It is generally assumed that manumission was not difficult for an intelligent, energetic and thrifty slave in the early Empire. Apart from other evidence, the legislation of Augustus to regulate manumission – the lex Iunia, the lex Fufia Caninia and the lex Aelia Sentia – points to the prevailing ease of manumission and did little to restrict any reasonably justifiable manumission. For the Familia Caesaris the question really is what is the average expectation of slavery for the various groups of slaves, and whether this varied according to occupation, area or period in the early Empire.

According to the lex Aelia Sentia of ad 4, the minimum age for formal manumission was 30 years for the slave, while the manumittor had to be 20 or older. Slaves under 30 did not acquire full citizenship on manumission but became Latini Iuniani unless, after due cause having been shown (‘causae probatio’), approval was given by a special consilium followed by manumission ‘vindicta’ or formal manumission.

As to what constituted a ‘iusta causa manumissionis’ for slaves under 30, Gaius (i. 19; cf. 31) includes in the list blood relationship (‘si quis filium filiamve aut fratrem sororemve naturalem…apud consilium manumittat’), foster relationship (‘…aut alumnum aut paedagogum’), future services (‘aut servum procuratoris habendi gratia’) – provided the slave was over 18 years – and intended marriage (‘aut ancillam matrimonii causa’); to which Marcianus adds past services (‘si periculo vitae infamiaeve dominum servus liberavit’).

We must now consider perhaps the best-known of all Imperial freedman positions, the senior administrative grades in Rome, the headships of the great Palatine bureaux a rationibus, ab epistulis, a libellis, a studiis, a cognitionibus, a codicillis, a memoria and a diplomatibus. The roll-call of slave and freedman dignitaries with the first two of these titles in the inscriptions is a surprisingly long one. There are eighteen, possibly twenty, a rationibus, not counting M. Antonius Pallas and the father of Claudius Etruscus, all but three of whom are from the period before Hadrian. There are no fewer than seventeen ab epistulis, all probably before Hadrian, not counting a further four ab epistulis Latinis and two ab epistulis Graecis. It is obvious from the instances of slaves with these titles that a rationibus, ab epistulis, etc. cannot refer exclusively to the head of a department. The problem is how to distinguish between, e.g., an a rationibus and the a rationibus.

The lists given in Friedländer, as revised by Hirschfeld and later by Bang, are accompanied by no explicit formulation of the principles for distinguishing between the ‘oberste Dirigenten’ and the ‘Unterbeamten’. It is clear from their age and status that the slaves cannot be senior: Libanus Caesaris vern. ab epistulis (died aged 16), Victor Caes. vern. a cognit(ionibus) (d. 18), Abascantus Aug. a rat(ionibus) Attic(ianus), Apolaustus Caesaris a rationibus, Ianuarius Caesaris Aug. ab epistulis, Aphnius Caesaris Aug. ab epistulis.

The senior administrative career of the Imperial freedmen has a second and perhaps more important aspect, that of the freedman procurators. They are much more numerous, less notorious, but longer lasting than their Palatine counterparts. Their numbers and responsibilities increase rather than decrease with the expansion of the bureaucracy in the second century, although they fill the same roles as the Palatine heads, both as sole heads of departments and also as auxiliary heads in conjunction with a superior colleague of equestrian rank. The freedman procurators are found not only in the administration of the emperor's estates, villas and other property in Italy and elsewhere throughout the empire, but also in the smaller departments in Rome as well as in all the main administrative centres in the provinces. The number of senior posts in the Palatine bureaux was relatively few and their holders were somewhat exceptional. The procuratorial posts on the other hand, whether carrying the responsibilities of sole or auxiliary head of a department, or whether exercised in a minor Imperial villa or a major province, make up the normal senior freedman career. The range of these freedman posts and the extent to which they were formally organised into a system of grades on the model of the equestrian procuratorships must now be considered.

‘Procurator’ in the late Republic was a term of private law meaning a personal agent or manager of another's affairs and under the Empire it continued to be used in this sense. For private citizens such procurators were usually their freedmen.

