Christopher
FUHRMANN “Arrest
me, for I have run away!” Fugitive Slave Hunting
and the Priorities of Roman Law Enforcement
Much scholarship on Roman criminality and public order has
focused on the pre-modern, non-institutional nature of
crime control and the limited scope of state involvement
in rectifying crimes (e.g., W. Nippel,
Public Order in Ancient Rome, 1995).
Moreover, the empire as a whole lacked any sort of consistent,
specialized police institution similar to modern police
forces. In
provincial communities, various public and private
servants and magisterial attendants did in fact carry out
certain restricted police duties, and at times imperial
officials used soldiers to encourage public order. But
Roman policing was minimal in many areas, and fractured
along different levels of command which rarely
coordinated with one another.
One clear exception to this general picture, however, can be
found in the Romans’ keen interest to recover
runaway slaves. Cicero
tried desperately to recapture his trusted servus
Dionysius, and while on his way to Cilicia
intended to go to great lengths to apprehend one of Atticus’
slaves (Fam. 13.77,
5.9-5.11; Att. 5.15).
Augustus later boasted that in the course of returning
stability to the Republic, he returned 30,000 runaways to
their masters for punishment (RGDA 25; cf.
Dio 49.12.4f). Pliny’s
Bithynian correspondence with Trajan
likewise reveals the concern that slaves must not
illegally escape their servile condition (Ep.
10.29f, 10.74).
The
most striking evidence, however, is found in Justinian’s
Digesta 11.4, where those who harbor fugitive
slaves are treated much like abettors of bandits.
This same chapter also brings to light a senatus
consultum which requires landowners and
magistrates to cooperate in the search for runaways.
The jurist Ulpian further cites two second-century imperial
letters (one from Marcus Aurelius and Commodus and
another from Antoninus Pius), which specify that
provincial governors, local magistrates, and soldiers
posted in the provinces must all cooperate to help owners
regain their fugitive slaves.
Moreover, a careful process of active investigation, detention
and recovery is laid out, which also details the
involvement of the varying levels of state police power –
from petty municipal servants to the Roman urban prefect
or provincial governor. In
addition to the legal evidence, an episode from Petronius’
Satyrica (§97f) merits
attention, for it aptly illustrates one form of the very
process described in Dig. 11.4.
Aided by a handout presenting the relevant texts, this paper
shows that the Romans’ pursuit of fugitive slaves
defies many assumptions made by modern scholars in their
limited estimation of Roman policing.
Besides offering grounds for a reassessment of Roman policing,
the paper also highlights the consistent anxiety that
members of the Roman elite felt towards their slaves.
While some treatments of Roman slavery barely mention
runaways, Keith Bradley was quite correct in noting that
fugitive slaves are almost an obsession in the sources
(Slavery and society at Rome, 1994, pp. 129f.).
Concern over the economic threat posed by defection of slaves
is detectable in the fugitive slave laws of several
slaveholding societies, from the Old Babylonian Empire
(Code of Hammurabi #15-18) to
ante-bellum America.
Runaway slaves were also seen to be a detriment to the
standing of elite individuals, from the Roman senator
Cicero, to George Washington, who tried to use his
presidential auctoritas
to recover his wife’s escaped slave, Oney
Judge.
For the Romans, intolerance for fugitives led some domini
to brand or tattoo suspect slaves, or to force them to
wear humiliating iron collars, inscribed with messages
such as, t(ene) m(e) q(uia)
f(ugi): “Arrest me,
for I have runaway!” (ILS 9454).
The concern over fugitive slaves is what led to novel, more
ambitious policing measures, highlighting Roman society’s
determination to uphold the dichotomy between “slave”
and “free.”
Abstracts
Index