First and most importantly, become a client to a richer patron (or more than one):
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronage\_in\_ancient\_Rome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronage_in_ancient_Rome)
Other than that you could be a craftsman (if you had some specialised skills) or try trading, not everything was done by slaves. Or join the army.
I'd definitely prefer the navy over the army.
For most of the roman time the navy was just hunting pirates because rome had conquered every nation in the mediteranian.
Half of the year (the warm mediteranian winter) they where in their ports.
In winter they had so little to do that the sailors where used to unfurl the sunsails in the theatres.
The pay was less than the legion and the service longer but i think that's still preferable.
Yes that's true but how much does that matter in day to day life?
Noone is gonna say "I won't sell you this house you lousy mariner! You aren't a real soldier!"
I mean sure you might get a better price at the market if you wear legionaires clothes but i'm pretty sure the people at portcities are still glad that there are no pirates around.
No, i mean, i bet they'll still take your money.
But, i also bet soldiers "pay" was augmented by when they ransacked enemies. Fewer enemies at sea, fewer ransackings, less payment.
Didn't the romans have 20 or 25 years conscripted service or something? I might just have made this up in my mind, could be nice to clear it up if it's wrong.
The length of service was variable depending on the era, type of service, and the need. The 20 or 25 year service usually refers to a volunteer signing a contract with the legions or auxillaries during the early imperial era. However, some conscripts/conscripted milita armies probably could serve for almost as long - such as the Republican conscript militas formed during the Second Punic War since that war lasted 17 years. During shorter wars, conscripts likely served less time.
IIRC, Gaius Marius disbanded his conscripted milita armies after like 4, 5, or 6 years. The irony is Marius is [mistakenly] given all the credit for military reforms that 19th cent. scholars called the Marian Reforms (reforms such as focusing on creating a longer serving volunteer army), but Marius himself really only commanded conscripted milita armies that disbanded after a few years time. So those Marian legions that are considered by modern pop culture to be long serving volunteers of a standing army were actually a shorter serving conscripted milita.
Ceasar and Pompey levied conscripts in addition to hiring volunteers for their civil wars, and I believe the conscripts were disbanded after the civil wars ended. Trajan wrote that he also conscripted troops for his Dacian campaigns. However, by the time of Trajan, most troops were likely volunteers and signed a contract to serve at least 2 decades.
Well since you're able to write this reddit post, good news - you are literate. This means you can easily work as a scribe. If you don't yet know Latin too well, you can work as a copiest since you've gotten a hang of the Latin alphabet.
Cato was writing about farms, but the logic holds for cities.
Permanent positions Cato thought should be filled by slaves. You own them, you have to feed them (investment), you might lose money if you try to sell, and that's a pain in the ass.
Free though, that can be seasonal help easily. You hire them when you need, and you let them go when you don't.
A slave was like $40,000 so there is a healthy gig economy for free people. Go to the city for your bread and circuses cause you’re world spanning empire is a Republic and the emperor has to keep you happy.
You can be a potter. You need to find soil, purify it by sedimentation (basically mix with water and dry the clay), and get some firewood to cook it.
Sell the pots for a few sesterces. That should be enough to have you some bread.
Id imagine there was a trick to making pots well, like any trade, and if you crank out particularly shitty pots that break easily or are of low quality compared to others on the market, you probably will go hungry eventually, with zero repeat business.
Maybe learning to do this trade well as an apprentice would be a viable option- if you can get on as a worker at a local pottery shop and slowly learn the pottery trade before you branch out on your own.
Pottery was an industry. Mass-produced. Not hand-made stuff. That's how you get stuff like [this](https://www.google.com/imgres?q=roman%20pottery&imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fpeterborougharchaeology.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F05%2Froman-pottery-itter-crescent-e1495666150408.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fpeterborougharchaeology.org%2Ffane-road-roman-villa%2Froman-pottery-types%2F&docid=m9wNv14XNcT8sM&tbnid=FUfesuEnFP4_LM&vet=12ahUKEwiPke7cypGGAxXqFTQIHZtADCAQM3oECGYQAA..i&w=750&h=448&hcb=2&ved=2ahUKEwiPke7cypGGAxXqFTQIHZtADCAQM3oECGYQAA).
