The Boy Slave: a funerary bust shares clues about the life of a Roman slave

History is a dirty, nasty business. As soon as you think you’ve got something figured out and know how you should feel…oops. A story went and confused your concepts of right and wrong by throwing Jupiter’s giant shoe in the flow of the aqueduct.

No, I don’t think that’s an actual Roman saying. It should’ve been, though.

The truth is, history is rarely clean. We can’t look at Ancient Rome and solely praise it for being this nation of rights and freedoms that our western world was built on.

And at the same time, we can’t just bash the entire culture as being corrupt and disgusting.

Were there Roman slaves? Absolutely. Were some of them kids? You bet. Does this mean they were all treated horribly each and every day? Definitely not.

I Got Myself 500 of Them

You had to be pretty rich to own yourself a Roman slave.  They weren’t cheap — around twice a year’s salary for a standard foot soldier. And that’s if you wanted a slave who couldn’t do anything but manual labor.

A skilled slave? Like one who was a doctor or a teacher or an accountant? Maybe as much as ten times pricier.

So if you were wealthy, you might own 500 slaves. Many would work out on your farm or in your mines, and some would live in your house. They’d do your laundry, cook your meals, and help bathe and dress you in the morning.

If you were really wealthy — like the Jeff Bezos of Rome — you might own thousands.

Many slaves came from Roman conquests. They’d go into some foreign territory, beat them in battle, and come home with boatloads of new slaves. The example that first comes to mind is the Colosseum, which was built by tens of thousands of Jewish slaves brought back from the sacking of Jerusalem.

So you’ve got prisoners who weren’t working for the government out there on the market. You’ve also got people who were captured by pirates and sold as slaves. There were even some who sold themselves as a way of getting out of debt.

And as the bust we’re talking about shows, there were also children. Some were bought at markets — but many were born into that life, as their parents were slaves.

How would you buy a Roman slave? From a dealer or at a slave market, of course. And from what I gather, the markets were every bit as nasty as you might think. The slaves were presented to the crowd naked, as the buyers wanted to know exactly what they were getting.

And remember, many were just looking for strong men to do manual labor. Signs would hang around their necks, listing bits of information like their skills, education, and where they came from. All three were key, and often just as important as the slave’s appearance.

Roman Slaves: Good Lives, Bad Lives

Like I said, it’s easy to see everything in black and white. You could say all Roman slaves were treated horribly, but that wouldn’t be true. You could also say they were all treated with kindness, but that wouldn’t be accurate either.

Here’s a quote from the ancient writer Pliny the Elder, talking about the life of a slave digging for gold in a mine:

“Mountains are hollowed out by the digging of long tunnels by the light of torches. The miners work in shifts as long as the torches last and do not see daylight for months at a time.”

At the same time, there were slaves who had relatively comfortable lives. After all, you probably weren’t going to beat your accountant, and you’d want to make sure the slave woman who’s feeding and caring for your baby is kept happy.

While Roman slaves had no rights, some were allowed to own property and earn money — eventually making enough to buy their freedom. Or, an owner of a slave could just decide to set them free. A couple of freed slaves in Pompeii actually owned their own villa. And as time passed in the Roman world, the “status” of some slaves increased.

There were those who advocated for slaves to be treated well, but you won’t really see anyone standing up and saying “Slavery is wrong, it shouldn’t happen.” As much as 20 percent of the population consisted of slaves; the entire economy depended on them.

Luckily for us, things are much better in the 21st Century. Everyone is paid enough to live on, and we don’t have anything along the lines of factories where people sleep in bunk beds and they put up netting outside the buildings so people can’t jump off.

Oh wait.

The Boy Slave

So that brings us to the bust — which is basically a gravestone. The inscription beneath the bust reads:

“To sweetest Martial, a house born slave who lived two years, ten months, and eight days. Tiberius Claudius Vitalis made this for him, well deserving.”

Here’s what we can glean: “House born slave” is the translation of the Latin word “verna,” meaning Martial was born to a slave woman while she was owned by her master. Vernae typically had more rights and freedom than a “regular” Roman slave, because they were seen as being more loyal — I guess because they didn’t know any other life.

We can also assume Vitalis was Martial’s owner, as having a marble bust carved wouldn’t have been cheap. It’s also possible that Vitalis was Martial’s father, as it wasn’t uncommon for masters to have children with their slaves.

But it was also desirable for your slaves to have children in general. This from Columella, who wrote about agriculture:

“Women slaves ought to be rewarded for the bearing of a certain number of children. I have granted exemption from work and sometimes even freedom after they have reared many children.”

In some cases, vernae would be “adopted” by their owners, especially when those owners had no children of their own and wanted kids to name in their wills.

It’s believed Martial lived in the early 100’s CE, during the reign of Trajan — that’s because of the hairstyle, which is like Trajan’s. I guess it’s like how Bieber became popular, and every other kid had a Bieber cut. 

It’s important to note this depiction of Martial would have been painted, meaning he wouldn’t have had those blank, empty eyes. I saw this bust in the Getty Villa in Malibu, and all I could find about its provenance is that it was purchased from someone in Zurich in 1985. So unfortunately, I have no idea where in the Roman Empire it was found. And no, it’s not lost on me that the bust of a slave boy is owned by a museum built by an oil baron.

I think the biggest takeaway here is that it’s easy to fall into this trap of thinking it’s sweet. After all, this was a guy who must have really loved this little boy who didn’t even make it to the age of three.

He might have seen him every day, chatted with him and played with him and took an interest in his happiness. Then one day, Martial dies. Vitalis is heartbroken, and all he can do is have a bust made of this little boy, in the hopes that he would be remembered. And he was successful — after all, here we are talking about Martial.

So yeah, it’s sweet — but Martial was the product of a society that depended on the exploitation of humans, who were bought and sold as property. And for every cute little boy who was loved, there might have been ten adults working their fingers to the bone in a gold mine.