The next question is to determine, if possible, the status of wives in the Familia Caesaris. What proportion at the time of marriage were freeborn (ingenuae) and how many of servile origin (servae or libertae)} And of the latter, how many were slaves from within the Imperial Familia, and how many belonged to masters other than the emperor and his relatives? These are matters of the greatest importance for the social history of the Familia, and must be studied in at least three dimensions: (1) Chronologically: did the pattern change from the early first to the early third century, and if so why? (2) Geographically: does the pattern vary significantly between the central departments and services in Rome (including Ostia) and Italy, Africa and the other provinces? (3) Seniority: do we find senior freedmen, such as procurators, and slave–freedman officials in favoured careers, favoured also in their family life by marrying more successfully and being more socially mobile than others? The status of the children from these marriages will be considered in the following chapter.

The problem is complicated: only 13% of wives of Caesaris servi give a status indication of any kind, and for wives of Augusti liberti the figure is only 11%. The overall status picture for wives is given in Tables I and III, where the figures are expressed as percentages of all examples of the group in question. Absolute figures are given in parentheses.

The terms used to refer to children and to express parental relationships are the same for children of all classes and status. It makes no difference whether they or their parents are slave, freed, or fteeborn; filius, filia, pater, mater, parens, etc., and their Greek equivalents, are basic. More rarely used are: liberi, infans, delicium, mama, or even a periphrasis, e.g. ‘duo incrementa’ (VI 8984). The one point of nomenclature with any chronological significance is the form of abbreviation for ‘films’ which shows a development from ‘f(ilius)’ to ‘fil(ius)’ similar to that for ‘libertus’ from ‘l(ibertus)’ to ‘lib(ertus)’. As with the status of wives, it is best to approach the naming and status of children in two sections according to the status of the father.

CHILDREN OF CAESARIS SERVI

It is convenient to begin with the children of the Imperial slaves because in these cases the status of the father at the time of the birth of the children is positively known. All these unions are strictly contubernium and hence the status of the children should in all normal cases be determined by that of the mother at the time of birth of the child, in accordance with the principle of the ius gentium. Using the same groups of Imperial slave fathers as we used in the previous discussion for slave husbands (i.e. Rome, Italy and the provinces), we may proceed within these groups on the basis of the mother's status.

The legal implications of a marriage pattern for Imperial slaves and freedmen where at least two-thirds of the wives were freeborn (ingenuae) must now be examined. There are two main questions; first, the legal status of the wives of Imperial slaves and freedmen who were ingenuae; and second, the status of the children who were the issue of such unions.

The general principle of the law regarding the status of children born to parents without conubium is clear – the status of the child follows that of the mother in accordance with the ius gentium (Gaius, i. 80: ‘semper conubium efficit ut qui nascitur patris condicioni accedat; aliter vero contracto matrimonio eum qui nascitur iure gentium matris condicionem sequi’. Cf. ib. 82; Ulpian, Reg. v. 9). But according to Gaius (i. 84) the rule of the ius gentium was modified by the SC Claudianum of ad 52, whereby, inter alia, the child of an ingenua could be a servus. This would seem to account for the status of the wives in the Familia Caesaris who were ingenuae and the group of children discussed above, who were Caesaris servi or Augusti liberti. Hadrian, however, according to Gaius (loc. cit.) restored the rule of the ius gentium. As most of the children with whose status we are concerned are dated to the period after Hadrian, we must therefore look elsewhere for an explanation.

The SC Claudianum itself requires closer examination. The two main sources are Gaius, i. 84, and Tacitus, Ann. xii. 53.1.

The intermediate grades in the mixed slave–freedman clerical sequence are the freedman posts of tabularius and a commentariis. From within these grades there arose a range of higher posts, such as proximus tabulariorum and proximus commentariorum, which must also be considered.

