The Domesticity of Their Darkness
Snapshots of the Enslaved in Roman Art
By (author) Iain Ferris
Paperback (Published)
(October 2025)
ISBN: 9781805831150
6.85 x 9.65 inches
Price: $77.00
In stock
This book explores how Roman art depicted enslaved individuals, emphasizing fragmented, non-linear “”snapshots”” rather than a full narrative. It highlights the unsettling presence of the enslaved in domestic scenes, revealing tensions between visibility and erasure, and aims to bring the overlooked background into focus.
The Domesticity of Their Darkness is about the appearance of images of the enslaved in Roman art and the analysis of this archive. The word snapshots has been used quite deliberately, and very specifically, in the subtitle of this study because of the impossibility of there ever being the material evidence and opportunity to write a full, linear, chronological narrative about images of the enslaved in Roman times. The ancient enslaved are now to us like shadows out of time: yet, most importantly, they seem to have existed between the images discussed in this study. In these works it was never their aesthetic value that counted: they were to be read and understood, so that their meaning came across. In the Roman world everything was art, including the history of enslavement and of the enslaved. The floating roots of so many of these enslaved individuals cannot be located in a world where for the Roman elite name, roots, and family lineage created an ideological geography of belonging, of being inside, reaching into the future as well as back to the past. For the enslaved the tranquillity of simply inhabiting space could never be enough. Images of the enslaved in Roman domestic interiors often appear now as being somehow quite weird, in terms of the strange within the familiar and the familiar as strange. The domestic world portrayed, its domesticity, does not coincide with itself. There is a wrongness here, a delusive envelope, yet all is depicted as being right. The book represents an attempt to foreground the background.
List of Figures
Image Credits
Acknowledgements
Preface
Chapter One: Severin Awaits You There
Isolation
Insight
Poison
Chapter Two: The Marble Index
Disorder
Transmission
Wilderness
Control
Connection
Chapter Three: Complete Control
Zone
Intrazone
Interzone
Ghosteen
Chapter Four: Innervisions
Specularisation
Shadow Play
Interior
Chapter Five: At Last I Am Free
Elevation
Consecration
Spectacle
Origin
Chapter Six: Straight Ahead
Movement
Word
Text
Precedent
Correspondence
Interpolation
Rhizomatic Entanglement
Acceptance
Chapter Seven: Ascension
Stilled Sorrows
No Enemy But Time
The Last Light Spoken
All That's Beautiful Drifts Away
Perne in a Gyre
Bibliography
Index
,
List of Figures
Image Credits
Acknowledgements
Preface
Chapter One: Severin Awaits You There
Isolation
Insight
Poison
Â
Chapter Two: The Marble Index
Disorder
Transmission
Wilderness
Control
Connection
Â
Chapter Three: Complete Control
Zone
Intrazone
Interzone
Ghosteen
Â
Chapter Four: Innervisions
Specularisation
Shadow Play
Interior
Â
Chapter Five: At Last I Am Free
Elevation
Consecration
Spectacle
Origin
Â
Chapter Six: Straight Ahead
Movement
Word
Text
Precedent
Correspondence
Interpolation
Rhizomatic Entanglement
Acceptance
Â
Chapter Seven: Ascension
Stilled Sorrows
No Enemy But Time
The Last Light Spoken
All That’s Beautiful Drifts Away
Perne in a Gyre
Bibliography
IndexÂ
- By (author) Iain Ferris
Other Titles in this Series
Roman Frontier Archaeology – in Britain and Beyond
Papers in Honour of Paul Bidwell Presented on the Occasion of the 30th Annual Conference of the Arbeia Society
From the Adriatic to the Alps: Transport and Trade Networks in Roman and Late Antique Northern Italy
The Changing Landscapes of Rome’s Northern Hinterland
The British School at Rome’s Tiber Valley Project
Un insediamento di età romana dimenticato nel tempo
Rinvenimenti e ricerche archeologiche a Tezze di Arzignano e nella vallata dell'Agno-Guà (Vicenza)
Immagini del tempo degli dei, immagini del tempo degli uomini
Un’analisi delle iconografie dei mesi nei calendari figurati romani e bizantini e del loro contest storico-culturale
Villas, Sanctuaries and Settlement in the Romano-British Countryside
New Perspectives and Controversies
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