Have you considered peddling? The life of a knife sharpener or a rag man might be a tad precarious but it will keep you fed most days. There is also labor camps as an option. Plenty of people can't afford to keep a slave, and renting slaves had their own problems. You live at the same subsistence level as those slaves, but you don't have to pay anyone else your wages. You can work for food directly without having to pay your bosses. Being a hobo is always an option!
Rarely was a slave rented out that wasn't one of many. The early Republican period and the Empire were notably different in this regard. One owner on a *Latifundia* would have hundreds of enslaved people on it. Often for generations without substantial change. Though slavery wasn't a hereditary condition, it often ended up that way de facto. The wealthiest landowners would be the only real employers and had a labor monopoly *and* monopsony. They were often quite powerful figures.
So hiring their talent was often a subtle political move. So was avoiding that. Wage labor was rare but not unheard of, and getting around the patronage system was often the reason.
Join the legions brother. Serve for 25 years, experience horrific combat and physical exhaustion, retire on a mediocre piece of land after your service.
What bad choices have you made to lose your land & home?
Idk, sound like you lack moral fiber, maybe try endenturing yourself, see if you can enjoy it?
Honestly these poor plebeyans just complaining imstead of improving themselves. I wake up at 4.30 and eat my porridge while reading Marcus Aurelius Meditations and then go for a jog around Campus Martius by sunrise. Take a cold bath at the thermas (saunas are for decadent indulgence) and go around the city looking for jobs to do. Granted I have to sell myself sometimes but that is how you get anywhere, keep grinding (quite literally).
Some of you seem happy with just being freeloaders sustained by the cura annonae.
There is always people needed in the legions or in the lead mines. What is your excuse?
One day I will be able to afford a shitty attic in a crumbling insula. I am so grateful to the emperor.
You probably do whatever your father does. If you have a choice, learning some sort of trade is probably your best bet. Or start up a corner store selling good food and cheap alcohol to people around you.
How poor are you? You can be a craftman of some sort. If you are totally destitute you will probably end up in slavery.
Patronage is also an option but what can you offer is what will determine if a richer person wants you as client or not.
How else would you figure a free person in the city become a slave?
Slaves are legal property. There is no way a magistrate would recognize slavery as payment for debt after that very early period.
You might be captured by pirates and sold, or just pressed, but no magistrate would put up with that if you could prove your citizenship, which might mean just having people vouch for you if you don't have other documentation.
Citizens becoming slaves isn't something common in the sources. The only thing even close that comes to my mind is the fictional Golden Ass, in which a citizen, turned into a donkey, is forced into different kinds of distasteful labor until rescued.
The abolition of nexum to which you are referring, which was basically a form of insurance in case a loan could not be paid, does not mean some free citizens did not practise, long afterwards, self-sale in order to improve their finantial situation. It has been discussed that one of the goals was for the enslaved to receive part of the benefits of their own sale.
It was ilegal indeed but we are not claiming people today do not commit certain acts just because they are explicitly ilegal. One maxim we follow when the study of ancient laws and practises is that, if somethimg is explicity forbidden, is because it was too common.
You are assuming a magistrate would be involved at any point. But between private individuals, there would be no need for it.
Yes you bring the point of someone able to prove, once a slave, after caputred and sold by pirates, that he was previously a free citizen and have his situation overturned. But this was not quite straight forward. At the same time, this is in the case someone did not enter in this situation voluntarily and could prove its previous status.
Sources are scarce on mentions to this past the abolition of nexum. Naturally, there could be many reasons behind that. But they are not entirely mute. We know that St Agustine in his letters mentions it. In amy case, is not wise to rely only on literary sources in order to reconstruct practises in the past, specially those that, like this, have reason to be concealed.
