Numeracy

Abstract Enslaved labor was pervasive in much numerical work in the Roman empire. While the basic presence of this labor is clear, the amount of authority and control enslaved people were able to claim is more ambiguous. Accounting was the numerical work most closely associated with the enslaved, but Roman enslavers tended to claim the role of auditor themselves. On close examination, however, it is clear that this role of auditor was unstable: Anxieties about fraud, the need to downplay expertise, the need for economic behavior to appear honest, and other factors meant that elites were rarely straightforward auditors, and enslaved accountants may have had more authority than it initially seems. In other areas, such as surveying and architecture, the role of enslaved numerate labor is even more ambiguous, since these professions had both enslaved/freed and freeborn practitioners and those who wrote the surviving manuals and treatises tended to be those most removed from slavery. But even here, enslaved labor is often visible or implied, and shaped both the professions and the texts.