HOW TO MANAGE YOUR SLAVES
Marcus Sidonius Falx with Jerry Toner
Profile Books;
216 pages; £8.99
In management literature, the name Marcus Sidonius Falx won't ring a bell. Of course, it won't, he's a nobleman living in the heyday of the Roman empire. But in some ways he is a man ahead of his time, having co-created a self-help book, the kind that has been all the rage in our barbarian age.
As a member of the privileged Roman nobility, Marcus Sidonius Falx presided over a vast household and extensive estates and naturally had to manage a large workforce of slaves, just as his family had done for generations. His brisk and earthy wisdom is conveyed to us through the wide-ranging research and entertaining pen of Jerry Toner, fellow and director of Classics at Churchill College, Cambridge University.
Professor Toner clarifies a point for us upfront: that Falx's existence "may be a subject of academic debate". In fact, the good professor's helpful Commentary at the end of each chapter makes it clear that it is Falx who is the ghost writer, a sort of Noble Everyman created to help philistine modern readers understand an institution that was intrinsic to one of the world's great empires.
Falx was very much a man of his time, so it may be useful for the modern reader to suspend moral judgement while reading him. For instance, she should not be shocked to read in a chapter titled "Be the Master" that "nature … intended to make the bodies and souls of free men different to those of slaves. Slaves have bodies that are strong and well suited to the kind of physical services they have to do. Their souls are less capable of reasoning. The bodies of free men, by contrast, are upright and not much use for that kind of manual work. But their souls are intelligent."
As Professor Toner explains, slavery didn't excite the kind of revulsion it does today among the educated elite. There were no texts advocating its abolition, for instance. "Wealthy Romans saw slavery as being necessary for a high standard of living, just as we do modern domestic appliances. Slaves did all the things that you would not want to do yourself - washing, cleaning, even wiping your backside - as well as providing a whole range of other services." The Greeks, in fact, "held stronger views of the nature of slaves than did the Romans. Aristotle famously argued that slaves were naturally slavish and it was right for them to be owned by superior Greeks".
Once you understand this, you'll take Falx's advice on optimal slave management at face value - literally. As he says, it starts with the purchase decision. "When it comes to buying slaves, let the buyer beware! If you perchance see a slave in whom you are interested you must be sure to examine him or her closely," Falx writes. "Just as you would take the cover from a horse you intended to buy … so you should have the slave dealer make them undress." He further advises a contract with the dealer and a guarantee. Professor Toner's Commentary tells us that "Digest 21.1 gives details of the Edict of the Curule Aediles which governed the sale of slaves and lists the defects that had to be revealed".
From how much food and clothing to provide slaves, when to let your slaves have sex with each other or to engage in sex with them yourself (this was okay only for the master of the house, for the mistress it was considered rank immorality), how to treat your illegitimate offspring from slaves, what to do when slaves fall ill (give 'em lighter duties till they recover), how to treat slaves who were too old to work (lots of noblesse oblige involved here), Professor Toner has been able to rise above his Irish peasant roots and scour the classical texts to create this authentic portrait of life in one of the earliest global enterprises called the Roman Empire.
Even if we discount some of Falx's less admirable qualities (judged by modern notions of morality, that is), he almost sounds like the CEOs of a mega-corporation advising his peers on Managing Talent. Who knows, had Falx been born in the 20th century he would have given his book a more evocative title - "How to Buy Slaves and Influence Slave Dealers", for instance, or "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Slave Management But Were Afraid to Ask", "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Slaves" or "The One-Minute Slave Manager". His book lacks only blurbs from fellow slave owners to convince readers of its intrinsic worth. Anyway, we have it on authority in a Foreword by no less a peerless classicist than Mary Beard that "Falx is one of the most reliable guides we have to what Romans would have seen as a proud tradition of 'slave management'".
Nor is the book as anachronistic as one might suppose. Professor Beard makes a subtle point: "Do some of his insights still help us manage our own 'staff'? For are we sure that 'wage slaves' are really so much different from 'slaves'?" Some these issues may not be entirely irrelevant in India, too, where family-owned businesses dominate the corporate sector and the households of the rich and the middle class run on hired help.
And finally, as Professor Toner sombrely reminds us, "it is a tragic fact that even though slavery is illegal in every country in the world … there are 27 million individuals who are forced to work under threat of violence, without pay or hope of escape. There are more slaves in the world today than there were at any point in the life of the Roman empire".
