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ANCIENT 
HISTORY
NO.56
IN THIS ISSUE: SLAVES, LABOURERS, SOLDIERS, AND ARTISANS — WORK AND EMPLOYMENT IN THE ANCIENT WORLD
AT THE LOOM
Working women were an 
integral part of the economy 
in ancient Athens.
CAT FIGHT
Solving the mystery of the 
man killed by an African lion 
in Roman Britain.
GET A JOB
How everyone – from 
unskilled workers to artisans – 
found work in ancient Rome.
ON THE BORDER
The city of Hatra was a key 
fortress between the Roman 
and Parthian Empires.
GET A JOB ON THE BORDER
LABOUR IN ANTIQUITY
THE DAILY
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US $13.99 
CAD $17.25
Ancient History 56Ancienent t HiHiHistststooro yy 56566 333
TA
BL
E 
OF
 C
ON
TE
NT
S
MANAGING AN EMPIRE
How did satraps contribute to the stabil-
ity of the Achaemenid Empire?
LABOUR IN ANTIQUITY
Most people in the ancient world, from slaves to skilled artisans, worked for a 
living instead of owning vast estates or plundering enemy treasuries. From odd 
jobs to construction contracts, all manner of employment was available.
Talking tools?
Rome's enslaved labour
Fighting for a living
Hellenistic professional soldiers
Finding work
The labour market in ancient Rome
SPECIAL FEATURES
Managing an empire 
The satraps of Achaemenid Persia
The city of Hatra
An ancient geopolitical hotspot
Lions in antiquity 
Symbols of strength, royalty, & chaos
DEPARTMENTS
Preliminaries
What's new in ancient history
Food on the table 
Grocery shopping in ancient Rome
Book reviews 
A look at new ancient history titles
18
24
8 The lion and the gladiator 
The arena on the edge of empire
The tale of Gilgamesh 
Woven wealth
The ancient Greek textile economy
"As long as they keep working" 
Labour in ancient Egypt
Further reading
More books on labour in antiquity
4
48
A SOLDIER'S LIFE
Philip II's military reforms professionalized 
military service in Hellenistic Greece.
8
12
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54
56
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Editor-in-chief: Jasper Oorthuys
Editor: Owain Williams
Assistant editor: Lauren van Zoonen
News editor: Lindsay Powell
Design & Media: Christianne C. Beall
Design © 2017 Karwansaray Publishers
Contributors: Katherine Backler, Peter Edwell, 
Miriam J. Groen-Vallinga, Arienne King, Rhyne 
King, Philip Matyszak, Louise M. Pryke, Charlotte 
Van Regenmortel, Jeroen W.P. Wijnendaele
Illustrators: Akshay Misra, Jose Morán, Richard 
Thomson, William Webb 
Special thanks: Carole Raddato (followinghadrian.com), 
Gary Todd (worldhistorypics.weebly.com), and Jona 
Lendering (livius.org) for their photographs
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ON THE COVER
A facsimile of a fresco from 
the tomb of Nebamun and 
Ipuky, dated to ca. 1390-1349 
BC, depicting craftsmen at 
work. While history tends to 
remember kings, queens, and 
generals, the majority of people worked for a 
living, whether as labourers or artisans.
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art
ANCIENT 
HISTORY
Ancient History 56444
EDITORIAL – WORKING HARD, OR HARDLY WORKING
Owain Williams 
Editor, Ancient History
O i Willi
Lost Mayan ceremonial city discovered
2600-year-old Etruscan tomb found intact
An undisturbed Etruscan tomb has been entered 
for the first time since the late seventh century BC. 
The discovery has been hailed as one of the most sig-
nificant finds in recent decades for understanding the 
ancient pre-Roman civilization. 
Sealed behind a massive stone slab, the burial chamber 
in the San Giuliano Necropolis near Barbarano Romano in 
central Italy revealed meticulously arranged funerary fur-
niture. The remains of four individuals lay on carved stone 
beds surrounded by more than 100 remarkably well-pre-
served grave goods, including ceramic vases, iron weapons, 
bronze ornaments, and delicate silver hair spools. A single 
vase placed at the tomb’s threshold may have played a role 
in pre-sealing rites. Preliminary analysis of the objects found 
in the tomb suggests that the buried individuals might be two 
male-female pairs, but further conclusions await anthropo-
logical, isotopic, and genetic study of the human remains. 
Most of the over 600 tombs in the necropolis 70 km 
north of Rome have been looted over the centuries. “This 
completely sealed burial chamber represents a rare find 
for Etruscan archaeology,” said Dr Davide Zori, archaeolo-
gist and associate professor of history, Baylor University.
The discovery was made by the SGARP team from 
Baylor University, in collaboration with Italy’s Ministero 
della Cultura and the local Soprintendenza Archeologia 
Belle Arti e Paesaggio per la provincia di Viterbo e per 
l’Etruria Meridionale.
A view of archaeologists at work removing the stone sealing the en-
trance to the Etruscan tomb in the San Giuliano Necropolis.
Pyramids and monuments uncovered by 
archaeologists have revealed a nearly 
3000-year-old, previously lost Mayan city in 
northern Guatemala.
 Named Los Abuelos (Spanish for ‘The 
Grandparents’), the site lies about 21 km 
from Uaxactún, a major archaeological 
complex in Guatemala’s Petén region, close 
to the Mexican border. According to Guate-
mala’s culture ministry, the city dates to the 
Middle Preclassic period (ca. 800–500 BC). 
It is believed to be one of the oldest and most 
important ceremonial centres in all Mesoa-
merica. The first cities of the Maya civiliza-
tion developed around 750 BC.
 Archaeologists from Guatemala and 
Slovakia made the discovery in a little-ex-
plored area of Uaxactún. The 16-sq-km site 
features remarkable architectural planning, 
including pyramids, sculpted monuments, 
and a canal system. Among the most striking 
finds are two human-like statues, dubbed an 
‘ancestral couple’, which inspired the city’s 
name. The statues, dated to between 500 and 
26
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f
©
 So
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rin
ten
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en
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gia B
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rti e P
aesaggio
Among the finds in the 
Etruscan tomb was bronze 
weaponry, like this Etrus-
can bronze spearhead,itself. They would 
run from an abusive slaveholder — in which 
Runaways and revolts
case the law would support their cause, and 
runaways might seek sanctuary at a statue of 
the emperor. In the Roman Republic, the large-
scale enslavement of people from the same 
place, speaking the same language, fuelled two 
Servile Wars on Sicily in the second century 
BC — Varro advises not having slaves of the 
same peoples living together (On Agriculture 
1.17.5). People took collective action towards 
reclaiming lost freedom, the final and most 
well-known example of which is the revolt led 
by Spartacus in the first century BC. In the em-
pire, conversely, the heterogeneous group of 
enslaved persons who were born into slavery or 
originated from vastly different places did not 
unite in a similar manner, nor could all of them 
remember what freedom was like.
A silver jug, part of the hoard of Palmi, 
dated to ca. 100-70 BC. It is possible 
that the hoard was hidden during the 
slave revolt led by Spartacus, known as 
the Third Servile War.
© Giovanni Dall'Orto / Wikimedia Commons
A view of the ruins of the fortified camp at 
Mons Claudianus in Egypt, a Roman quarry 
where labourers mined granodiorite. The 
site consisted of a garrison, the quarry-
ing site, and the quarters for civilians and 
workers. Surviving documents from the 
site attest to relatively decent pay and 
living conditions for the free labourers who 
worked alongside slaves.
© AndroidTrotter / Wikimedia Commons
slave revolt led by Spartacus, known as 
the Third Servile War.
© Giovanni Dall'Orto / Wikimedia Commons
© 
x
Ancient History 5622
greater part of the workforce. Still others 
would be crushing the rocks, sieving, and 
subsequently smelting the ore for extracting 
precious metals. Many of those employed in 
such dire circumstances would have been en-
slaved. Perhaps surprisingly, though, we find 
that the mines were not operated solely by 
enslaved labourers. Natural resources were 
also extracted by criminals convicted to the 
mines, and by free labour migrants. By con-
trast, stone was mostly extracted from open-
pit quarries. In the imperial quarries at Mons 
Claudianus in Egypt, ostraca detailing aspects 
of the administration there attest to relatively 
good working conditions and wages for the 
largely free workers active at the site.
 The villas of the elite do seem to have 
profited from the large-scale availability of 
slave labour. Our most detailed descriptions 
of the work enslaved persons performed in 
the rural context of the large villae come 
from three agricultural treatises: the writings 
of Cato (second century BC), Varro (first cen-
tury BC), and that of Columella (first century 
AD). The picture they paint is of an absen-
tee landholder and an estate where the rural 
household or familia rustica laboured under 
the daily supervision of an enslaved overseer 
and his wife, the vilicus and vilica. Irregular 
visits from the slaveholder meant that chanc-
es to ingratiate oneself and improve manu-
mission chances were slight. Their writings 
also demonstrate that slave labour was pro-
foundly hierarchical, with the position of the 
vilicus being decidedly higher up the social 
scale than that of the field hands.
 All three ancient authors emphasize that 
time needed to be spent productively and 
warn against idleness, which surely must 
mean that enslaved labourers worked long 
hours. A certain amount of gang labour is 
implied, but there is no mention of chain-
gangs of slaves. Conversely, care-intensive 
and responsible tasks were also executed by 
the same estate labourers. Enslaved children 
on the estate were expected to contribute 
through bird keeping, herding animals, and 
weeding, or other chores befitting their age. 
It is very well possible that even on villae-
estates, freeborn workers regularly comple-
mented the enslaved labour force, suffering 
equally dire circumstances as the enslaved 
workers – though self-determination admit-
tedly made all the difference. 
 The familia rustica and familia urbana 
(‘urban household’) of an elite slaveholder 
may have overlapped, and some enslaved 
persons were perhaps employed in both set-
tings. Thousands of occupational inscriptions 
from the city of Rome have been discovered 
in underground columbaria — chamber 
tombs containing up to hundreds of named 
individual cremation burials, that have been 
related to imperial and upper-class house-
holds. The job-titles indicated on the in-
scriptions include skilled doctors and mid-
gre
wo
su
pre
su
sla
tha
en
als
mi
tras
pit 
Cla
of t
goo
larg
pro
slav
of t
the 
A mosaic known as the Cupbearers 
of Dougga, dated to the third century 
AD, depicting two slaves pouring wine. 
Slaves could be found throughout the 
Roman world, working in the homes of 
the elite or on agricultural estates.
© Dennis Jarvis / Flickr
A Roman funerary stele for the freedman 
Marcus Asellius Clemens, his wife Statia 
Statulla, and their freedman Marcus Asel-
lius Latinus, dated to the second century 
AD. Upon their manumission, slaves were 
granted citizenship, although they could 
not hold formal office.
© Giovanni Dall'Orto. / Wikimedia Commons
© 
x
DID YOU KNOW?
Roman practices concerning the organiza-
tion of slaves, such as avoiding monoglot slave 
populations and employing slave overseers on 
farms, have earlier precedents in ancient Greece.
Ancient History 56 23
wives, administrative workers like scribes or 
bankers, service jobs such as footservants, 
doorkeepers, litter-bearers, hairdressers, per-
fumers, and caretakers of pearls. The aim of 
sporting a staff like this seems to have been 
ostentation rather than exhaustiveness, and 
additional (free) labourers must have been 
hired to fulfil the needs of the elite home. 
In smaller households, it is likely that a do-
mestic servant took up all sorts of chores. Fu-
nerary epigraphy indicates that artisans and 
craftsmen with a smaller business also relied 
on enslaved and freed labour to complement 
their skilled workforce. Where 
there was no biological heir, 
there were more enslaved persons we can 
hardly see in the evidence and remind us that, 
for some, slavery under the Roman Empire 
was decidedly inhumane. Despite the fact 
that some freedpeople did very well for them-
selves or even prospered, manumission was 
never certain and even for them the stigma of 
slavery clung persistently. In sum, we would 
do well to remember that in Roman society, 
too, slavery was brutal and exploitative. AH
Miriam J. Groen-Vallinga is assistant pro-
fessor at Radboud University Nijmegen. 
Her research focuses on the position of 
marginalized groups such as enslaved 
persons, women, and children in Ro-
man society and the Roman economy.
on enslaved an
their
ciety,
AH
pro-
gen. 
n of 
d 
-
y.
(Top) A view of the remains of a villa rus-
tica from Gambach, Germany. Many slaves 
would have been housed on such villae and 
worked as agricultural labourers.
© Cherubino / Wikimedia Commons
(Bottom) The remains of the tomb of 
Marcus Vergilius Eurysace, a baker, and his 
wife Astitia, dated to the late first century 
BC. While it is not certain, it is believed that 
Marcus Vergilius Eurysace was a freedman.
© Joris / Wikimedia Commons
© 
x
© 
x
a freedman could continue the 
family name and business. A well-
known example is that of Lucius 
Cornelius Atimetus and Lucius 
Cornelius Epaphra, his freedman, 
blacksmiths whose funerary altar 
is preserved in the Vatican Museums 
(CIL 6.16166). Atimetus set up the monu-
ment for himself and for Epaphra, his well-
deserving freedman. In a standard clause he 
includes his other freedmen, freedwomen, 
and descendants. Finally, a special place 
seems to have been reserved in all types of 
households for enslaved wetnurses and child 
caretakers, who are sometimes explicitly 
commemorated as part of the family in fu-
nerary epigraphy. 
In both the urban and rural economy, en-
slaved labourwas everywhere. Enslaved per-
sons, however, did not outcompete free per-
sons in the labour market in any way. Skilled 
and unskilled labour was performed by en-
slaved, freed, and free persons alike. Slavery 
provided an important additional flexible 
shell to the workforce that could be strategi-
cally used in times of fluctuating supply and 
demand. The deployment of enslaved people 
varied widely, however, and individual expe-
riences must have differed accordingly. Inci-
dental finds of bodies buried with shackles 
still on, or references to whipping, branding, 
and facial tattoos as punishment suggest that 
Ancient History 5624242424242424
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Ancient History 56 252525255
HELLENISTIC PROFESSIONAL SOLDIERS
WARFARE AS 
A LIVELIHOOD
THETHETHTT MEME
By Charlotte Van Regenmortel
The revolutionary reforms of Philip II of Macedonia 
turned military service into a professional career. But 
it was in the chaotic aftermath of Alexander the Great’s 
sudden death that professional soldiering came fully 
into its own. From the disciplined Macedonian ranks 
to the mercenary markets of the Successors and Hel-
lenistic kings, this article explores how the rise of 
paid, contract-based military service changed the na-
ture of warfare in the Hellenistic age, when fighting 
was no longer a civic duty but a way to earn a living.
I
n the summer of 323 BC, thousands of soldiers had gath-
ered at Cape Taenarum, the rocky headland at the most 
southern point of the Peloponnese. Alexander the Great 
was dead; his empire was already beginning to unrav-
el. These veterans, discharged or displaced, stood there 
ready, waiting for the next general to hire them. They had fol-
lowed Alexander across Asia, but their loyalty was no longer 
to their polis, king, or cause — it was to the best paymaster.
 This moment captures a turning point in the history 
of warfare. In Classical Greece, military service had been 
the duty of citizen-soldiers, called up in defence of their 
home poleis. Mercenaries were known in the Classical pe-
riod, especially during the Peloponnesian War and through-
out the fourth century BC, but they are typically thought of 
as impoverished, with mercenary service being seen as a 
route out of poverty. However, mercenary service — and 
the pay that went with it — did not automatically mean a 
high standard of living. Mercenary pay in the fourth century 
BC, prior to Philip II's reforms and the professionalization 
of the Macedonian army, was relatively low. According to 
Xenophon, Cyrus the Younger, after his mercenaries discov-
ered the true intention of their expedition, raised their pay to 
7.5 obols per day (Anabasis 1.3.21). Yet this pay was excep-
tional, effectively being an investment by Cyrus the Younger 
in the hopes of attaining the vast wealth of the Achaemenid 
Empire. Later in the fourth century BC, Demosthenes tells 
us that mercenaries were paid 2 obols per day (4.28), al-
though this was the allowance for food, and they were paid 
further through booty. Citizen-soldiers, on the other hand, 
appear to have been paid 1 drachma per day, equivalent to 
6 obols. But under Philip II of Macedon, a different model 
had emerged: a stand-
ing, professional army, 
drawn from a broader 
pool and maintained by 
regular wages. His son, 
Alexander, expanded this system into a transcontinental war 
machine, that would form the basis of the ever-expanding 
armies of the Successors and Hellenistic kings.
 As warfare professionalized, fighting became a career 
and source of income. Pay and contracts replaced civic duty, 
and soldiers began to see themselves as labourers, not citi-
zens fighting for their polis. Recruitment, pay, and protest 
came to define the lives of Hellenistic soldiers in an age of 
ambition and instability.
The rise of the professional soldier
It is tempting to equate soldiers who enlist for pay with mer-
cenaries. However, ancient Greek had no specific word for 
‘mercenary’; instead, the sources rely on terms such as epik-
ouros (‘helper’ or ‘ally’), xenos (‘foreigner’), or misthophoros 
(‘wage earner’) to denote soldiers who were not part of the 
citizen contingents. While these words align with many as-
pects of the modern definition of a ‘mercenary’, we should 
be cautious when translating. For example, soldiers serving 
in a clearly mercenary capacity are not always labelled as 
such in the ancient sources. Moreover, the modern term car-
ries a range of negative connotations that may not always 
apply in the ancient context. For this reason, it is better to 
look at the nature of soldiers’ recruitment and terms of ser-
vice to identify the capacity in which they served. 
The transformation of the Macedonian army into an in-
novative force of professional soldiers was driven as much 
by political necessity as by military demands. When Philip II 
seized the throne of Macedonia in the mid-fourth century BC, 
he inherited a kingdom under threat, and, therefore, immedi-
ately set to strengthening his army. As Macedonia was faced 
with a shortage of eligible manpower (many soldiers had died 
in battle alongside Philip’s predecessor), traditional models 
of citizen-soldiery based on conscription, like those in the 
Greek city-states, were unviable. To field a stronger army, 
Philip not only significantly reformed the army by introducing 
innovative weaponry, but also encouraged recruitment from 
beyond the Macedonian citizenry, allowing non-landowning 
locals and foreigners to enlist in all divisions of the army — a 
radical departure from earlier norms.
This shift was not just practical; it was political. Philip 
needed a loyal, full-time fighting force that answered directly 
to the crown, not to tribal loyalties or civic duties. By pay-
ing and training these soldiers year-round, he created a truly 
professional army — one that had specialist skills, could be 
mobilized quickly, and deployed flexibly.
 This was the army that accompanied Alexander the 
Great on his campaign against the Achaemenid Empire, fur-
ther supported by allied troops provided by the Greek poleis. 
The demanding campaign across Asia required constant re-
inforcement, and the army absorbed additional mercenaries 
and local recruits throughout the campaign. Crucially, once 
the Persian king had been defeated, Alexander dismissed the 
Greek allies, allowing them to return home or to re-enlist as 
hired forces – with many choosing the latter option, his army 
A recruiter enlisting new troops on 
behalf of a Hellenistic king.
© Jose Morán© J© Joseoseoses oo ááá
Ancient History 562626262626226
was increasingly composed of hired professionals who en-
listed in exchange for pay, rather than political duty.
After Alexander’s death, his former generals and other 
ambitious warlords — known as the ‘Successors’ — fought 
over and across his empire for decades. Initially, these new 
kings did not have enough individual authority to command 
all of Alexander’s military, nor were their territorial claims 
strong enough to raise forces through mass conscription. 
Therefore, strengthened by funds from the former Persian 
treasuries, they turned almost entirely to voluntary recruits 
and hired substantional numbers of soldiers to fill their ranks. 
 As the Wars of the Successors quietened down and 
the emergence of the independent Hellenistic kingdoms 
introduced some territorial stability, kings could return to 
the model of conscription, with levies comprising settled 
soldiers or local populations. However, the model of the 
professional, hired soldier persisted, not least because these 
skilled troops were often preferred for staffing the increas-
ingly large and lethal armies that defined the militaristic na-
ture of the Hellenistic world.
Manning the armies
Recruitment and retention of troops became an ongoing pro-
cess, carried out ina variety of ways. Some armies issued 
calls for soldiers to enlist. Others dispatched commanders 
armed with gold and silver to actively recruit from across the 
Mediterranean. Aspiring soldiers, meanwhile, could indepen-
dently offer their services. As a result of this movement, key 
gathering points emerged: the aforementioned Cape Taenar-
um may well have been one such known hub, where soldiers 
waiting to be hired met with potential employers.
A good example of how recruitment worked in prac-
tice comes from Diodorus’ account of a muster organized 
by Eumenes of Cardia — a Greek who had served under 
Philip II and held a top position in Alexander’s army. Once 
Eumenes gained access to a treasury and thus the funds 
required to support an army, he set a generous rate of pay 
and dispatched recruiters across the Levant. The response 
was swift and enthusiastic: soldiers flocked to enlist, in-
cluding many from Greece, where word of the recruitment 
drive — and the high wages on offer — spread like wildfire 
(Diodorus, 18.61.4).
Sometimes, entire cities were drawn into the recruitment 
process. Antigonus I Monophthalmus, founder of the Antigo-
nid dynasty, once sent a general to the Peloponnese, coffers 
of gold in tow, to formally request permission from Sparta to 
recruit soldiers within its territory (Diodorus, 19.56.1). While 
this kind of arrangement may have functioned as a disguised 
alliance, it also served a more practical purpose: it gave cities 
like Sparta a way to keep their young men occupied — and 
possibly out of trouble at home — by channelling them into 
military service abroad.
 Naturally, competition among the Successors led to a 
volatile and highly competitive recruitment market. Rival com-
manders often tried to outbid each other, offering higher wages 
or better conditions to lure troops away from their opponents. 
A striking example comes from a campaign involving Ptolemy 
I Soter, king of Egypt, who, when threatened by Antigonus, of-
fered a cash premium to any soldier willing to desert the en-
emy. The offer was generous, and it worked — many soldiers 
switched sides just before the battle (Diodorus, 20.75.1).
Soldiers often had considerable agency in this competi-
tive recruitment environment and were not shy about us-
ing it to their advantage. A good example is Athenagoras, a 
Milesian commander serving under Ptolemy I. According to 
Diodorus, the Antigonid successor king Demetrius I Polio-
rcetes tried to tempt him with a large sum of money to switch 
sides. Athenagoras appears to have played along, cleverly 
using the situation to pit both employers against each other. 
After revealing the plot to his superiors, he was handsomely 
rewarded: he received five talents — 30,000 drachmas, an 
enormous sum — as well as an honorific crown, so that his 
(admittedly purchased) loyalty could serve as an example to 
other hired troops (Diodorus, 20.94.3–5).
