Marcion the Enslaver: The Rhetoric and Realities of Human Trafficking in the Roman Mediterranean (Hans-Lietzmann-Vorlesungen, 24)

Marcion the Enslaver reframes early Christian invective against Marcion through the lens of Roman slavery and the slave trade. Drawing on literary, epigraphic, and medical sources, it reveals how charges that Marcion “mutilated” texts echoed accusations leveled against deceitful slave traders who altered human bodies for profit. Moving beyond metaphor, the book reconstructs the material and social realities of trafficking: the cosmetic, pharmacological, and surgical techniques used to prepare enslaved people for sale; the collaboration of physicians, cosmeticians, bankers, and educators; and the hidden infrastructure of confinement, training, and exploitation that sustained the trade. By exposing how ancient rhetoric blurred the boundaries between textual corruption and bodily manipulation, Moss challenges modern assumptions about who counted as a slave trader and demonstrates that the entire apparatus of Roman medicine, commerce, and education was complicit in the manufacture and sale of human beings.

Candida R. Moss, University of Birmingham, UK.