NAMES IN -POR AND SLAVE NAMING IN REPUBLICAN ROME

摘要

In Quintilian and Festus we read that slaves were, in some antique age, known simplynby a derivation from their masters’ names; thus Marcipor from Marcus, Lucipor fromnLucius, and so on. The practice is also mentioned by Pliny and the grammariansnProbus and Priscian.1 The -por element has been explained as puer, undergoingnsyncope and passing from an -o- to a consonantal stem in the third declension. It isnattached to the genitive of the master’s praenomen, the long final syllable of whichnhas, in some cases at least, been shortened.2 Many have accepted this reconstruction.3nIt has also been noted that Varro bewailed some sort of change in the form or naturenof slaves’ names, a change which it is easy to identify as the desuetude of these namesnin -por.4nAs Mommsen observed, names like this are hardly names at all; more like labels.5nThey certainly have a beguilingly archaic flavour that sits well with the legalnconception of slaves as property. But the same historian regretted the absence of anuseful explanation of their origin and usage.6 This absence persists today. It will benargued here that this is because there is really no salvaging the standard account ofnthese (in practice, very rare) names, to which scholars have nonetheless generally, if atntimes uncertainly, clung.