Wages and incentives
Citizen-soldiers in the Greek poleis were typically given a 
payment known as misthos. Scholars continue to debate 
whether this misthos should be seen as a true wage or sim-
ply a ration allowance. Either way, when it was given (and it 
wasn’t always!), the amount was generally modest, covering 
little more than basic subsistence. Either way, in most cases, 
military service was a seasonal activity, meaning it did not 
offer a regular or sustainable income for citizens. A notable 
exception, however, was the Athenian navy. Operating year-
round and often employing men who had few other means 
of support, it provided something much closer to steady, 
paid employment.
Having a steady job with a regular salary is largely a mod-
ern concept. In the ancient world, most people earned their 
income through the sale of produce or by offering specific 
services. Those who did receive cash wages were often paid 
per day; many were on piece rates, receiving payment upon 
completion of a specific unit or task. Agriculture, with its 
seasonal, peak demands, may well have been a source of 
employment for day labourers, but most of our evidence for 
this comes from the building industry, where public accounts 
of costings reveal the specific employment costings and re-
lations; notably, both slaves and citizens worked alongside 
each other in these projects, often operating as teams. Within 
these sectors, employment was typically informal, irregular, 
and highly dependent on seasonal cycles or local demand. 
In Athens, citizens could also earn small payments for par-
ticipating in civic duties – such as jury service or attendance 
at the assembly – making it possible for poorer individuals to 
engage in the democratic process. However, in this context, 
the regular and long-term pay provided by the royal armies 
represented a radical innovation in labour relations.
Wage labour in the ancient world 
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Wage labour in the ancient world Wage labour in the ancient world
Ancient History 56 27272727777
In contrast to the conscript citizens, soldiers who enlist-
ed voluntarily had to be incentivized. Thus, in Macedonia, 
Philip II had begun to recruit hired forces to pack the ranks 
of his army, but we should note that wages were provided 
to all troops from the beginning. In addition to regular pay, 
Philip supplied weapons and armour based on rank to those 
who enlisted. Exceptionally skilled individuals could even 
receive land grants, meaning that military skill, rather than 
personal wealth or aristocratic lineage, became the criterion 
for joining elite divisions like the Companion Cavalry. Philip 
funded this ambitious recruitment strategy by exploiting the 
mines near Crenides, which yielded enough gold and silver 
to support his army of paid soldiers.
This model continued under Alexander the Great, who 
kept his army under arms during his lengthy campaign by 
offering regular pay and additional bonuses. A sophisti-
cated pay scale, tied to soldiers’ ranks, appears to have 
been in place, as evidenced by military titles like ‘Ten Sta-
ter Men’ or ‘Double Pay Men’. With the vast wealth of the 
Achaemenid treasuries at his disposal, Alexander could 
afford to offer his troops sums previously unimaginable. 
The historian Arrian tells us that, upon the army’s return 
to Babylon in 325/4 BC, Alexander paid 10,000 depart-
ing soldiers their back pay, along with a bonus of 1 talent 
(about 6,000 drachmas) each. He also settled 20,000 tal-
ents’ worth of soldiers’ outstanding debts (Arrian, Anabasis 
7.12.1; 7.5.3). These staggering sums required the minting 
of vast quantities of coinage, much of which can still be 
traced through the numismatic record today.
 The link between available cash and generous remu-
neration remained crucial under the Successors, who clearly 
understood that their ability to pay directly influenced their 
success on the battlefield. Diodorus Siculus illustrates this 
well in his account of Ptolemy’s arrival in Egypt, noting that 
upon discovering 8000 talents in the treasury, he immedi-
ately set about recruiting mercenaries (18.14.1). Similarly, 
when in charge of the east, Antigonus reportedly did not fear 
confrontation, knowing he could provide endless pay to his 
troops (Diodorus, 18.50.3).
As we have seen, soldiers were acutely aware of the 
competition for their service, and the price of enlistment 
was increasingly inflated as a result. While there are few 
contemporary records detailing exact pay rates, some exam-
ples suggest that serving in the royal armies offered much 
higher pay than that provided by citizen militias. This no 
doubt contributed to the contemporary stereotypes of boast-
ful soldiers who had plenty of cash to spend and were often 
seen as living a lavish lifestyle.
Wages were not the only benefits to be gained, and 
employers soon began to offer soldiers land in exchange 
for military service. The Ptolemies in Egypt were perhaps 
the most famous practitioners of this model, but it is at-
tested across all the Hellenistic kingdoms. Land did not 
only form part-payment but also encouraged troops to re-
turn ‘home’ at the end of a campaign. These settlements of 
active-duty soldiers and their families resulted in the crea-
tion of a dependable, and sometimes multi-generational 
recruitment base by limiting the mobility of soldiers in an 
age where loyalty was often for sale.
Disputes and the military contract
Under Alexander the Great, soldiers increasingly began to as-
sert their rights regarding the conditions of their service. Several 
notable instances — often labelled mutinies — involved troops 
refusing to march or continue fighting until their demands, 
typically concerning pay, rest, or repatriation, were addressed. 
At the Hyphasis River in 326 BC, Alexander’s army, exhausted 
by years of campaigning and daunted by the prospect of fac-
ing powerful Indian kingdoms beyond the Ganges, refused to 
continue eastward. Later, at Opis in 324 BC, tensions erupted 
again when Alexander attempted to discharge Macedonian 
veterans and integrate more Persian troops into his forces. 
These early forms of collective action laid the groundwork for 
an even more transactional understanding of military service 
under the Successors and in the Hellenistic kingdoms.
Under the Successors, negotiation between soldiers and 
their employers became a common practice. In addition to 
discussions about pay — and the ever-present threat of de-
fection — records indicate that negotiations also covered 
the length of campaigns, whether to advance or retreat, and 
which routes to take. Eumenes of Cardia even maintained a 
dedicated tent for such discussions, where he met with both 
commanders and soldiers on equal footing. This practice was 
symbolically overseen by the ghost of Alexander, who, ac-
cording to Plutarch, had instructed Eumenes to adopt this ap-
proach in a dream (Plutarch, Eumenes 13.3–4).
 The epigraphic record provides further evidence for 
similar practices in the later Hellenistic kingdoms. An in-
scribed agreement between the Attalid king Eumenes I and 
soldiers stationed at garrisons reveals that these troops had 
also ceased work until their demands were met. In addition 
to a promise to pay outstanding wages — presumably the 
immediate cause of the strike — the agreement specifies set 
prices for grain and wine, the length of the campaigning sea-
son, provisions for paying those who had completed their 
service, tax breaks, arrangements for the care of orphans, and 
clear procedures for soldiers wishing to leave. Together, these 
clauses amounted to a transparent and sophisticated set of 
employment conditions for military personnel.
The rise of professional soldiery in the Hellenistic world 
marked a profound transformation of the nature of military 
service and its broader relationship to the economy and soci-
ety. No longer bound by civic duty or loyalty to a city-state, 
soldiers operated within a transactional system defined by 
contracts, wages, and negotiated rights. As armies grew in 
size and complexity, so too did the expectations and agency 
of those who filled their ranks. Whether through protest, ne-
gotiation, or shifting allegiances, Hellenistic soldiers played 
an active role in shaping their own conditions – fighting not 
just for kings or causes, but for livelihoods forged on the bat-
tlefield and secured through pay. AH
Charlotte Van Regenmortel is a lecturer in Ancient History 
at the University of Liverpool.
Ancient History 56282828
THE LABOUR MARKET IN ANCIENT ROME
FINDING WORK
THEME 
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By Owain Williams
Discussions about labour in the Roman Empire tend to focus 
on the work of slaves. There were, of course, hundreds of thou-
sands of slaves, if not more, at any one point in the Roman Em-
pire. Yet freeborn people — both men and women — were also 
involved in labour,but their contributions are hard to discern.
I
t was once believed that, because of the extensive use of slave la-
bour, there was no free labour market in ancient Rome. Instead, it 
was thought that wage labour was rare. The dismissal of the lower 
classes by ancient authors, who depicted them as “addicted to 
the circus and theatre” (Tacitus, Histories 1.4) and longing 
only for bread and games (Juvenal, 10.78–81), promot-
ed the idea that average people were content to live 
off the grain dole and spend their time at the many 
games and shows on offer. However, the monthly 
grain dole was only five modii, enough for a single 
adult male. Depending on the work they were do-
ing, Cato gave each of his slaves between three and 
five modii of grain a month (On Agriculture 56). The 
grain dole, therefore, was hardly enough to support 
a family and certainly not an incentive to not work 
for many. That Vespasian rejects a proposal 
for a labour-saving device because the peo-
ple needed to eat (Suetonius, Vespasian 18) 
suggests that many Romans worked to buy 
food. Similarly, Tacitus tells us that, after the 
Tiber flooded during the reign of Otho, “The 
common people were reduced to famine by 
lack of employment and failure of supplies” 
(Histories 1.86), again demonstrating how af-
fording food was an incentive to work.
Getting a job in ancient Rome
So, working for a wage, even with the grain 
dole, was necessary for the average Roman 
to survive. Many different professions are at-
tested, from more typical jobs like being a 
porter (Petronius, Satyricon 117) to more unu-
sual jobs like throwing dice for a man with no 
fingers (Horace, Satires 2.7.15–18), but we do 
not know how people found these jobs.
 Odd jobs may be directly advertised 
by the employer. Apuleius, for instance, de-
scribes how a man stood on a stone in the 
forum and declared that he needed someone 
to watch a corpse for a night, for which they 
would be paid (Metamorphoses 2.21). Simi-
larly, while there is no direct evidence for 
it, praecones (‘announcers’), who made an-
nouncements in the forum, as described by 
A relief, dated to the mid-first century BC, depicting several labourers working around a crane under the instruction of a magistrate. Construction 
work was likely one of the biggest employment sectors in ancient Rome.
An altar dedicated by a collegium fabrorum ('association of black-
smiths'), dated to the second century AD. Professional associations 
created networks along which jobs could be advertised.
© Giovanni Dall'Orto. / Wikimedia Commons
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Ancient History 56 29
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Dio Chrysostom (Orations 7.123), could also 
have advertised opportunities for employ-
ment. It appears that people looking for work 
would gather in the forum, making a praeco’s 
role even more likely. Pliny the Elder, for ex-
ample, tells of how cooks would gather at 
the macellum, where they would be hired by 
those who had no cooks on their household 
staff (Natural History 18.108), al-
though Pliny the Elder is discussing 
matters before his time. However, 
Claudius had slaves and workers re-
moved from the forum when he of-
fered a supplication upon the Rostra 
(Suetonius, Claudius 22), suggesting 
they had gathered there. Profession-
al associations, or collegia, could 
also provide useful networks to 
spread news about opportunities 
for work, albeit for skilled labour-
ers. The largest of such collegia in Rome 
was the collegium fabrum tignariorum 
(association of builders and carpen-
ters), which, by the third century AD, 
had over 1300 members. 
Of these members, nearly 
half had non-Latin cogno-
mina, suggesting they came 
to Rome from across the 
empire. Among the many 
reasons people came to the city of Rome, 
and many other Roman cities, Seneca the 
Younger includes work (To Helvia 6).
Women’s work
Aristotle, writing in the fourth century BC, 
explained how poor women were forced to 
work (Politics 6.1323a), and the same was 
true of Rome, even though Roman attitudes 
maintained that it was not proper for women 
to work. A common way women could gen-
erate additional income for their household, 
and one which remained within Roman mores, 
was weaving. Yet in accordance with Roman 
attitudes, it appears that domestic roles, such 
as wet nurses and mid-
wives were the most com-
mon form of occupation 
for women, with the role 
of ornatrix (‘hairdresser’), ac-
counting for 20 per cent of all 
known working women from Rome and Ostia 
(see Matyszak, AH 55). Women could also help 
out with their father’s or husband’s occupation, 
as two inscriptions referring to goldworkers 
attest. Women could even manage their own 
businesses, such as taverns, where they also 
worked as bar staff. Similarly, Mecia Flora, a 
wool-comber, left three shops to her daughter 
and her son was a woolworker, suggesting she 
had a woolworking business. AH
Owain Williams is the editor of Ancient His-
tory magazine.
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(Top) The remains of the Rostra, 
a platform in front of the Curia in the 
Forum Romanum. It is possible that free 
labourers gathered here while waiting 
for offers of employment.
© Sailko / Wikimedia Commons
(Bottom right) A detail of the so-called 
dye-workers fresco from Pompeii depict-
ing a laundry worker brushing a piece of 
textile. The textile industry was one area 
of work where women were common.
© WolfgangRieger / Wikimedia Commons
(Bottom left) A fresco from Tyre, dated to 
the second century AD, depicting a man 
carrying a load on his back. Labourers 
were commonly employed as porters, 
especially at busy ports.
© Livius.org
© 
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DID YOU KNOW?
In the Roman Empire, labourers and arti-
sans could go on strike. A letter from Egypt, 
dated to AD 116 or 117, tells of how labourers in 
wool-weaving workshops in Hermopolis took to 
the streets to demand better pay!
THE CENTERFOLD
Unskilled labourers and skilled artisans 
work to erect a temple under the gaze 
of a magistrate. Construction work was 
likely one of the largest employment sec-
tors of the Roman economy, much like it 
was across many pre-industrial societies.
© William Webb
π
Ancient History 56323232
Despite the iconic nude sculptures that survive in white 
marble, ancient Greeks wore clothes in a variety of 
colours and styles, and used textiles to furnish their 
homes, worship their gods, and power their warships. 
Who made them, by what methods and in 
what conditions, and how did this work shape 
the economy and culture of ancient Greece?
THE ANCIENT GREEK TEXTILE ECONOMY
WOVEN WEALTH 
AND WOMEN’S WORK
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By Katherine Backler
A Boeotian terracotta statuette of a woman, dated to ca. 450 BC, with 
the original pigmentation still present. Ancient Greek textiles were 
very colourful, and they were the product of women's work through-
out ancient Greek history.
© The Art Institute of Chicago
T
he very first wage-earner in Western lit-
erature is a single working mother de-
scribed by Homer. The poet of the Iliad 
sang of how the battle lines of the Greeks 
and Trojans were evenly strained,
as a careful woman who earns by the work of her 
hands holds a pair of scales and draws up the weight 
and the wool equally on both sides, keep-
ing them evenly balanced, to gain a pitiful 
wage for her children (12.433–5).
The simile conveys the tension not just in 
the balance of the scales but in the woman’s 
economic precarity. Like the armies, she is 
engaged in a battle for her life and the lives 
of her children, whom she provides for with 
her wages.Women in ancient Greece made 
clothes for themselves and their families, but 
they could also make an income by produc-
ing surplus textiles for sale.
Women at work
Before the mechanized loom or even the 
spinning wheel, textile production was ex-
traordinarily time-consuming. Just to produce 
a simple woollen tunic, sheared wool first had 
to be picked clean of dirt, worms, and sheep-
dung; washed; weighed out into portions 
according to the planned design; combed 
straight; pulled into ‘rovings’ (rolls of fibre); 
spun into threads using drop-spindles; then 
woven into fabric. A sixth-century BC Attic le-
kythos by the Amasis Painter depicts several of 
these stages. At the loom, one woman passes 
A detail of the Parthenon frieze, a relief depicting the Athenian Panathenaic procession, showing two figures holding a folded garment between 
them — possibly the peplos — a dress presented to a cult statue of Athena.
hoomemess,s, wwwworshhip t
WhW oo mad
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© The Art In
as a c
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th century BC Attic le-
is Painter depicts several of 
loom, one woman passes 
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Ancient History 56 33
©
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a shuttle through the warp threads while an-
other beats up the weft to push the threads 
together. Beside them, a woman places por-
tions of wool in a balance while another, like 
Homer’s woman, holds the scales.
 The women depicted work in pairs or 
threes: textile production required collabora-
tion. Women talked and sang to distract from 
the tedium and aches of repetitive labour, 
which left its mark on their bodies: archaeolo-
gists excavating at Iron Age Epirus and other 
early Greek sites consistently found shallow 
grooves on the front teeth of female but not 
male skeletons, caused by biting on wool dur-
ing spinning. Young girls would have learnt the 
necessary skills by watching elder sisters, moth-
ers, and aunts carrying out the more techni-
cally and physically demanding stages, while 
they themselves be-
gan with the simpler 
tasks and ‘graduated’ 
to harder ones, first 
in their childhood 
homes and later un-
der the tutelage of mothers- and 
sisters-in-in law. The necessity for 
such extensive labour, done pre-
dominantly by women, meant that hours 
and hours of women and girls’ time were de-
voted to textile production.
Production, consumption, 
and ‘whorification’
Though the mother’s work in the Iliad only 
brings in a “pitiful wage”, surplus textile pro-
duction could be lucrative. Xenophon’s ac-
count of the wisdom Socrates dispensed to his 
friends includes a story of advice he gave to 
a man named Aristarchus (Memorabilia 2.7). 
Enslaved women worked alongside free 
women and under their direction. In the Iliad, 
Heector tells his wife Andromache to “attend 
to [her] work, the loom and the distaff, and tell 
the slave-women to set about their work”, but 
he knows that if she is enslaved, there will be a 
role-reversal and she will “weave at the loom 
under another woman” (6.456, 490–3). In larg-
er households, this meant that the household-
er’s wife took on a managerial role. As a child, 
the fourteen-year-
Aristarchus’ sisters, nieces, and female 
cousins, whose husbands, brothers, 
and sons had fled Athens to escape 
political violence, came to live with 
Aristarchus, putting such pressure on 
his household that he struggled to feed 
them. Socrates points out that these 
women were trained from childhood 
to produce clothes for themselves 
and their families, and, against 
Aristarchus’ aristocratic protesta-
tions that wage-earning labour is be-
neath them, he recommends that they 
be put to work producing textiles for 
sale. The details make clear that this 
was a high-value industry: Aristarchus 
must take out a loan to buy the wool 
that his relatives will convert into tex-
tiles but expects to make the money 
back and enough to spare.
 In time, Aristarchus returns from his over-
crowded home to the agora to report to So-
crates that everyone now has food to eat and 
the women are happier. But the women have 
pointed out to him that he is the only one in the 
house who does no work but still eats the food 
that their work has enabled him to buy. So-
crates, confronted with these interlocutors who 
‘dialogue’ with him through their male relative, 
fudges a response: Aristarchus, as the women’s 
male protector, is doing the work of a guard 
dog “who allows the sheep to feed in peace”. 
In Socrates’ mind, the women whose skilled la-
bour has restored the household to economic 
sustainability and prevented the family from 
starvation are still consumers, not producers.
 Some historians also struggle to take 
women’s textile work seriously. Fourth-century 
BC records which mention the occupations 
Managing other workers
old bride in Xenophon’s Oeconomicus learned 
not just how to make a cloak herself but also 
how to distribute spinning tasks among the en-
slaved women; in her new home, she is also 
expected to teach the enslaved girls to spin and 
weave (7.6, 41; 10.10). Similarly, one woman 
mentioned in an Athenian legal dispute man-
ages a number of enslaved women who pro-
cess the wool from the household’s flock of 
fifty sheep, specifically bred for their soft wool 
([Demosthenes] 47.52–6).
er housseholds, this meant that the hh
er’s wifee took onn a managerial role. AA’
the fourrt
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brothers, 
to escape 
live with 
essure on 
ed to feed
hat these 
ildhood 
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the wool 
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The oldest known Greek-language pa-
pyrus from Egypt, dated to ca. mid-July 
310 BC, recording a marriage contract 
between Heraclides and Demetria. 
According to the contract, Demetria 
brought clothing and jewellery worth 
1000 drachmas.
© Berliner Papyrusdatenbank
A reconstruction of an ancient Greek 
standing loom, based on an original 
dated to the third-second century BC.
© Lauren van Zoonen
© 
x
© 
x
Ancient History 5634
of immigrants (or, less likely, freedpeople) in 
Athens attest to large-scale participation in 
the textile economy. Alongside tavernkeepers, 
wet-nurses, flautists, lyre-players, and sellers of 
sesame seeds, frankincense, and honey, these 
lists record about 50 textile-workers. The schol-
ar Kelly Wrenhaven argued that the word used 
to describe these women, ‘woolworker’, was 
a euphemism for ‘prostitute’. While prostitu-
tion was prevalent in ancient Greece, the 
assumption that ‘wool-work’ means ‘sex’ 
work’ is unfounded. Unwillingness to rec-
ognize women’s economic contributions, 
a tendency to categorize women as either 
‘good wives’ (imagined as not working for in-
come) or ‘prostitutes’, and the sexualization of 
women, have led to what historian Claire Tay-
lor has called the ‘whorification’ of women’s 
labour: the assumption that female work was 
sexual. The same logic is behind the argument 
that the large, multi-room ‘Building Z’ excavat-
ed in Athens’ pottery quarter, containing loom 
weights and spindle whorls, must have been a 
brothel where prostitutes kept busy by produc-
ing textiles ‘on the side’ – despite a lack of con-
clusive evidence.
Weaving and warring
Women’s textile production even contributed 
to arms manufacture. The triremes — the domi-
nant weapon in fifth- and fourth-century con-
flicts, used to destroy enemy ships by ramming 
them — despite being named for their three 
banks of oars, also used wind power, allow-
ing them to reach speeds of over nine knots, 
although a trireme's mast was lowered in bat-
tle. The linen sails which har-
nessed this power would have 
been made by women. A song in 
the comedy Frogs, in which the 
comedian Aristophanes makes fun 
of the tragedian Euripides for writing about 
“ordinary, familiarthings” (v. 959), features 
a woman producing a skein of flax for sale 
(vv. 1346–51). Women would also have made 
fabric awnings which served as anti-missile 
covers. Linen sails were essential to the war ef-
forts of Greek cities. During the Social Wars of 
357–355 BC, when Athens’ East Aegean allies 
revolted, there was such a shortage of sailcloth 
that the Assembly passed a decree compelling 
incoming sea-captains to recover it from outgo-
ing sea-captains ([Demosthenes] 47.20).
 Sails woven by women also powered 
trading ships, which travelled as far as Spain, 
Egypt, the Levant, and Ukraine, facilitating 
long-distance trade and cross-cultural encoun-
ters which fed ancient Greece’s rich intellectual 
and economic life. Some of this trade was itself 
in textiles. In a fourth-century BC letter found 
in Myrmekion (near modern Kerch in Crimea, 
Ukraine), a trader tells his colleague,
Send me a cloak for myself, and most im-
portantly send me two Ion-
ian cloaks for sale. Take 
the slave-boy Charius 
and the Black Sea slave 
un 
ting about 
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 Ion-
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A scene from an Attic black-figure leky-
thos, dated to ca. 550-530 BC, depicting 
the various stages of preparing and 
weaving wool. In ancient Athens, women 
across the social spectrum were involved 
in the production of textiles, whether as 
workers or as managers of workers.
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art
An Attic white-ground oinochoe, dated to 
ca. 490 BC, depicting a woman spinning 
wool. Before the invention of the spin-
ning wheel, this was a very time-consum-
ing process, and girls would have learned 
how to do it from a young age.
© ArchaiOptix / Wikimedia Commons
© 
x
© 
x
and two or three purple textiles 
and give them to Diodorus the 
helmsman [to transport].
