During the period of Roman imperial expansion, the increase in wealth amongst the Roman elite and the substantial growth of slavery transformed the economy. Multitudes of slaves were brought to Italy and purchased by wealthy landowners to labour on their estates. Land investment and
agricultural production generated great wealth; in the view of
Keith Hopkins, Rome's military conquests and the subsequent introduction of vast wealth and slaves into Italy had effects comparable to widespread and rapid technological innovation. Scholars differ on how the particulars of Roman slavery as an institution can be framed within theories of labor markets in the overall economy. Economic historian
Peter Temin has argued that "Rome had a functioning labor market and a unified labor force" in which slavery played an integral role. Since wages could be earned by both free and some enslaved workers, and fluctuated in response to labor shortages, the condition of mobility required for market dynamism was met by the number of free workers seeking wages and skilled slaves with an incentive to earn.
The slave trade What the Roman jurist
Papinian referred to as "the regular, daily traffic in slaves" involved every part of the Roman Empire and occurred across borders as well. The trade was only lightly regulated by law. Slave markets seem to have existed in most cities of the Empire, but outside Rome the largest center was
Ephesus.
Puteoli may have been the second busiest. Trading also occurred at
Brundisium,
Capua, and
Pompeii. Slaves were imported from across the
Alps to
Aquileia. The rise and fall of
Delos is an example of the volatility and disruptions of the slave trade. In the eastern
Mediterranean, policing by the
Ptolemaic Kingdom and
Rhodes had kept some check on piratical kidnapping and illegal slave trading until Rome, on the wave of their unexpected
success against Carthage, expanded trade and exerted dominance eastward. The long-established port of Rhodes, known as a "law and order" state, had legal and regulatory barriers to exploitation by the new Italian "entrepreneurs", who got a more porous reception in Delos as they set up shop in the latter 3rd century BC. To disadvantage Rhodes, and ultimately devastating its economy, in 166 BC the Romans declared Delos a free port, meaning that merchants there would no longer have to pay the 2 percent customs tax. The piratical slave trade then flooded into Delos "with no questions asked" about the source and status of captives. While the geographer
Strabo's figure of 10,000 slaves traded daily is more hyperbole than statistic, slaves became the number one Delian commodity. The large commercial agricultural operations in Sicily
(latifundia) likely received great numbers of Delian-traded Syrian and
Cilician slaves, who went on to lead the years-long slave rebellions of 135 and 104 BC. But as the Romans established better-located and more sophisticated trading centers in the East, Delos lost its privilege as a free port and was left to be sacked in 88 and 69 BC during the
Mithridatic Wars, from which it never recovered. Other cities such as
Mytilene may have taken up the slack. The Delian slave economy had been artificially exuberant, and by averting their gaze the Romans exacerbated the piracy problem that would vex them for centuries. Major sources of slaves from the East include
Lydia,
Caria,
Phrygia,
Galatia, and
Cappadocia, for which Ephesus was a center of trade.
Aesop, the Phrygian writer of fables, was supposed to have been sold at Ephesus.
Pergamum is likely to have had "regular and heavy" slave trading, as is the prosperous city of
Acmonia in Phrygia. Strabo (1st century AD) describes
Apameia in Phrygia as ranking second in trade only to Ephesus in the region, observing that it was "the common warehouse for those from Italy and from Greece"—a center for imports from the west, with slaves the most likely commodity for export trade. Markets are also likely to have existed in Syria and
Judaea, though direct evidence is thin. In the north Aegean, a large memorial to a slave trader in
Amphipolis suggests that this might have been a location where
Thracian slaves were traded.
Byzantium was a market for the
Black Sea slave trade, and slaves coming from
Bithynia,
Pontus, Scythia, and
Paphlagonia would have been traded in the cities of the
Propontis. Roman coin hoards dating from the 60s BC are found in unusual abundance in
Dacia (present-day
Romania), and have been interpreted as evidence that Pompey's success in shutting down piracy caused an increase in the slave trade in the lower Danube basin to meet demand. The hoards drop off in frequency for the 50s BC, when Julius Caesar's
campaigns in Gaul were resulting in large lots of new slaves brought to market, and resurge in the 40s and 30s. Archaeology into the 21st century has continued to produce evidence of slave trafficking in parts of the Empire where it had been little attested, such as
Roman London. Slaves were traded from outside Roman borders at several points, as mentioned by literary sources such as Strabo and
Tacitus and attested by epigraphical evidence in which slaves are listed among commodities subject to
tariffs. The readiness of
Thracians to exchange slaves for the necessary commodity of
salt became proverbial among the Greeks.
