ABSTRACT
In theory, it was unthinkable that a slave should have any such remedy (recognition of a slave’s right to appeal against ill treatment by taking asylum at a shrine side-stepped the issue of the master’s absolute power over his property). Thus the slaves’ ways of exerting pressure on their owners to treat them properly were extra-legal: one was the threat of murdering a bad master. Roman legislation required the interrogation under torture of all those of a man’s slaves who had been within earshot when he was killed. Pliny draws a pessimistic conclusion from one such case. When a runaway slave called Onesimos joined the circle of the Apostle Paul, awaiting trial at Rome, there could be no question of Paul’s committing the crime of harbouring the fugitive. Christians objected to branding slaves on the face, since the face was made in the image of God.