That it was worth transport-
ing only “two or three purple 
textiles” for sale, alongside two 
human beings, is suggestive of 
the textiles’ value. At the top end of 
the scale was silk, a luxury associated with the 
island of Cos. Aristotle describes how women 
produced silk fibres from moth cocoons, a 
technology he says was invented by a woman 
named Pamphile (Aristotle, History of Animals 
5.19, 551b14–17). Women’s labour and tech-
nical skill produced valuable commodities 
traded across the Mediterranean.
Clothed in colour
Textiles could be so valuable that they were 
sometimes given as gifts to gods. Fourth-
century BC inventories from the sanctuary of 
Artemis at Brauron, on the south-east Attic 
coast, record women’s dedications of textiles 
to the goddess. The records’ meticulous detail 
sheds light on the variety of colours, fabrics, 
techniques, fashions, and designs. That some 
items were recorded as being “worn out” 
and only a few were “new” show that these 
clothes had typically been worn by their mak-
ers and their families before being dedicated 
to Artemis. Again, enslaved women and girls 
would have played an essential part in pro-
ducing the garments, though their contribu-
tions are not recorded. Thanks to the labour 
of women, people walked through the streets 
and markets and sanctuaries of a world we 
sometimes imagine as marble-white wearing 
“a saffron-yellow two-layer cloak”, “a sea-
purple short tunic”, “a frog-coloured outfit”.
 The Brauron inventories also record sim-
pler offerings, perhaps from poorer women: 
“Menecratea, wife of Diphilus, dedicated a 
coarse tunic, worn out”. Menecratea or Diphi-
lus might have worn this sturdy tunic for years, 
enjoying its protection from wind and weather 
as they went about their life and work. At every 
level of society, women’s labour kept ancient 
Greece clothed, allowing economy and so-
ciety to function. The financial accounts of 
the sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone at 
Eleusis, to which people from across the Greek 
world travelled to be initiated into the Eleusin-
and
an
he
h
ian Mystery Cult, record a payment in 329/8 
BC to a woman named Thettale (‘Thessalian’ 
— probably a freedwoman or immigrant born 
in Thessaly) for 28 weatherproof cloth caps for 
enslaved workers, providing them with a low 
level of protection as they constructed and 
repaired buildings at the sanctuary. This one 
transaction is emblematic of the way in which 
women’s textile production undergirded an-
cient Greek architecture, religion, economy, 
society, and culture. AH
Katherine Backler is an Ancient Historian 
at the University of Oxford. 
Her book Athena’s Sisters: 
Reclaiming the Women of 
Classical Athens is now 
available for pre-order.
ford. 
s: 
f 
w 
te
items w
and onl
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ers and 
to Artem
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and
s
(Top) A Roman terracotta relief, one of 
the so-called Campana reliefs, dated to 
the first century AD, depicting Athena-
Minerva overseeing the construction of 
the Argo. Throughout ancient history, 
women were involved in the creation of 
the linen used for ships' sails.
© Jastrow / Wikimedia Commons
(Bottom) A view of the archaeological 
site at Brauron, a sanctuary to Artemis 
in Attica. Temple inventories, inscribed 
on stone, record how women would 
dedicated pieces of clothing here, both 
new and used.
© Aerial-motion / Shutterstock
© 
x
Ancient History 56363636
Egypt is famous for its towering pyramids and hypostyle 
halls, lasting monuments to human engineering. Less well 
known are the stories of those who built them, from the 
masons cutting stones for monumental tombs, to the car-
penters measuring planks for sleek riverboats. Many rul-
ing dynasties rose and fell as Egypt fractured and reunified, 
was conquered, and went through periods of decline. 
Throughout all this, everyday labourers adapted to 
changing times and fought for adequate compensation.
LABOUR IN ANCIENT EGYPT
“AS LONG AS MY PEOPLE 
KEEP ON WORKING”
THEME 
A
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By Arienne King
F
or much of Egypt’s history, most people 
were farmers and farmhands. Some farmers 
owned their own land, but many were ten-
ant farmers who paid a significant amount 
of their harvest to their landlord. High taxes 
further reduced the earnings and economic mobility 
of tenant farmers. These conditions have been com-
pared to serfdom by some historians.
 Egypt’s farmland was particularly pro-
ductive in comparison to many contempo-
rary societies. It is estimated that 200,000 
farmers could produce enough grain to feed 
3,000,000 people. The fertility of the Nile 
Valley meant that excess grain could be pro-
duced to support labourers specializing in 
non-agricultural trades, like stone-cutting 
and building. Ancient labourers built a sys-
tem of water basins and canals to capture the 
floodwaters and feed their crops. Workmen 
repaired these water channels every autumn 
in preparation for planting.
 Farmers scattered seed over the mud 
each winter, only ploughing the fields if the 
crop required it. Pack animals, like oxen and 
donkey, trod the seed into the ground. By 
late spring, it was ready for harvest. The straw 
and crop stubble left behind after the harvest 
was useful for feeding grazing animals like 
sheep. In this manner, a person could effec-
tively cultivate about 7.5 aroura (52 sq m) of 
land by themselves.
 The most important crops were grains 
like wheat and barley. Other staple crops 
were flax for linen and oil, and legumes for 
protein. More intensive crops were grown in 
gardens. Water carriers hauled jugs of water 
to feed fruit trees and vegetables. These had 
A facsimile of a fresco from the tomb of Menna, dated to ca. 1400–1352 BC, depicting a harvest scene. Thanks to the Nile's fertility, agriculture was 
an important element of the Egyptian economy, with most labourers working on agricultural estates, and surplus produce paying for other, skilled 
The wooden, painted funerary maskof an Estate Manager named Wah, 
dated to ca. 1981–1975 BC. Most people in ancient Egypt would likely 
have been involved in agriculture, either as labourers or overseers.
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art
s a
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Ancient History 56 37
to be meticulously 
pruned and weed-
ed by gardeners. Orchards 
and vineyards required especially arduous 
care, but their fruit was valuable enough to 
make the venture worthwhile.
Managing Egyptian industry
Major production centres were controlled by 
the pharaoh and the temples. The crown and 
clergy owned massive farms, mines, and work-
shops throughout Egypt. The temples were 
not merely religious functionaries; they were 
responsible for many administrative functions 
at the local and regional 
level, including organizing 
the production and distri-
bution of goods. The phar-
aoh granted endowments 
of property to the temples 
and often relied on them 
to manage royal industries as well. For ex-
ample, Papyrus Harris I, dated to ca. 1153 
BC, records how Ramesses III made endow-
ments to major temples, granting them a 
combined total of 100,000 workers and 1 
million arouras of farmland. The endow-
ments recorded in the papyrus amounted to 
fifteen per cent of the country’s agricultural 
area and five per cent of its population.
 The state’s economic activity was 
meticulously managed, documented, 
and archived by scribal bureaucrats, giv-
ing Egyptologists extensive material to 
study. Much less is known about small-
er, private industries with comparatively 
poor documentation. In many cases, private 
transactions were entirely verbal and left no 
written record at all.
Craftsmen and artisans
Sculptors, smiths, and other skilled artisans 
were in high demand. Craftsmen working in 
prestige industries like goldsmithing were em-
ployed by both state and private workshops. 
Others served in the households of wealthy 
Egyptians. Many families traditionally prac-
ticed a craft over generations, 
passing knowledge down 
from parent to child. Out-
siders had difficulty entering 
those industries since 
they required many 
years of training. Some 
important industries 
were even controlled by 
guilds, who maintained a 
monopoly over their trade. 
This was especially true of crafts with closely 
guarded expertise, like embalmers.
 Every village had its own craftsmen, who 
produced basic goods without any workshop 
affiliation. Many worked from home, produc-
ing pottery, weaving palm leaves into baskets, 
or twisting flax into yarn for linen. These were 
some of the oldest crafts in Egypt, and produced 
necessary goods like clothing, containers, and 
cooking vessels. Independent artisans sold their 
©
 Th
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fifteen per
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 The
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study. M
(Top) A facsimile of a fresco from the 
tomb of Ipuy, dated to ca. 1295-1213 BC, 
depicting a garden scene with a man 
pulling water from a canal.
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art
(Bottom left) A limestone relief, dated to 
the Old Kingdom (ca. 2700–2200 BC), de-
picting donkeys. Such animals were used 
to stamp seeds into the earth on farms.
© Livius.org
(Bottom right) A fresco depicting men 
working in a vineyard from the tomb of 
Userhat, an official during the reign of 
Amenhotep II (ca. 1448-1422 BC) who 
held several administrative positions.
© The Yorck Project (2002)
© 
x
© 
x
© 
x
generations, 
e down 
ild. Out-
entering
since 
x
Ancient History 5638
Bricks and stones
Brickmaking was an essential industry in 
ancient Egypt, as it was inexpensive and re-
quired little skill. It was used for monumen-
tal architecture like pyramids as late as the 
Middle Kingdom and never went out of style 
as a material for ordinary dwellings. Though 
uncomplicated, brickmaking was messy and 
difficult work. Brickmakers broke up hard 
mud with a hoe and mixed it with straw and 
water. They kneaded the mixture with their 
feet and then poured it into wooden molds 
to harden under the sun.
 Over time, soft stone like limestone and 
sandstone began to replace brick in monumen-
tal buildings constructed by the crown and tem-
ples. Hard stone, like granite, basalt, and dior-
ite, was especially suitable for applications like 
obelisks, statues, and sarcophagi. Mines and 
quarries were built to supply the stone needed 
for these projects. The scale of these operations 
could be immense — an estimated 45,000 cu-
bic metres of stone was removed from Aswan 
during the Old Kingdom. Valuable metals 
and minerals like gold, copper, lapis lazuli, 
and amethyst were also exploited.
 Mines and quarries were typically in 
remote locations like the eastern desert. Net-
works of waystations on the road offered shel-
ter and supplies to caravans travelling to these 
sites. A basic seasonal mining camp consisted 
of stone huts, processing and ore-washing fa-
cilities, and defensive walls to protect against 
floods or attacks. In some cases, villages and 
towns were built around these sites. Workers 
at a copper and turquoise mining operation at 
Serabit el-Khadim in the Sinai Peninsula, active 
in the Middle and New Kingdom, cut shrines 
into the nearby hills. Over time, they built a 
substantial temple to Hathor, a goddess associ-
ated with turquoise, at the site.
 Labourers prepared the site of a planned 
quarry by removing rock, dirt, and sand. Blocks 
were drawn onto the surface of the stone with 
chisels or ochre, showing labourers where to 
carve out blocks. Quarry workers carved each 
block by hand, wielding hammers, stone picks, 
and metal chisels. As they carved, they cut nar-
row trenches between each block, just wide 
enough for themselves to stand or kneel in 
as they worked. A quarry near the pyramid of 
the Fourth Dynasty pharaoh Khafre 
in Giza still bears the scars from 
wares at marketplaces located 
in town, near the riverbanks. 
Some crafts were dominated 
by a specific gender; the majority 
of textile workers were women, while metal 
smiths were generally men.
 Though Egypt had limited forest resources, 
Egyptian carpenters developed sophisticated 
techniques for working with what they had. 
Specialized tools for woodworking were devel-
oped in the late Predynastic period, including 
pull-saws, axes, and chisels for shaping wood. 
Longer, higher quality timbers were imported 
from places like Cyprus and Lebanon for uses 
like boat building. Since many goods were 
transported via riverboat, boat construction be-
came very sophisticated (see Williams, AH 54).
row trenches betw
enough for them
as they worked. A
the Four
in Giz
ations 
000 cu-
swan 
als 
 
w
in
So
by 
k
(Top) A facsimile of a fresco from the tomb 
of Khnumhotep, dated to ca. 1897-1878 BC, 
depicting a textile workshop. Most textile 
workers in ancient Egypt were women.
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art
(Bottom) A fascimile of a fresco from the 
Tomb of Rekhmire, dated to ca. 1479-1425 
BC, depicting brickmakers at work. Mud-
bricks, despite being replaced by stone 
in monumental architecture, continued to 
be used to construct houses throughout 
Egyptian history.
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art
© 
x
© 
x
Ancient History 56 39
where 3-sq-m blocks were 
removed to build the pyramid.
 The Egyptians built both 
open quarries and underground quar-
ries depending on the location and type of 
stone. Working conditions at these sites were 
extreme due to heat, environmental hazards, 
and inadequate rations. Labourers had no pro-
tection to prevent them from inhaling thick dust 
and rock particulates, which was particularly 
dangerous in underground quarries with poor 
air circulation. Mining-related hazards like 
cave-ins could result in crushing injuries, suf-focation, and death. At open quarries, the glare 
reflected off the sheer stone could be blinding. 
It was common for convicts sentenced to harsh 
labour to be sent to quarries and mines, where 
they were kept under watchful guard.
Searching for slavery
Egypt is popularly imagined 
as a slave state, but the sur-
viving evidence describes a 
complex economy involving 
both free and forced labour. 
Unskilled workers were paid in 
barter, typically receiving rations of bread and 
beer. Their employers also housed them and 
provided them with other basic necessities. This 
arrangement made labourers dependent on 
their employer for basic survival, which severe-
ly restricted their practical freedom. Craftsmen 
received better pay and more prestige, giving 
them more social power.
 Literal slavery and indentured servitude 
are attested in Egyptian documents dating 
back to the Old Kingdom, though there is 
no evidence for large-scale slavery like that 
found in ancient Rome. Most slaves belonged 
to private individuals, rather than the state, 
and are commonly recorded in Egyptian doc-
uments as domestic labourers. Unlike some 
systems of slavery which fully dehumanized 
enslaved people, slaves in ancient Egypt often 
had certain rights. They could own property, 
negotiate the terms of their service, and testify 
in court. Some slaves also learned skills like 
reading and writing from their masters.ul guard.
d
ome slaves also learned skills like 
reading and writing from their masters.
wher
remov
A relief, dated to ca. 1333-1323 BC, 
depicting Horemheb, a general under the 
pharaohs Tutankhamun and Ay before 
becoming pharaoh himself, with soldiers 
and captives. Prisoners taken during war 
were a source of slaves in ancient Egypt, 
but slavery was never as integral to the 
Egyptian economy as it was in the later 
Greek and Roman worlds.
© Sailko / Wikimedia Commons
A view of the ancient quarry in Aswan, 
where as much as 45,000 cubic metres 
of stone was quarried during the Old 
Kingdom period.
© Diego Delso / Wikimedia Commons
© 
x
Ancient History 5640
 There were many ways for 
a person to become enslaved. One 
of the most well-documented methods 
of enslavement was the practice of taking 
prisoners of war. Captive men, women, and 
children were taken from enemy nations 
during wars of conquest. During the New 
Kingdom, Egypt’s borders expanded into 
Syria and Nubia, resulting in a growing sup-
ply of slaves. In the New Kingdom and Late 
period, enslavement also became common 
as a punishment for debt.
Serving the state
There were other types of forced labour that 
are not considered slavery but were never-
theless coercive. People could be forced to 
work for the state as a form of taxation, while 
others were sentenced to labour as punish-
ment for a crime. The governmental labour 
system was organized in a hierarchical, mili-
taristic fashion.
 Crown and temple lands were tended by 
cultivators, who performed compulsory agri-
cultural labour for the state. Cultivators came 
from many varied backgrounds: some were 
prisoners of war, retired military veterans, or 
criminals, who had been forced into that oc-
cupation. Many others were free peasants, 
who had no other means of subsistence. Cul-
tivators were required to deliver set quotas of 
grain or other goods, regardless of the size of 
their harvest, and were severely punished for 
abandoning their work. The mortuary priest 
Hekanakht described this relationship in a let-
Most craftsmen created items that made life 
easier, but some made goods to improve the 
afterlife as well. Small figurines called shabti 
dolls, or ushabtis, were common funerary of-
ferings. They were supposed to serve the de-
ceased in the afterlife and were placed in tombs 
to fulfill this purpose. They were imagined as 
contracted labourers who would toil for eterni-
ty so that their deceased master could have an 
easier afterlife. Magical incantations were typi-
cally inscribed into the dolls, compelling them 
to obey. The most common version of the spell 
commanded them to “detail yourself for me on 
every occasion of making arable the 
fields, of flooding the banks, or of 
conveying sand from east to west”.
ter dated to the Eleventh Dynasty: “Only 
as long as my people keep on working 
shall you give them these rations. Take great 
care! Hoe every field, keep sieving, and hack 
with your noses in the work!” (P. Hekanakht 
No. 2, trans. Wente).
 Cultivators were generally provided 
with equipment, seed, and draft animals by 
their overseers. Some cultivators were able 
to attain significant wealth, autonomy, and 
local influence through agriculture. The 
Wilbour Papyrus, created in the 1140s BC, 
lists wealthy cultivators who tended vast 
tracts of farmland on behalf of the crown and 
the temples. These farmers were in charge of 
directing workers, warehouses, and grain 
transport. The most successful cultivators 
might even receive official status as 
part of the temples or nobility.
 Free Egyptians were regularly 
summoned to perform compulsory 
labour for the crown and temples 
as a form of tax. This practice is 
commonly called corvée labour 
by Egyptologists, and might 
involve farmwork, construc-
tion, or other manual labour. 
Local officials were tasked with rounding 
up corvée labourers, and the state regularly 
issued ‘exemption decrees’ to declare who 
was ineligible for corvée labour. Wealthy 
Egyptians could avoid this duty by substitut-
ing another labourer in their place. Corvee 
labour was widely used in the planting and 
harvest season. Only after their compulsory 
Labourers in the afterlife
 The earliest shabti dolls, made in the 
third millennium BC, were crude wax mum-
mies. Over time, craftsmen began making 
more individualized shabtis from materials 
like faience. In the New Kingdom, many 
were depicted as living people carrying farm 
tools. Some sets of shabtis included workers 
and foremen carrying whips. A bill of sale 
from the Third Intermediate Period records 
a payment for 401 shabtis, including 365 
workers and 36 foremen. The receipt in-
structs the shabtis to work for the buyer in 
the afterlife since he paid the required silver 
for their services. Just like human labourers, 
the shabtis were expected to 
need compensation.
to 
c
fi
c
ays for 
aved. One 
ted methods
ter d
as 
shall
were in charge of 
ouses, and grain
essful cultivators
l status as
ity.
regularly
pulsory 
temples 
actice is
labour
ght
uc-
ur.
d with rounding
he state regularly 
’ to declare who
A shabti box and shabtis of members 
of the Sennedjem family, dated to ca. 
1279-1213 BC. The shabtis were meant to 
work for the deceased in the afterlife.
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art
A painted limestone statue of Ti, a high-
status official in the Fifth Dynasty (ca. 
2400 BC) bearing the titles of 'Overseer of 
the Pyramids of Niuserre' and 'Overseer 
of the Sun-Temples of Sahure, Neferirkare 
and Niuserre'.
© Djehouty / Wikimedia Commons
© 
x
Ancient History 56 41
work was complete 
could the workers return home to plant or 
harvest their own crops.
Worker resistance
At times, labourers resisted unfair demands 
by the state or private landowners. Unskilled 
labourers were known to flee their villages 
and go into hiding when the demanded 
quota of corvée labour and taxation became 
unbearable. Workers also fled or protested 
the state when the pharaoh was deemed to 
be illegitimate or otherwise failing to uphold 
their duty to the country. They also com-
plained of inadequate payment and supplies.
 The last resort of labourers facing mis-
treatment were strikes and protests. The first 
recorded worker’s strike in history occurred at 
Deir el-Medina (ca. 1170 BC) and was docu-
mented by the scribe Amennakht in the Strike 
Papyrus. The royal workmen at the necropolis 
abandoned their work in protest of delayed 
payment, refusing to return until they received 
sufficient food and supplies for themselves.
 At times,these methods were effective 
at soliciting better conditions or payment. 
However, collective action 
did not guarantee a positive 
result. If a person failed to 
appear for compulsory duty, 
one of their relatives might be 
forced to fulfil their obligations in their stead. 
The Berlin Papyrus records a complaint from 
the temple doorman Ameny: “I was seized 
as a substitute for my son, the porter of the 
temple there, by my district officers who said 
that he is in deficit for the corvee force.” (P. 
Berlin 10023A, trans. Wente).
 Labour conditions changed dramati-
cally over time as a result of social change, 
wars, and political unrest. After Egypt was 
conquered by the Ptolemaic dynasty, a 
Greek system of slavery was introduced to 
the country. New industries developed, and 
others shrank as Egypt became part 
of a Hellenistic empire in 332 BC 
and then the Roman Empire in 30 
BC. Many old methods of resistance 
survived into later eras, as labourers 
continued to fight for fair treatment 
for themselves. AH
Arienne King is a history writer 
specializing in the ancient Medi-
terranean, specifically Greco-Ro-
man Egypt.
t 
t 
r 
-
work was complete 
could the workers return home t
harvest their own crops.
An aerial view of the Ptolemaic-era temple 
of Hathor in the village of Deir el-Medina. 
Before the site was abandoned, the village 
housed craftsmen who worked in the 
Valley of the Kings. In ca. 1170 BC, on 
account of their payments of food being 
delayed, the people here refused to work.
© Stig Alenas / Shutterstock
A door-shaped stele, dated to ca. 1960-
1916 BC, honouring a deceased chief of 
police named Shemai, who is depicted 
seated at a banquet.
© Cleveland Museum of Art
© 
x
© 
x
Ancient History 56
SYMBOLS OF STRENGTH, ROYALTY, AND CHAOS
LIONS IN ANTIQUITY
EA
ST
ER
N
 M
ED
IT
ER
R
A
N
EA
N
: 
ca
. 
30
00
 –
 4
00
 B
C
By Owain Williams
Part of Ashurbanipal's lion hunt relief from the North Palace of Nineveh, dated to ca. 669-631 BC, depicting Ashurbanipal slaying a lion with a 
sword in a stance reminiscent of divine imagery.
Long before they were taken into the arena to fight ve-
natores and kill condemned criminals in the Roman Em-
pire, lions appeared throughout ancient art. Symbolizing 
strength and power and more, depictions of lions in Meso-
potamia had a great influence on lions in ancient Greek art.
I
t should come as no surprise that lions are a common feature 
of ancient art. After all, they are the 'kings of the wild'. Yet lions 
were not just known for their strength and power. The symbol-
ism associated with lions reflects humans’ admiration and fear of 
these great beasts.
Lions in the Near East
From its earliest appearance in art, both literary and visual, in the Bronze 
Age, lions were, unsurprisingly, associated with kings. However, rather 
than representing the attributes most desired in a 
king, as they would later come to do, lions were 
placed in opposition to kings, who were expected 
to protect their people from them. 
