Roman Slavery and Emotional Labor

Roman slavery was characterized by pervasive exploitation. Sarah Levin-Richardson here takes the innovative step of examining how emotions and affect functioned in this realm. Taking wetnurses, pedagogues, children, sex laborers, and mourners in turn, Levin-Richardson shows how the skills of enslaved individuals—including managing their own affective states, performing the affect required for a situation (such as grief), and inspiring the desired feelings in others—were resources that could be manipulated for slaveowners’ emotional regulation, social capital, personal pleasure, and monetary benefit. This labor catered to the emotional needs of free people from birth through death while providing enslaved individuals a means to protect family and friends, as well as a potential pathway to upward mobility or freedom. A significant contribution to ancient histories of enslavement, Roman Slavery and Emotional Labor illuminates the pervasive emotional labor performed by enslaved individuals, the reliance of enslavers on this labor, and the opportunities for enslaved people to leverage this labor even in the most extreme conditions.