THE IMPACT OF HOUSEHOLD SLAVES ON THE JEWISH FAMILY IN ROMAN PALESTINE by CATHERINE HEZSER Trinity College, University of Dublin Summary In late antiquity most of the slaves owned by Jewish slave owners in Roman Palestine seem to have been domestic slaves. These slaves formed an integral part of the Jewish household and played an important role within the family economy. In a number of respects the master-slave rela- tionship resembled the wife-husband, child-father, and student-teacher relationships, and aVectionate bonds between the slave and his master (or nursling) would have an impact on relationships between other members of the family. Master and slave were linked to each other through mutual ties of dependency which counteracted the basic powerlessness of slaves. On the other hand, slaves had to suVer sexual exploitation and were con- sidered honorless. Rabbinic sources reveal both similarities and diVerences between Jewish and Graeco-Roman attitudes toward slaves. The Jewish view of the master-slave relationship also served as the basis for its metaphorical use. In late antiquity the employment of slaves in agriculture seems to have declined throughout the Roman empire as other forms of farm- ing, especially tenant labor, came to be considered more protable by estate owners. 1 Domestic slavery, on the other hand, continued to be taken for granted and seems to have been pervasive in Roman Italy as well as in the provinces in the rst four or ve centuries C.E. 2 The © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2003 Journal for the Study of Judaism, XXXIV, 4 Also available online – www.brill.nl 1 On changes in slavery in late antiquity see especially Ramsay MacMullen, “Late Roman Slavery,” in Changes in the Roman Empire. Essays in the Ordinary (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990) 236-49. 2 See ibid. 236V, where he discusses the situation in each province separately. See also Istvan Hahn, “Sklaven und Sklavenfrage im politischen Denken der Spätantike,” Klio 58 (1976) 460; Roger S. Bagnall, “Slavery and Society in Late Roman Egypt,” in