In the third millennium BC, kings would 
also refer to themselves as shepherds — a mo-
tif present in Christian traditions today. Du-
muzid the Shepherd, a Mesopotamian god, 
appears in the early entries on the Sumerian 
King List, while Gilgamesh is referred to as 
“shepherd of his people” or “shepherd of the 
city” several times in Tablet I of the Standard 
Babylonian Version of the Epic of Gilgamesh 
(see Pryke, this issue). This conception of kings 
as shepherds who must protect their flocks — 
that is, the people — likely gave rise to the 
idea that kings were hunters of lions. While 
it does not necessarily depict kings in action, 
one of the oldest narrative sculptural reliefs 
from Mesopotamia, dated to ca. 3000–2900 
BC, depicts a lion hunt — the first evidence 
of lion hunting in the region — demonstrating 
just how prevalent lion attacks likely were. In 
his hymns of self-praise, Shulgi, the second 
king of the Third Dynasty of Ur, who ruled ca. 
2095–2045 BC, boasts of slaying lions in a 
manner that demonstrates the importance of 
such hunting to his merit as king:
“The high point of my great deeds is 
the culling of lions before the lance as if 
they were garden weeds, the snapping 
he high po
the culling of li
they were garde
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A silver furniture fragment from the tomb of Queen Puabi 
in Ur, dated to ca. 2450 BC. Lions featured in some of the 
earliest Mesopotamian art, reflecting their importance in the 
local environment. 
© The University of Pennsylvania Museum
Agge,e, llioionss wwwwere e, uunsurprisingly
than repre
king, as 
placed in
to protec
A silver furnit
in Ur, dated t
earliest Meso
local environ
© The Universit
Ancient History 56 43
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of fierce felines like reeds as if under the 
carding-comb, and the crushing of their 
throats under the axe as if they were 
dogs” (Hymn B, 338–341).
 Yet despite this emphasis on slaying lions, by 
the late third millennium BC, kings had come 
to also identify with lions, adopting their at-
tributes for themselves. Shulgi, who boasts of 
culling lions, is also described as “the lion with 
the wide-open mouth” (Hymn C, 1–2) and “the 
lion with the raised paw” (Hymn C, 11), meta-
phors associating the king with the lion’s pro-
pensity for violence.
 These trends — depicting the king as 
shepherd, hunt-
er, and lion 
— continued 
throughout the 
second millen-
nium and into 
the first. In the 
early eighteenth 
century BC, Hammurabi is 
described as a shepherd in 
both the introduction and the 
epilogue of his law code; in 
the early eleventh century BC, 
the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser I 
boasts of slaying 120 lions on foot 
and 800 lions from his chariot in 
his prism, far more than any other As-
syrian ruler; and Assyrian kings are regularly 
depicted as shepherds on reliefs. That said, it 
appears that kings increasingly became asso-
ciated with lions.
 Royal seals, used from the mid-ninth cen-
tury BC to verify the king’s property, depict 
lions. Much like Shulgi’s description of lions 
from over a millennium earlier, the lions in 
these seals are depicted standing on three legs, 
with their fourth leg raised, and their mouths 
open. Similarly, in so-called Assyrian hiero-
glyphs, a type of writing system attested only 
in the library of Ashur, it seems that a symbol of 
a lion was intended to be read as ‘king’. While 
it may seem natural for us to associate a rul-
ing monarch with a lion — the king of the wild 
— no Mesopotamian text, whether Sumerian 
or Akkadian, ever refers to the lion as such. 
Rather, this association of the king with a lion is 
more likely meant to associate the king with the 
strength and prowess of the lion, especially as 
lions were thought 
to have been granted melam, heavenly aura, 
by the god Enlil, and are described in the Epic 
of Gilgamesh as “perfect in strength” (VI.51).
 Despite this association of the king with 
the lion, depictions of kings killing lions also 
take on a greater significance, with the most 
well-known depiction of Assyrian lion hunt-
ing coming from the same period. In addition 
to depicting just lions, Assyrian royal seals also 
depict the king slaying a rampant lion with a 
sword, reflecting a common depiction of As-
syrian gods also killing lions, thereby associat-
ing Assyrian kings with the divine realm and 
demonstrating their strength. While no surviv-
ught
d melam, heavenly aura, 
bed in the Epic 
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t
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bo
and
his pr
association of the king with a lion is
meant to associate the king with the
prowess of the lion, especially as 
© 
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(Top) A detail of the Ishtar Gate. Built in 
the mid-sixth century BC on the order 
of Nebuchadnezzar II, it depicts various 
creatures including lions, an animal asso-
ciated with Ishtar, as well as other gods.
© Richard Mortel / Flickr
(Bottom) Part of the Apadana reliefs in 
Persepolis depicting Elamite ambassadorsdated to ca. 750-90 BC.
© The Metropolitan 
Museum of Art
When people think of the ancient world, they 
will likely think of the vast monuments that still 
stand today, like the Colosseum in Rome and 
the pyramids of Egypt, that are attributed to the 
great men that fill most of our surviving literary 
sources. However, these monuments were only 
possible thanks to the work of ordinary people.
Ordinary people, both free and enslaved, 
worked to build the Colosseum, the pyramids, 
the Roman aqueducts that still crisscross the 
lands that composed the Roman Empire. They 
quarried and shaped the stones, hauled them to 
the building sites, and raised them. Yet, unfor-
tunately, despite their important contributions, 
ordinary people are often overlooked in ancient 
history, barely discernible — besides a few no-
table examples — in the surviving sources, both 
literary and archaeological.
 In this issue, we have endeavoured to 
shine a light on the lives of these ordinary peo-
ple, focusing on their labour and what they 
did to get by. From ancient Egypt to Greece 
and Rome, we hope you find this glimpse into 
ancient everyday life fascinating.
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Ancient History 56 5
300 BC, are thought to be linked to ancient 
ancestor worship rituals, the ministry said. 
Nearby, a 33-m-high pyramid decorated 
with murals from the Preclassic period was 
also discovered, further underlining the site’s 
ceremonial significance.
Officials noted that Los Abuelos, Uax-
actún, and a third nearby site form a previ-
ously unidentified ‘urban triangle’. These 
findings, they say, could reshape current 
understanding of the sociopolitical and reli-
gious organization of pre-Hispanic Petén.
Archaeologists of Proyecto Arqueológi-
co Regional Uaxactún (PARU) have been ex-
ploring two other related sites at Petnal and 
Cambrayal. A system of canals was discov-
ered inside a palace at Cambrayal, approxi-
mately 5 km from Los Abuelos. 
rent 
reli-
n.
ó i
Dacian masonry tools reveal local innovation
A set of ancient iron tools has been discov-
ered by chance in Romania, which archaeol-
ogists speculate likely belonged to a Dacian 
stonemason before the Roman conquest.
 Unearthed in 2022 near an old lime-
stone quarry at Măgura Călanului, the 
fifteen-piece toolkit was found by a local 
resident and handed to the Corvin Castle 
Museum. Though initially dismissed as cor-
roded iron, the objects were soon identified 
to be a complete stonemason’s kit. The tools 
have now been thoroughly studied. 
 Weighing a combined 10.93 kg, the 
tools include chisels, pointers, splitting 
wedges, a specially shaped hammer, a porta-
ble anvil, and a whetting set. Some resemble 
Greek or Roman designs, but the picks com-
bined with a toothed cross-pein are unique, 
revealing local Dacian innovation.
The toolkit was apparently hid-
den deliberately. Aurora Pețan writes: “The 
apparent concealment of the toolkit may 
suggest a crisis period, possibly related to 
the Roman conquest in AD 102. As one of 
the most varied and complete stonemason 
kits discovered in European antiquity, this 
finding is exceptionally significant and is ex-
pected to impact the study of ancient crafts-
manship and architectural techniques.”
 The 30-ha quarry is marked by un-
finished stone blocks, tool marks, and de-
bris. The limestone extracted here helped 
build the monumental Dacian fortresses 
of Sarmizegetusa Regia, now a UNESCO 
World Heritage Site. 
The findings, by Aurora Pețan of West Uni-
versity of Timișoara, are published as “A stone-
mason’s toolkit from the pre-Roman limestone 
quarry at Măgura Călanului (Romania)” in Prae-
historische Zeitschrift, 2025.
w
ble a
Gr
vealing l
The tool
A Roman stele of a stonemason, depicted 
carrying his double-pointed hammer. 
While Roman tradesmen were active 
in Dacia, especially during the reign of 
Domitian, the tools recently discovered in 
Dacia show that local innovation.
© Vassil / Wikimedia Commons
(Top) A recon-
struction of what 
experts think Los 
Abuelos, the Mayan city re-
cently discovered in Guatemala, 
may have looked like. The population of 
Mayan cities could number in the high 
tens of thousands, with some housing as 
many as 100,000 people.
© PARU
(Bottom) One of the anthropomorphic stat-
ues that has given the city its name of Los 
Abuelos, Spanish for 'The Grandparents'.
© Guatemalan Ministry of Culture and Sports
© 
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Ancient History 566
Jade and lacquerware found in Chinese tombs 
Some 75 ancient tombs and several kilns 
have been uncovered during excavation 
work ahead of a development project near 
Qianshan, Anhui Province in eastern China. 
Despite widespread looting over the cen-
turies, over 300 artefacts were recovered 
from the tombs, including pottery, lacquered 
wood, jade, and copper utensils. 
 The findings span four historical periods, 
with most tombs dating to the Warring States 
Period (ca. 475–221 BC) and the Han Dy-
nasty (206 BC – AD 220). A few tombs from 
the later Six Dynasties (AD 220–589) and 
the Song Dynasty (AD 960–1279) were also 
identified. In most tombs, the burial objects 
and human bones had decayed, leaving only 
traces of the coffins, grooves in the wooden 
sleepers, and some funerary objects.
 Researchers found 37 tombs from the 
Warring States Period, built in rectangular 
shapes without passageways. Some con-
tained well-preserved wooden coffins with 
grave goods such as copper pots, wooden 
figurines, jade items, and lacquerware. Oth-
ers, lacking coffins, held simpler pottery 
items, including jars, plates, and boxes.
 36 tombs, consisting of both vertical pit 
and brick chamber tombs, were dated to the 
Han Dynasty. The pit tombs contained de-
cayed coffins and items such as pots, stoves, 
and bronze mirrors. The brick tombs featured 
multiple chambers, iron swords, bronze belt 
hooks, and even a small arched opening be-
tween two chambers dubbed by 
archaeologists as a “crossing 
fairy bridge”.
Roman baths became a Christian church
A pagan bathing complex was repurposed into a church by 
early Christians, according to new findings by archaeologists 
working at a site in the southeast of Rome.
 Archaeologists uncovered the striking evidence of religious 
transformation at the so-called Baths of the Tritons. This was a 
Roman bathing complex within the Villa di Sette Bassi built in 
the second century AD, one of the largest villas in the Roman 
suburbs, the name of which possibly derives from the emperor L. 
Septimius Bassianus, better known as Caracalla (r. AD 198–217). 
A marble-lined basin, or vasca, was identified as a baptistery used 
for full-immersion baptism, an initiation ritual which was central 
to early Christians. Archaeologists note two distinct phases in its 
design: an initial deeper pool for total immersion (symbolizing 
spiritual rebirth) and a later modification that raised the floor, in-
dicating a shift toward a less demanding rite. Its presence reveals 
that the baths were converted into an early Christian church.
 This evolution of the structure reflects broader changes in 
Christian liturgy during Late Antiquity. The baptistery’s scale 
and design suggest it was more than a small chapel. Its func-
tion as a formal baptistery church is reinforced by numerous 
burials found nearby. Researchers believe the presence of a 
bishopric at the site is also possible. Parco Archeologico 
dell'Appia Antica says the discovery sheds light on 
how classical architecture was repurposed for 
Christian use, illustrating the complex yet grad-
ual nature of religious transition.
A view of the vasca, a marble basin, in the Roman baths of the Villa di 
Sette Bassi, which may have been used as a baptistery.
© 
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One of the great villas of Roman Gaul explored
Archaeologists working in France have uncov-
ered one of the largest Roman villas ever found 
in the country. Covering an area of more than 
4000 sq m, it features a central garden which 
alonebringing a lioness and her cubs as a gift 
to the Achaemenid king. In Zoroastrian 
beliefs, the lion had demonic associa-
tions, yet it remained a symbol of king-
ship, possibly reflecting an adoption of 
Mesopotamian motifs.
© A.Davey / Wikimedia Commons
© 
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Ancient History 5644
ing text explains the meaning behind the As-
syrian lion hunt reliefs, it is likely that they have 
a similar purpose to such seals, only in monu-
mental form. The most obvious reason behind 
depicting the lion hunt in a monumental form 
is the association with strength and military 
prowess. Indeed, it appears that one entrance 
room to Ashurbanipal’s North Palace in Nin-
eveh was entirely devoted to such images, en-
suring that any visitors to the palace were sure 
of the king’s military prowess — or so it was 
hoped. Yet Ashurbanipal’s lion hunt reliefs also 
depict the preparatory stages of a post-hunt 
ritual, with libations poured over the deceased 
lions. Moreover, some texts describe how lion 
hunts were carried out at the command of dei-
ties like Ninurta and Nergal. Consequently, the 
reliefs may also have been meant to reinforce 
the divine support of the king, much like the 
seals depicting the king in a stance reminiscent 
of sculptures of gods. That the number of lions 
slain in Ashurbanipal’s lion hunt relief — eight-
een in total — corresponds to the number of 
Nineveh’s gates suggests there may have been a 
symbolic element to the hunt, with the slaying 
of each lion representing the defeat of a threat 
to each gate, possibly in connection to the no-
tion of Assyrian kings being shepherds. After all, 
lions were associated with chaos. In the Epic 
of Gilgamesh, a lion is compared to the Flood 
(XI.188–9). However, it is also possible that this 
relief simply represents an actual lion hunt de-
scribed in a fragmentary text from Nineveh.
 The importance of lions to Mesopotamian 
kingship is reflected in the conscious adoption 
of the motif by Persian rulers, even as the notion 
of the king as shepherd disappeared. Despite 
the fact that, in Zoroastrian beliefs, the lion 
has demonic associations, depictions of lions 
are everywhere in Persepolis. As the centre of 
power in the Achaemenid Empire was focused 
on Mesopotamia, it is possible that the Persian 
rulers adopted elements of Mesopotamian mo-
tifs of royal power and authority to cement their 
rule. Similarly, ancient Greek depictions of li-
ons demonstrate Near Eastern influence.
Lions in the Aegean
Lions are present in Aegean art from the Bronze 
Age. Frescoes from Thera show them painted 
on the sides of ships, possibly referencing their 
speed, while lions are a common feature of Mi-
noan art. From the sixteenth century BC, lions 
also appear in Mycenaean art, from decorated 
boxes to the heraldic lions crowning the Lion 
Gate of Mycenae. Yet Mycenaean depictions 
of lions deviate from their insular parallels in 
their focus on violence. Minoan art, for exam-
ple, rarely shows lions in conflict with humans, 
while Mycenaean art is full of examples of 
hunts and conflicts between humans and lions.
 Remains of lions have been found through-
DID YOU KNOW?
In Mycenaean Greece, lions may have been 
hunted for food. Lion bones with carving marks 
were found in kitchen rubbish alongside the remains 
of domesticated animals in Late Bronze Age Tiryns.
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ple, rarely shows lions 
while Mycenaean art is f
hunts and conflicts betwee
Remains of lions have
An Attic black-figure amphora, dated to 
ca. 520-510 BC, depicting Heracles slaying 
the Nemean Lion. Early depictions of this 
scene in Greek art resemble Mesopota-
mian depictions of gods and kings slaying 
lions, in which the lion rears on two legs 
and the god or king seizes the lion's legs.
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The famous Lion Gate of Mycenae. The two 
lions flanking a pillar above the gate likely 
served a heraldic purpose, possibly reflect-
ing the power of the kings of Mycenae.
© Andy Montgomery / Flickr
© 
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Ancient History 56 45
out mainland Greece, dat-
ing to the Bronze Age and 
Early Iron Age, with the latest 
remains dating to the sixth cen-
tury BC. Later writers, such as Hero-
dotus (7.125–6), also describe lions living in 
the more remote parts of mainland Greece. As 
such, the prevalence of hunting and conflict in 
Mycenaean art featuring lions may correspond 
to the conditions of Mycenaean Greece, with 
lions attacking both domestic animals and hu-
mans. Of course, given the need for hunters 
and warriors to protect flocks, herds, and com-
munities from lions, the Mycenaeans appear 
to have come to associate the desired traits of 
warriors and hunters with lions, as scenes of 
humans versus lions are paralleled with scenes 
of lions attacking prey animals.
 It seems straightforward to associate this 
prevalence of lion imagery in Mycenaean 
Greece with the appearance of lion-based 
similes in the Homeric epics. Such similes 
are applied approximately 30 times in the po-
ems, and they appear to be divinely inspired. 
Sarpedon’s attack on the walls of the Argive 
camp, for example, is described as like a lion 
attacking a herd of animals (Iliad 12.293–6, 
299–308). However, such similes ap-
pear to be linguistically late. Moreover, 
they sometimes echo Near Eastern literary mo-
tifs, as much does in the Homeric epics. Most 
obviously, Achilles is described as mourning 
the death of Patroclus like a lioness mourning 
her cubs (Iliad 18.318–323), echoing the de-
scription of Gilgamesh’s mourning of Enkidu, 
also described as a lioness without her cubs 
(VIII.61–2). Moreover, Greek art from the eighth 
and seventh centuries BC, roughly contempo-
rary to when it is believed the Homeric epics 
were first transcribed, parallels Near Eastern art, 
including Egyptian, Phoenician, and Assyrian, 
in what is known as an Orientalizing style. Li-
ons appear to have been particularly inspired 
by Near Eastern art. Early depictions of Hera-
cles’ slaying of the Nemean Lion, for instance, 
recall the motif of the god defeating a lion in 
Mesopotamian art.
 Throughout antiquity, lions have been 
associated with strength and physical prow-
ess. However, whether by their dominance 
of the natural world or the dangers of fight-
ing them off, lions came to be endowed with 
social, political, and religious sig-
nificance. Yet by the time of the 
Roman Empire, especially during 
the Imperial period, lions became 
little more than beasts to be de-
feated in the arena for the enter-
tainment of the people. AH
Owain Williams is the editor of 
Ancient History magazine.
ons have bee
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angers of fight-
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A fragment of a statue depicting a lion 
attacking a bull, dated to ca. 525-500 BC, 
that once may have decorated the pedi-
ment of a small building in Athens. The 
ensemble has parallels in Near Eastern 
art, and may have been adopted in order 
to associate members of the Athenian 
elite with eastern kingship. After the Per-
sian Wars, such lion imagery disappeared 
from Athens, likely reflecting changing 
Athenian attitudes to the Near East.
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art
A detail from the northern frieze on 
the Treasury of the Siphnians in Delphi. 
Dated to ca. 525 BC, it depicts the battle 
between the gods and giants. Lions have 
been depicted fighting alongside the 
gods, with Themis riding in a lion-drawn 
chariot. In the Iliad, lion similes, although 
applied to heroes, were connected to 
divine inspiration.
© Sharon Mollerus / Flickr
© 
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© 
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Ancient History 56464646
THE ARENA ON THE EDGE OF EMPIRE
THE LION AND THE 
GLADIATOR
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By Jeroen W.P. Wijnendaele
A marble relief, dated to the first-second century AD, depicting two 
scenes of combat between a venator and a lion. The lower reliefdepicts a lion biting a fallen venator's hip. The skeleton from York is 
the first physical evidence of such games.
© Carole Raddato / Flickr
A mosaic from the House of Bacchus in Cuicul, a Roman city in Numidia, depicting a venatio (fight against animals) involving lions and a leopard.
In 2025, a research team led by Professor Tim Thompson from 
Maynooth University was able to determine that a Roman 
skeleton showed bite marks from a lion for the first time ever. 
Even more fascinating is that this skeleton was discovered 
near York, at the northwestern edge of the Roman Empire. But 
why is this discovery so special? And what does it teach us? 
T
he investigation began in 2004 based 
on a burial ground near York. By 2010, it 
had been established that Driffield Ter-
rance was one of the best-documented 
burial sites for gladiators, based on 82 
well-preserved skeletons of young men dating from 
the first to the fourth century. Based on tooth enamel, 
the team concluded that some of these men came from 
far beyond Britannia. Additionally, most of 
the skeletons showed signs of injuries (both 
fatal and healed). 
 Even more remarkable is that three quar-
ters of these skeletons show signs of ritual de-
capitation. The exact reasons for this are un-
clear. On the one hand, it could indicate the 
execution of criminals, which we know was 
not uncommon in the arena. On the other 
hand, this seems to be a specifically British 
custom about which we remain in the dark 
(on Celtic headhunting, see Armit, AH 48). 
 The skeleton that recently drew all the at-
tention belongs to a man (‘individual 6DT19’), 
aged between 26 and 35 years old. As a child, 
he was malnourished but recovered later in life. 
His vertebrae also show signs of overexertion. 
His bones are characterized by highly devel-
oped muscles and injuries associated with fight-
ing. However, using 3D scans, the team was 
able to reconstruct how he received significant 
bite marks on his pelvis during his final hour. 
Even more remarkable is that he was probably 
already dying, but had not yet breathed his final 
breath, when a predator struck and tried to drag 
him away. The research team made zoological 
comparisons of these sets of bite marks. They 
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Ancient History 56 47
©
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could only conclude that this was a large feline, 
most likely a lion. The pelvis is not a common 
place for lions to strike, so the man may have 
already been immobile, after which the lion 
tried to drag him away.
The splendour of the arena
Based on all of this, we could settle for the sober 
observation that a resident of the Roman Empire 
was bitten by a lion. There is no smoking gun to 
prove that this man died as a gladiator in the 
arena. Yet how else can we explain that a man 
ended up in the jaws of a large feline in Ro-
man Britain, a notoriously unnatural habitat for 
lions? We have more than enough literary and 
artistic evidence that venationes (fights against 
animals) were extremely popular throughout 
the empire. In the Roman Maghreb, we have 
numerous mosaics and frescoes depicting 
both gladiators and condemned pris-
oners confronted with raging animals. 
These works of art were commissioned 
by aristocrats who proudly mentioned 
how they had sponsored such games. 
Men trained specifically as bes-
tiarii to perform in such 
games, as recorded in 
late-second-century pa-
pyri from the fortress of 
Babylon near Memphis 
(Egypt). While gladi-
atorial games, in which 
men fought each other, 
ceased to exist in the early fifth century, vena-
tiones continued until the middle of the sixth 
century, both in Theoderic the Amal’s Gothic 
Italy (Cassiodorus, Variae 5.42) and in Justin-
ian’s Eastern Roman Constantinople.
 We cannot emphasize enough the logis-
tical feats involved to make this come true. 
Gladiatorial games only require armed men, 
regardless of origin. But for the most spectacu-
lar venationes, Rome imported exotic species 
from both within and outside the empire’s 
borders to present (and often massacre) for the 
public (see Ball, AH 48). Already during the 
last generation of the Roman Republic, Cice-
ro’s correspondence teaches us that the famous 
general Pompey sent elephants into the amphi-
theatre, which aroused awe and even 
compassion among Roman specta-
tors (Letters to Friends 7.1). Cicero, 
as governor of Cilicia, was 
also petitioned several times 
by a colleague asking him to 
send panthers to Rome (Plutarch, Cicero 36). 
