Runaway Bees and Snails: Servile Flight in Varro's De Re Rustica 3

Studia Patristica Vol 70, 2013

The development of Augustine’s understanding of the theological value of Roman history can be illuminated by comparing his discussion of trivial incidents in the opening book of the De ordine with his contemplation on the barbarian attacks against the Roman Empire in the De ciuitate Dei I-V. In his early philosophical dialogue, Augustine dwelled on various trivial phenomena that suggested the apparent disruption of the natural or well-established order, such as leaves blocking the drain and mice prompting philosophical disputation. In the course of the dialogue these apparent anomalies were discovered to comply fully with the universal order of creation and to be designed to bring the protagonists to God. In a similar vein, in the De ciuitate Dei Augustine presents the devastation of Rome by the barbarians in 410, and the religious controversy fuelled by it, as a wake-up call to the divine governance of Roman history. The leaves, mice, and barbarians all emerge as heralds of the City of God, the similarity of the rhetorical strategy highlighting the depth and scope of Augustine’s mature understanding of the theological meaning of apparently disruptive historical events, and of the importance of the Roman past for the universal drama of salvation.

Hephaistos 30 2013

Freed Roman slaves were stained by their former status but not uniformly. It is argued that free men who had been forcible captives and their forcibly detained children (vernae) were not detested by the elite. On the other hand, scorn was poured on the heads of upwardly mobile former slaves who, it is argued, were typically self-sellers. The former ›slaves by contract‹ were a ›distinct category‹ in a way that made them posters of ›servility‹ and hence perfect targets for invective hurled by envious ingenui and by literary flatterers of snobs. The macula servitutis becomes almost an index of the importance of self-sale in the Roman economy.

Renaissance Quarterly, 1994

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Illinois Classical Studies, 2016

This article explores the genre and ideological agenda of Varro’s De re rustica by examining the textual representation of oporothecae (“fruitgalleries”). As structures in which fruit could be stored and dinner parties held, the oporothecae not only serve to evaluate and satirize the rural practices of contemporary Roman elites but also programmatically epitomize the tension generated by De re rustica’s synthesis of the technical treatise, philosophical dialogue, and satire.

The talk addresses the use of intertexts by Varro and Columella and discusses the problems that this raises when we try to separate practical, agricultural advice from literary convention. Showing how each writer positions himself as superior in both knowledge and style to his predecessors, it considers whether specific examples genuinely advance agricultural techniques or are more like rhetorical flourishes. It concludes that there is clearly a practical underpinning of the work of these writers but care is needed in evaluating the detail.

It is notoriously diff icult to contribute to the larger theme of this volume, the socio-economic setting of Roman slavery, using Roman legal sources as the main source of information. The reasons for this are twofold. First, legal sources forming part of the 6'h century compilation of Roman law created by order of the emperor Justinian are at least three degrees removed from their original context. That is, they are analyses/commentaries on the law, written by Roman jurists of the classical period (l s , -3 rd centuries AD), which were broken up into snippets, stripped of the context and reassembled (with some interpolations) under topical headings by the compilers of Justinian's compilation project. Secondly, it is virtually impossible to establish from the extant sources the extent to which they engaged with socio economic concerns in legal writing since the Roman jurists were only passively involved in the legal process. While scholars such as Alan Watson have argued that the jurists were essentially 'isolationist' in legal argument, it cannot be denied that 'some' connection must have existed between Roman law and the socio-economic concerns of Roman society, but the exact nature of this connection remains at issue. 1

TAPA, 2019

While recent readings of Varro’s De Re Rustica have emphasized a negative view of contemporary politics and mores across all three books, this ar- ticle identifies an oppositional contrast between Rust. 1 and 3, set in the temple of Tellus and the Villa Publica, respectively. Arguing that Varro intentionally casts the Villa Publica—and its analogue, villatica pastio—as the more success- ful integration both of Rome’s rural past and urban present, and of its elite and non-elite citizens, it suggests that Varro took a more populist view—of the Villa Publica, villatica pastio, and the governance of the res publica itself.

Volume 6 in the series Dependency and Slavery Studies, 2023

The article is open access available at the page: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110987195-007/html Jurists, starting from the mid-second century CE, call servi poenae those who are sentenced to the penalties of decapitation, exposure to wild animals or gladiatorial combat in the arena, burning alive, hard labour for life in the mines, and crucifixion. They introduce a new type of slavery in which the slave’s owner is not clearly determined and, as we will see, the consequences are not exactly the same as in regular slavery. I will try to address five points: 1) origin of the terminology and concept of servus poenae; 2) the role played by the institution in the history of the potential conflict between the punitive power of the dominus on his slaves and the punitive power of the emperor on all the inhabitants of the empire, both free and slaves; 3) the importance of the new label in order to distinguish the legal condition of the people who were respectively, working, being exploited, or being executed in the arena; 4) the religious beliefs as well as the ideology of the amphitheatre as background for the executions; 5) the ambiguity of the expression servus poenae that allows to exploit without owning.