Nullis honoribus functus : Emotions, honour, and family among slaves and freedmen in the Roman Empire

Abstract: Research on Roman slavery has mainly been focued on questions of market economy since the beginning of the twentieth century. With the interest in the treatment of slaves and their experience of slavery, the master-slave relationship has been the object of increased interests, until recent exploration of the influence of freed slaves' culture on traditional practices. this thesis tries to assess the construction of parallel value systems among slaves and freedmen, which not only contrasted worldviews in free society but often reshaped them. Instrumentalization of the emotional concepts of honour and dishonour in the context of the family and in funerary commemoration are central to such assessment.