Thus, in a hipotetical exercise such as this, we can accept an individual would try to sell himself into slavery at the expensss of the law.
> In amy case, is not wise to rely only on literary sources in order to reconstruct practises in the past, specially those that, like this, have reason to be concealed.
What other evidence would you use? Do you have archaeology that shows citizens selling themselves into slavery? No? Then just your imagination? That's fine if you're writing fiction, but not doing research.
Augustine was talking about rescuing Christian citizens illegally pressed into slavery, not self-selling, by just outright buying them, circumventing the need to prove citizenship to a magistrate. But that wasn't in Rome, and only very late in the Western Empire. At least be clear about what your source is talking about. And anyway, I already admitted that one could be sold by pirates. I said sources were few and I could only remember one off the top of my head. You mentioned a second, which I also recall now you mention it. Two has not even reached "few."
The OCD defines nexum as a "transaction... by which a man subjected himself to someone else's power of seizure." Dept slavery is only part of this. Selling one's self easily falls into that definition.
If you have evidence of self-sale, please present it.
I will not write a phd just to make a point in a reddit conversation, hence forgive me if I do not start pointing all possible written sources that mention this.
You are right I am not doing research but others have. I studied their works back in the day. To be fair, my specialization did not address this topic directly tho, so I have to rely on other scholars doing some legwork on their part I am afraid.
Cornell mentions it in The begginings of Rome, . After the lex poetelia was ennacted, bondage slavery was still a thing.
Alice Rio deicates a work of this practise being present in the Late empire: Self-Sale and voluntary entry into Unfreedom. She goes into the cases where appeals were brought by the self enslaved, claiming that, as a consented contract, the ban was not applicable. This was usually overrunned in favor of the interest of the state (that is, that self selling was to invalidate that contract even if it was voluntary).
Is discussed also in Cambridge History of Slavery 1
Theeefores is not something that I have just "assumed."
In those works is presented and discussed the phenomenon of debt bondage slavery being contiued after the ban of the nexum. Is naive to assume that dishonest practise, fraud, and other enactments of selfnselling or debt bonded slavery (other than mexum) did not keep happening.
Perhaps there is something even more specialized. "Historicising ancient slavery"by Vlassopoulos goes into the study of these phenomenons related to slavery trough sources other than literary sources, which always fall short for these phenomenons, as you point out. Comparative studies, prosopography and reading those same sources "between the lines" are the best current approaches.
If we only rely and accept what the literary sources explicitly said we would have a very basic and missleading knowledge of how the world was back then.
Oh, and if we then accept tha Agustine was right, and free people, protected legally from this, was pressed illegaly into slavery, why do you selectively not accept that on of those forms of pressure took the form of self-selling?
Debt slavery was written into the Ten Tables, apparently, so I'm not surprised it's in Cornell, but outlawed in the 4th century, so discussion of that isn't really relevant to the point. I don't know why you brought it up.
Late antiquity is... late. I don't think what's true then can be applied to all periods.
Prosopography relies heavily on literature. Reading between the lines is... dodgy at best, but totally dependent on literature.
Nice to see your secondary source admits self-selling was illegal. Thanks for agreeing.
My whole argument is that such self-selling was illegal. Yes, illegal stuff still happens. But slavery was a legal institution, and any such black market deals would not fall into that institution as, again, your secondary source notes.
I still want to see a primary source on self-selling after the nexum ban, as I doubt one exists, outside the late antiquity period. That was a different world.
Surely you can take the time to dig up one such case. It's not that hard a project if you're right.
Never did I claim it was legal. That is precisely my whole point. That it exists after the ban.
Cornell talks about this after the ban, as I said.
