Mnemosyne 67 (2014) 577-587

brill.com/mnem

Places for Self-Selling in Ulpian, Plautus and

Horace: The Role of Vertumnus
Morris Silver

Professor Emeritus of Economics

City College of the City University of New York
msilver12@nyc.rr.com
Received: January 2012; accepted: March 2012

Abstract
Ulpian refers to places frequented by those who declare themselves for sale. Plautus
places persons who sell themselves in Romes Tuscan Quarter and arguably links this
activity with the statue of Vertumnus. This article argues that Vertumnus presided over
a place where individuals sold themselves into slavery and/or, less likely, sponsored a
kind of labor-exchange.

Keywords
self-sale venaliciarii general training

Ulpian (Digest 21.1.17.12) speaks of a slave who seeks asylum or betakes himself
to a place frequented by those who declare (postulo) themselves for sale...
(tr. Watson).1 Asylum probably refers to an emperors statute or, more generally,
1 Apud Labeonem et Caelium quaeritur, si quis in asylum confugerit aut eo se conferat, quo solent
venire qui se venales postulant, an fugitivus sit: ego puto non esse eum fugitivum, qui id facit
quod publice facere licere arbitratur. ne eum quidem, qui ad statuam Caesaris confugit, fugiti
vum arbitror: non enim fugiendi animo hoc facit. Idem puto et in eum, qui in asylum vel quod
aliud confugit, quia non fugiendi animo hoc facit: si tamen ante fugit et postea se contulit, non
ideo magis fugitivus esse desinit. With respect to Watsons translation, I have been advised by
a Latinist that in this passage postulo is linked with the noun/adjective venales (people for

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to temple precincts as in Greece (Ulp. Dig. 1.12.1.1; Chaniotis 1996, 79-83).

Perhaps, Ulpians place is the office of the praefectus urbi, who had the power
to sell mistreated slaves to new owners (Filip-Frschi and Klingenberg 2005).2
This is an unlikely interpretation for a number of reasons. First, the office of
a high public official would not be anonymously designated as place which
leaves room for a variety of forms and, moreover, implies many places, or at
least more than one. Second, the group referred to as those is thereby differentiated from the group of slaves dissatisfied with their present masters and
would not be characterized as frequenting the office of the praefectus urbi.
My sense of Ulpians place is first that it is a private (non-state) place and
second that it is a formal location, perhaps including specialized structures,
which would be known and regularly resorted to by buyers and sellers. That
is, fugitive slaves were allowed to or sought to take advantage of a structured
venue established for and utilized by free persons who wished to sell themselves into slavery. Indeed, the objective of this article is to identify a place of
this kind on the ground in Romes Tuscan Quarter. The implication of such
identification would be that the self-sale market had grown to a critical size for
only then would it pay to invest in a specialized venue (Silver 2009, 246-247).
Legal, literary, epigraphic sources and some quantitative evidence testify
that self-sale or contractual slavery was or became a major source of Roman
freeborn slaves (Silver 2011). Further, the direct evidence for contractual slavery
is reinforced by consideration of the extreme lack of fit between the postulated
resentment motive of forcibly taken captives and Romes open system of slavery with its provision to slaves of independent spheres of activity, training, and
opportunities to purchase freedom. It would still be of great interest even if,
by way of an alternative to contractual slavery, Ulpian had in mind designated
places where slaves, perhaps together with free persons, sold labor services.
There is some evidence for a rental market for slaves and, although this must
sometimes have happened, there is little or no evidence that Roman slaves
sale) so it is reasonable to understand esse and translate claim to be/declare they are people
for sale. Otherwise, venales is the object and the resulting translation is nonsense: claim/
demand those people who are for sale. Further, I am advised by an anonymous reader that
the reflexive se makes the meaning absolutely certain: who declare themselves for sale.
2 Plutarch (Moralia 166D) says: There is a law even for slaves who have given up all hope of
freedom, that they may demand a sale (prasin ait), and thus exchange their present master
for one more mild and later he adds: For a slave there is an altar to which he can flee... (tr.
Hembold). No additional details are provided by Plutarch. From a fragment of Aristophanes
(567K), Pollux preserves the expression prasin eurmen find a sale (or seek a sale) in connection with flight to Athens Theseion (Christensen 1984, 24).