The tabularius was the basic clerical post in a departmental office or tabularium. His functions were essentially those of accountant, involving the recording of payments made and those due, balancing the accounts of the department and communicating the results to the central bureau in Rome, whether the a rationibus itself or the ratio patrimonii. Much would depend on the sphere of operations of the particular department outside Rome, i.e. whether it was concerned with the revenue from a particular tax, overseeing the operations of conductores or direct supervision of patrimonial interests in a particular province or region. In the larger bureaux there must have been several officials assigned to these duties; hence further refinements in these clerical grades would have developed. Other duties were also involved, especially the drafting of documents, including receipts. A good example is in VI 10233 (dated 211) where Martialis Augg. lib. prox(imus) tab(ulariorum) records having received from P. Aelius Chrestus the proceeds of the sale of Imperial property negotiated by the equestrian procurator Agathonicus on behalf of the fiscus. The actual physical control of funds is the function of the dispensator, who sometimes is aided by an arcarius.

From the point of view of legal status or legal capacity the most notable differentiation within the slave section of society is between the slave who forms part of another slave's peculium, i.e. is his de facto property, the servus vicarius, and other slaves. Slave-owned slaves were fairly numerous in Roman society. Such wide differences of wealth and position existed among different kinds of slaves that inevitably the wealthier and more important slaves, with their master's consent, acquired slaves of their own whether for their personal use or to aid them as deputies in their master's service.

The Roman terminology for the slaves of slaves is not without significance. ‘Servus servi’, on the Greek model of δοῦλος δούλου, is very rare in the literary, legal and epigraphical sources, as is ‘servus peculiaris’. The usual term is ‘(servus) vicarius’ which is derived, as is much of the domestic terminology of Roman slavery, from military usage and organisation. It originally meant ‘substitute’ or ‘replacement’ (vices agens). The owner-slave is called ‘ordinarius’, regularly in the legal texts but only occasionally elsewhere. In the inscriptions his status is usually obvious from the nomenclature of the vicarius and needs no special definition; e.g. VI 64 = D 3502: Venustus Philoxeni Ti. Claudi Caesaris servi dispensatoris vicarius. The slave vicarius could be:

1. (i) a replacement, deputy or auxiliary of a slave official;

2. (ii) a personal slave of another slave irrespective of function or skill.

In Cyprus, as in other regions, the course of the Bronze Age has been divided into three main stages, Early, Middle and Late. Each stage is further subdivided into three phases, I, II and III, which, in their turn may be split into subperiods, A, B, and C. By analogy with Early, Middle and Late Helladic, Minoan and Cycladic in Greece, Crete and the Islands respectively, the terms Early, Middle and Late Cypriot (abbreviated to E.C., M.C. and L.C.) are used.

THE IDENTITY OF THE EARLIEST BRONZE AGE SETTLERS

The beginning of the Early Cypriot period synchronizes fairly closely with the disastrous end of the E.B. 2 period in Anatolia, c. 2300 b.c.; it may, indeed, prove to have been a direct outcome of this major Anatolian catastrophe. Its duration seems to have been between four and five hundred years; the transition to the Middle Cypriot stage is an ill-defined process, but may with some probability be placed in the century between 1900 and 1800 b.c., in view of synchronisms with Crete demonstrated by Minoan vases and weapons found as imports in north Cyprus.

The account that can be given of the Early Cypriot period is very imperfect, depending almost wholly as it does upon the evidence of cemeteries and their contents. Only at the very end of the period is it possible to draw on evidence provided by settlements.

