owners I know, consider his advice to be too cruel and heartless. Frankly, he was more worried about his sick fish than he was about his ill slaves and it is in any case now illegal to dump them. Personally, I think that an owner who treats his slaves like mules and then gets rid of them when they get old is wrong because he sees no bond between an owner and his slaves.
We owners have responsibilities towards our dependants. It will not always be in our financial interest to keep on a sick slave. But we can at least give them a chance to recover and lighten their load while they do so. And we can find some gentle jobs for the old slaves to perform, which enables them to contribute to the household. It is, after all, quite rare that slaves live into old age given the demands that are placed upon them. I use them as doorkeepers, or as bag-carriers for my sons when they go to school.
As an aside, let me tell you of an embarrassing incident I had with an old doorkeeper when visiting an old friend’s villa. I went up to the entrance where a decrepit slave was keeping watch. ‘Where on earth did you get hold of him?’ I asked my friend. ‘What possessed you tosteal a corpse from a graveyard to guard the door?’ But my friend said to me, ‘Don’t you recognise him, Marcus? It’s Felicio. We used to play together when we were children during the Saturnalia. He was the son of my father’s manager, Philositus, and we were all playmates.’ I had no idea what he was talking about. ‘You’re completely mad!’ I told my friend. ‘How could this toothless old crone have been a contemporary of ours?’ My friend’s look said it all! It is true that we have all been wearied by the passing years, but the life of a slave had certainly taken its toll on Felicio. But then I’m surprised my friend remembered him at all. He was, after all, only a slave boy.
While I am on the subject of age, I should say that when it comes to very young slaves I am all in favour of getting them working as soon as possible, certainly by the age of five. There is always something useful they can do, whether it is tending the small animals, doing some weeding in the garden, acting as cup-bearer at dinner, or, for the girls, doing simple weaving or helping in the kitchen. Carrying out these tasks gets them used to work early and trains them to understand their role in life.
On your country estate, the most important slave is the manager. Choose him carefully. If he is competent, then you will be free to devote your life to the dignified leisure that accords with your social station. If you select the wrong person, then productivity will fall, discipline will fail and you will find yourself constantly going back and forth from Rome, where your political and social responsibilities are based, to your estate to try to sort out the mess. I personally select and train my managers to ensure they are loyal agents for my interests.I pick out two or three slaves in their early twenties who have impressed me with their attitude and promote them steadily. I rotate them thoroughly so that they gain experience of all the different aspects of the work that has to be done on the farm. If they let me down or fail to shine then I demote them as a punishment back to their previous position. I always praise those who do well and make sure that they are never seen to have benefited from flattering me. In fact if they try to tell me how wonderful I am I punish them so that they realise that this kind of nonsense is not to their advantage and that they would do better to work hard and deliver results.
The single most important piece of advice I can give you is not to appoint a manager from the kind of slaves who are good-looking and particularly not from the kind who waste their time hanging about in the city. The lazy slave who loves the taverns and brothels of urban life never stops dreaming about these things. Which is bad enough in your domestic slaves but when such a
We owners have responsibilities towards our dependants. It will not always be in our financial interest to keep on a sick slave. But we can at least give them a chance to recover and lighten their load while they do so. And we can find some gentle jobs for the old slaves to perform, which enables them to contribute to the household. It is, after all, quite rare that slaves live into old age given the demands that are placed upon them. I use them as doorkeepers, or as bag-carriers for my sons when they go to school.
As an aside, let me tell you of an embarrassing incident I had with an old doorkeeper when visiting an old friend’s villa. I went up to the entrance where a decrepit slave was keeping watch. ‘Where on earth did you get hold of him?’ I asked my friend. ‘What possessed you tosteal a corpse from a graveyard to guard the door?’ But my friend said to me, ‘Don’t you recognise him, Marcus? It’s Felicio. We used to play together when we were children during the Saturnalia. He was the son of my father’s manager, Philositus, and we were all playmates.’ I had no idea what he was talking about. ‘You’re completely mad!’ I told my friend. ‘How could this toothless old crone have been a contemporary of ours?’ My friend’s look said it all! It is true that we have all been wearied by the passing years, but the life of a slave had certainly taken its toll on Felicio. But then I’m surprised my friend remembered him at all. He was, after all, only a slave boy.
While I am on the subject of age, I should say that when it comes to very young slaves I am all in favour of getting them working as soon as possible, certainly by the age of five. There is always something useful they can do, whether it is tending the small animals, doing some weeding in the garden, acting as cup-bearer at dinner, or, for the girls, doing simple weaving or helping in the kitchen. Carrying out these tasks gets them used to work early and trains them to understand their role in life.
On your country estate, the most important slave is the manager. Choose him carefully. If he is competent, then you will be free to devote your life to the dignified leisure that accords with your social station. If you select the wrong person, then productivity will fall, discipline will fail and you will find yourself constantly going back and forth from Rome, where your political and social responsibilities are based, to your estate to try to sort out the mess. I personally select and train my managers to ensure they are loyal agents for my interests.I pick out two or three slaves in their early twenties who have impressed me with their attitude and promote them steadily. I rotate them thoroughly so that they gain experience of all the different aspects of the work that has to be done on the farm. If they let me down or fail to shine then I demote them as a punishment back to their previous position. I always praise those who do well and make sure that they are never seen to have benefited from flattering me. In fact if they try to tell me how wonderful I am I punish them so that they realise that this kind of nonsense is not to their advantage and that they would do better to work hard and deliver results.
The single most important piece of advice I can give you is not to appoint a manager from the kind of slaves who are good-looking and particularly not from the kind who waste their time hanging about in the city. The lazy slave who loves the taverns and brothels of urban life never stops dreaming about these things. Which is bad enough in your domestic slaves but when such a
Similar Books