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directly hired out their services to third parties.3 More basically, an understanding of Ulpian in terms of labor services is unlikely to be correct as jurists
made a distinction between emptio venditio sale and locatio conductio letting and hiring, or, more specifically, locatio conductio operarumthat is, the
letting of the services of a free man (the locator) for merces pay, hire, wages,
fee (Gaius Institutes 3.139-147). Nevertheless, labor-exchanges are taken into
account in what follows.
Legal sources make no further references to possible places for self-sale
or for sale of labor services. The present paper suggests that it is possible to
learn more about such places by considering several literary sources, beginning with Plautus who speaks of a place in Rome where people sell themselves.
In Curculio (482) the choragus (property manager) informs Curculio, In the
Tuscan Quarter there are those persons who sell themselves (in Tusco vico, ibi
sunt homines qui ipsi sese venditant, tr. de Melo).
It will be objected, however, that the choragus refers solely to the sale of
sexual services as is perhaps the case elsewhere in Plautus. For example, Moore
(1991, 354) points out, In Miles...after Sceledrus sees Philocomasium in the
arms of Pleusicles, he complains: non ego possum quae ipsa sese venditat tuta
rier [I cannot watch (one) who is (all the time) selling herself (313)]. The direct
parallel shows that Plautus speaks not of workers4 here, but of prostitutes. It
might be replied that while Philocomasium is portrayed as sexually active
she plays the (sexual) fieldshe is not literally on the (sexual) m
arketthat
is, she is not prostituting herself.5 Again, in Cistellaria (The Casket Comedy
562-563) a slave tells a freeborn girl who had been exposed and then raised by
a meretrix: Thats definitely not the case here, where youd earn your dowry
yourself with your body, in a manner unworthy of yourself, in the Tuscan
way (non enim hic, ubi ex Tusco modo tute tibi indigne dotem quaeras corpore,
tr. de Melo). Does Plautus really mean that Tuscan men customarily married
women whose dowry was earned by providing sex to the public for cash? (So
Hdt. 1.93.4 for the Lydians.) Or does he mean that Tuscan men are customarily
3 Fuks (1951) has presented evidence for the functioning of labor exchanges in Athens in which
free persons and possibly slaves may have participated (cf. Epstein 2008, 109, n. 6). For slaves
hiring out their labor services, see Randall 1953.
4 The references cited by Moore (1991, 354, n. 34) including, for example, de Robertis (1963, 57,
n. 34) do not add substantial information about sales by workers.
5 To say of a hired laborer (a mercenarius) that he has sold himself is legally inaccurate and
intentionally derogatory. To say of a prostitute who sells sexual services that she has sold
herself is legally inaccurate and derogatory but, on the other hand, there is in this kind of
sale a degree of intimacy not usually found on the labor market.

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pimps? Tales of very strange sexual customs around the world notwithstanding, this is a joke and has nothing to do with Romes Tuscan Quarter.6 Perhaps
the reference to self-sale in Curculio 482 is a double entendre whose humor lies
precisely in the familiar device of portraying a standard, nonsexual economic
transactionselling ones self or ones servicesas prostitution. Audiences,
ancient and contemporary, enjoy sexual innuendo. Or perhaps it is not at all a
reference to prostitution. The prostitution only interpretation is certainly not
decisive.
This much is clear: the property managers reference to self-sale in the
Tuscan Quarter is embedded in a recognizable (if somewhat defamatory) tour
around the south side of the Forum Romanum: Below the Old Shops are those
who give and receive on interest (faenore). Behind the temple of Castor there
are those whom you shouldnt trust quickly. In the Tuscan Quarter there are
those people who sell themselves. In the Velabrum you can meet the miller or
the butcher or the soothsayer or those who turn or give others the opportunity
to turn. (in Velabro vel pistorem vel lanium vel haruspicem vel qui ipsi vortant vel
qui aliis ubi vorsentur praebeant) (Curculio 480-485; tr. de Melo). The reference
to the Temple of Castor seems to fit the proverbially untrustworthy slave dealers
whose shops were located there (Seneca On the Firmness of a Wise Person 2.13.4;
cf. Harrill 1999, 106, n. 20). De Melo (2011, 283, n. 30) says the meaning of the
reference to the Velabrum is obscure and he adds: It has been suggested that
uortere and uorsari mean to trick financially. But it has also been argued that
they refer to homosexual intercourse... Topography helps to clarify the meaning. The busy Vicus Tuscus leads from the Forum to the Circus Maximus but,
according to the scholiast on Horace (Satires 2.3.226), along the way it enters
and merges with the Velabrum (Burgess 1831, 382; Richardson 1992, 406-407).
It is argued below that a prominent monument links the turning activity in the
Velabrum with the self-selling in the Vicus Tuscus.
ONeill (2000) finds a place of self-sale in the Tuscan Quarter (he identifies it with prostitution) at the statue of Vertumnus (Vortumnus), an old god
said, correctly or not, to be of Etruscan origin (Varro De Lingua Latina 5.46;
Prop. 4.2.11ff.), which stood on the Vicus Tuscus as late as the earlier fourth century CE (CIL 6.1.804 cited by Putnam 1967, 179). Before reviewing the evidence
for Vertumnus role as patron of self-sellers it is well to note the well attested
Greco-Roman precedents for gods presiding over changes in sociolegal status.
6 Does Plautus perhaps play on the commercial and linguistic relationship between dos dowry
and vendo to sell? (Skiles 1941, 521). Probably Plautus is playing on a supposed origin of the
Etruscans in Lydia where the vile custom was practiced by the common people, according
to Herodotus.