THE EARLY MONARCHY AND THE UNIFICATION OF EGYPT

Tradition and a substantial body of indirect evidence suggest strongly that Egypt, in the period immediately preceding the foundation of the First Dynasty, was divided into two independent kingdoms: a northern kingdom, which included the Nile Delta and extended southwards perhaps to the neighbourhood of the modern village of Atfīh (Lower Egypt) and a southern kingdom comprising the territory between Atfīh and Gebel es-Silsila (Upper Egypt). The residences of the kings are believed to have been situated at Pe, in the north-west Delta, and at Nekhen (Hierakonpolis), on the west bank of the river near Edfu, both of which, in historical times at least, possessed important sanctuaries of the falcon-god Horus, the patron deity of the rulers. In the vicinity of Pe lay Dep, the seat of a cobra-goddess Uadjit (Edjo); the two places were together known in the New Kingdom and later under one name Per-Uadjit (House of Edjo), rendered as Buto by the Greeks. Across the river from Nekhen stood Nekheb (El-Kāb), where a vulture-goddess Nekhbet had her sanctuary. Both goddesses came to be regarded at a very early date, perhaps while the separate kingdoms were in being, as royal protectresses.

Even such information about this period as was recorded in the king-lists is largely lost and what remains is difficult to interpret. The first line of the fragmentary Palermo Stone consists of a series of compartments, seven only being entirely preserved, each of which contains a name and a figure of a king wearing the crown of Lower Egypt, but no historical events are mentioned.

HISTORY

The oldest contact of Anatolia with the Akkadian-speaking peoples appears to go back to the time of the Dynasty of Agade. A legendary account, the so-called epic King of the Battle, relates that a group of merchants from the Anatolian city of Purushkhanda sent a delegation to the king Sargon of Agade, urging him to undertake a campaign to their city and vividly describing the wealth of their country. Sargon is reported in the legend to have, after some hesitation, acceded to the merchants' request leading his troops to Purushkhanda.

Another historiographical text, the Legend of Naram-Sin, implies that the city of Purushkhanda belonged to the realm of Sargon's grandson. Here it is related that a strange host, descending from the city of Shubat-Enlil in the country of Subartu, i.e. from northern Mesopotamia, invaded Naram-Sin's kingdom, first attacking Purushkhanda and then, turning east and finally south, advanced toward the heartland of the Akkadian Empire. It is significant that Hittite versions of both of these tales have come to light at Boĝazköy and that Sargon's exploits in Asia Minor are alluded to by the Hittite king Khattushilish I (c. 1650 b.c.) in an historical inscription; for this tends to show that the later population of Anatolia considered the Old Akkadian period the beginning of their country's recorded history. It is further worth noting that in the King of the Battle one of the principal actors bore the name of Nur-daggal, which stands for Nur-Dagan. Since, in the belief of the Akkadians, the lands dominated by the god Dagan lay west and north-west of the city of Tuttul (near the mouth of the river Balīkh) the name Nur-Dagan perhaps implies that the merchants of Purushkhanda were not Akkadians but western Semites who were anxious to enter into commercial relations with Akkad.

SYRIA AND PALESTINE IN THE HERACLEOPOLITAN PERIOD AND THE ELEVENTH DYNASTY

With the end of the Old Kingdom (c. 2181 B.C.), Egypt entered upon a period of decadence, the First Intermediate Period, comprising the Seventh to the Tenth Dynasties and lasting about 140 years. Egyptian activity in Asia, which until then had been considerable, suffered from the effects of the instability prevailing in the Nile Valley. Describing the beginning of the troubled period in his ‘Admonitions’, Ipuwer says sadly that his compatriots are no longer going to Byblos to obtain the conifer wood and resin needed for mummies. It was to be a long time before economic and diplomatic relations were to become active again. Archaeological evidence of Egyptian influence in Syrian ports between the Sixth and Twelfth Dynasties is scarce and of doubtful value. At Byblos, and in Syria and Palestine as a whole, no Egyptian king is mentioned in the hieroglyphic inscriptions between Phiops II and Sesostris I. A similar absence of royal names can also be observed (from Phiops II to Mentuhotpe II) in the mines of Sinai. This silence shows how slight and irregular connexions must have been at that time.

Internal weakness, after the end of the Old Kingdom, left the Egyptian frontiers without adequate protection. The Asiatics took advantage of this state of affairs to make their way in force into the Eastern Delta and to wander through its pastures with their flocks. Some of these invaders settled there, while others conducted raids on the territory or used it for the seasonal movements of flocks, all of which added to the prevailing condition of anarchy in the country and contributed to its ruin.

