greek Aljamiado , some Greek Muslims from Crete wrote their Cretan Greek in the Arabic alphabet . The same happened among Epirote Muslims in Ioannina . This also happened among Arabic-speaking Byzantine rite Christians in the Levant ( Lebanon , Palestine, and Syria ). This usage
#837162