Slavery in ancient Rome

Roman Slaves were regarded as non-persons by the law; they had no rights of matrimony, and no protection against adultery. They were treated as personal property; they might be tortured for evidence, or even put to death, at the discretion of their master."

Treatment

Cato the Elder expelled his old and sick slaves out of house and home. Hadrian, one of the most humane of the Roman Emperors, wilfully destroyed the eye of one of his slaves with a stylus. Roman ladies punished their maids with sharp iron instruments for the most trifling offences.

The proverb "As many enemies as slaves," prevailed in the Roman Empire. As a result, there was a constant danger of servile insurrections, which more than once brought the republic to the brink of ruin, and seemed to justify the severest measures in self-defence — including the law of collective responsibility: if a slave killed his master, the authorities put all of the slaves in the household to death.

Prevalence

Estimates for the prevalence of slavery in the Roman Empire vary. Some estimate that the slave population in the 1st century consisted of approximately one-third of the total. The Roman economy was certainly heavily dependent on slavery, but was not (as is sometimes mistakenly stated) the most slave-dependent culture in the history of the world. That distiction probably belongs to the Spartans, with helots (the Spartan term for slave) outnumbering the Spartans around seven to one (Herodotus; book IX, 10). The actual proportion may have been less than 20% for the whole Empire, 12 million people, but we cannot be sure. Since there was a labor shortage in the Roman Empire, there was a constant need to find slaves to tie down the labor supply in various regions of the Empire. In the Later Empire emperors tried to tie people into hereditary occupations to secure vital services as the supply of slaves dried up.

Social standing

In Republican Rome, the law recognised slaves as a social class, and some authors found in their condition the earliest concept of proletariat, given that the only property they were allowed to own was the gift of reproduction. Slaves lived then within this class with very little hope of a better life, and they were owned and exchanged, just like goods, by free men. They had a price as "human instruments"; their life had not, and their patron could freely even kill them.

Most of the gladiators came from the ranks of the slaves. One of them, Spartacus, formed an army of slaves that battled the Roman armies in the Servile War for several years.

Protection

Augustus punished a wealthy Roman, one Vedius Pollio, for feeding clumsy slaves to his eels;there followed laws increasingly restricting the power of masters over their slaves and children. However, we cannot know how well-enforced these were. Claudius ruled that if a master abandoned an old or sick slave, the slave became free. Under Nero, slaves were given the right to complain against their masters in court. Under Antoninus Pius, a slave could claim his freedom if treated cruelly, and a master who killed his slave without just cause could be tried for homicide. At the same time, it became more difficult for a person to fall into slavery under Roman law. By the time of Diocletian, free men could not sell their children or even themselves into slavery and creditors could not claim insolvent debtors as slaves.

Emanicipation

Freedmen and freedwomen, called liberti, formed a separate class in Roman society at all periods. They had the Phrygian cap as their symbol. These people were not numerous, but Rome needed to demonstrate at times the great frank spirit of this "civitas," so the freed slaves were made famous, as hopeful examples. Freed people suffered some minor legal disabilities that show in fact how otherwise open the society was to them—they could not hold certain high offices and they could not marry into the senatorial classes. They might grow rich and influential, but were still looked down on by free-born Romans as vulgar nouveaux riches, like Trimalchio. Their children had no prohibitions.

The Latin poet Horace, the son of a freedman, served as a military officer in the army of Marcus Junius Brutus and seemed headed for a political career before the defeat of Brutus by Octavian and Mark Antony. Though Horace may have been an exceptional case, freedmen were an important part of Roman administrative functions. Freedmen of the Imperial families often were the main functionaries in the Imperial administration. Some rose to positions of great power and influence, for example Narcissus, a freedman of the Emperor Claudius.

Influence

This is all wrong. Anyone can just come on here and type whatever like this. The Stoics taught that all men were manifestations of the same universal spirit, and thus by nature equal. At the same time, however, Stoicism held that external circumstances (such as being enslaved) did not truly impede a person from practicing the Stoic ideal of inner self-mastery: one of the more important Roman stoics, Epictetus, spent his youth as a slave.

Both the Stoics and the early Christians opposed the ill-treatment of slaves, rather than slavery itself. Keith R. Bradley argues, indeed, that the influence of such texts as "obey your masters...with fear and trembling" may have made beatings more common in late Antiquity. Many Christian leaders (such as Gregory of Nyssa and John Chrysostom) often called for good treatment for slaves and condemned slavery. In fact, tradition describes Pope Clement I (term c. 92 - 99), Pope Pius I (term c. 158 - 167) and Pope Callixtus I (term c. 217 - 222) as former slaves. [1]

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)