'The Bitter Chain of Slavery': Reflections on Slavery in Ancient Rome, page 1 by Keith Bradley
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ey had become the bad slaves of a good Master, which meant that the barbarian invaders, while pagans, were in fact their moral superiors. In Salvian's judgement it was this moral superiority that accounted for the barbarians' stunning invasionary success (On the Governance of God 4.13-29; 6.92; 7.16-20; cf. 3.50; 8.14).
Despite his critical assault on Roman slaveowners, Salvian makes very clear the low esteem in which slaves were held in his society. Slaves were naturally inferior, criminous, and corrupt, they lived only to satisfy their base wishes, and they were expected to show unquestioning obedience to their owners, including sexual obedience. In recognising the motives that drove them to steal, lie, and run away, Salvian was notably sympathetic to them and he maintained that kindly treatment was a useful alternative to physical coercion in rendering slaves submissive. But he never questioned the reality of slavery, and he could proclaim without any sign of discomfort: 'It is generally agreed that slaves are wicked and worthy of our contempt' (4.29).
Such views were hardly new. Images of immoral and criminous slaves, appeals for adopting a carrot-and-stick approach to handling them, and statements that obedience should be expected of them can be found in any number of earlier Greek and Latin writers. The precise form of slavery Salvian knew in fifth-century Gaul is a matter of controversy, but the terms he used to describe it, and the conceptual attitudes underlying them, were those which Greek and Roman slaveowners had used and drawn on for centuries past.
His remarks nonetheless are striking. Salvian was writing at a very late date in classical history, and while directed to Romans in general his audience in the first instance was an entirely local body of men, the wealthy lords of southern Gaul--and both he and his local audience were of course Christian. Despite its conventional aspects, therefore, Salvian's evidence brings into sharp focus two well-known but important facts