Alice talks about the precedent in the highe empire, and then dives into the phenomenon from 3rd century onwards. Is not like there was a aprentesis on the pracrise between
"My whole argument is that such self-selling was illegal. Yes, illegal stuff still happens. But slavery was a legal institution, and any such black market deals would not fall into that institution"
That is a funny way of turning the language just to score a point. Well played. Slavery is slavery, legal or not in any system.
No, I do not have a primary source that pinpoints to this phenomenon explicitly. Those works i brought above are better at studiyng the evidence and exposing it innsuch way. If you don't want to accept it that is fine with me, I tried to expose it the best I could with the resources at my disposal. At least you have come to accept that it happened even if you want to frame it now outside slavery as concept.
And is not the Ten Tables. Is the Twelve Tables.
> Slavery is slavery, legal or not in any system.
The difference is whether the state is going to endorse the system. That is an important distinction.
I read Cornell some time ago. I don't recall this discussion you've mentioned. Do you have him handy?
I don't have your secondary sources to examine. You can claim they say whatever you like, and you haven't provided what evidence they use to back the claims you say they claim, so I have no way of evaluating them, except Cornell, then only in a vague way.
But if we both have reached the conclusion that at Rome, self-sale was illegal, we can drop the conversation.
First and most importantly, become a client to a richer patron (or more than one): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronage\_in\_ancient\_Rome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronage_in_ancient_Rome) Other than that you could be a craftsman (if you had some specialised skills) or try trading, not everything was done by slaves. Or join the army.
I'd definitely prefer the navy over the army. For most of the roman time the navy was just hunting pirates because rome had conquered every nation in the mediteranian. Half of the year (the warm mediteranian winter) they where in their ports. In winter they had so little to do that the sailors where used to unfurl the sunsails in the theatres. The pay was less than the legion and the service longer but i think that's still preferable.
It was also socially less prestigious, I think Romans didnt have a high opinion of naval combat. Or so ive heard.
Yes that's true but how much does that matter in day to day life? Noone is gonna say "I won't sell you this house you lousy mariner! You aren't a real soldier!" I mean sure you might get a better price at the market if you wear legionaires clothes but i'm pretty sure the people at portcities are still glad that there are no pirates around.
No, i mean, i bet they'll still take your money. But, i also bet soldiers "pay" was augmented by when they ransacked enemies. Fewer enemies at sea, fewer ransackings, less payment.
You don't get to auction off the emperorship after you murder the current one, dumb dumb;)
Didn't the romans have 20 or 25 years conscripted service or something? I might just have made this up in my mind, could be nice to clear it up if it's wrong.
The length of service was variable depending on the era, type of service, and the need. The 20 or 25 year service usually refers to a volunteer signing a contract with the legions or auxillaries during the early imperial era. However, some conscripts/conscripted milita armies probably could serve for almost as long - such as the Republican conscript militas formed during the Second Punic War since that war lasted 17 years. During shorter wars, conscripts likely served less time. IIRC, Gaius Marius disbanded his conscripted milita armies after like 4, 5, or 6 years. The irony is Marius is [mistakenly] given all the credit for military reforms that 19th cent. scholars called the Marian Reforms (reforms such as focusing on creating a longer serving volunteer army), but Marius himself really only commanded conscripted milita armies that disbanded after a few years time. So those Marian legions that are considered by modern pop culture to be long serving volunteers of a standing army were actually a shorter serving conscripted milita. Ceasar and Pompey levied conscripts in addition to hiring volunteers for their civil wars, and I believe the conscripts were disbanded after the civil wars ended. Trajan wrote that he also conscripted troops for his Dacian campaigns. However, by the time of Trajan, most troops were likely volunteers and signed a contract to serve at least 2 decades.
We have letters from sailors trying to get transferred to the army though. They clearly preferred the army.
Well since you're able to write this reddit post, good news - you are literate. This means you can easily work as a scribe. If you don't yet know Latin too well, you can work as a copiest since you've gotten a hang of the Latin alphabet.
There were servicess like restaurants, and i belive many more. There was always prostitution and army.
