Fake slave

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The false slave ( bona fide serviens ) is a social phenomenon of the Roman Empire . Translucent slave is the one that a bona fide owner of a slave serves without being a slave in truth. The special thing about this phenomenon is the good faith of the owner, who therefore assumes that the other actually belongs to him as a slave.

This seems to be a by no means rare occurrence, which is shown by the fact that Roman law knew a number of rules about the legal relationships of the dummy slave.

The motives of Roman citizens to pose as slaves have not been conclusively clarified, but are essentially of an economic nature. Slaves of rich masters often lived far more comfortably than socially inferior freemen. Another speculation is that free people pretended to be slaves to avoid military service .

literature

  • Alfred Söllner: Free people mistakenly held as slaves and slaves in uncertain property relations = homines liberi et servi alieni bona fide servientes . Steiner, Stuttgart 2000 (Corpus of Roman legal sources on ancient slavery, part 9. Research on ancient slavery, supplement 3) ISBN 3-515-07782-0