University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Undergraduate Humanities Forum 2017-2018: Penn Humanities Forum Undergraduate Afterlives Research Fellows 5-2018 ἐλευθέρα εἶμεν καὶ νέφαπτος: An Examination of the Manumission Inscriptions at Delphi Claudia Kassner University of Pennsylvania Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/uhf_2018 Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Kassner, Claudia, "ἐλευθέρα εἶμεν καὶ νέφαπτος: An Examination of the Manumission Inscriptions at Delphi" (2018). Undergraduate Humanities Forum 2017-2018: Afterlives. 4. https://repository.upenn.edu/uhf_2018/4 This paper was part of the 2017-2018 Penn Humanities Forum on Afterlives. Find out more at http://wolfhumanities.upenn.edu/annual-topics/afterlives. This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/uhf_2018/4 For more information, please contact [email protected]. ἐλευθέρα εἶμεν καὶ νέφαπτος: An Examination of the Manumission Inscriptions at Delphi Abstract Located at the ancient sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi is a collection of inscriptions that detail the sales of slaves by their owners to the god Apollo. In reality, these slaves were purchasing their freedom, and the Delphic inscriptions are the manumission contracts between slave and slave owner. But how did the Greeks reconcile the integration of slaves into free civilization with their established systems and rationalizations surrounding slavery? My project investigates the Delphic approach to manumission, using the manumission inscriptions in conjunction with evidence from other locales to examine the circumstances and methods that would enable a slave to achieve freedom through the Delphic procedure. Close reading and consideration of these inscriptions reveal a tension between the many advantages manumission offered to slaveowners, and the centuries of alienation and objectification of the slave figure to the appellation of merely σῶμα ("body"). This tension, and other evidence of Greek discomfort and anxiety concerning boundary-crossing and categorical dilemmas, may help explain the strange role of the god in the Delphic epigraphy. Disciplines Arts and Humanities Comments This paper was part of the 2017-2018 Penn Humanities Forum on Afterlives. Find out more at http://wolfhumanities.upenn.edu/annual-topics/afterlives. This thesis or dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/uhf_2018/4 ἐλευθέρα εἶµεν καὶ ἀνέφαπτος: An Examination of the Manumission Inscriptions at Delphi Claudia Kassner 2017–2018 Wolf Humanities Center Undergraduate Research Fellow University of Pennsylvania completed under the supervision of Dr. Jeremy McInerney Senior Research Paper in the Classical Studies major in the Department of Classical Studies of the University of Pennsylvania 1 Abstract Located at the ancient sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi is a collection of inscriptions that detail the sales of slaves by their owners to the god Apollo. In reality, these slaves were purchasing their freedom, and the Delphic inscriptions are the manumission contracts between slave and slave owner. But how did the Greeks reconcile the integration of slaves into free civilization with their established systems and rationalizations surrounding slavery? My project investigates the Delphic approach to manumission, using the manumission inscriptions in conjunction with evidence from other locales to examine the circumstances and methods that would enable a slave to achieve freedom through the Delphic procedure. Close reading and consideration of these inscriptions reveal a tension between the many advantages manumission offered to slaveowners, and the centuries of alienation and objectification of the slave figure to the appellation of merely σῶµα ("body"). This tension, and other evidence of Greek discomfort and anxiety concerning boundary-crossing and categorical dilemmas, may help explain the strange role of the god in the Delphic epigraphy. Ancient Greece was not only a society dependent on slave labor, but also one that took the enslavement of other human beings for granted as a fact of human life.1 Yet there is ample evidence—some literary, but primarily epigraphic—that there existed the opportunity for an escape from servitude in Greece, and that manumission may even have been a commonplace practice. Notably, the evidence for manumission is more limited in larger cities like Athens, Corinth, and Thebes; most of the known manumission inscriptions have been found in other regions of northern and central Greece, including locations like Thessaly, Boeotia, Elateia, and Phocis. The Delphic sanctuary of Apollo houses the largest of these epigraphic collections.2 The degree to which the evidence from Delphi, or indeed from any of these places, is representative of Greek manumission as a whole is still up for debate, due to the scattered nature of the evidence (perhaps as a result of these regions’ particular recording habits) and its confinement to particular periods of time. In other words, a location’s manumission inscriptions can only really speak to the manumission procedure of that location at that time, at least without a comparative study.3 1 Finley, “Was Greek Civilization Based on Greek Labour?,” in Slavery in Classical Antiquity, ed. Moses Finley (Cambridge: Heffer, 1968) 53. 