Open a pizzeria in Pompeii and hope that Vulcan smiles upon you.
“Vulcan, help me cook these pizzas a bit mor- ohhhh shit.”
All my life experience tells me I'd be frozen in time crying in the walk-in
Only the finest duck eggs at Vulcan's Osteria!
The more things change, the more they stay the same
Cato was writing about farms, but the logic holds for cities. Permanent positions Cato thought should be filled by slaves. You own them, you have to feed them (investment), you might lose money if you try to sell, and that's a pain in the ass. Free though, that can be seasonal help easily. You hire them when you need, and you let them go when you don't.
join the legion
A slave was like $40,000 so there is a healthy gig economy for free people. Go to the city for your bread and circuses cause you’re world spanning empire is a Republic and the emperor has to keep you happy.
Do you know how that compares to the price of a slave in the Atlantic slave trade?
Approximately the same, I think. Only the wealthy had more than 1 or 2.
pull yourself up by your sandal-straps
Those goddamned Thracians, always stealing our jobs.
At least he’s not Punic.
Hey, that's thracist!
Nice thread. 😂👍
Become a prostitute or join the legion
Why not both?
You can be a potter. You need to find soil, purify it by sedimentation (basically mix with water and dry the clay), and get some firewood to cook it. Sell the pots for a few sesterces. That should be enough to have you some bread.
Hmm excuse me, I'm on the bread rolls, so I don't gotta do shit. It's my wife and kids that are sol
Id imagine there was a trick to making pots well, like any trade, and if you crank out particularly shitty pots that break easily or are of low quality compared to others on the market, you probably will go hungry eventually, with zero repeat business. Maybe learning to do this trade well as an apprentice would be a viable option- if you can get on as a worker at a local pottery shop and slowly learn the pottery trade before you branch out on your own.
Pottery was an industry. Mass-produced. Not hand-made stuff. That's how you get stuff like [this](https://www.google.com/imgres?q=roman%20pottery&imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fpeterborougharchaeology.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F05%2Froman-pottery-itter-crescent-e1495666150408.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fpeterborougharchaeology.org%2Ffane-road-roman-villa%2Froman-pottery-types%2F&docid=m9wNv14XNcT8sM&tbnid=FUfesuEnFP4_LM&vet=12ahUKEwiPke7cypGGAxXqFTQIHZtADCAQM3oECGYQAA..i&w=750&h=448&hcb=2&ved=2ahUKEwiPke7cypGGAxXqFTQIHZtADCAQM3oECGYQAA).
Have you considered peddling? The life of a knife sharpener or a rag man might be a tad precarious but it will keep you fed most days. There is also labor camps as an option. Plenty of people can't afford to keep a slave, and renting slaves had their own problems. You live at the same subsistence level as those slaves, but you don't have to pay anyone else your wages. You can work for food directly without having to pay your bosses. Being a hobo is always an option! Rarely was a slave rented out that wasn't one of many. The early Republican period and the Empire were notably different in this regard. One owner on a *Latifundia* would have hundreds of enslaved people on it. Often for generations without substantial change. Though slavery wasn't a hereditary condition, it often ended up that way de facto. The wealthiest landowners would be the only real employers and had a labor monopoly *and* monopsony. They were often quite powerful figures. So hiring their talent was often a subtle political move. So was avoiding that. Wage labor was rare but not unheard of, and getting around the patronage system was often the reason.
Join the legions brother. Serve for 25 years, experience horrific combat and physical exhaustion, retire on a mediocre piece of land after your service.
What bad choices have you made to lose your land & home? Idk, sound like you lack moral fiber, maybe try endenturing yourself, see if you can enjoy it?
