Secondary Characters Furthering Characterization: The Depiction of Slaves in the Acts of Peter

With a few notable exceptions, the depiction of slaves in the Acts of Peter has gone predominantly without comment in scholarship.¹ This is perhaps not terribly surprising, given the peripheral nature of these figures in the text, who are never named, a fact that is in keeping with ancient perceptions of slaves as background figures. Indeed, I will argue here that, rather than offering any opposition or challenge to the assumptions regarding slaves and slavery in antiquity, the author of the Acts of Peter in fact utilizes these assumptions, both positively and negatively, in order to enhance the characterization of the three central figures of the text in ways that would have been understood by an audience in slave-owning antiquity. Recontextualizing the episodes containing the interactions between these unnamed characters and the text's protagonists within the cultural conceptions pertaining to slaves and slavery in antiquity illuminates the ways in which these assumptions are utilized by the Acts of Peter to reinforce the positive characterizations of Peter and the senator Marcellus, as well as the negative characterization of Simon Magus, the antagonist of the work.

I. The Peripheral Nature of the Slave Characters

The slave characters in the Acts of Peter are depicted in a host of different ways as almost completely devoid of individuality or autonomous personhood. They are, as noted above, never given names-not even the favored slave of the prefect and emperor, who would have been of relatively high importance. They are never portrayed as acting as individuals but are always described as undertaking actions in groups or in pairs. They seem incapable of acting autonomously, their actions being instigated (or commanded) by the central figures of the text. Indeed, with the exception of such prompted actions, slaves, for the most part, take passive roles: they are maligned, bribed, tortured, bound, killed, and resurrected. There are only two occasions when they are given a voice in the first person. The first is when they are abusing Simon (14), an action prompted by Marcellus and, moreover, a means of further shaming him (in that their low social status as slaves would render the insults all the more demeaning). The second is when they are being interrogated under torture (17), and thus their speech is again prompted, in a way that underscores their passive nature. This is markedly different from the depiction of slaves in other apocryphal acts. While they are rarely positive characters in their respective narratives, they are nonetheless often depicted with the attributes that are notably missing in the portrayal of slave characters in the Acts of Peter.² Thus, it seems clear that the primary narratological purpose of these figures in the Acts of Peter is to function as secondary figures to enhance the depiction of the text's more dominant ones. While the ways in which they do this have gone mostly unexamined in contemporary scholarship, they would have been appreciated by an audience in antiquity.

II. The Slaves in the Household of Marcellus

Although clearly designed to be comical in nature, the episode in which the slaves of Marcellus's household take vengeance against Simon is also rife with implications for the characterization of these two predominant figures, beyond the immediately appreciable affront to Simon. The senator Marcellus, a former member and generous patron of the early Christian community in Rome, apostatized by switching his loyalties and patronage to Simon, who had taken up residence in the former's house. When Peter arrives in Rome, he soon draws Marcellus back into the fold, and Marcellus in turn enters his own dining room to confront Simon angrily, accusing him of being a "corrupter of my soul and of my house [corruptor anime meae et domus meae]" (14). The narrative continues:

And [Marcellus] laid his hands on him and ordered him to be driven from the house. And now the slaves had (him in their) power [serui autem accepta potestate], and rained insults upon him, some boxing his face, some (using) the stick and some the stone, while others emptied pots...