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Today, few ancient historians believe that Greek and Roman slavery had anything to do with race or racism. But when histories of ancient slavery were first written in the 1780s, the connection was assumed. This article explores how and why race and racism persisted in Anglophone historiography on ancient slavery into the twentieth century, only disappearing in the 1950s. I argue that it might be time to reopen the book on whether ancient slavery was a racialized institution. Adopting insights from premodern critical race studies (PCRS), I argue that the real differences between ancient and Atlantic-world slaveries should not be seen in terms of discontinuity and rupture. Rather, I see the question through what Margo Hendricks calls a "bidirectional gaze," by which social arrangements of the past few centuries might bear uncanny resemblance to institutions of the ancient past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the Aramaic and Egyptian textual evidence for the practice of marking enslaved persons in Late Period Egypt, concluding that the terminology of the period refers to branding, not tattooing, as previously suggested. Both branding and tattooing existed as forms of body mutilation, but these practices inhabited different spheres of social power; branding marked one as property, whereas tattooing was religious and decorative. Bearing in mind the use of branding as an indication of ownership, the evidence of tattooing as a cultic (and particularly feminine) practice, and the etymology and usage of the Aramaic terms, this paper proposes that the body mutilation practiced in this period on enslaved persons was branding, not tattooing. The identification of these marks as brands emphasizes the dehumanization of these enslaved persons and implies that their status was on par with other property such as cattle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have recently noted a reluctance in New Testament scholarship to accept and apply the most recent historical scholarship on ancient enslavement to our readings of the biblical texts. The last century has seen developments in historical and classical scholarship that have moved those disciplines away from an understanding of ancient slavery as benevolent and toward a recognition of the institution's violent and coercive nature. A similar movement can be seen in the study of enslavement among first-century Jewish communities, with recent scholars arguing that Jewish enslavement practices were not as uniquely benign as was once thought. In spite of these developments, scholars of the Synoptic Gospels continue to utilize outdated models for understanding slavery in the biblical texts as a benevolent institution. A handful of New Testament scholars are charting a new course, challenging the rest of us to adopt the new historical consensus and to see biblical enslavement for what it was. Allowing these new critical works to lay the foundation for our understanding of slavery as it appears in the Synoptic Gospels will move us away from tired clichés and toward a more accurate picture of the worlds in and behind these texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution looks at Babylonian slaves and servants as they appear in 322 Old Babylonian letters. This corpus has not been used for this purpose before, and now reveals that the primary economic functions of slaves had to do with information and credit in an economic environment of mercantilism, rather than with labor in the agricultural sector. Cuneiform letters, rarely mentioning work, instead emphasized the independent movement of slaves, their delegation as proxies to their masters to conduct business, and their capacity to serve as collateral for loans. The analysis of this evidence permits a deeper look at the ethics of care and control that conditioned the relations of masters and slaves, and what we can now say about the personhood of slaves and servants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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O artigo mostra, mediante exemplos iconográficos, as dificuldades metodológicas de identificação de escravos em obras de arte antigas, mas, também, as possibilidades de se obter informações adicionais às fontes literárias. Ainda que, muitas vezes, sejam necessárias inscrições ou fontes escritas adicionais para se definir com exatidão o estatuto jurídico das pessoas representadas, os monumentos transportam, de maneira sutil, informação de outra qualidade sobre a relação senhor-escravo e sobre a auto-compreensão de senhores e de escravos. Algumas das obras até nos oferecem perspectivas dos próprios escravos, que nas fontes escritas são muito raras.The article shows, using iconographic examples, the methodological difficulties of identifying slaves in ancient works of Art, but also the possibilities for additional information on literary sources. Often are necessary additional inscriptions or written sources to define accurately the legal status of the persons represented. But the monuments offer, so subtle, other kind of information on the master-slave relationship and on the self-understanding of masters and slaves. Some of the works of Art offer the perspectives of slaves, that in the written sources are very rare.

The purpose of this essay is to give an account of John Chrysostom's views on the public appear-ance of female Roman aristocrats in the marketplace, and to ask what it tells us about the func-tioning of pastoral power. The focus is on John Chrysostom's 28th homily On Hebrews. The study argues that Chrysostom's rhetoric is aimed at pastoralizing the domestic somatoscape and manipulating the patria potestas. The pastoralization of the household ramified various patriar-chal operations in Christian households, and a potent programme of asceticization of the agoric space accompanies it. The asceticization of the agoric took place by means of a tripart campaign of metaphorization: firstly, metaphorical dedoulologization, accompanied by decosmeticization, and also psychic virginization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]