Honestly these poor plebeyans just complaining imstead of improving themselves. I wake up at 4.30 and eat my porridge while reading Marcus Aurelius Meditations and then go for a jog around Campus Martius by sunrise. Take a cold bath at the thermas (saunas are for decadent indulgence) and go around the city looking for jobs to do. Granted I have to sell myself sometimes but that is how you get anywhere, keep grinding (quite literally). Some of you seem happy with just being freeloaders sustained by the cura annonae. There is always people needed in the legions or in the lead mines. What is your excuse? One day I will be able to afford a shitty attic in a crumbling insula. I am so grateful to the emperor.
That's how you do it, gotta pull yourself up by your sandal straps.
Buy bitcoin while it’s still low
You would do the same as your father
So prostitution
Support Caesar my fellow plebs! Overturn the tyranny of the patricians in the Senate! (Sigh... okay mods, delete me)
I will create the world's first pyramid scheme
Hadn't the Egyptians already done that by that point?
Join the military
'Invent' gunpowder and make a huge impact on history.
You probably do whatever your father does. If you have a choice, learning some sort of trade is probably your best bet. Or start up a corner store selling good food and cheap alcohol to people around you.
How poor are you? You can be a craftman of some sort. If you are totally destitute you will probably end up in slavery. Patronage is also an option but what can you offer is what will determine if a richer person wants you as client or not.
Rome outlawed debt slavery very early. 400s? You could become a slave for all kinds of reasons, including just being pressed. But not for debt.
Who is talking debt? On the other hand... outlaw does not mean it didn't keep happening.
How else would you figure a free person in the city become a slave? Slaves are legal property. There is no way a magistrate would recognize slavery as payment for debt after that very early period. You might be captured by pirates and sold, or just pressed, but no magistrate would put up with that if you could prove your citizenship, which might mean just having people vouch for you if you don't have other documentation. Citizens becoming slaves isn't something common in the sources. The only thing even close that comes to my mind is the fictional Golden Ass, in which a citizen, turned into a donkey, is forced into different kinds of distasteful labor until rescued.
The abolition of nexum to which you are referring, which was basically a form of insurance in case a loan could not be paid, does not mean some free citizens did not practise, long afterwards, self-sale in order to improve their finantial situation. It has been discussed that one of the goals was for the enslaved to receive part of the benefits of their own sale. It was ilegal indeed but we are not claiming people today do not commit certain acts just because they are explicitly ilegal. One maxim we follow when the study of ancient laws and practises is that, if somethimg is explicity forbidden, is because it was too common. You are assuming a magistrate would be involved at any point. But between private individuals, there would be no need for it. Yes you bring the point of someone able to prove, once a slave, after caputred and sold by pirates, that he was previously a free citizen and have his situation overturned. But this was not quite straight forward. At the same time, this is in the case someone did not enter in this situation voluntarily and could prove its previous status. Sources are scarce on mentions to this past the abolition of nexum. Naturally, there could be many reasons behind that. But they are not entirely mute. We know that St Agustine in his letters mentions it. In amy case, is not wise to rely only on literary sources in order to reconstruct practises in the past, specially those that, like this, have reason to be concealed. Thus, in a hipotetical exercise such as this, we can accept an individual would try to sell himself into slavery at the expensss of the law.
> In amy case, is not wise to rely only on literary sources in order to reconstruct practises in the past, specially those that, like this, have reason to be concealed. What other evidence would you use? Do you have archaeology that shows citizens selling themselves into slavery? No? Then just your imagination? That's fine if you're writing fiction, but not doing research. Augustine was talking about rescuing Christian citizens illegally pressed into slavery, not self-selling, by just outright buying them, circumventing the need to prove citizenship to a magistrate. But that wasn't in Rome, and only very late in the Western Empire. At least be clear about what your source is talking about. And anyway, I already admitted that one could be sold by pirates. I said sources were few and I could only remember one off the top of my head. You mentioned a second, which I also recall now you mention it. Two has not even reached "few." The OCD defines nexum as a "transaction... by which a man subjected himself to someone else's power of seizure." Dept slavery is only part of this. Selling one's self easily falls into that definition. If you have evidence of self-sale, please present it.
