Sandra Ayikwerah

Enslaved Intellectual Labor in Roman Epistolography

My dissertation examines the letters of Cicero and Pliny the Younger to highlight the contributions of intellectual laborers to the literary lives of elite men in late Republican and early Imperial Rome. The lives of enslaved and freed people in ancient Rome were deeply intertwined with their enslavers, and patrons and enslavers were very reliant on enslaved and formerly enslaved people in their daily lives. Despite the ubiquity of enslaved people and their importance as readers and writers in the homes of patrons and enslavers, they are often elided to a significant extent in the writings of elite men. Until recently, they were inappropriately described as "research assistants" in modern analysis of these letters. My work uses letters, which offer an intimate view into the daily lives of elite men, to argue that enslaved and freed people were treated as tools and extensions of their enslavers and patrons. The contributions of these intellectual laborers were often elided or minimized to augment the literary personae of elite men. However, this hidden labor was instrumental for allowing elite men to produce large amounts of literature, and thus, establish themselves as authoritative literary figures.