2 Zelnick-Abramovitz, Not Wholly Free : The Concept of Manumission and the Status of Manumitted Slaves in the Ancient Greek World (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 2-3. 3 Ibid. May 2018, Final paper submitted for Wolf Humanities Center Undergraduate Research Fellowship 1 Claudia Kassner, College of Arts and Sciences 2018, University of Pennsylvania 2 Still, the individual collections are informatively fruitful, especially one as abundant and detailed as Delphi’s. Of particular interest for this discussion is the representation of the slave in the majority of Delphic manumission inscriptions by the word σῶµα (“body”), which provides an unfortunate reminder of the initial status that he or she occupied in servitude. How did the Greeks approach the transformation of a σῶµα—a slave alienated, objectified, and stripped of legal rights to the point of being what Patterson labels “socially dead”4—into a free human being? How was this even possible logically and logistically in a society that participated in the systematic subjugation and exploitation of masses of people? The inscriptions at Delphi are valuable resources for examining how the Greeks effected the manumission of slaves, and how they conceived of manumission. Overview of the Delphic Manumission Epigraphy The body of manumission inscriptions in the ancient sanctuary of Delphi records the release of over 1200 individuals from slavery. Dating between 201 BCE and roughly 100 CE, the inscriptions that survive lie primarily on the polygonal masonry comprising the terrace wall of the temple of Apollo—some can also be found in other locations around the site, such as on public monuments along the Sacred Way and the theater.5 Through the particular process documented at Delphi (the cases of which number over a thousand), manumission took the form of the god Pythian Apollo purchasing one or more slaves from a slave owner. In reality, the slave bought his or her own freedom and was only nominally the property of the deity.6 Accordingly, 4 Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), 237; Zelnick-Abramovitz, 5. 5 Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978): 133-134. 6 Kamen, “Sale for the Purpose of Freedom: Slave-Prostitutes and Manumission in Ancient Greece,” The Classical Journal 109 (2014): 285. May 2018, Final paper submitted for Wolf Humanities Center Undergraduate Research Fellowship 2 Claudia Kassner, College of Arts and Sciences 2018, University of Pennsylvania 3 scholars often refer to these transactions as “fictive sales,”7 “trust sales,”8 or, more broadly, “sacral manumission.”9 The inscription recording the manumission of a slave named Ladika is fairly typical and can illustrate the standard form of this practice: ἄρχοντος Ἐµµενίδα τοῦ Καλλία µηνὸς Δαιδαφορίου, ἀπέδοτο Τελεσὼ Μνασικράτεος Δελφίς, συνευδοκέοντος καὶ τοῦ υἱοῦ Κλέωνος, τῶι Ἀπόλλωνι τῶι Πυθίωι σῶµα γυναικε͂ιον ἇι ὄνοµα Λαδίκα τὸ γένος Σύραν, τιµᾶς ἀργυρίου µνᾶν τριῶν, καὶ τὰν τιµὰν ἔχει, καθὼς ἐπίστευσε Λαδίκα τῶι θεῶι τὰν ὠνάν, ἐφ’ ὧιτε ἐλευθέραν εἶµεν καὶ ἀνέφαπτον ἀπὸ πάντων τὸν πάντα χρόνον, ποιέουσα ὅ κα θέληι καὶ ἀποτρέχουσα οἷς κα θέληι. βεβαιωτὴρ κατὰ τὸν νόµον τᾶς πόλιος· Ἀστόξενος Διονυσίου. εἰ δέ τις ἐφάπτοιτο Λαδίκας ἐπὶ καταδουλισµῶι, βέβαιον παρεχόντων τῶι θεῶι τὰν ὠνὰν ἅ τε ἀποδοµένα Τελεσὼ καὶ ὁ βεβαιωτὴρ Ἀστόξενος· εἰ δὲ µὴ παρέχοιεν βέβαιον τὰν ὠνὰν τῶι θεῶι, πράκτιµοι ἐόντων κατὰ τὸν νόµον. ὁµοίως δὲ καὶ οἱ παρατυγχάνοντες κύριοι ἐόντων συλέοντες ὡς ἐλευθέραν οὖσαν ἀζάµιοι ἐόντες καὶ ἀνυπόδικοι πάσας δίκας καὶ ζαµίας µάρτυρες· τοὶ ἱερεῖς τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος Ταραντῖνος, Ἀµύντας καὶ τοὶ ἄρχοντες Ἀριστίων, Ἄσανδρος, Ἀριστόµαχος, ἰδιῶται Πατρέας, Εὐκράτης, Ἀστόξενος, Κλέων, Ἀρτεµίδωρος, Χαρίξενος.10 While Emmenidas son of Kallias was archon in the month of Daidaphorios, Teleso daughter of Mnasikrates of Delphi, with her son Kleon also consenting, sold to Pythian Apollo a female body named Ladika, Syrian in origin, for the price of three mnae of silver, and [Teleso] holds the payment, accordingly as Ladika entrusted the sale to the god, according to which she be free and untouchable by all for all time, doing whatever she wishes and going wherever she wishes.