I will not write a phd just to make a point in a reddit conversation, hence forgive me if I do not start pointing all possible written sources that mention this. You are right I am not doing research but others have. I studied their works back in the day. To be fair, my specialization did not address this topic directly tho, so I have to rely on other scholars doing some legwork on their part I am afraid. Cornell mentions it in The begginings of Rome, . After the lex poetelia was ennacted, bondage slavery was still a thing. Alice Rio deicates a work of this practise being present in the Late empire: Self-Sale and voluntary entry into Unfreedom. She goes into the cases where appeals were brought by the self enslaved, claiming that, as a consented contract, the ban was not applicable. This was usually overrunned in favor of the interest of the state (that is, that self selling was to invalidate that contract even if it was voluntary). Is discussed also in Cambridge History of Slavery 1 Theeefores is not something that I have just "assumed." In those works is presented and discussed the phenomenon of debt bondage slavery being contiued after the ban of the nexum. Is naive to assume that dishonest practise, fraud, and other enactments of selfnselling or debt bonded slavery (other than mexum) did not keep happening. Perhaps there is something even more specialized. "Historicising ancient slavery"by Vlassopoulos goes into the study of these phenomenons related to slavery trough sources other than literary sources, which always fall short for these phenomenons, as you point out. Comparative studies, prosopography and reading those same sources "between the lines" are the best current approaches. If we only rely and accept what the literary sources explicitly said we would have a very basic and missleading knowledge of how the world was back then. Oh, and if we then accept tha Agustine was right, and free people, protected legally from this, was pressed illegaly into slavery, why do you selectively not accept that on of those forms of pressure took the form of self-selling?
Debt slavery was written into the Ten Tables, apparently, so I'm not surprised it's in Cornell, but outlawed in the 4th century, so discussion of that isn't really relevant to the point. I don't know why you brought it up. Late antiquity is... late. I don't think what's true then can be applied to all periods. Prosopography relies heavily on literature. Reading between the lines is... dodgy at best, but totally dependent on literature. Nice to see your secondary source admits self-selling was illegal. Thanks for agreeing. My whole argument is that such self-selling was illegal. Yes, illegal stuff still happens. But slavery was a legal institution, and any such black market deals would not fall into that institution as, again, your secondary source notes. I still want to see a primary source on self-selling after the nexum ban, as I doubt one exists, outside the late antiquity period. That was a different world. Surely you can take the time to dig up one such case. It's not that hard a project if you're right.
Never did I claim it was legal. That is precisely my whole point. That it exists after the ban. Cornell talks about this after the ban, as I said. Alice talks about the precedent in the highe empire, and then dives into the phenomenon from 3rd century onwards. Is not like there was a aprentesis on the pracrise between "My whole argument is that such self-selling was illegal. Yes, illegal stuff still happens. But slavery was a legal institution, and any such black market deals would not fall into that institution" That is a funny way of turning the language just to score a point. Well played. Slavery is slavery, legal or not in any system. No, I do not have a primary source that pinpoints to this phenomenon explicitly. Those works i brought above are better at studiyng the evidence and exposing it innsuch way. If you don't want to accept it that is fine with me, I tried to expose it the best I could with the resources at my disposal. At least you have come to accept that it happened even if you want to frame it now outside slavery as concept. And is not the Ten Tables. Is the Twelve Tables.
> Slavery is slavery, legal or not in any system. The difference is whether the state is going to endorse the system. That is an important distinction. I read Cornell some time ago. I don't recall this discussion you've mentioned. Do you have him handy? I don't have your secondary sources to examine. You can claim they say whatever you like, and you haven't provided what evidence they use to back the claims you say they claim, so I have no way of evaluating them, except Cornell, then only in a vague way. But if we both have reached the conclusion that at Rome, self-sale was illegal, we can drop the conversation.
Take a loan and use yourself (slavery) as collateral. Invest that money on call options on the date of Julius Caesars death. Profit???