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TRANSLATOR’S FOREWORD<br />

I was prompted to undertake this translation by events at a conference<br />

organised by the International Centre for the History of Slavery (ICHOS) at<br />

the University of Nottingham in 2001.<br />

In discussion stimulated by a paper delivered by Professor Heinz Heinen,<br />

at the time director-designate of the Research Group on Ancient Slavery at<br />

the Mainz Academy of Sciences and Literature, Germany, it emerged that<br />

English-speaking students of international social history were not fully exploiting<br />

important German publications in their field, mainly because of the<br />

difficulties of reading these in the original. It occurred to me that this could<br />

be overcome by translating such publications, and that a very useful start<br />

could be made with Thomas Grünewald’s Räuber, Rebellen, Rivalen, Rächer<br />

(1999) which provides an admirable introduction to the challenges involved<br />

in assessing the evidence for those living – or, perceived to be living – at the<br />

edge of society in the Roman world.<br />

I am grateful to Heinz Heinen for taking up my proposal and presenting<br />

it to the Mainz Academy, and to Richard Stoneman for commissioning the<br />

translation on the part of Routledge. I owe particular thanks to Thomas<br />

Grünewald for his promptness and enthusiasm in reading and correcting my<br />

draft chapters as they were produced, at a time when he was under particular<br />

professional pressure. Any faults that remain are mine, not his.<br />

ICHOS was conceived by Thomas Wiedemann, Professor of Latin at the<br />

University of Nottingham, who died tragically young just before the 2001<br />

meeting. The loss of Professor Wiedemann was a great blow to Classical<br />

scholarship. In the short time in which I was his colleague I learned an enormous<br />

amount from him and, with the permission of the author, dedicate this<br />

translation to his memory.<br />

ICHOS continues, as the Institute for the Study of Slavery, under the<br />

direction of Professor Geary, to whom all enquiries respecting its activities<br />

should be addressed: dick.geary@nottingham.ac.uk.<br />

vi<br />

John Drinkwater<br />

Nottingham, September 2003

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