His colleague’s not-so-secret hope was that by 
organizing games with such wild animals, he 
could secure his next election.
British exceptionalism?
Oddly, little attention has been paid to the spe-
cific British context within the broader imperial 
picture. Britannia was one of the last additions 
to Rome’s empire, with the annexation com-
mencing under Claudius (AD 47), only to be 
completed under Domitian (AD 87). Britannia 
was the absolute periphery of empire, which 
manifested itself in numerous ways. Sympto-
matically, Britannia never produced a Roman 
b
on
Th
by
ho
awe and even
oman specta-
.1). Cicero, 
a, was 
© 
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(Top) A detail from a Roman mosaic, dated 
to ca. AD 300-400, depicting a venatio 
scene, with several venatores or criminals 
lying wounded on the ground. Professional 
fighters, known as venatores, could fight 
animals in the arena, but criminals could 
also be sentenced to damnatio ad bestias.
© Daderot / Wikimedia Commons
(Bottom) The remains of the Multiangular 
Tower in York, dated to the third century 
AD, part of the Roman fortress around 
which the city grew. York, then known 
as Eboracum, was the second largest city 
in Roman Britain and home to wealthy 
regional elites.
© Chabe01 / Wikimedia Commons
© 
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© 
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Ancient History 5648
author of any renown (unless 
we attribute that dubious honour to 
the heretic Pelagius). Nor did any Briton ever 
become an emperor who gained legitimate 
support throughout the empire. More impor-
tantly, from that same empire-wide panorama, 
Roman Britain only had a relatively low degree 
of urbanization, with most cities simply grow-
ing out of legionary camps. 
 Roman England and Wales punched 
above their weight given the number of am-
phitheaters that have survived, thanks to its 
disproportionately large military establish-
ment. The troops had to be kept happy in a 
rough and rainy backwater. Although no such 
amphitheatre has currently been discovered 
near York, where Driffield Terrace is located, 
it makes sense that it used to have one. York 
also sprang forth out of a legionary base in AD 
71. Under the name Eboracum, it sprawled 
to become the second largest city in Roman 
England and regional capital of the north. It 
was a place Roman aristocrats called home. 
From time to time, the city even welcomed 
the most prestigious individuals from the em-
pire. Septimius Severus died there in AD 211, 
and Constantine I was proclaimed emperor 
by his troops there in AD 306. It is only natu-
ral that local elites sponsored games for the 
entertainment of the local population. 
Crisis entertainment
Let’s keep in mind the specific time frame of 
‘individual 6DT19’. The most recent bio-ar-
chaeological isotope analysis shows that our 
protagonist shuffled off this mortal coil during 
the third century (probably even in the mid-
dle or second half). This was not an obvious 
period for such games. By the mid-third cen-
tury, the Roman Empire seemed hell-bent on 
fragmentation due to incessant civil wars, for-
eign invasions, economic decline, and even a 
pandemic. In the 250s, for the first time ever, 
a Roman emperor was killed in battle against 
non-Roman opponents, and another was cap-
tured and taken to Persia, never to return. From 
around AD 260 to AD 297, Roman Britain 
repeatedly fell to usurpers who opposed cen-
tral authority of emperors already reigning.This period is, therefore, conveniently coined 
in scholarship ‘the crisis of the third century’. 
But here too, Roman Britain occupies a special 
place. The crisis disproportionately affected 
areas closest to the European and Levantine 
frontier zones (along the Danube, Rhine, and 
Euphrates), while a number of regions were 
largely spared, such as the Maghreb, the Ibe-
rian Peninsula, and ... Britain.
 The island even experienced a relative 
period of prosperity that would last well into 
the fourth century. The fact that magnates from 
York decided to import a lion for their own 
games in the middle or late 
third century is, therefore, 
remarkable. After all, vena-
tiones could simply make 
use of local fauna, such as 
bears, wolves, or wild boars. 
Viminacium, the site of a Ro-
man legionary fort near Ko-
ga
th
re
ti
u
b
V
m
author of any renown (unless 
we attribute that dubious honour to
the heretic Pelagius). Nor did any Briton ever PP
it
a
7
(Top) A view of the foundations of the 
amphitheatre at Viminiacum with a 
reconstruction of the arena's seating in 
the background.
© Ivan Radic / Flickr
(Bottom) Caerleon, south Wales, where 
a Roman military base was built in AD 
75. Britannia had a high concentration of 
amphitheatres compared to the rest of 
the Roman Empire, with Caerleon's being 
the most complete today.
© Becks / Flickr
© 
x
© 
x
Ancient History 56 49
stalac in Serbia, has yielded 
bear bones, for instance. Even 
in the Colosseum, lions were 
not nearly as common as we might think, 
given the logistical challenges of transporting 
such creatures. But even at a time when most 
of the Roman world experienced unprecedent-
ed chaos, it was decided at York, on the edge of 
the empire, that ‘the show must go on’.
So, what?
This discovery is our first physical evidence 
from anywhere in Europe that Roman gladi-
ators fought against exotic animals. Hence, 
it is valuable tangible evidence. Moreover, 
it broadens our empirical knowledge of how 
widespread such games were in the farthest 
corners of the empire. As mentioned earlier, 
we already have an impressive collection of 
literary and iconographic evidence on both 
gladiatorial combats and venationes. ‘Indi-
vidual 6DT19’ can now be matched with the 
relief held in the British Museum depicting a 
gladiator being bitten by a lion in the thigh. 
But this skeleton should also give pause and 
make us reflect on one of the most violent 
contributions of ancient Rome: ecocide.
 In his public achievements, Augustus 
claimed that during his reign he had assembled 
3500 African wild animals for 26 venationes 
(Res Gestae 22). When the Flavian Amphithe-
atre in Rome was ceremoniously opened by 
Titus, he had 5000 animals presented in a sin-
gle day (Suetonius, Titus 7). Trajan is even said 
to have hunted to death 11,000 animals dur-
ing his own games a generation later (Cassius 
Dio, 68.15.1). Such figures seem staggering 
and implausible. Yet they must have some ba-
sis in reality. Those same elephants, which the 
Roman public still felt pity for in Cicero’s day, 
did not survive Roman rule in the Maghreb as a 
species. The question remains as to how many 
other species were decimated 
throughout the Mediterranean 
to satisfy the Roman public’s 
bloodlust. AH
Dr Jeroen W.P. Wijnendaele 
is Visiting Professor and Ger-
da Henkel Fellow at Ghent 
University. He is an expert 
on the political, social, and 
military history of the Late 
Roman Empire, on which he 
has published extensively.
y
ated
an 
’s ’
e 
-
t 
t 
d 
e 
e
stalac in
bear bon
in the Co
not nearly as common
given the logistic l h
A section of the Great Hunt Mosaic from 
a Roman villa in Piazza Armerina, Sicily, 
dated to the early fourth century AD. It 
depicts the loading of exotic animals onto 
a ship, likely for transport to various games 
throughout the Roman Empire.
© Holger Uwe Schmitt / Wikimedia Commons
A terracotta relief, dated to ca. AD 45-70, 
depicting two venatores fighting two lions 
as spectators watch from a tower. Such 
scenes were a common motif in visual art.
© Jamie Heath / Flickr
© 
x
© 
x
Ancient History 56505050
THE WORLD’S FIRST TRAGIC EPIC
THE TALE OF GILGAMESH
M
ES
O
P
O
TA
M
IA
: 
ca
. 
21
00
 –
 1
70
0 
B
C By Louise M. Pryke
A view of the Eanna district in the ancient city of Uruk, with the Eanna Ziggurat of Uruk in the background. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the epony-
mous hero was the ruler of Uruk, and the Eanna temple there is mentioned in the text.
Before the Muses inspired the Homeric epics, and long before Virgil had thought of the Aeneid, 
the world’s first tragic epic was being told and retold in ancient Mesopotamia. The Epic of 
Gilgamesh is the world’s first tragic epic. It tells the story of the heroic young king, Gilgamesh, 
and his journey seeking fame and immortality alongside his beloved companion, Enkidu. 
K
nown as the ‘land between rivers’ for its placement between 
the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, Mesopotamia is home to many 
‘world firsts’ alongside the epic. These include advances in 
agriculture, science, and maths, the invention of the potter’s 
wheel, and what is known as the world’s first ‘museum’, cu-
rated by princess and priestess, Ennigaldi-Nanna, around 530 BC. 
The sources
The first stories about Gilgamesh were written in the Sumerian lan-
guage and are thought to be written down around 2100 BC, 
in the Ur III period. These stories only survive in later cop-
ies from the Old Babylonian period, some 300 years lat-
er. Indeed, when talking about Gilgamesh’s story, there 
are many different texts to consider, and it is 
worth noting that all the versions that have 
survived exist in a fragmented, incomplete 
state. As well as the Sumerian Gilgamesh 
stories, there are Akkadian, Hittite, and Hur-
rian versions. Of these many versions, it is 
the Standard Babylonian Version that is best 
attested, and it is thought that we currently 
have around 80 per cent of this text.
 The languages of the stories about 
Gilgamesh are written in cuneiform – the 
world’s oldest known writing script. Cu-
neiform is composed of many hundreds of 
wedge-shaped characters and was written 
on clay tablets. For thousands of years, c u -
neiform was used to write the pri-
mary languages of communication 
A copy of a cuneiform tablet, dated to the Old Babylonian period (ca. 
2003-1595 BC), recording the beginning and the end of Tablet V of 
the Epic of Gilgamesh, describing the hero's encounter with the de-
mon Humbaba. There are several different versions of Gilgamesh's 
story, but the Standard Babylonian Version is the most complete.
© Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP / Wikimedia Commons
ke
d, 
ten
nds of years, c u -
the pri-
cation 
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Ancient History 56 51
©
 to
b
eytravels / Flickr in the Near East, even stretching into parts of 
the Mediterranean. Cuneiform disappeared 
around the first century AD, only to be de-
ciphered again in the 1850s in a remarkable 
feat of scholarly virtuosity, with the transla-
tion of the Behistun Monument.
 The Sumerian stories of the Epic of Gil-
gamesh contain some familiar episodes from 
the Standard Babylonian Version, including 
a battle between Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and 
the forest guardian, Humbaba (Sumerian 
Huwawa). This myth, known as Gilgamesh 
and Huwawa, was included in 
a group of texts known as the 
Decad, dated to the Old Baby-
lonian period. These texts have 
been generally thought to have 
been used for scrib-
al training exer-
cises. The Decad’s 
sequence of ten 
texts would have 
likely been copied 
or memorized by 
scribes as part of their education. Howev-
er, the common view that the Decad was 
for educational purposes is not unchal-
lenged, with an alternative suggestion 
being that they were grouped together 
for archival purposes.
The story
The Epic of Gilgamesh is traditionally toldover twelve tablets. In Tablet I, the story be-
gins in the city of Uruk, located in modern-
day southern Iraq. Gilgamesh the king is 
behaving like a tyrant, and the mother god-
dess, Aruru, creates a hairy man from clay, 
named Enkidu, to keep him company. En-
kidu, like Gilgamesh, has heroic strength, 
but grows up in the wilds with the animals. 
This means he has no capacity for speech 
and is uncivilized. Through Gilgamesh’s ini-
tiative, Enkidu is civilized by a wise priest-
ess named Shamhat, and he learns to speak 
and to drink beer and eat bread. 
 Towards the end of Tablet I, 
Gilgamesh and Enkidu finally 
meet. Enkidu storms into Uruk 
to challenge the king, and 
the two heroes immediately 
start to wrestle. Eventually, 
however, they come to re-
spect each other’s strength and become 
inseparable companions. Gilgamesh takes 
Enkidu on a quest to seek fame and glory, and 
they kill the monstrous guardian of the Forest of 
Cedars. This invokes the wrath of the gods, and 
Gilgamesh makes things worse by romantically 
rejecting the beautiful goddess of love and war, 
Ishtar. As a punishment, Enkidu dies.
 Gilgamesh is grief-stricken over Enkidu’s 
loss but also terrified of death. He decides to 
seek the legendary Flood survivor, Utanap-
ishtim, hoping to find the key to eternal life. 
After a long journey and many adventures, 
he finds Utanapishtim, who is often com-
pared to biblical Noah. The Flood survivor 
tells Gilgamesh that no one can follow his 
path to immortality, and so Gilgamesh even-
tually returns home – presumably having de-
veloped greater wisdom. A final tablet, Tab-
let XII, tells the story of Enkidu descending 
to the Underworld and then returning to tell 
Gilgamesh what he has seen.
me 
kes 
ry, and
Forest of 
ds, and 
ntically 
nd war,
the fo
Huwaw
sc
er
fo
le
b
f
w )
a
Huwaw
(Top) Ancient water wheels in the Euphrates 
at Hit that drew up water for irrigation of 
surrounding fields and palm groves.
© Ansoavis / Wikimedia Commons
(Bottom) A view of Mount Judi, known 
as Cudi Dagi in Turkish, which was con-
sidered to be the landing place of Noah's 
Ark in early Christian and Islamic tradi-
tions. Utanapishtim, a Flood survivor in 
the Epic of Gilgamesh, is often compared 
to the biblical Noah.
© Timo Roller / Wikimedia Commons
© 
x
© 
x
© 
x
Ancient History 5652
Royal relatives
There is some debate about whether the lead 
character in the Epic of Gilgamesh is based on 
a historical king. The epic does contain fantasti-
cal elements, such as a forest of jewelled trees 
and hybrid scorpion people who guard the Path 
of the Sun. However, the stories of legendary 
heroes such as Gilgamesh may have developed 
from famous historical figures, and this inter-
pretation is supported by Gilgamesh’s appear-
ance on the Sumerian King List as the fifth ruler 
of Uruk, reigning around 2700 BC. Admittedly, 
the Sumerian King List also contains elements 
that seem unlikely to be entirely historical — 
such as the presence of sages and kings whose 
rule lasted for tens of thousands of years.
 In any case, the ancient tradition associ-
ated with the Epic of Gilgamesh is that the story 
is based on a real person. Numerous histori-
cal Mesopotamian kings, such as Shulgi of Ur, 
claimed to be Gilgamesh’s relatives, being born 
of the same divine mother. The close connec-
tion of historical kings with the legendary hero 
added prestige to the historical monarchy and 
longevity to the Epic of Gilgamesh. 
 The connection between historical and 
legendary royalty can be seen in the recovery of 
the Standard Babylonian Version of the Epic of 
Gilgamesh, with copies of the story found in the 
ruins of the Royal Library of Ashurbanipal. The 
collection in the Royal Library of the seventh 
century Assyrian king contained over 30,000 
clay tablets and was described by the Eng-
lish writer H. G. Wells as “the most precious 
source of historical material in the world”.
Editor/exorcist
The Standard Babylonian Version of the Epic 
of Gilgamesh, rediscovered in the library ruins, 
is thought to have been edited by an historical 
figure – a priest, scribe, and exorcist known as 
Sin-leqi-unnini, whose name means “Sin is the 
one who accepts a prayer” (Sin is a Mesopota-
mian god of the Moon, also known as Nanna). 
Sin-leqi-unnini lived in Uruk around the twelfth 
century BC. Gilgamesh scholars have suggest-
ed that it was this editor who added a Flood 
story to the Epic of Gilgamesh, by interpolating 
the epic with the Babylonian Flood story, Atra-
hasis. While Sin-leqi-unnini’s name is firmly at-
tached to the most famous version of the Epic 
of Gilgamesh, the nature of his connection to 
the story remains unclear. It is possible that Sin-
leqi-unnini himself was a legendary poet who 
created the Babylonian version of the story or 
a scholar who established a ‘final form’ of the 
narrative, acting more like an editor. The 
current tendency is to view Sin-leqi-unnini 
as a scholar from the second half of the 
second millennium who lived in Uruk 
and had a significant contribution to 
shaping the Standard Babylonian Version 
of the Epic of Gilgamesh.
The purpose of the story
The Epic of Gilgamesh narrative held a 
significant role in Mesopotamian culture 
and identity. With so many versions of 
Despite its widespread fame in the ancient 
world, the ancient and modern reception 
of the Epic of Gilgamesh is as fragmentary 
as the tablets upon which it was inscribed. 
There are only a handful of non-cuneiform 
references to Gilgamesh from antiquity. In-
terestingly, in light of the presence of a great 
Flood narrative in the Epic, Gilgamesh ap-
pears in a text from the Dead Sea Scrolls 
known as the Book of Giants. The Dead Sea 
Scrolls were discovered by young Bedouin 
herders in the 1940s, at Qumran, located in 
the West Bank near the Dead Sea (see Len-
dering, AH 43). In the Book of Giants, a text 
linked to the Enochic tradition, Gilgamesh is 
Gilgamesh through the ages 
explicitly named as one of the Giants killed 
by the biblical Flood. 
 In the modern day too, Gilgamesh’s story 
has largely been overlooked — although no-
table exceptions continue to emerge. As well 
as recently appearing as a hero in Marvel’s 
Eternals (2021), Gilgamesh featured in a ro-
mance novel by Saddam Hussein. The novel 
drew from the Epic’s primary theme of a ruler 
who develops greater wisdom through his 
experiences. The modern engagement with 
this ancient epic continues to grow in eve-
rything from metal music to graphic novels, 
reflecting the enduring relevance of the first 
known hero of world literature.
colle
cent
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lish
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DDesp
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ass th
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reefere
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Flood
pears
know
Sccrol
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dering
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Gilg
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ch
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a
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t
t
s
he story or 
orm’ of the 
or. The 
unnini 
of the 
Uruk 
on to
Version 
held a 
culture
sions of 
A Neo-Assyrian bronze plate, known as 
the Hell Plate. Dated to ca. 911-604 BC, it 
was used to conjure the child-devouring 
demon Lamashtu, who was believed 
to ride in her boat on the river of the 
Underworld. The plaque is decorated with 
religious symbols and representations of 
gods and demons. Tablet XII of the Epic 
of Gilgamesh features a description of the 
Mesopotamian underworld.
© Tangopaso / Wikimedia Commons
© 
x
An Assyrian relief from the façade of the 
throne room in the Palace of Sargon II 
at Khorsabad, dated to ca. 713-706 BC, 
depicting a hero, possibly Gilgamesh, 
wrestling a lion. Gilgamesh was consid-
ered a real, historical figure in ancient 
Mesopotamia, from whom some rulers 
could claim descent.
© Darafsh / Wikimedia Commons
Ancient History 56 53
the text, and the story being told 
and retold for two millennia, the sto-
ry likely held many purposes at different 
stages of its history. These purposes may have 
included providing entertainment, recording 
historical elements, and holding a mirror for 
historical kings to reflect on their royal pow-
er and itslimitations. The Epic of Gilgamesh 
explores themes of love, death, and justice, 
and provides a timeless meditation on human 
mortality and what makes life meaningful. As 
well as functioning as an adventure story, the 
epic’s focus on origins, advice, and life’s big 
questions means it can also be considered as 
a type of ancient wisdom literature.
 In a less esoteric vein, the Epic of Gil-
gamesh provides an origin story for the legend-
ary figure of Gilgamesh, who was known as a 
god and Underworld judge in ancient Meso-
potamia. In this role, Gilgamesh appears in 
magical texts and exorcistic rituals, working to 
mediate between the living and the dead. His 
name was invoked in rituals against sorcery 
and by those seeking protection from ghosts, 
witchcraft, demons, and sorcery. The connec-
tion of Gilgamesh to religious duties can also 
be seen in texts which reference his role in fer-
rying the dead safely in the Underworld, and 
in his presence in funerary rituals.
 In the Homeric epics, the audience gets 
a sense from the text about how Greek ep-
ics like the Iliad and the Odyssey were per-
formed. This is memorably seen in the court 
of Alcinous, where Odysseus weeps while 
listening to the bard, Demodocus, recount 
his story. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, there is 
no corresponding reference to oral storytell-
ing in the legend — except where Gilgamesh 
tells his own story to characters that he meets 
on his journey. Instead, there is an emphasis 
on the written text itself as a treasure for the 
ages, with the tablets containing Gilgamesh’s 
story buried beneath the walls of Uruk — lit-
erally forming part of the city’s foundation.
Reception
The Epic of Gilgamesh largely vanished 
from popular awareness alongside the dis-
appearance of cuneiform written traditions. 
Traces of the story can be seen in other an-
cient texts, such as the Tales of the Arabian 
Nights, the Hebrew Bible (also known 
as the Old Testament), and the Ro-
man author Aelian’s On the Nature of Ani-
mals. The most overt parallels between the 
Epic of Gilgamesh and the Hebrew Bible 
occur in the biblical Flood narrative of the 
Book of Genesis. Gilgamesh himself ap-
pears alongside the forest guardian, Hum-
baba, in the biblical apocryphal text, the 
Book of Giants, from the Book of Enoch. 
 The Epic of Gilgamesh is the world’s 
first know epic. It is also a tragic love story 
combined with a meditation on the meaning 
of mortality. Preserved through millennia of 
copying, translation, and reinterpretation, the 
story’s cultural significance lies not only in its 
antiquity but in its profound understanding of 
the human condition. AH
Louise M. Pryke is a Research As-
sociate at the University of Syd-
ney. She is the author of several 
books, including Ishtar (2017), Gil-
gamesh (2019), and Wind (2023).
-
l
as the O
the 
and r
ry l
(Top) The ruins of Ennigaldi-Nanna's 
museum in Ur, founded ca. 530 BC by 
Princess Ennigaldi.
© Dynamoland / Shutterstock
(Bottom) A view of the reconstruction 
of the Ishtar Gate of Babylon. Gilgamesh 
rejects the romantic overtures of the 
goddess Ishtar, who punishes Gilgamesh 
by killing Enkidu.
© Ali Kareem Yousif / Wikimedia Commons
A terracotta relief depicting Gilgamesh 
and Enkidu slaying Humbaba in the 
Cedar Forest, dated to the eighteenth-
seventeenth century BC. Gilgamesh and 
Humbaba both appear in the Book of 
Giants, from the Book of Enoch.
© Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg) / 
Wikimedia Commons
© 
x
© 
x
Ancient History 56
A
N
C
IE
N
T 
R
O
M
E:
 c
a.
 1
00
 B
C
 –
 A
D
 3
00
A Roman ceramic caccabus ('cooking pot') atop a tripod. 
Romans had a variety of different ingredients available to 
them and many markets from which to buy them.
© Tyler Bell / Flickr
While we hear much of sumptuous Roman dinner parties, these 
were far from the norm, apart from with the very top echelon 
of Roman society. The average Roman dined with some ordi-
nary fare on the plate. Yet whatever Romans had for dinner, 
it could be acquired at the many markets and shops of Rome.
GROCERY SHOPPING IN ANCIENT ROME
FOOD ON THE TABLE
By Philip Matyszak
I
n densely populated urban areas, many Romans habitually ate 
their meals in snack-bar taverns called popinae, where ready-
cooked meals were offered at low prices. Those planning to eat at 
home might call on thermopilia, establishments with stone coun-
ters facing the street with large jars filled with hot stew, cooked 
lentils, olives, and other essentials which could be quickly assembled 
into a meal at home. However, in areas where there was less of a fire 
hazard from close-packed tenement buildings, Roman households 
did their own cooking. In a world without refrigeration, this meant 
regular trips to buy groceries.