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One thinks immediately in the latter connection of the Delphic manumissions of the second-first centuries BCE in which slaves purchasing freedom
deposited the payment with Apollo and then were transferred from owners to
the god (they became Apollos own) and then were granted freedom by the god
(Westermann 1946; Tucker 1982; Zelnick-Abramovitz 2005, 214-217). The entire
transaction was inscribed for future reference. Similar practices are attested
in the Roman Near East (Cameron 1939, esp. 148-150) and Roman Macedonia
(Youni 2010). The slave, lacking legal status, deposited his ransom with Apollo
because the god, unlike some humans, would not be likely to claim repayment
of his loan from the freed slave or hold him in slavery (Haslam 1976, 59, n. 5).
Note in the latter connection: Also if a slave has relied on someones good faith
to buy him with his own money and manumit him when this has been repaid,
and the purchaser refuses to take the money when proffered, the slave is given
the opportunity of bringing to light the spirit of their agreement (Dig. 5.1.53.
Hermogenian; tr. Watson).7
Returning to Vertumnus, ONeill in considering Prop. 4.2 turns up no evidence
that this god was regarded as a patron of prostitutes or of self-sellers generally.
What does emerge is that Vertumnus enjoyed mixing with ordinary Romans
(lines 5, 60) and is noted for shifting identities/roles/occupations (lines 1-3; line
47, vertebar...omnis), including male and female (lines 23-24). With respect
to shifting identities, ONeill also cites Hor. S. 2.7.13-14, wherein the slave Davus
remarks on the personality of his master Priscus, Now he would choose to be a
lecher in Rome, now a scholar in Athens, a man born with as many Vertumnuses
as there are all hostile to him (tr. ONeill 2000, 267). Ovid (Met. 14.623 ff.) has
Vertumnus courting Pomona in various disguises. Finally, ONeills c itation of
Horaces Epistles 1.20.1-2 is something of a red herring because Horace is speaking of selling books, not humans, but it is helpful because it explicitly links
Vertumnus with self-sale: You seem, my book, to be looking wistfully toward
Vertumnus and Janus, in order, forsooth, that you may go on sale (prostes;
literally to present oneself), neatly polished with the pumice of the Sosii
(tr. Fairclough).
Bettini (2010, 320, 332), like Roman writers including Propertius (4.2.21ff.)
and Ovid (Met. 14.642 ff.), links the name Vertumnus with the Latin verb vertere
to transform whose range of meaning and activity, includes transformation by
7 The argument from economic theory may be illustrated by Crassus who educated his numerous slaves because, as Plutarch (Crassus 2.6) explains, he thought that the chief duty of
the master was to care for his slaves as the living implements of household management
(tr. Perrin). Saller (2008, 9) remarks: Plutarchs phrase [in Crassus 2.6)] organa empsucha
might be translated with only slight license, as human capital.

