Читать книгу Antike Sklaverei - Группа авторов - Страница 13

Symbolic ideas are usually given social expression in ritualized patterns. Let us look now at the ritual aspects of the natal alienation of the slave. For all but the most advanced slave systems the acquisition of a slave is a very special event in the master’s household. Even where slave’s number as much as a quarter of the total household, their acquisition may be a once-in-a-life-time event for the members, especially if the pattern of slaveholding is highly skewed. It was common for people in the premodem world to give ritual expression to special events and when one of those events involved the incorporation of a person defined as socially dead, it is easy to recognize that the event should not proceed without ceremony. The ritual of enslavement incorporated one or more of four basic features: first, the symbolic rejection by the slave of his past and his former kinsmen; second, a change of name; third the imposition of some visible mark of servitude; and last the assumption of a new status in the household or economic organization of the master.

Many cultures obliged the new slave to make a symbolic gesture of rejecting his natal community, kinsmen, ancestral spirits, and gods – or, where the slave was of local origin, of rejecting his own kin group and ancestral spirits in favor of those of his master. The ceremony was often simple and brief, but it was always deeply humiliating, sometimes even traumatic, for the slave. […]

In large-scale slave systems where the slave became a unit of production outside the household economy we do not, of course, find such elaborate initiating rituals of enslavement. The newcomer was usually handed over to a trusted older slave to be taught the necessary skills to survive in his new environment. This is not to say, however, that ritual did not play a part even here. For we know that even in the brutal capitalistic slave plantations of the modern Caribbean, slaves had a rich ritual life and found their own ways of incorporating the new recruit.8 The same was very possibly true of slaves on the latifundia of ancient Rome, given the rich and intense religious life of the slave population. But if the slave was not incorporated privately by his master, there was still the need to incorporate him publicly, to give ritual expression to his presence as a large and significant, and potentially dangerous, element in the body politic. We shall see later that in such large-scale systems this task was performed by the state religion.

The second major feature of the ritual of enslavement involved the changing of the slave’s name. A man’s name is, of course, more than simply a way of calling him. It is the verbal signal of his whole identity, his being-in-the-world as a distinct person. It also establishes and advertises his relation with kinsmen. In a great many societies a person’s name has magical qualities; new names are often received upon initiation into adulthood and into cults and secret societies, and the victim’s name looms large in witchcraft and sorcery practiced against him. […]

Thus it is understandable that in every slave society one of the first acts of the master has been to change the name of his new slave. One must reject any simplistic explanation that this was simply a result of the master’s need to find a name that was more familiar for we find the same tendency to change names when slaves come from the identical society or language group as their masters.

There are several reasons for, the change of name. The changing of a name is almost universally a symbolic act of stripping a person of his former identity (note for example the tendency among modern peoples to assign a new formal identification, usually a number, to both prisoners of war and domestic convicts). The slave’s former name died with his former self. […]

The situation was different, however, among that small group of kin-based societies where the slave was not incorporated into the household economy but was exploited separately, in a protocapitalist sector, and in most of the advanced premodern slave systems. Here the new name was often a badge of inferiority and contempt. Sometimes the names were either peculiar or characteristically servile. A Greek name in republican Rome, for example, often indicated slave status or ancestry, and many traditionally Roman names eventually became favorite slave names, cognomens such as Faustus, Felix Fortunatus, and Primus.9 […]

In other societies such as China, those of the ancient Near East and pharaonic Egypt, the absence of family names was the surest mark of slavery.10 Much more humiliating, however, were those cases in which insult was added to injury by giving the slave a name that was ridiculous or even obscene. […]

The slave’s name was only one of the badges of slavery. In every slave-holding society we find visible marks of servitude, some pointed, some more subtle. Where the slave was of a different race or color, this fact tended to become associated with slave status – and not only in the Americas. A black skin in almost all the Islamic societies, including parts of the Sudan, was and still is associated with slavery. True, there were white slaves; true, it was possible to be black and free, even of high status – but this did not mean that blackness was not associated with slavery.11

The Greeks did not require their slaves to wear special clothes, but apparently (as in America) the slaves’ style of dress immediately revealed their status.12 Rome is fascinating in this regard. The slave population blended easily into the larger proletariat, and the high rate of manumission meant that ethnicity was useless as a mean of identifying slaves. A ready means of identification seem desirable, however, and a special form of dress for slaves was contemplated. When someone pointed out that the proposal, if carried out, would lead slaves immediately to recognize their numerical strength, the idea was abandoned.13 […]