The Life of Publius Afer (Rome, 200 BC)
Tides of History
Audible / Patrick Wyman
4.7 • 6.5K Ratings
🗓️ 5 February 2026
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The best way to understand the impact slavery had on a person's life is to follow their journey through the institution, but the ancient world provides few examples that we can use. Instead, we have to assemble a composite character from bits and pieces. We'll call him Publius, and watch him as he's abducted, enslaved, and lives out his life in a new, Roman, world.
Patrick launched a brand-new history show! It’s called Past Lives, and every episode explores the life of a real person who lived in the past. Subscribe now: https://bit.ly/PWPLA
And don't forget, you can still Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World in hardcopy, ebook, or audiobook (read by Patrick) here: https://bit.ly/PWverge.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The amphora fell from the back of the cart with almost comical slowness, |
| 0:15.8 | cracking into a hundred pieces and spilling gallons of oil onto the packed dirt. |
| 0:20.4 | Publius watched it happen from his |
| 0:21.8 | comfortable seat under the tree. How many times had he seen a storage jug shatter over the past |
| 0:26.9 | 50 years? A hundred? A thousand? He chuckled to himself. It truly wasn't his problem anymore. |
| 0:35.5 | Publius was too old to run this farm, one of a dozen belonging to the Roman |
| 0:39.0 | senator, Titus Quinctius, but he had done the job for four decades. No longer. Now all he had to do was |
| 0:46.0 | sit under this tree, munching on a heel of softbread soaked in more oil than his wife, Taise, |
| 0:50.9 | would have preferred him to have. It's not like they were short of oil, he always |
| 0:54.5 | joked. This farm had hundreds of olive trees when he started managing it. Now it had thousands. |
| 1:00.4 | They could spare the oil. It would be nice to leave the farm, though, Poblius reflected. |
| 1:06.1 | Taiz regularly did so, walking down the road to the small plot owned by their two sons. |
| 1:11.6 | They had grandchildren now, he thought, amazed at the very idea, grandchildren who were nearly grown. |
| 1:17.6 | How had that happened? |
| 1:20.6 | Unlike Taiz, Publius couldn't leave. |
| 1:23.6 | She was free, and had been since the day Publius bought her freedom 20 years earlier, along with their two sons. |
| 1:29.3 | Not Publius. He still belonged to Titus Quinctius. Every bit as much as property as the land underneath them, the trees growing on it, and the olive oil splashed all over the road. |
| 1:40.3 | Publius wished his sons would bring their children to see him more often. He saw the two of them regularly. In fact, he saw them now. They were currently resettling the other amphorae in the back of the cart and arguing with one another over whether it was the poor packing job or the poor driving that had caused the jar to fall and shatter. They'd been arguing since they were old enough to talk |
| 2:01.2 | and had rarely stopped since, but it didn't stop them from spending almost every waking |
| 2:04.9 | minute together. That made Quibli a smile. He understood why his sons didn't bring their |
| 2:10.5 | children to the farm, why Taise was always leaving to see them. His boys didn't want their sons |
| 2:16.0 | to know that their grandfather was still a slave. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Audible / Patrick Wyman, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Audible / Patrick Wyman and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.