Everyday essentials
Those looking for basic items would first head for that 
staple of civilization, the baker, and obtain a loaf of 
bread and perhaps some rolls. Roman loaves were 
not designed to be cut into slices but were gen-
erally circular and baked with deep grooves 
in the top allowing the loaf to be broken into 
wedges. These were used to dip into stews or 
eaten with olives or baked vegetables.
 As for fresh vegetables, people would 
head for street markets, which were known as 
nundinae because they were held every nine 
days. Farmers living close to the city might 
load a cart and sell their produce at these 
markets. Farmers living further from the city 
often sold their produce to specialist whole-
salers who purchased particular items — for 
instance beans, apples, or cabbages — and 
then sold them to nundinum stallholders. 
Such farmers also tended to produce items 
with a longer shelf-life. Dried beans, smoked 
hams, and a large variety of cheeses were all 
produced and sold in large quantities.
 While nundinae were enough for many 
smaller towns, large cities also had dedicated 
market halls called macellae. These indoor 
grocery malls offered a superior shopping 
experience — probably with prices to match 
— and were accordingly situated in the ar-
eas of Rome where the denizens had deeper 
pockets. Poorer types had to make their way 
to the Forum Holitorium, which translates to 
Forum of the Vegetable Sellers.
A fresco from the praedia of Julia Felix, dated to the mid-first century AD, depicting eggs, birds (possibly partridges or thrushes), and bronze 
dishes. Small birds were a delicacy in ancient Rome.
LI
VI
NG
 L
IK
E 
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 A
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IE
NT
50
0 
A
D
1
A
D
50
0 
B
C
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Ancient History 56 55
©
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 / Flickr
 Roman markets also sold goods from 
beyond the empire. Cherries were suppos-
edly introduced to Rome by Lucius Licin-
ius Lucullus in the first century BC, while 
lemons became available in the Imperial 
period. Rice, which was considered a lux-
ury food especially suited to those with 
delicate stomachs, was shipped from India. 
Wheat, although not a rare product from 
far away, was also imported to Rome in 
huge quantities. Italy did have substantial 
wheat fields in the Po Valley, but most of its 
grain came from Sicily, North Africa, and 
Egypt (see Williams, AH 52). The olives of-
ten eaten with that bread were also import-
ed, again in large quantities, from estates 
in North Africa. An-
other North African 
import was figs, both 
dried and fresh. Cato 
the Elder famously 
demonstrated to the 
Roman senate the 
closeness of their rival Carthage 
by showing fresh figs which he 
claimed had been on the branch-
es of North African trees less than 
a week before (Plutarch, Cato the 
Elder 27.1).
 Another common grocery 
product which made its way to 
Rome from overseaswas the fish 
sauce with which the Romans liked 
to smother their food. Many Roman 
recipes required liquamanen or gar-
um, and while it was available in small vials 
for shoppers, the product originally arrived 
in amphorae from Spain.
Special occasions
Meat only made an appearance on the aver-
age Roman table on special occasions. As 
Horace has a householder remark: “I never 
over-indulge on week-
days. Vegetables are 
enough, or if a friend or 
neighbour is visiting, a 
leg of ham, a chicken, 
or a kid” (Satires 2.2). 
 While farm ani-
mals provided some of 
the meat Romans ate 
at dinner, their tastes 
were eclectic. A gourmet shopper 
might look for giant African snails, dor-
mice, sea urchins, or the lampreys found in 
abundance where Roman sewers entered the 
Tiber. Even the exotic animals killed in the 
arena during the Roman games were thriftily 
recycled as steaks. An abundance of game 
could be found close to Rome, and pheas-
ants and hares could be found in markets, as 
well a variety of wild birds – thrushes were 
especially popular. AH
Philip Matyszak is a regular contributor to 
Ancient History magazine.
per 
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recipes r
um, and while it
(Top) A fresco from the praedia of Julia 
Felix, a large complex in Pompeii, depicting 
the sale of foodstuffs near an arch. In small-
er towns, street markets were regularly set 
up for people to buy and sell produce.
© Phyrexian / Wikimedia Commons
(Bottom) Part of the exterior of Trajan's 
Market in Rome, a permanent multilevel 
structure possibly built ca. AD 100-110. 
Additions were made to the building in 
the Medieval period.
© Nicholas Hartmann / Wikimedia Commons
© 
x
© 
x
© 
x
Ancient History 56565656
Strike: Labor, Unions, and Resistance 
in the Roman Empire
By Sarah E. Bond
ISBN: 978-0300273144
Yale University Press (2025) - $35.00
yalebooks.yale.edu
The origins of the term ‘strike’, refer-
ring to workers halting work as a bar-
gaining strategy, dates to 1768, when 
sailors ‘struck’ the sails of the vessels 
they worked on to demand higher 
pay. Yet such actions by workers have 
a far longer history than the term. The 
first recorded instance of such group 
action occurred in the twelfth cen-
tury BC, in Egypt, during the reign of 
Ramesses II, when workers in Deir el-
Medina staged a ‘sit in’ to protest late 
pay. While Strike’s title may imply that 
this book is about this long history, it 
is more about the history of collec-
tive groups, often associations of pro-
fessionals, in the Roman Empire – of 
which strikes are but only a part.
 Therefore, Bond explores over 
1000 years of Roman history, from the 
founding of the Republic in 509 BC to 
the death of Justinian in AD 565, ex-
amining the growth and development 
of both formal and informal collective 
groups, as well as noting their impact 
on Roman history. Bond also openly 
acknowledges how this book is also 
about modern labour movements. 
Consequently, as with the book’s title, 
Bond often makes use of anachronistic 
language, such as referring to ancient 
collectives as ‘labour unions’, as it “al-
lows us to speak to the present and 
to capture both the continuities and 
functional differences of occupational 
groups that advocated for their mem-
bers” (p. 9). That said, Bond is very 
careful throughout the book when 
using such language, often simply 
pointing out similarities between an-
cient and modern collectives rather 
than explicitly referring to them both 
as labour unions. For instance, when 
discussing the Hellenistic technitai, 
groups of touring performers, Bond 
notes how they “may present the earli-
est parallel to today’s trade unions” (p. 
45). Similarly, Bond describes Julius 
Caesar’s legal measures concerning 
associations in Rome as “association 
busting” (p. 86). None of these terms, 
however, felt unwarranted, as Bond 
convincingly argues that labour union-
like associations and strike actions are 
not a modern phenomenon but regu-
larly occurred in the Roman world.
 Many of the events featured will 
be familiar to most readers. Chapter 
One, for example, is concerned with 
the Struggle of the Orders – a centuries-
long attempt by the plebeians of Rome 
at garnering greater social protections 
and political power – and Chapter 
Three examines the role of associa-
tions in the political struggles of the 
Late Republic, especially concerning 
Clodius Pulcher. Bond’s explanation 
of these events offers a novel perspec-
tive, however, focusing on the agency 
of the collectives and the relationship 
between them and the state. Notably, 
in Chapter Two, Bond attributes the 
slave revolts that rocked the Late Re-
public to a growing awareness of the 
power that collectives had, with many 
slaves involved in these revolts com-
ing from the Greek East, where asso-
ciations had flourished for some time. 
Slave familiae, Bond argues, “permit-
ted a coordinated action against its 
oppressors” (p. 62), especially during 
the Third Servile War, with gladiatorial 
familiae possibly “providing a preexist-
ing structure of leadership, friendship, 
and coordination” (p. 69).
 Bond’s discussion of the impor-
tance of slave familiae to slave revolts 
would have benefitted from a greater 
discussion of their organization. The 
agricultural writings of Cato and Varro, 
both contemporaries of the Servile 
Wars, offer an insight into agricultural 
familiae, and much work has been 
done to understand the workings of 
gladiatorial familiae, such as the divi-
sion of gladiators into different ranks, 
called pali after the posts they trained 
at. There were other parts of the book 
that felt underexplored. Bond’s dis-
cussion of the Circus Factions, for 
example, focuses exclusively on Late 
Antiquity, with no mention of the 
withholding of chariots and horses in 
an attempt to obtain greater prizemon-
ey during Nero’s reign (see Cassius 
Dio, 61.6 2–3; Suetonius, Nero 22). 
Mutinies in the Roman army are only 
briefly mentioned. A discussion of the 
mutiny along the Rhine in the begin-
ning of Tiberius reign – according to 
Tacitus, their grievances included mis-
treatment by centurions and low pay 
(Annals 1.31), both things associations 
protest with collective action else-
where in the book – seems pertinent 
for a discussion on collectives and 
group action. These points, however, 
are not indicative of a weakness of 
Bond’s argument – they would simply 
have elevated Strike’s central premise.
 Ultimately, Strike offers a novel 
perspective to Roman history, shining 
a light on the lives of non-elite people 
and how, through belonging to asso-
ciations, they could influence the Ro-
man Empire using collective actions 
reminiscent of and even parallel to 
modern labour movements, and how 
the imperial system reacted to them. 
As Bond writes, social collectives have 
“influenced Rome’s growth in ways 
that we have not fully grasped in tradi-
tional histories” (p. 20). AH
– Owain Williams
BO
OK
 R
EV
IE
W
S
Ancient History 56 57
The Remarkable Life, Death, and 
Afterlife of an Ordinary Roman
By Jeremy Hartnett
ISBN: 978-1009536097
Cambridge University Press (2024) - £23.99
www.cambridge.org
A lot of work is being done to prop-
erly understand what life was like for 
ordinary people in Rome, yet rarely 
do such studies focus on individuals. 
Instead, treatments of ordinary people 
tend to categorize them along lines 
of social and legal status or gender, 
for example, treating what we know 
about the experiences of people from 
these categories as applicable to all its 
members. Biographies, meanwhile, 
tend to keep the focus on the familiar 
names from Roman history, such as Ju-
lius Caesar, Augustus, and Constantine 
the Great. This, of course, is hardly a 
surprise. There is simply not enough 
information on ordinary Romans to 
create such a biography. However, in 
The Remarkable Life, Death, and Af-
terlife of an Ordinary Roman, Jeremy 
Hartnettoffers as close to a biography 
of an ordinary Romans as possible.
 To do so, Hartnett has studied the 
funerary monument of one Flavius Ag-
ricola, a man who was buried along 
the Via Cornelia, near the Vatican Cir-
cus, in ca. AD 160. Examining each 
element of the funerary monument, 
from the sculpture to the epitaph and 
even Flavius Agricola’s name, “sheds 
light on how captivating realms of Ro-
man life – sex, religion, philosophy, 
dining, notions of the body, low-brow 
fluency in high culture, and more – 
were experienced by many excluded 
from Rome’s halls of power” (p. 2). 
Such an approach suggested to me 
that Hartnett will fall into the same 
trap as previous social histories, treat-
ing the experiences of different social 
groups as monolithic. Indeed, Hartnett 
even writes that Flavius Agricola’s ex-
perience “is certainly more represent-
ative of the way more Romans lived” 
(p. 3) than the Julius Caesars and Con-
stantines, whom Hartnett describes as 
“atypical” (p. 3). However, Hartnett 
quickly allayed my concerns, writing 
how “Flavius and his life are not meant 
to be stand-ins for all Romans and all 
stories” (p. 4). Indeed, he notes how 
the Roman experience cannot be cap-
tured in a single narrative.
 While this is a relatively short 
book, Hartnett has included a great 
deal of information in its pages. In-
deed, it is impressive just how much 
Hartnett can parse from Flavius Agri-
cola’s funerary monument. Each facet 
of the monument is used as a starting 
block from which Hartnett launches 
into a wider discussion, bringing in 
other, comparative examples from Ro-
man history to properly contextualize 
Flavius Agricola in the Roman world 
of the second century AD. Flavius Ag-
ricola’s name, for instance, suggests he 
was the son or grandson of a freedman 
of the Flavian emperors, being too 
young to have been a Flavian freed-
man himself. The sculpture of Flavius 
Agricola, depicting him reclining on a 
kline and holding a deep cup, also tells 
us about his wealth, as it likely cost 
5000 sesterces, based on the median 
cost of 147 other examples (p. 27). 
How Flavius Agricola acquired this 
wealth remains a mystery, however, 
as does much about Flavius Agricola’s 
life – the funerary monument can only 
tell us so much. Moreover, as Fla-
vius Agricola includes his wife, Flavia 
Primitiva, also likely descended from 
a freedman, in his epitaph, noting her 
involvement with the mystery cult of 
Isis, much of Hartnett’s discussion fo-
cuses on what we can learn about her 
from her association with the Egyp-
tian goddess, such as what may have 
drawn her to the cult and whether 
there was any conflict between her 
and Flavius Agricola based on their 
differing outlooks. Additionally, Hart-
nett also studies the ‘object biography’ 
of the funerary monument itself, chart-
ing its history from its discovery under 
St Peter’s Basilica in Rome in 1626 
to its acquisition by the Indianapolis 
Museum of Art in 1972, and noting 
how the monument was interpreted 
throughout this period – its funerary 
epitaph had been destroyed after it 
had been first rediscovered because 
it espoused a life of pleasure, at odds 
with Christian doctrine. Though unu-
sual, this latter section was equally fas-
cinating, shedding light on the world 
of Early Modern antiquarians and the 
modern antiquities market, with all its 
crimes and controversies.
 As I have already noted, this 
was not a long book, but it is a very 
informative one. Readers should not 
expect a sweeping panorama of the 
general experience of Rome’s lower 
classes, as other social histories pro-
vide, but a more intimate examination 
of one family’s experience. A variety 
of topics are covered, from Roman 
dining habits to philosophical schools 
and even literary culture, with some 
topics receiving far more attention 
than others. As this book was writ-
ten with students in mind, Hartnett 
clearly expects readers to have a basic 
understanding of Roman society, and, 
consequently, his discussion does not 
go into minute detail about every pos-
sible facet. However, readers familiar 
with Roman society should have no 
problem with this book and will be 
well rewarded by this insightful biog-
raphy about ordinary Romans. AH
– Owain Williams
Ancient History 565858585
READINGS: ANCIENT JOBS
Want to learn more about how people in antiquity earned a living or some-
times just survived? Here are some books and articles you can check out.
WORK, LABOUR, AND PROFESSIONS 
IN THE ROMAN WORLD
By Koenraad Verboven and 
Christian Laes (eds.)
Brill, 2017
ISBN: 978-9004331655
Other books and articles
Containing several chapters written by experts in Roman eco-
nomic history, this book offers readers a comprehensive over-
view of labour and work in the Roman world, from methods of 
finding work to the self-identity of working Romans. In doing 
so, readers will learn about the mechanisms of ancient labour, 
ancient attitudes to work, and professional identities.
WORK AND LABOUR IN THE CITIES 
OF ROMAN ITALY
By Miriam J. Groen-Vallinga
Liverpool University Press, 2022
ISBN: 978-1802077599
Using New Institutional Economics, Groen-Vallinga explores 
how a wide range of factors influenced work and labour in 
ancient Rome to illuminate the complexities of the Roman la-
bour market. Focusing on Roman Italy allows Groen-Vallinga 
to explore workers beyond free, skilled, male workers, includ-
ing unskilled labourers and even women and children.
MAKING MONEY IN ANCIENT ATHENS
By Michael Leese
University of Michigan Press, 2021
ISBN: 978-0472132768
As the title suggests, this book focuses on the many ways peo-
ple could make money in ancient Athens, examining how an-
cient Athenians thought about making money and detailing 
the various ways that ancient Athenians could make money 
from the position of the oikos in the Athenian economy to the 
many miners, bankers, and moneylenders.
VALUING LABOR IN 
GRECO-ROMAN ANTIQUITY
By Miko Flohr and Kim Bowes (eds.)
Brill, 2024
ISBN: 978-9004694835
This partially Open Access book offers readers a wide over-
view of how ancient Greek and Roman people thought about 
labour and labourers, from the philosophy of Plato and Ar-
istotle to various contexts of labour in antiquity, challenging 
the notion that ancient elites disparaged ancient workers and 
reconsidering their social and cultural value.
Woven wealth and women's work (Katherine Backler)
• Bundrick, S.D. “The Fabric of the City: Imaging Textile 
Production in Classical Athens.” Hesperia 77 (2008): 
283–334. 
• Spantidaki, S. Textile Production in Classical Athens. 
Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2016. 
• Taylor, C. “Women, Gender and the Ancient Econo-
my: Towards a Feminist Economic History of the An-
cient Greek world.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 144 
(2024): 1–28.
• Wrenhaven, K. “The Identity of the “Wool-Workers” in 
the Attic Manumissions.” Hesperia 78 (2009): 367–386.
Talking tools? (Miriam J. Groen-Vallinga)
• Joshel, S. R. Slavery in the Roman World. New York: 
Cambridge University Press, 2010.
• Roth, U.  Thinking Tools: Agricultural Slavery be-
tween Evidence and Models. London: University of 
London, 2007.
• Scheidel, W. “Slavery.” In The Cambridge Compan-
ion to the Roman Economy, edited by W. Scheidel, 
89–113. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 
2012.
"As long as my people keep on working" (Arienne King)
• García, J.C.M. Dynamics of Production in the Ancient 
Near East. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2016.
• Ezzamel, M. The Economy of Ancient Egypt: State, Ad-
ministration, Institutions. Abingdon: Routledge, 2024.
• Warburton, D.A. “Work and Compensation in An-
cient Egypt.” The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 93 
(2007): 175–194.
Warfare as a livelihood (Charlotte Van Regenmortel)
• Chaniotis, A. War in the Hellenistic World: A Social and 
Cultural History. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 
2005.
• Trundle, M. Greek Mercenaries: From the Late Archaic 
Period to Alexander. London: Routledge, 2004.
• Van Regenmortel,C. Soldiers, Wages, and the Hel-
lenistic Economies. Cambridge: Cambridge University 
Press, 2024.
Finding work (Owain Williams)
• Brunt, P.A. “Free Labour and Public Works in Ancient 
Rome.” In The Journal of Roman Studies 70 (1980): 
81–100.
• Groen-Vallinga, M.J. “Desperate Housewives? The 
Adaptive Family Economy and Female Participation in 
the Roman Urban Labour Market.” In Women and the 
Roman City in the Latin West, edited by E. Hemelrijk 
and G. Woolf. Leiden: Brill, 2013: 295–312.
• Temin, P. “The Labor Market of the Early Roman Empire.” 
Journal of Interdisciplinary History 34 (2004): 513–538.
FU
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R 
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AD
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BOOKS AND MAGAZINES FROM KARWANSARAY PUBLISHERS
Intelligent, accessible historical writing with a focus on new scholarship. 
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Magazine subscriptions, both digital and print, are avaiable from our webshop. We also offer an extensive catalog of back issues.
TO ORDER, VISIT: WWW.KP-SHOP.COM OR CALL +31-848-392256
Ancient India
living traditions
Until 19 October
Members/under 16s free
Dancing Ganesha with bowl of sweets, 
India, about AD 750.
Book 
now
‘Ethereal’ 
The Guardian
‘Spellbinding’ 
The Standardoccupies 900 sq m. The villa is located 
3 km south of Auxerre, in France’s Bourgogne-
Franche-Comté region. Investigations conduct-
ed in 1966, prompted by commercial gravel ex-
traction, had identified the foundations of a 700 
sq m rectangular building with ten rooms. The 
new excavations have revealed that to be just a 
secondary wing of a much larger complex. 
ogico 
n 
la di
©
 P
arco
 A
rch
eo
lo
gico
 d
ell’A
p
p
ia A
n
tica
A wooden coffin, dated to the Warring 
States Period (ca. 475-221 BC), recently 
excavated near Qianshan. Of the 75 tombs 
discovered at the site, 37 were from the 
Warring States Period.
© Anhui Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics 
and Archaeology
© 
x
Ancient History 56 7
 Unlike typical Roman estates, where the 
agricultural activity dominated, the Auxerre 
villa’s luxurious residential section was unu-
sually expansive. Organized around a central 
garden measuring 450 m per side, the villa 
includes extensive porticoed galleries, under-
floor hypocaust systems to heat rooms, private 
baths, ornamental fountains, and evidence of 
painted walls and mosaics. These features indi-
cate the presence of an elite household, likely 
tied to the political or economic leadership of 
nearby Autessiodurum (Roman-era Auxerre). 
 The site shows signs of at least two, pos-
sibly three, phases of construction. Archae-
ologists speculate that its development mir-
rored the city’s rise from a modest settlement 
in the first century AD to a walled regional 
capital by the fourth century.
 Situated on the Yonne River, Autessio-
durum flourished on account of its location 
where important roads met: from Sens and 
Lutetia (Paris), from Augustodunum (Autun), 
from Interannum (Entrains), and from Au-
gustobona (Troyes). INRAP says the work of 
excavating and documenting the villa site is 
just beginning. Material finds, such as ce-
ramics and organic remains, have yet to be 
fully analyzed.
Egyptian donkeys sacrificed in Bronze Age Israel
Archaeologists excavating an Early Bronze Age 
neighborhood at Tell es-Sâfi/Gath in Israel have 
uncovered the remains of four young donkeys, 
buried beneath house floors in what researchers 
describe as ritual foundation deposits. The ani-
mals, dated to ca. 2900–2600 BC, were found 
fully intact and appear to have been carefully 
placed as part of domestic construction rituals. 
Isotopic analysis of their teeth reveals they were 
born and raised in Egypt before being brought 
to Tell es-Sâfi/Gath. In contrast, the remains of a 
separate donkey, sheep, and goat used for food 
show local origins. These animals were butch-
ered and discarded, rather than ritually buried.
 Researchers have concluded that the 
imported donkeys held greater symbolic 
value. Significantly, all buried equids were 
young females from Egypt. One donkey in 
particular stood out. It was decapitated, 
trussed, and buried with its head placed on 
its abdomen, facing eastwards. Isotope data 
suggests it spent its final months penned 
and fed locally before sacrifice.
 While donkeys served practical 
roles in agriculture and trade, the 
deliberate burial of Egyptian animals 
underscores their prestige and sym-
bolic significance. The findings are 
presented in “An isotopic perspec-
tive on equid selection in cult at Tell 
es-Sâfi/Gath, Israel” published in 
PLOS One, July 2025.
ent mir-
tlement 
regional 
Autessio-
location
Sens and
(A tun)
A tempera painting on straw and clay, from 
the tomb of Iti, Commander of the Troops 
and Treasurer of the King, depicting a 
donkey driver leading a donkey towards the 
granaries, dated to 2118-1980 BC. Donkeys 
were first domesticated in East Africa, from 
where they spread into the Levant, garnering 
a religious significance.
© Museo Egizio In Turin (IT)
(Top) An aerial view of the excavations of 
the Roman villa at Sainte-Nitasse, likely a 
luxury residence of political or economic 
elite from Autessiodorum (modern Auxerre).
