Slave Religiosity in the Roman Middle Republic

Classical Antiquity 36 (2):317-369 (2017)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

This article proposes a new interpretation of slave religious experience in mid-republican Rome. Select passages from Plautine comedy and Cato the Elder's De agri cultura are paired with material culture as well as comparative evidence—mostly from studies of Black Atlantic slave religions—to reconstruct select aspects of a specific and distinctive slave “religiosity” in the era of large-scale enslavements. I work towards this reconstruction first by considering the subordination of slaves as religious agents before turning to slaves’ practice of certain forms of religious expertise in the teeth of subordination and policing. After transitioning to an assessment of slave religiosity's role in the pursuit of freedom, I conclude with a set of methodological justifications for this paper's line of inquiry.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Structure and Level of Religiosity Test.Małgorzata Tatala, Czesław Walesa & Elżbieta Rydz - 2017 - Polish Psychological Bulletin 48 (1):20-27.
Slave Revolt, Deflated Self-deception.Guy Elgat - 2015 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 23 (3):524-544.

Analytics

Added to PP
2017-11-01

Downloads
39 (#356,630)

6 months
5 (#246,492)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Cannibal Metaphysics.Eduardo Viveiros de Castro - 2014 - Univ of Minnesota Press.
The Sociology of Religion.Max Weber & Ephraim Fischoff - 1963 - Philosophy 41 (158):363-365.
Freedom as Marronage.Neil Roberts - 2015 - University of Chicago Press.

View all 26 references / Add more references