Religious service: images of pleasure and devotion

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5. SLAVE-BOYS FOR SEXUAL AND 

RELIGIOUS SERVICE: IMAGES OF PLEASURE 

AND DEVOTION

John Pollini

From the literary, epigraphic and archaeological record, we know

much about the institution of slavery in the Roman period, but far

less about the way in which slaves were represented in art. In some

instances, of course, they can be identi

fied by context, as in the ban-

queting scene in a Pompeian painting showing typical slave-boys

dressed in tunics, serving guests at a Roman banquet.

1

In most cases,

however, they are not so readily identi

fiable, especially in the early

imperial period when hairstyles and even dress of slave-boys and

freeborn boys might appear similar in art. Although there are numer-

ous inscribed grave reliefs with images of ex-slaves, or freedmen,

there are relatively few portraits representing individuals while they

were slaves, since most did not have the means to set up likenesses

of themselves. And even if they did, the majority would probably

not have wanted to be portrayed in a way that would reveal their

servile status or their servile origins after they had gained their free-

dom.

2

There are, consequently, not many representations of readily

identi

fiable slaves and even fewer portrait images of them.

In this essay, I shall be concerned principally with images of

slave-‘boys’ in the later Julio-Claudian and Flavian periods. Besides

1

From a house at Pompeii (V.2.4), now in the Naples National Museum (inv.

120029): see Ward-Perkins and Claridge (1978) 2.198 no. 244. For an excellent

large colour photograph, see Dalby and Grainger (1996) 99. For a literary descrip-

tion of one such Roman banquet, see Philo’s account in his De Vita Contemplativa

48–52 (cited below). For the high status of these wine pourers, see D’Arms (1991)

esp. 173–4. D’Arms, however, does not include the important passage from Philo

regarding these slave-boys.

2

The notable exception to the latter was the 

fictional character Trimalchio in

Petronius’ Satyricon, who had himself represented as a slave in a biographical cycle

of paintings that decorated the interior walls near the entrance of his house (Sat.

29). However, this 

fictive painting cycle was part of Petronius’ biting satirical com-

mentary on this rich and gauche freedman. Of the many wall paintings that have

survived in Roman houses, no biographical cycle of paintings of a freedman’s

‘career’, such those described by Petronius, are known to me.

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150

 

designating a male as opposed to a female, the Latin word for ‘boy’,

puer, has essentially two meanings: a prepubertal free-born boy or a

male slave, who may be a boy, a teenager, or a mature male.

3

Unlike

a free-born puer, whose age range was 

fixed in Roman law between

seven and fourteen,

4

the age range of a slave puer was not limited

chronologically.

5

In this sense, the Latin word puer is similar to the

term ‘boy’ as commonly used in the antebellum South for a male

slave.

6

I shall focus here on a type of slave-boy in the Roman period

called a delicatus, who was generally a favourite, pretty-boy, ‘pet’

slave. The most desirable ones combined both androgynous beauty

and intelligence.

7

In Latin literature these delicati are also sometimes

called  glabri (smooth-skinned),  e