Fortunata was a young woman enslaved in the late first-century or early second-century, known from a surviving deed of sale from Londinium (London, UK). This deed of sale was featured as one of the objects in the BBC's A History of the World in 100 Objects.
Fortunata was a member of the Diablintes people of northwestern Gaul. Her age is not known, but she was sold as a slave in London between AD 80 and 120 (possibly under the reign of Domition (AD 81âÂÂ96)) for the price of 600 . Roger Tomlin has argued that she was likely a young adult rather than a child.
Enslavement was a legal institution during the Roman Empire (). The deed of sale of Fortunata was handwritten into a wax tablet. The text became inscribed into the wooden casing and so its content survived, and the case was discovered during a 1994 excavation at 1 Poultry, London. The text was written in 11 lines into a wooden tablet cut from silver fir. Unusually, some of the black wax survives adhered to the tablet. A translation of the surviving text reads:
The text is revealing for both showing that an enslaved person could themselves own another slave, but also that the cost incurred was significantâÂÂ600 was equal to two year's salary of a Roman legionary at the time.
The Fortunata tablet is in the collection of the Museum of London (inventory number: ONE94[18195]<5160>). It featured as one of the objects in the BBC's A History of the World.