Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Acknowledgments
- PART I THE ECONOMY OF SLAVERY
- PART II THE MAKING OF HONORABLE SOCIETY
- Introduction
- 5 Semper timere: the aims and techniques of domination
- 6 Self, family, and community among slaves
- 7 Sex, status, and social reproduction
- 8 Mastery and the making of honor
- PART III THE IMPERIAL ORDER
- CONCLUSION
- APPENDIXES
- Bibliography
- Index
8 - Mastery and the making of honor
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Acknowledgments
- PART I THE ECONOMY OF SLAVERY
- PART II THE MAKING OF HONORABLE SOCIETY
- Introduction
- 5 Semper timere: the aims and techniques of domination
- 6 Self, family, and community among slaves
- 7 Sex, status, and social reproduction
- 8 Mastery and the making of honor
- PART III THE IMPERIAL ORDER
- CONCLUSION
- APPENDIXES
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
THE DOMUS FELIX IN LATE ANTIQUITY
In the late 410s, Augustine preached a sermon on the 137th Psalm to his flock at Hippo. The Psalm was set in the Babylonian captivity and represented for Augustine a lyrical reflection on spiritual exile. The sermon was a conversation between the bishop and his regular crowd, but in the preacher's words we sense an Augustine preoccupied with writing his City of God. He urged his Christians to be strangers in this transitory world, not to be a “willow on the waters of Babylon,” but rather to look towards the “everlasting Jerusalem.” This pastoral Augustine was a man who had an unfailing sense of what it meant to cling to life in the world:
When you are well and the things of this earth smile upon you, when nothing of yours dies, none of your vines is ruined, nor does hail fall upon them, nor do they become sterile, your casks turn not sour, nor do your cattle bear dead offspring, you hold every dignity the world has to offer, you have friends everywhere who live and keep your friendship, you lack not clients, your children revere you, your slaves quake utterly before you, and your wife is agreeable, then your house is called happy.
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- Slavery in the Late Roman World, AD 275–425 , pp. 326 - 348Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011