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means of exchange. Marquis (1974, 496-497), citing Propertius (4.2.48) reference to patria lingua, suggests that the god was given a specifically Latin name.
More importantly, according to Pomponius Porphyrion (Ad Hor. Ep. 1.20.1), a
second or third century CE commentator on the works of Horace: Vertumnus
is the god who presides over things to be exchanged that is, of buying and selling (deus est praeses vertendarum rerum, hoc est emendarum et vendendarum,
tr. Bettini 2000, 330-331). Columella (10.304-310) sees Vertumnus manifesting
himself in the profitable transformation of country-grown roses and marigolds
into the cash from towns. Vertumnus himself boasts: My nature suits any role:
turn me (verte) to which you please, and I shall fit it well (Prop. 4.2.21-22; tr.
Goold). A commercially oriented god capable of adapting to diverse everyday
occupations, including some skilled tradesreaper, fisherman, hunter, vintner, grafter, peddler, shepherd, gardener, charioteer, soldier (lines 21-40 with
Ov. Met. 14)would be an apt sponsor for self-mancipators seeking the best
fit for themselves or for a labor-exchange. But the variety of occupational roles
mentioned by Vertumnus would hardly be relevant for a sponsor only concerned with self-sale by sex-objects. Those who claim that Propertius refers to
sexual prostitution need to explain why the other occupations, usually ignored
in literature, are mentioned. Surely Propertius is not seeking out of embarrassment to obscure Vertumnus single-minded interest in prostitution.
Further, the emphasis placed on Vertumnus ability to turn/transform himself into something else fits better the god being an agent of self-sale than of
hire. Owners of labor (slave owners) were much more than hirers of labor services motivated to transform unskilled into skilled workers by means of investment in human capital. Owners more willingly bore the cost of providing
unskilled workers with marketable skills (general training) because, as slaves,
they could not, like free workers, quit and offer their (now more productive)
services to the highest bidder. A slave who fled from his owner was a thief guilty
of stealing himself (Dig. 47.2.61 Africanus). In short, slavery reduced wasteful
(for slave owners) labor turnover and thereby encouraged owners to embed
capital in their workers. The self-purchase (manumission) price/market price
of a skilled slave collected by an owner would take into account the market
value of the slaves embedded capital.
Vertumnus excellent credentials as a patron of self-sellers into slavery would
of course include that he/she voluntarily moved to Rome at the beginning of
the Citys history (Marquis 1974, 493-494 with citations). As Suits (1969, 486)
explains: Vertumnus patria lingua is Latin. The gods naturalization as a Roman
thus becomes the last in the long series of his transformations, and thereby
the nationality motif is united with the poems principal theme of change.
Further, the resemblance of Vertumnus to Plautus servus callidus wily slave is
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striking. As described by Leigh (2005, 25) the wily slave character is a figure of
such brilliance that he can take control of the entire course of the drama and
whose triumph the comedy is destined to depict. The slave frequently transcends his lowly status by means of transformation or identification. He can
become a teacher, an attorney, a philosopher, or a priest. Most importantly, his
exploits become subject to a pervasive military metaphor and he can turn into
a Homeric hero, an Alexander, a consul or a great Roman general.8 In discussing the etymology of his name, Propertius Vertumnus is himself something of
a con-man, as pointed out by Dee (1974, 48 citing lines19-20). The contractual
slave is reflected in the servus callidus and quite possibly in the god Vertumnus.
Indeed, it might be suggested that Vertumnus is the servus callidus.
Finally, it is proposed that Plautus lines 483-484 mentioning the presence
in the Velabrum of those who turn or give others the opportunity to turn
(vorsant/verso) are functionally linked with the statue of the very god of shifting identities standing in the Vicus Tuscus (Putnam 1967, 177 with Jordan 1880,
123-124). Given the topography, Vertumnus on the Vicus Tuscus was near and
probably visible from the Velabrum. Within the Velabrum there were numerous shops of various kinds9 including shops operated by Plautus specialists in
turningthat is, shops intermediating between those wishing to sell themselves into slavery and those wishing to purchase slaves. The shops of the intermediaries were not the impressive prison-like structures suitable for forcible
captives but they were durable enough to accommodate a clientele consisting of volunteers! The final transactions were validated (sanctified) by having
them take place under Vertumnus understanding gaze.
In support of the postulated intermediaries, note Seneca (On Benefits 4.13.3):
A benefit has in view the advantage of him upon whom we bestow it, not our
own...Many things, therefore, which are of the greatest possible use to others
8 Note Juvenal 3.70-78 in which foreigners from the Greek East (slaves?) come and batten the
genial soil of Rome, minions, then lords of every princely dome...That shifts to every form
and shines in all: grammarian, painter, augur, rhetorician, rope-dancer, conjurer, fiddler and
physicianall trades his own your hungry Greekling counts (tr. Gifford and Warrington). No
mention is made of Vertumnus or the servus callidus but the theme is the same.
9 Horace Satires 2.3.224 ff.: This man, soon as he received his patrimony of a thousand talents,
decreed, in praetor-fashion, that fishmonger, fruit-seller, fowler, perfumer, the Tuscan Streets
vile throng, cooks and parasites, the whole market and Velabrum, should come to him in
the morning. What next? They came in crowds. A pimp was spokesman. Whatever I have,
whatever any of these have at home, believe me, is at your service. Send for it today and
tomorrow (tr. Fairclough). The pimp is the spokesman not because his trade leads the community in sales but because he is, in Horaces ideology, the quintessential (negative) image
for all those who make a living by retail selling.

