Child Follows the Womb

A new and incisive exploration of female slavery and reproduction in ancient Rome One of ancient Romes most significant legacies is a legal framework for hereditary slavery. Under the Roman principle that would come to be known as partus sequitur ventrem (the offspring follows the womb), enslaved women bore enslaved children regardless of the identity of the childs father. For centuries, across the globe, this legal doctrine was invoked to justify control over enslaved womens reproductive labor.This is the first book to examine the development and practice of the partus principle in its original Roman context, tracing the lives of five women subject to different forms of corporal control, from coerced reproduction to concubinage to forced marriage. These womens storiesa "e;recovered from fragments of papyrus, stone monuments, wooden tablets, and morea "e;reveal the diverse ways that slaveholders used the partus principle to their advantage. Offering an intimate, nuanced account of the sexual and reproductive dimensions of slavery across the vast Roman Empire, Katharine P. D. Huemoeller reveals the particularities of female enslavement in the Roman world and the long history of reproductive injustice.