DEFINITION OF THE INQUIRY

The Bronze Age in lands bordering the Aegean Sea was a period of roughly two millennia that followed the age of Neolithic cultures. The name is not perfectly accurate; men did begin to use metals more or less systematically in this time, but chief among them at the outset was natural copper, not yet deliberately alloyed with tin. None the less the phrase has useful connotations, reflecting the Greek memory of an older γενος μεροπων ανθρωπων χαλκειον, and it is firmly established. The terms Chalcolithic and Copper Age, logical and correct in themselves, are now best reserved for Anatolia and other areas where their meanings have won acceptance.

As a source of confusion the name of the metal is of minor consequence. More perplexing are the formidable quantities of material remains that have been gathered in three generations of archaeological research, for they beckon the student of this area to conclusions more positive than are in fact justified. Since written records are lacking in Greece during the early period with which we are here concerned, one must rely upon stratification and comparison of objects at the known sites in order to establish a relative chronology. An approach to absolute dates may be made through proven relationships with Egypt and Mesopotamia, but these are few in number and less exact than one is often led to suppose. New and promising methods of dating, including particularly the process of radiocarbon (C–14) analysis, are still in experimental stages and the results they yield must be regarded objectively.

THE BACKGROUND

It is necessary at the beginning of this chapter to define what we mean by the geographical term ‘Syria’, which includes in a single area regions which were seldom in ancient times united under one rule, and were already inhabited, it seems, during the third millennium b.c. by peoples of greatly differing ways of life, of different racial affinities and separate tongues. Yet in spite of the diversity of its peoples through the ages and the varied climatic zones into which it can be divided, the region known today as Syria and the Lebanon may be said to form a geographical entity with natural boundaries. On the north and north-west it is hedged about by the Amanus and Antitaurus mountains of Anatolia and by the Upper Euphrates bend; on the west it is bounded by the Mediterranean, and on the east by the Syrian desert, the northward extension of the great Nefūd, the arid desert of Arabia. To the south it merges with Palestine, and the natural boundary of both is the Wilderness of Sin, the desert stretch which separates Egypt from Palestine, Africa from Asia. We shall see that there were close cultural links between Syria and Palestine, though the archaeology of the latter is somewhat apart and has been treated for this period in an earlier chapter.

In the simplest analysis, the land of Syria falls into three distinct zones: the coastal fringe, later called Phoenicia, with its temperate climate, fertile soil and heavy winter rains; the steppeland, separated from the coast by a high, double mountain chain which cleaves it from north to south, and experiencing a wide seasonal variation of temperature and consequently a specialized vegetation to which the name Irano-Turanian has been given.

CLASSIFICATION OF THE MATERIAL

Although the first scientific excavations in Palestine had yielded traces of the Early Bronze Age, its chronological limits remained vague and its internal development was completely obscure. A much more exact knowledge has been acquired since 1930 by the excavation of several large well-stratified sites and by the application of the comparative method to better classified material, particularly pottery.

In 1932 seven archaic stages were distinguished on the slopes of the tell at Megiddo, the most recent of which, stages I–IV, belonged to the Early Bronze Age. On the tell itself levels XVIII–XVI, which were explored in 1937–8, represent almost the same period, but the stratigraphy is confused. The only two tombs of the Early Bronze Age which were found belong to the very beginning of this period.

In 1933, at Beth-shan, a wide sondage was made down to virgin soil which revealed, above the Chalcolithic levels, several levels (XV-XI) of the Early Bronze Age.

Excavations at Jericho reached Early Bronze Age deposits (tombs A and 24) in the seasons 1930—2 and more especially in 1935—6 when work was concentrated on the deepest sections of the tell: above the Neolithic and Chalcolithic were found five levels, III—VII (with tomb 351) belonging to the Early Bronze Age.