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lose all claim to gratitude by being paid for. Merchants are of use to cities, physicians to invalids, dealers [mangones] to slaves, yet all these have no claim to the
gratitude of those whom they benefit, because they seek their own advantage
through that of others (tr. Gummere; emphasis added; for the socially useful
slave dealer see Dig. 50.14.3 Ulpian). Harris (1999, 73) explains, Seneca takes it
as obvious that mangones are useful to those whom they sell (mango venalibus
prodest). These beneficiaries can only be those who wish to be sold. How precisely did mangones or, more formally, venaliciarii salesmen make themselves
useful to self-sellers? Presumably, by becoming familiar with the volunteers
preferences and abilities and helping him to negotiate price and placement,
including by accentuating or exaggerating his positive qualities and disguising his flaws. Also, the venaliciarii helped by making themselves familiar with
the reputations of possible purchasers: Did a buyer tend to snatch the pecu
lium? Did he promise to train his slave to be an actor but instead send him to
the mines? Venaliciarii tended to be reasonably substantial businessmen as,
according to Paul, they were generally organized as partnerships (Dig. 21.1.44.1).
Obviously, my intermediaries would, like specialists in banking, keep
records of their transactions. But bankers do not change the status of their clients from free to slave. Something more would seem to be required to provide
reliable witness. Was the Vertumnus cult substantial enough to keep necessary
records of self-sale transactions in the way that Apollo recorded manumissions or in the way that Libitina registered deaths? (Suet. Nero 39; D.H. 4.15.5).
The statue of Vertumnus probably could not have included elaborate facilities.
But Vertumnus also had an Aventine temple in the Vicus Loretti Maioris (Fest.
228 L.) and enjoyed a state cult on August 13 (Myers 1994, 246 with n. 74). In
the temple stood a statue of the conqueror in 264 BCE of the Etruscan town
Volsinii, M. Fulvius Flaccus (Marquis 1974, 494). The temple might easily have
sent priest-agents to minister at the statue and kept and returned the records
for safekeeping in the temple. That Libitina, who recorded deaths in her temple, sent out priests to officiate at funerals is implied by Plutarchs (Numa 12.1)
remark: Libitina, who presides over the solemn services for the dead, whether
she is Proserpina, or, as the most learned Romans maintain, Venus; thereby not
inaptly connecting mans birth and death with the power of one and the same
goddess (tr. Perrin). I am, of course, assuming that the statue of Vertumnus
and the temple belonged to the same cultic enterprise or, as Lipka (2009, 72)
puts it, had the same or overlapping functional foci.
The case for Vertumnus as presiding over one of Ulpians places for selfsellers must necessarily remain incomplete but it is credible. This is not to say,
however, that he was the only god under whose auspices free men contracted

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into slavery or that his place in Romes Tuscan Quarter was the only one where
they declared themselves for sale. Neither did Vertumnus confine his services
to the Tuscan Quarter.10
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10

A Latin dedication to Vertumnus was found in the sanctuary of Silvanus in Philippi in

Macedonia (MacMullen 1981, 1). An altar with an inscription dedicated to VertumnusPisintus (BRGK 1929, no. 31) has been dated to the late first-early second century CE. The
altar is decorated with four bearded heads, circles, a sword and a torch and was found in
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to Gaul with them?My thanks to Michael Lipka, Roland Oetjen, Roberta Stewart, Koen
Verboven and, most of all, to an anonymous reader for numerous helpful suggestions. The
responsibility for remaining errors is entirely my own. My research benefited greatly from
the conscientious assistance of Evelyn Bodden of the Interlibrary Loan Department in
the Cohen Library in the City College of New York.

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