© Christophe Fouquin, INRAP
(Bottom) A Gallo-Roman column capital 
from Auxerre depicting Mercury carrying 
a caduceus and a purse.
© Ji-Elle / Wikimedia Commons
8
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Pharnabazus, satrap of Hellespon-
tine Phrygia, meets the Spartan 
king Agesilaus in a meeting engi-
neered via their mutual friendship 
with Apollophanes of Cyzicus.
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9
THE SATRAPS OF ACHAEMENID PERSIA
MANAGING 
AN EMPIRE
By Rhyne King
The Achaemenid Persian Empire (550–330 BC) far 
surpassed the reach of any predecessor. The Per-
sian kings ruled from the coast of modern Turkey to 
the Eurasian steppe in Central Asia. But how exactly 
did the empire maintain control over its expansive 
realm? Royal representatives called ‘satraps’ man-
aged the day-to-day operations of running the empire.
F
rom around 550 to 500 BC, the Persian kings Cyrus, 
Cambyses, and Darius led their armies out of south-
western Iran and forged the largest empire the world 
had yet seen. Yet managing an empire is different from 
conquering one, and the central government had to 
enact strategies by which they could maintain internal peace, 
collect taxes, and ensure prosperity. For this, the kings relied 
upon their satraps, the kings’ regional representatives. ‘Satrap’ 
derives from the Old Persian word xšaçapāvan, meaning ‘one 
who protects the kingdom’. Satraps were responsible for super-
vising regional military, economic, administrative, and judicial 
affairs in the areas they were stationed. Almost all the satraps 
were part of the royal family, either by blood or marriage, or 
else had personal ties of friendship to the kings.
Modern audiences tend to think of empires as defined by 
their territory and subdivided into discrete territorial divisions. 
The ancient Greek historian Herodotus thought of the Achae-
menid Empire in a similar way: he wrote that it was divided 
into twenty provinces called ‘satrapies’. But it seems that the 
Persians did not think of their own empire in such terms. They 
never use the word ‘satrapy’ and rarely discuss their empire 
in terms of territory. Instead, they viewed the empire as com-
prised of subject peoples, and it was the job of the satrap to 
keep these subject peoples under imperial control.
Satraps could not manage their responsibilities by them-
selves. They drew upon a network of family, friends, and subor-
dinates to keep the empire afloat. The primary sources refer to 
the satrap, his property, and the people around him collectively 
as a ‘house’. It is best to understand these satrapal houses, rath-
er than the satraps themselves, as the key components in man-
aging the empire. When ordinary people interacted with the 
Achaemenid government, they typically sought out the near-
est satrapal house. Satrapal houses, spread across the empire, 
marked the interface between the government and its subjects.
We can learn about these satrapal houses from a variety of 
sources. Ancient Greek authors like Herodotus and Thucydides 
were contemporaries of the Achaemenid Empire, and they 
often report on satraps, especially in the empire’s Mediterra-
nean regions. Additionally, we also have documents produced 
by satrapal houses across the empire. Although the imperial 
elite spoke Old Persian, they did most of their everyday writ-
ing in Aramaic, a Semitic language closely related to Hebrew. 
Aramaic letters survive from several satrapal houses, such as 
in Egypt and Bactria (northern Afghanistan). In Mesopotamia 
and Iran, clay tablets inscribed in the cuneiform languages of 
Akkadian and Elamite also give us insight into how satraps and 
their houses conducted themselves. Archaeological evidence, 
particularly coinage, can also be used to study the satraps.There is some evidence for change over time in the satra-
pal system. The general trends are an expansion of the bureau-
cracy, manifested in a greater number of satraps, and an in-
creased number of non-Persians becoming satraps. The Greek 
sources and, indeed, the king himself refer to King Darius I 
as an administrative reformer. Although the reign of Darius 
was certainly a period of fiscal reform, it is harder to confirm 
changes to the satrapal system at this time. Changes are more 
apparent later in the fifth century BC. In the early Achaeme-
nid period, a single satrap was given the jurisdiction over the 
combined populations of Babylonia and Syria. However, this 
jurisdiction was split into two during or after the reign of King 
Xerxes (r. 486–465 BC). A satrap in Caria (southwestern Ana-
tolia) was a new position created in the early fourth century 
BC. From the late fifth century BC onwards, there is also more 
evidence for the incorporation of non-Persians as satraps. 
Managing the satrapal house
Across the empire, satrapal houses varied in their operations, 
but we can detect a shared pattern of behavior. Satraps needed 
to give orders to their subordinates in different towns, write to 
other elites about regional affairs, and inform the royal court 
about local politics. For all these tasks, satraps used highly 
trained bureaucrats to produce their paperwork, and for writ-
ing letters, Aramaic was the typical language of choice. The 
similarity of the Aramaic language found in letters in Egypt and 
Bactria suggests that there was a relatively standard curriculum 
that scribes studied. These scribes, it seems, often came from 
local communities. For example, Aršāma, the satrap in Egypt in 
the late 400s BC, used a series of Egyptians as his primary local 
managers during his lengthy career in the region.
10
 Alongside these Aramaic letters, satraps had to man-
age local operations: keeping track of storehouses for the 
military, making sure the roads were clear, or accounting for 
the collection of taxes. For tasks like these, satrapal houses 
could draw upon preexisting local traditions of writing. A 
man named Bēlšunu, for example, came from a Babylonian 
background and eventually rose to become the satrap in 
Syria by 410 BC. In Babylonia, his scribes conducted their 
business in Akkadian cuneiform, a language with 2000 years 
of written tradition in the region.
 Satraps used rewards and incentives to maintain their 
houses. Imperial subjects recognized that they could materially 
benefit by working within a satrapal house. The best attested 
type of incentive was a grant of agricultural land. The economy 
of the Achaemenid Empire, like that of many premodern states, 
was heavily oriented toward farming. Satraps often gave people 
who worked in their service grants of fertile land. These land 
grants could sustain a family, and if large enough, the recipi-
ent could grow richer by selling surplus products. If the worker 
remained in the satrap’s good graces, these grants of land could 
be passed down from one generation to the next.
Yet satraps did not hesitate to use violence to maintain 
their houses. The Achaemenid Empire was home to many un-
free workers, and a system of violence was used to maintain 
control over them. One particularly shocking letter comes 
from the correspondence of Aršāma. In it, the satrap com-
mands his local manager to take advantage of a period of civil 
unrest by going to nearby farms, forcibly removing the work-
ers, taking them back to Aršāma’s estate, and marking them 
with his brand. Documents like this serve as a stark reminder 
that the empire was built on violent foundations.
The duties of the satrapal house
One of the satraps’ essential duties was to maintain the empire’s 
infrastructure. This is easiest to see in one of the empire’s most re-
nowned creations: its sprawling road system. Herodotus describes 
the ‘Royal Road’, which stretched between Sardis and Susa, but 
we know from administrative documents that this was only one 
branch of a much more extensive road network. With these roads, 
the imperial government could send express messages, transport 
immense armies, and move workers to wherever they might be 
needed. Letters from the correspondence of Axvamazdā, satrap in 
Bactria in the fourth century BC, provide insight into the mainte-
nance of this system. In one letter, Axvamazdā gives a command 
to clear out sand from caravanserais – apparently a sandstorm 
had blown through. In another, we hear of camels that travellers 
used to move goods on the road system.
The road system connected the royal court to outlying re-
gions, and the satrapal houses were essential in maintaining 
these connections. A well-documented example is the house of 
Bakabaduš, the satrap in Arachosia (southwestern Afghanistan), 
ca. 500 BC. Several administrative documents from Persepolis 
(southwestern Iran) refer to Bakabaduš facilitating the trans-
portation of “tax” or “treasure” — such terms are deliberately 
broad and could likely encompass silver, gold, and even ob-
jects of worked gems and stones — from Arachosia to the 
king’s court. Bakabaduš also moved workers from Arachosia 
to southwestern Iran: the largest known group making this trip 
comprised 720 men. Bakabaduš’s tenure as satrap coincided 
with a time of intensive construction projects in southwestern 
Iran, and the royal court sought to gather labourers from across 
the empire. Some of these workers travelled amazing distances. 
One group of Greeks, probably from the Greek-speaking cities 
of western Anatolia, had traveled from Anatolia to Arachosia 
and then were sent from Arachosia to Persepolis. It was satrapal 
houses like that of Bakabaduš that were responsible for ensur-
ing these trips of unprecedented scale.
 Another significant responsibility was diplomacy. Sa-
traps had to keep elites inside the empire happy, and they 
also looked to forge connections with elites beyond imperial 
control. Inside the empire, letters from the correspondences of 
both Aršāma and Axvamazdā show these satraps in frequent 
communication with the other elites of their regions. The sa-
traps had to handle whatever problems may arise, for example, 
a swarm of locusts devasting the crops in Bactria. Keeping other 
elites content with Achaemenid rule was essential to maintain-
ing internal peace, and satrapal houses recognized this.
 We are best informed on external relations through the 
Greek sources. It was common for satraps to maintain ties with 
Greek elites both in the Anatolian city-states and across the Ae-
gean Sea. These relationships could be expressed in the Greek 
terminology of guest-friendship (xenía). It was through guest-
friends that satraps could intervene in foreign affairs. Pharna-
bazus, for example, utilized his guest-friendship with Apol-
lophanes of Cyzicus to organize a meeting with Agesilaus II, 
in which he persuaded the Spartan king to withdraw from his 
territory. These interventions included another crucial duty: su-
pervising war. Satrapal interventions in war are especially well 
documented during the Achaemenid intervention in the Pelo-
ponnesian War between Athens and Sparta (431–404 BC). An 
alliance between Sparta and the Achaemenid Empire, mediated 
on the ground through the Anatolian satraps, eventually led to a 
Spartan victory. The satraps gave money to the Spartans for sol-
diers, rowers, and ships. Notably, the satrap Cyrus, often called 
Cyrus the Younger to differentiate him from the homonymous 
king, brokered a relationship with the Spartan commander Ly-
sander, and Cyrus funnelled money and resources to Lysander to 
aid the Spartan cause. Although the royal court provided some 
financial contributions, the satrapal houses were also expected 
to contribute their own resources to the war effort. 
11
Examination of coinage allows us to understand these sa-
trapal contributions more precisely. At the time of the Achae-
menid Empire, coinage was stilla relatively recent invention, 
and it was only in the Mediterranean regions of the empire 
that coinage regularly circulated. Soldiers and sailors in these 
regions came to expect payments in coinage. From the time of 
the Peloponnesian War onwards, satraps began to mint coin-
age bearing their name, likeness, or both. The initial recipients 
of this coinage, it seems, would have been soldiers or rowers. 
These emissions of coinage could be enormous. For example, 
Pharnabazus, satrap in Hellespontine Phrygia (northwestern 
Turkey), minted 20,000 kilograms worth of silver coinage for 
a campaign in the early fourth century BC.
Self-interested imperialism
Satraps were not just interested in maintaining the empire, 
but they also wished to maintain and even enlarge their own 
houses. Therefore, satraps conducted a form of self-interested 
imperialism in their areas of jurisdiction. With the king’s per-
mission, satraps could transmit their position within their fam-
ily, so enlarging their houses could benefit their descendants 
for generations to come. Well-off workers within the satrapal 
house could likewise improve their own standings by enlarg-
ing the house of their lord. Satraps typically managed to con-
duct themselves in such a way that benefited both themselves 
and the empire at large. But where imperial and personal 
goals conflicted, there could be trouble.
A great example of the marriage between satrapal and im-
perial interests can be seen by examining the career of the afore-
mentioned Bēlšunu, who eventually rose to the position of satrap 
in Syria. Unlike most satraps, he is not from Persia proper, that 
is southwestern Iran; instead, he was from Babylonia. While he 
came from a well-connected Babylonian family, his origins lay 
outside the inner circle of the imperial ruling class. Nevertheless, 
he manoeuvred his career for the benefit of both himself and the 
king. King Darius II, who ruled from 423 to 404 BC, controlled 
extensive landholdings in Babylonia and looked for local elites 
to manage the local agricultural economy. Bēlšunu proved him-
self a reliable ally and his management of royal lands enriched 
both himself and the king’s court. As a reward, Darius II promoted 
Bēlšunu to the position of satrap in Syria. This move obviously 
helped Bēlšunu establish his house as one of the empire’s most 
prominent, and in fact, Bēlšunu’s probable grandson (also named 
Bēlšunu) is attested as the satrap in Syria some 60 years later. This 
promotion also helped Darius II ensure imperial stability: after 
making Bēlšunu satrap, the king now had a personal ally in dis-
tant Syria entirely dependent on his good graces for his position. 
The empire was built on these personal ties of loyalty.
 Investing in imperial infrastructure could benefit the 
personal riches of satraps. The letters from the house of 
Axvamazdā in Bactria provide an illustration. Bactria lay at 
the crossroads of Eurasian trade networks, an early incarna-
tion of what is commonly known as the Silk Road. Goods 
produced in the Achaemenid Empire can be found in far-
flung regions across the Eurasian steppe. The most famous of 
these is the Pazyryk carpet, a rug of presumably Achaemenid 
manufacture excavated from a burial in Russia near the bor-
der with Mongolia and China. Facilitating the trade of objects 
like this required Axvamazdā’s house to stock storehouses for 
travellers, keep the roads free of banditry, and ease movement 
over difficult terrain. Doing so worked to the selfish interest 
of Axvamazdā’s house because it allowed the satrap and his 
workers an opportunity to collect customs taxes on the move-
ment of goods. So long as Axvamazdā kept imperial opera-
tions running and sent a portion of what he collected to the 
king’s court, he could keep extra revenue for himself. 
But sometimes conflicts could arise between satrapal 
interests and imperial goals. Tissaphernes, satrap in Lydia 
during the Peloponnesian War and its aftermath, helps us 
understand this phenomenon. Although the king furnished 
some supplies for the local war effort, the satraps were also 
expected to contribute their own resources to fund wars. Tis-
saphernes, however, proved to be a miserly paymaster and 
sometimes put the interests of his own house above imperial 
interests. After one military defeat too many, King Artaxerxes 
II had Tissaphernes executed and replaced. But one satrap’s 
failure could be another’s opportunity. Tissaphernes’ long-
time rival, Pharnabazus, satrap in the neighbouring region of 
Hellespontine Phrygia, showed himself to be a dependable 
ally, a reliable paymaster, and a stalwart general, and King 
Artaxerxes II rewarded Pharnabazus by marrying his daugh-
ter to him. Pharnabazus thereby became part of the royal 
family, and his descendants served as satraps in the same 
region until at least the 340s BC. 
Ultimately it was the wedding of the personal interests of 
the satraps with the broader goals of the empire at large that 
enabled the Achaemenid Empire to endure at such scale for 
its 200-year duration. The technologies of the time prevented 
the close coordination of officials that is seen in modern bu-
reaucratic states. Satraps and their houses needed to be given 
reasons to continue participating in the imperial project. En-
suring that the best interests of the satrapal houses aligned 
with those of the larger empire reduced internal conflict. 
Thus, it should be no surprise that the empire collapsed from 
external, rather than internal, pressure with the invasion of 
Alexander the Great of Macedon. AH
Rhyne King has a PhD from the University of Chicago and is cur-
rently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Toron-
to. His book, The House of the Satrap, was published in 2025.
Ancient History 5612121
AN ANCIENT GEOPOLITICAL HOTSPOT
THE CITY OF HATRA
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By Peter Edwell
A view of the Temple of Shamash, one of the primary gods of Hatra, who is consistently referred to as protecting the city — as it was repeatedly besieged.
The once-splendid city of Hatra lies in the dry steppe of upper 
Mesopotamia in Iraq, some 300 km northwest of Baghdad. En-
closing an area of approximately 200 hectares, the city was en-
circled by 6-km-long walls and at its centre was an enormous 
temple complex to the Sun god Shamash. In the second cen-
tury AD, Hatra found itself in the middle of a major geopo-
litical rivalry between the Roman and Parthian Empires.
W
hile there is no direct evidence, a set-
tlement likely existed at Hatra in the 
Achaemenid or Seleucid periods. The 
city proper was probably founded in 
the second century BC and was part 
of the Parthian Empire or Commonwealth, and it flourished 
from the late first to the early third centuries AD. During 
this period, Roman imperial expansion east of the Euphra-
tes River challenged long-established Parthian hegemony in 
northern Mesopotamia. Thus, at its height, Hatra was at the 
centre of a geopolitical struggle between two 
of the ancient world’s most powerful empires.
 The Parthians, whose origins lay on the 
south-eastern shores of the Caspian Sea, came 
to prominence in eastern Iran in the third cen-
tury BC. Under the kingship of the Arsacid 
dynasty, they took control of large sections of 
the Seleucid Empire over the third and second 
centuries BC. By the time of the reign of Mith-
ridates I (r. 165–132 BC), the Parthians were in 
clear control of an empire, which would come 
to rival the Roman Empire for centuries. 
 The Romans invaded the Parthian Em-
pire on three occasions in the second cen-
tury AD. As the hegemony of the Parthians in 
Mesopotamia was challenged during this pe-
riod, the significance of Hatra in the Parthian 
Commonwealth grew. The nature of govern-
ment at the city also changed.
Hatra and the local landscape
It is important to understand the extent to 
which Hatra was connected to the territory 
surrounding the city. Cassius Dioempha-
sized Hatra’s location in the middle of a de-
sert lacking drinking water and vegetation: 
A limestone statue, dated to ca. AD 140-180, depicting Sanatruq I, one of the 
first kings of Hatra. The city was once ruled by lords, but they became kings 
thanks to their close relations with the rulers of the Parthian Empire.
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“This city is neither large nor 
prosperous, and the surround-
ing country is mostly desert and 
has neither water (save a small 
amount and that poor in quality) 
nor timber nor fodder” (68.38.1). In real-
ity, the territory surrounding Hatra, which 
it also controlled, was more varied than Dio 
claimed. The existence of watering holes 
and oases together with numerous tracks 
and roads provided the capacity for human 
activity in areas that European-based writ-
ers did not recognize. 
 In a later Arabic account by Tabari (ca. 
AD 915), Hatra controlled a considerable 
section of upper Mesopotamia (also known 
as the Jazira), which would have included 
central and northern parts of the Tigris River. 
It also controlled its environs to the north at 
Jebel Sinjar and terri-
tory all the way to the 
banks of the Khabur 
River to the west (Annals I.828). This 
considerable stretch of territory was 
vitally important in the context of the 
geopolitical developments between 
the Romans and Arsacid Parthians in 
the second century AD.
The connectedness of Hatra 
to the dry steppe and desert regions 
it controlled is demonstrated by the 
remains of roads and tracks from 
the city and throughout the region. 
Using satellite images and an an-
cient map known as the Tabula 
Peutingaria (Peutinger Table), at least 
six different routes departed from the city. Two 
routes headed east towards the Tigris at Ashur 
and modern Tikrit. Two headed south and even-
tually joined roads to Ctesiphon, the most im-
portant Arsacid Parthian capital. Another head-
ed west, eventually joining routes that headed 
to the Euphrates and Khabur Rivers. A road to 
the northeast, which crossed the Wadi 
Tharthar, appears to have linked to a 
series of military structures in the sec-
ond century AD, essential to Hatra’s 
control of the surrounding territory. 
The rulers of Hatra 
and Rome’s wars
From the late first century AD to 
the middle of the second century 
AD, Hatra was ruled by a lord 
(mry’ in Aramaic). The lords of 
Hatra were loyal to the overall 
sovereignty of the Arsacid Parthian king. 
The Roman writer, Pliny the Elder, writing 
ca. AD 75, claimed that the Parthian Em-
pire was comprised of eighteen kingdoms 
and even though Hatra was not a kingdom 
at this time, it was probably counted in that 
number (Natural History 6.112). Sometime 
between AD 151/2 and 177/8, the rulers 
of Hatra became kings (mlk’ in Aramaic), 
heralding a closer relationship with the Par-
thian monarch. 
 The context for the changes in the middle 
of the second century was the power strug-
nor 
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(Top) A map of Mesopotamia (ca. AD 200) 
depicting the borders of the various vassal 
kingdoms between the Roman and Parthian 
Empires. As Hatra's importance to Parthia 
grew in this period, so to did its borders.
© Richard Thomson
(Bottom) Part of the Peutinger Table, a 
map of the roads of the Roman Empire, 
depicting Mesopotamia. Hatra can be 
seen to the right of Babylon. The map 
depicts several roads leading from Hatra, 
connecting it to the surrounding region, 
possibly reflecting its use as a trade hub.
© Peter Edwell
© 
x
© 
x
© 
x
Ancient History 5614
gle between Rome and Parthia, especially 
the invasions of Trajan (AD 114–117) and the 
war between Vologases IV of Parthia and the 
emperor Lucius Verus (AD 161–166). When 
Trajan’s army of approximately 100,000 men 
invaded the Parthian Empire in AD 114, it 
initially met with spectacular success. Terri-
tory and cities in northern Mesopotamia were 
captured with relative ease, as was the Parthi-
an capital, Seleucia-Ctesiphon on the Tigris. 
In AD 115, Trajan made it as far as the Persian 
Gulf but revolts in the conquered territories 
soon broke out. Hatra played a significant 
part in these revolts and Trajan attempted to 
capture the city in AD 116. 
When the emperor failed to capture the 
city due to its stout resistance, the 
lords of Hatra were drawn 
even more into the 
orbit of the Parthian 
king, who was 
able to recapture 
all the gains 
made by Trajan soon after 
his death in AD 117. Either 
Elkud or his son Nashrihab was 
lord of Hatra at the time of the 
unsuccessful Roman siege, and it was via 
this line that the kings of Hatra would later 
emerge. Nashrihab’s son Nasru had two sons, 
Volgash and Sanatruq I, and sometime be-
tween AD 151/2 and 177/8 they were granted 
the title king (mlk’) by the Parthian king. 
 This promotion was likely connected to 
the significant changes underway in north-
ern Mesopotamia during the 160s, when the 
war between Lucius Verus and Vologases IV 
saw the Romans make significant territorial 
gains. After this war, it was clear that the Ro-
mans now held the upper hand in northern 
Mesopotamia. Thus, Hatra and its rulers be-
came of greater significance to the Parthians 
and this likely explains the upgrade of the 
status of its rulers to kings. 
 The geopolitical significance of Hatra was 
further demonstrated in the 190s in the context 
p ese revolts and Trajan attempted t
capture the city in AD 116. 
When the emperor failed to capture th
city due to its stout resistance, th
lords of Hatra were draw
even more into th
orbit of the Parthia
king, who wa
able to recaptur
all the gain
er 
er 
ab was 
e of the 
, and it was i
One of the plaques of the Parthian Monu-
ment, a structure erected in Ephesus to 
commemorate Lucius Verus' victory in the 
Parthian campaign, depicting a battle be-
tween Roman and Parthian soldiers. Hatra 
was of greater importance to the Parthian 
Empire after Lucius Verus' campaign.
