The Elephant in the Study: Working Latin Literature for the Enslaved

Roman histories, speeches, and plays are conventionally regarded as the works of individual elite male authors such as Cicero, Virgil, and Livy. But in the slave society of ancient Rome, enslaved secretaries were widely used in all phases of producing literature: reading, researching, composing, revising, copying, distributing, performing, critiquing. The great individual authors of Roman literature conceal beneath their single names a production team of enslaved labour.

This project aims to transform our understanding of Roman literature by exploring the implications of this collaboration with enslaved workers, generating new insights into the creative processes that shaped the Classical literary canon. What difference does this collaboration make for the form and content of Roman literature? How do these production processes account for the distinctive features of this influential body of texts, features both familiar and unfamiliar? This project will seek to find a new approach for understanding how authors work and give attention to the unsung role of the enslaved in the history of literary culture.

Funding, collaborations, outcomes

This project is funded by an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship. It will involve collaboration with several institutions in the UK, US and Europe, including Columbia University, Harvard University, King’s College London, the University of Birmingham, and the University of St Andrews. Project outcomes will include academic books (single-authored and collaborative) and articles, online op-eds, and an exhibition based at the ANU Classics Museum. These interventions will lead to better-informed public debate on the history of slavery.

Contact

Enquiries, including from prospective PhD or Honours students, are welcome. Please contact Dr Tom Geue: tom.geue@anu.edu.au

More information

For a recent example of exciting work coming out in this field, see Candida Moss’s accessible and compelling book on enslaved labour in the production of the bible: God’s Ghostwriters: Enslaved Christians and the Making of the Bible (William Collins, 2024).