“Why Do You Begrudge Us Your Daughter?”: Genealogy as Slaveholding Practice

In first-century CE Herculaneum, a freedwoman named Petronia Vitalis staged a confrontation with her patrons over their claim to her daughter Iusta. Some years later, Iusta would elevate the dispute to a legal matter, leaving a cache of wooden tablets attesting to the entanglement of slavery and kinship in the household. Using Vitalis’ struggle as a jumping-off point, I argue that genealogy was foundational to the practice of Roman slavery.

While historians often focus on the ways that Roman slavery effaced ties of kinship to effect “natal alienation” (Patterson), I show that enslavers frequently recognized, documented, and even sought to establish enslaved (and freed) peoples’ family ties. Engaging in a selective and strategic mode of genealogy, free Romans facilitated the continuity of their own family lines by appropriating the lineages of others.