© Carole Raddato / Flickr
A fresco from Dura Europos, dated to 
the first century AD, from the temple of 
Palmyrene gods, depicting two priests in 
conical white hats, behind whom stands 
Conon, the leader of the sacrifice. Hatra, 
despite mostly being aligned with Parthia 
rather than Rome, possibly had similar 
religious imagery. 
© Dosseman / Wikimedia Commons
© 
x
Ancient History 56 15
of the Roman emperor Septimius Severus’ in-
vasions of Parthia. Severus came to power in 
AD 193, following a civil war with Pescennius 
Niger. A number of local Mesopotamian rulers 
supported Niger, including the king of Hatra, 
Barsemius, who sent a troop of highly skilled 
archers to fight with Niger against Severus. 
When Severus undertook major invasions of 
Parthia later in the 190s, he prosecuted two 
sieges of Hatra in reprisal for its support of Ni-
ger. Just as Trajan discovered 80 years earlier, 
however, the impressive fortifications at Hatra 
and the defending garrison were formidable:
“But he (Severus) lost a vast amount of 
money, all his engines, except those built by 
Priscus…and many soldiers besides. A good 
many were lost on foraging expeditions, as 
the barbarian cavalry…kept assailing them 
everywhere in swift and violent attacks. 
The archery, too, of the Atreni was effec-
tive at very long range, since they hurled 
some of their missiles by means of engines, 
so that they actually struck many even of 
Severus' guards; for they discharged two 
missiles at one and the same shot and there 
were many hands and many bows hurling 
the missilesall at the same time. But they 
inflicted the greatest damage on their as-
sailants when these approached the wall, 
and much more still after they had broken 
down a small portion of it; for they hurled 
down upon them, among things, the bitu-
minous naphtha…and consumed the en-
gines and all the soldiers on whom it fell” 
(Cassius Dio, 76.11).
In reports of the sieges of Hatra by Trajan and 
Septimius Severus, the sun god Shamash also 
played an active role in defending the city. 
 Despite his failure at Hatra, Severus made 
significant territorial gains across northern Mes-
opotamia in the 190s. A newly formed prov-
ince of Mesopotamia was established with its 
capital at Nisibis and legionary garrisons 
at Singara and Rhesaina. To the west 
of the new province, the Kingdom 
of Osrhoene, which had also been 
As the Roman Empire expanded further east after the establishment of the 
province of Syria in ca. 65 BC, it came into closer proximity to the burgeon-
ing wealth of Arabia, India, Central Asia, and China. The acquisition of Egypt 
in 31 BC saw heightened sea-borne trade originating in India and East Africa 
(see Rathbone, AH 50), and when Rome acquired the Kingdom of Nabataea 
in Arabia in AD 106 the incense trade from southern Arabia became more 
proximate as well. The growing wealth of urban elites across the Roman Em-
pire as it expanded saw skyrocketing demand for luxury items originating east 
of the empire. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of different products 
that formed part of this trade — from silk to pepper and incense — and they 
had their origins across Afro-Eurasia. The Romans not only imported a range of 
items but also exported products such as glass, wine, and metals. Thousands of 
Roman silver coins from the first and second centuries AD have been found in 
locations such as India.
While it is plausible that Hatra was involved in the burgeoning trade that 
the entire region experienced from the first century AD onwards, as the city’s 
growing prosperity coincided with the intensification of trade in the region, very 
little direct evidence survives to confirm this. Perhaps the notable similarities of 
Hatra with Palmyra in Syria, where extensive evidence for that city’s involve-
ment in the ‘luxury’ trade from Iran, Mesopotamia, the Persian Gulf, and India 
has been found, is a useful parallel. Like Palmyra, Hatra may have exploited 
its geographical position to act as a trading go-between for goods travelling 
overland between Mesopotamia and Iran and the Roman Near East. Tabari high-
lighted the ability of the Hatrene king Daizan (ca. AD 230) to tax the area he 
controlled between the Tigris and Khabur Rivers (Annals I. 827). This tax would 
likely have included taxes (tariffs) on trade. An undated inscription found at a 
watering hole 20 km from Hatra commemorates the establishment of a 
caravan station. Hatra’s role in this trade was likely significant.
A trading hub?
A view of the remains of Nisa, a Parthian city located in modern Turkmenistan. The city was a major 
trading hub, connecting the Parthian Empire to the trade routes of Central Asia.
under Parthian domination before the mid-sec-
ond century AD, became a Roman province. 
Its king, Abgar VIII, remained as a Roman cli-
ent-king in Osrhoene’s capital, Edessa, despite 
his support of Niger in the civil war. 
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DID YOU KNOW?
 The Parthian Empire was a commonwealth of 
eighteen individual kingdoms. Of these, Parthia 
was dominant, and its king took the title ‘King of 
Kings’, marking him as the head of the empire.
©
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© 
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Ancient History 5616
Hatra and the Sasanian Persians
 The Sasanian Persian overthrow of the Ar-
sacid Parthians in the 220s had significant 
ramifications for the empire the Parthians 
once controlled and especially for Hatra. 
The Sasanians took a more centralized ap-
proach to the government of the empire and 
often installed family members as rulers of the 
kingdoms and principalities that comprised it, 
which may have spurred the Hatrenes’ defec-
tion to the Roman Empire around this time.
 The Sasanians 
took an early and ag-
gressive stance to Rome’s 
expansionary activities in Mesopotamia. In 
AD 230, they attacked Roman Mesopota-
mia, and by the end of the decade they had 
captured large swathes of the province. At 
around the same time, the Sasanian Shahan-
Rise of the Sasanians
In the second century AD, the Parthian Em-
pire faced challenges like it never had in 
its more than 300-year history. Three dev-
astating Roman invasions left the empire 
reeling and the Arsacid dynasty that ruled 
it faced some serious internal problems. 
This was, in part, caused by the Roman inva-
sions but also contributed to the limitations 
of the Parthians in dealing with them. 
In AD 205/6, Papak, who descended from 
a semi-mythical figure named Sasan, overthrew 
the King of Persis in southern Iran. He then 
rebelled against the Arsacid Parthian king Vo-
logases V. Papak’s son, Ardashir, expanded this 
revolt into neighbouring kingdoms and suc-
ceeded his father as King of Persis in AD 208. 
Ardashir’s succession marked the beginning 
of the Sasanian Persian dynasty, which would 
eventually overthrow the last Parthian King of 
Kings, Artabanus V in AD 224. The Sasanian 
overthrow of the Arsacid Parthian dynasty was 
assisted by a decade-long civil war, beginning 
in AD 213, between Artabanus V and his broth-
er, Vologases VI, who had succeeded his father 
as King of Kings on his death in AD 208. 
As the first King of Kings of the Sasanian 
Persian Empire, Ardashir attempted consider-
able territorial expansion. One of his main aims 
was the removal of the Romans from northern 
Mesopotamia and Armenia. He achieved par-
tial success in this endeavour by the time of his 
death in AD 241/2.
e’s 
in Mesopotamia. In
Roman Mesopota-
w
t
R
In
p
a
re
it
This
sion
of th
An aerial view of the remains of Hatra's 
sacred centre, referred to as the Enclo-
sure of Shamash on a Hatrene coin. In 
antiquity, Hatra's walls were formidable, 
keeping armies of both the Roman Empire 
and the Sasanians at bay. When the walls 
were finally breached in the third century 
AD, the city was soon abandoned.
© Livius.org
A Sasanian dish, dated to the late third 
century AD, decorated with images of a 
goddess riding a predator in the centre 
and warriors and animals. The dish 
incorporates Iranian, Roman, and Middle 
Eastern artistic motifs.
© The State Hermitage Museum
© 
x
© 
x
Ancient History 56 17
shah (King of Kings), Ardashir I, placed Hatra 
under siege. Cassius Dio claimed that Arda-
shir wished to use Hatra as a forward base 
from which to attack the Romans (80.3). Ar-
dashir also desired to punish the Hatrenes for 
attempting to expand their power while he 
was away fighting on the Central Asian fron-
tier, as well as their defection to Rome. Like 
the three Roman sieges of the city in the sec-
ond century, however, this one also failed. It 
is possible Roman troops were present during 
Ardashir’s siege as, by AD 235, Latin inscrip-
tions at Hatra show that a Roman auxiliary 
unit (Cohors IX Maurorum) was based at the 
city, and it may have arrived earlier. 
 In AD 240 the Sasanians put Hatra 
under siege again. This siege, for which 
archaeological evidence still exists, lasted 
two years and was prosecuted by Ardashir’s 
son and later successor Shapur I. Tabari at-
tributed the capture of the city to a highly 
romanticized legend that Shapur seduced 
a Hatrene princess during the siege named 
Nadira. Shapur was able to gain entry to 
Hatra via this love interest and capture the 
city (Annals I.829–30). The story is not ac-
cepted as historical but adds to the mys-
tique of Hatra and its extensive ruins.
 Despite Dio’s claim that the Sasanians 
wished to use Hatra as a staging area for west-
ward campaigns,the Sasanians did not retain 
Hatra after capturing it in AD 240 and the city 
was not reoccupied. A similar outcome is ob-
servable at Dura Europos on the Euphrates af-
ter it was captured by the Sasanians from the 
Romans in the mid-250s. When the emperor 
Julian’s army was in retreat from Persia in AD 
363, they encountered Hatra, which was long 
deserted according to the eyewitness, Ammi-
anus Marcellinus (25.8.5). 
 Tabari quoted from a poem that was 
later written about the fall of Hatra:
“And where is now the ruler of 
Hatra, who once built it and 
for whom the taxation of the 
Tigris and the Khabur 
was collected? He 
raised it up firmly with 
marble and covered it over 
with plaster, yet the birds 
have found nesting places in 
its pinnacles” (Annals I.830)
Hatra was a city that captured the imagina-
tion of ancient writers in both the Roman 
and Persian/Arabic traditions. Its legendary 
status was fed by the perceived isolation of 
its location in northern Mesopotamia and its 
formidable defences that repulsed the most 
powerful armies of the time on four occa-
sions. The wealth of the city and its kings also 
formed part of this legend and the remains 
of the city to this day bear testimony to the 
extraordinary endeavours of its people. AH
Peter Edwell is Associate Professor of Histo-
ry and Archaeology, Macquarie University, 
Sydney. He has published extensively on the 
Roman eastern provinces in Late Antiquity 
and Rome’s relationship with the Sasanian 
Persian Empire. 
of Hatra:
e ruler of 
it and 
of the 
r 
e 
th 
it over 
birds 
aces in 
.830)
Hatra 
Arda-
Hatra was a city th
tion of ancient wr
c traditions. Its legendary 
l tion of
hat captured the imagina-
riters in both the Roman 
(Top) A decorated archway from Hatra, 
carved with a row of dromedaries. Hatra's 
location between the Roman Empire and 
the Parthian and Sasanian Empires — 
much like Palmyra to the south — likely 
meant the city was a major trade hub, 
facilitating east-west movement of goods.
© Livius.org
(Bottom) A relief known as the Ardashir 
Relief, depicting armoured cavalrymen 
in combat, representing the Sasanian 
king Ardashir's victory over the Parthian 
king Artabanus V. Having defeated the 
Parthians, Ardashir put Hatra, which had 
turned to Rome, under siege.
© Hadi Karimi / Wikimedia Commons
© 
x
© 
x
Ancient History 56181818
ROME'S ENSLAVED LABOUR
TALKING TOOLS?
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By Miriam J. Groen-Vallinga
A funerary bust, dated to AD 100–115, of a young boy named Martial who 
was born a slave, dedicated by his master. Enslaved people were an integral 
part of ancient Roman society, and served in a variety of roles.
© The J. Paul Getty Museum
A fresco from the praedia of Julia Felix in Pompeii. Dated to the mid- to late-first century AD, it depicts the sale of a slave girl at the market.
It is easy to overlook the fact that much, perhaps even most, 
of the art- and craftwork we appreciate today as the essence 
of Roman society was the result of the great effort and skill 
of enslaved labourers. Who were these individuals, and what 
was their contribution to the Roman economy? What ancient 
evidence is there to find out more about the work and la-
bour of these marginalized, but far from marginal, persons?
E
nslaved persons throughout history have been identi-
fied as property, deemed commodities in themselves 
— Varro famously refers to slaves as “talking tools” 
(On Rural Matters 1.17.1) — and considered socially 
dead, having no family or legal persona of their own. 
The Roman Empire was no exception. Rome, however, was also 
characterized by the remarkable extent to which freed per-
sons were accepted into society. Freedmen’s proverbial 
wealth became a source of anxiety to the elite, their 
ostentatious self-aggrandizement the target of ridicule. 
This wealth must have originated from the skills gained 
and the work performed in enslavement, 
which has led some scholars to argue that 
slavery in Rome was not that bad, and that 
it could have served merely as a stepping 
stone to a better life. If this were the case 
for some, it was certainly not the norm. Slav-
ery came in many forms and most enslaved 
persons never tasted freedom. Their experi-
ences and quality of life depended largely on 
slaveholders’ practices, and on the work and 
labour that had to be performed.
Slaveholding and slaveholders
Just how many persons had to endure slav-
ery under Roman rule? Unfortunately, the 
only numbers historical demographers have 
to go on are incidental and often unreliable 
attestations in literary sources. Even though 
the Romans kept a census on a regular basis, 
fragmentary documentation for this remains 
solely for the province of Egypt. As such, es-
timates on the numbers and percentages of 
the population that were enslaved vary. Yet 
there is something close to consensus that, 
in absolute numbers, there were more en-
slaved persons in the countryside than in the 
city; the percentage population that was en-
a
nt,
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slaved, however, was higher in cities than in 
the countryside, higher in Roman Italy than 
in the provinces, and it was without doubt 
highest of all in the capital — as many as 
40 per cent of the population of the city of 
Rome. Overall, the free population was sig-
nificantly larger than the enslaved popula-
tion, although the free population consisted 
of both freeborn and freed persons, who had 
also experienced slavery. In other words, 
slavery had an enormous impact on the de-
mographic make-up of the Roman Empire. 
 Slaveholding was prevalent across Ro-
man society. The practice is, as with so many 
things, particularly well-attested for the elite. 
The consul of AD 43, Lucius Pedanius Se-
cundus, allegedly owned 400 slaves 
(Tacitus, Annals 14.42–45); 
Augustus’ Lex Fufia Caninia 
of 2 BC, limiting testamen-
tary manumission, includes 
stipulations for households with 
100–500 or more slaves. Although 
these numbers should be seen as 
the exception to the norm, they may 
illustrate the 
wider phenom-
enon that elite 
households were 
expected to own 
a considerable 
number of enslaved persons. Even more mod-
est non-elite households, however, would 
Slavery existed in antiquity long before the 
Roman Empire arose. The enslaved popula-
tion of Rome increased in pace with the ex-
pansion of Roman territory from the Second 
Punic War onwards. As a result of large-scale 
conquest in the third and second centuries 
BC, the main source of slaves were prison-
ers of war. By the time of the Late Republic, 
however, slavery had stabilized into a system 
in which at least as many people were born 
into slavery as were introduced on the slave 
market through conflict and the independent 
slave trade. A steady influx of newcomers 
on the slave market remained in existence 
throughout the Imperial period. There are in-
dications of continuous trade routes for hu-
man trafficking with the Black Sea regions, 
for example, but slaves were procured from 
have owned one or two slaves at some point 
during the family life cycle, which underlines 
that there was also a more practical, econom-
ic side to slavery. In literary evidence dating 
as early as Plautus’ comedies (second cen-
tury BC) to at least the figure of Photis in Ap-
uleius’ Metamorphoses (second century AD), 
these household servants are a recurrent stock 
character. Their presence in smaller homes is 
confirmed by epigraphic evidence, and the 
census documents from Roman Egypt also 
regularly list enslaved household members. 
Formerly enslaved personsvery often became 
slaveholders, and even enslaved persons 
could own slaves, who are known as vicarii 
or sub-slaves. Slaveholding was, therefore, 
the norm, not the exception.
Slavery and the Roman economy
The Roman Empire and its economy would 
have looked very different without slavery. 
This certainly holds true for the Roman labour 
market. It has been argued that slavery and the 
widespread availability of commodified la-
bour it entails precludes or inhibits economic 
growth. In Roman society, labour power was 
the most significant production factor and that 
innovation, profit, and growth as a result were 
very often attained chiefly through investing in 
human capital. However, most of the available 
workers were free, and not enslaved. 
Evidence for the working population is 
very diverse. Literary evidence underlines 
The slave supply
all parts of the empire and beyond. 
Anyone could become a slave. Persons 
were robbed of their freedom through con-
flict, piracy, or brigandage. Pirates knew 
where to locate Roman traders, who would 
in turn transfer their human cargo to slave 
dealers (mangones). If we are to believe Sue-
tonius, Julius Caesar himself was captured 
by pirates and only a handsome ransom of 
50 talents kept him out of bondage (Caesar 
4.1–2). Others were exposed as infants to 
be raised in slavery or sold at a later age by 
indigent parents. Enslaved persons were put 
up on the auction block in the very heart of 
the city. Seneca the Younger indicates that, in 
first-century-AD Rome, they were found on 
the Forum near the temple of Castor (On the 
Firmness of the Wise Person 2.13.4).
d.
pulation is 
underlines 
d. 
ave. Persons 
hrough con-
rates knew 
who would
rgo to slave 
believe Sue-
was captured 
e ransom of 
dage (Caesar 
as infants to 
later age by 
ons were put 
very heart of 
cates that, in 
ere found on 
astor (On the 
3.4).
The c
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nt 
es 
m-
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n-
p-
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ck 
is 
he 
so
rs. 
me 
ns 
ii
A stele with a relief depicting a slave driver 
armed with a club and holding a chain 
connected to the necks of two slaves. War 
was a major source of slaves in the Roman 
world, but as the borders of the empire 
stabilized, opportunities to seize captives 
lessened. Consequently, slaves born into 
slavery became more common.
© Livius.org
A part of a Roman thymiaterion 
('incense burner') in the shape 
of a comic actor dressed as the 
character of the Leading Slave, dated to to 
the first half of the first century AD. Slaves 
were stock characters in Roman drama from 
as early as the second century BC.
© The J. Paul Getty Museum
© 
x
© 
x
Ancient History 5620
an elite perspective and is only 
helpful to investigate enslaved 
labour to some extent. For in-
stance, if we are to believe 
Cicero, wage workers were all 
‘enslaved’: “their very wages 
are the warrant of their slavery” 
(On Duties 1.150). This view 
can hardly have been that of the 
majority. Almost everything that 
survives from Roman antiquity 
– every aqueduct, every house,
every brick, tool, loaf of bread,
vegetable, or chicken – was in
some way made, produced,
processed, grown, or bred by
man. These things, unfortunately,
were not always signed by the persons who 
made them, although this happened perhaps 
more often than we would expect – the petri-
fied bread from Pompeii and Herculaneum 
was stamped by the baker. 
Funerary epigraphy generally provides 
more details, as tombstones sometimes re-
cord the occupation as well as the identity 
of the deceased or the dedicator. Thus, the 
freedman Quintus Lucretius Chrestus, a bail-
iff (viator quaestor ab aerario), had a marble 
funerary plaque made for his patron Gemel-
lus of the same occupation (CIL 6.1929, first 
century AD, Rome). Chrestus presumably 
worked together with his patron, who was, in-
cidentally, also a freedman. It has often been 
noted that freedpersons are overrepresented 
in inscriptions. They are even more overrep-
resented in so-called occupational inscrip-
tions. In examples like this, in lieu of the fam-
ily ties that enslaved persons did not legally 
have, it seems they opted to commemorate 
colleagues, the work that they identified with, 
or the job that had provided them with the 
funds to become independent. As it is quite 
likely that Chrestus learned the trade while 
he was enslaved, occupational inscriptions 
for freedpersons also tell us something about 
enslaved labour. Such inscriptions also exist 
for enslaved persons, however, and they are 
attested for men, women, and children. One, 
for example, tells us 
that nine-year old Vic-
centia was a gold spin-
ner (CIL 6.9213). 
a
h
l
s
C
‘
a
(
c
m
s
–
e
v
s
p
m
were not alw
made them, a
more often th
fied bread fro
was stamped
p
s, however, and they are 
men, and children. One, 
us
c-
in-
Replica of a relief from an altar-
ossuary, dated to the second century 
AD, depicting two knife-makers — Lucius 
Cornelius Atimetus and his freedman 
Epaphra — at work. Slaves could be 
bought and trained by tradesmen, before 
being freed and using their skills to 
generate personal wealth.
© Livius.org
Detail from the Great Hunt Mosaic in a 
Roman villa at Piazza Armerina, Sicily, 
dated to the early fourth century AD. It 
depicts a man beating a slave with a rod. 
Mistreatment of slaves was considered a 
valid reason for a slave to run away and 
take refuge at a statue of the emperor.
© Gorup de Besanez
© 
x
© 
x
 Though freed and en-
slaved persons predominate in 
the epigraphic evidence, most of the indi-
vidual occupations are attested for freeborn, 
freed, and enslaved individuals alike, suggest-
ing that in Roman society persons of differing 
legal status were working side by side in the 
same jobs. Having said that, the inscriptions 
all originate from an urban context. Since 
it is costly to put up even a modest inscrip-
tion in stone, the occupational designations 
likely obscure menial labour and the type 
of working conditions where enslaved 
labour is generally expected to have out-
numbered free labour, such as on the 
large villa-estates of the elites, and in 
(imperial) mines and quarries.
Rural and urban slavery
There were enormous differ-
ences in the demographic 
make-up of the population 
between urban settlements 
and the more rural areas of 
the empire. Perhaps 60 per 
cent of the enslaved popula-
Ancient History 56 21
tion lived in rural areas. Even between prov-
inces, however, the percentage of enslaved 
persons could differ. The higher estimate for 
enslaved labourers in particular areas should 
be related to the presence of the large-scale 
agricultural estates that were so prevalent in 
Italy, or the gold mines in Spain and Dacia. 
 The mines and quarries of the empire 
called for the collaboration of many people. 
Highly skilled construction engineers and site 
overseers were needed on a mining site. A 
great many more manual labourers were in-
volved in the actual work of carving out mine 
shafts in the mountains. The resulting narrow 
shafts are sometimes thought to have neces-
sitated child labour for winning the stone. 
Considering the unhealthy circumstances as 
well as the physical strength needed to ex-
tract the rock, however, it is likely that adults 
rather than children would have made up the 
There were ways in which enslaved persons 
could take their lives into their own hands. 
This might mean working hard and cooperat-
ing with the slaveholder’s wishes, in the hope 
of attaining better living circumstances or 
even their freedom. Alternatively, there were 
those who would actively or furtively coun-
teract the interests of slaveholders by slack-
ing, messing up their chores, or by hiding. 
Runaways, too, are well attested, through 
collars inscribed with a version of the text 
“Catch me because I flee” — in Late Antiqui-
ty, branding and tattoos seem to have served 
the purpose of indicating a former runaway. 
Enslaved persons do not appear to have 
been running from slavery

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