Diodorus Siculus says that in pre-conquest Gaul, wine merchants could trade an
amphora for a slave; Cicero mentions a slave trader from Gaul in 83 BC. The
trans-Saharan slave trade along the ancient
Garamantian caravan route would have brought slaves to Rome along with other goods and raw materials, but slaves from
sub-Saharan Africa appear to have been viewed as an exotic luxury and were relatively few in number.
Walter Scheidel conjectured that "enslavables" were traded across borders from present-day Ireland, Scotland, eastern Germany, southern Russia, the
Caucasus, the Arab peninsula, and what used to be referred to as "
the Sudan"; the
Parthian Empire would have consumed most supply to the east.
Auctions and sales William V. Harris outlines four market venues for slave trading: • small-scale transactions owner-to-owner in which a single slave might be traded; • the "opportunistic market", such as the slave traders who followed the army and handled large numbers of slaves; • fairs and markets in small towns, where slaves would've been among various goods exchanged; • slave markets in major cities, where auctions were held on a regular basis. Slaves traded on the market were
empticii ("purchased ones"), as distinguished from
home-reared slaves born within the
familia.
Empticii were most often bought cheap for everyday tasks or labor, but some were thought of as a kind of luxury good and brought high prices, if they possessed a sought-after, specialized skill or a special quality such as beauty. Most of the slaves traded on the market were in their teens and twenties. In
Diocletian's edict on price controls (301 AD), a maximum price for skilled slaves aged 16–40 is fixed as up to double that of an unskilled slave, which was the equivalent of 3 tons of wheat for a male and 2.5 for a female. Actual pricing would differ by time and place. Evidence for real prices is rare and known mostly from papyri documents preserved in
Roman Egypt, had a section aimed at protecting buyers of slaves by requiring any disease or defect to be divulged at time of sale. Information about the slave was either written on a tablet
(titulus) hung from the neck or called out by the auctioneer. The slave being auctioned might be placed on a stand for viewing. Prospective buyers could feel the slave, have them move or jump, or ask for them to be undressed to make sure the dealer wasn't concealing a physical defect. The wearing of a particular cap
(pilleus) marked a slave who didn't come with a warranty; chalk-whitened feet were a sign of foreigners newly arrived in Italy. A rare depiction of an auction, on a funeral monument from about the same time as the edict, shows a male slave wearing a loincloth and possibly shackles and standing on a pedestal- or podium-like structure. To the left is an auctioneer
(praeco); the gesturing, toga-wearing figure to the right may be a buyer asking questions. The monument was set up by a
familia of former slaves, the Publilii, who were either depicting their own history or, like many freedmen, expressing pride in conducting their own business successfully and honestly. If defects were fraudulently concealed, a six-month return policy required the dealer to take back the slave and issue a refund, or to make a partial refund during an extended
warranty of twelve months. Roman jurists closely parsed what might constitute a defect—not, for instance, missing teeth, since perfectly healthy infants, it was reasoned, lack teeth. Slaves who were sold for a single price as a functional unit, such as a theatre troupe, could be returned as a group if one proved to be defective. Although slaves were property
(res), as human beings they were not to be considered merchandise
(merces); those who sold them therefore were not merchants or traders
(mercatores) but sellers
(venalicarii). Slave-traders (
CIL 13.8348; 30–40 BC) The Latin word for slave-trader was
venalicius or
venalicarius (from
venalis, "something that can be bought", especially as a substantive, a human being for sale) or
mango, plural
mangones, a word of likely Greek origin that had connotations of "huckster"; in Greek more bluntly
somatemporos, a dealer in bodies. Slave-traders had a reputation for dishonesty and deceptive practices, but most of the moral judgments are about defrauding customers rather than the welfare of the slaves. While the senatorial class disdained commerce in general as sordid, rhetoric reviling slave-traders in particular is found widely in Latin literature. Professional slave-traders are rather shadowy figures, as their social standing and identities are not well documented in ancient sources. Most of those known by name are Roman citizens; The cultivation of various
genii was an everyday feature of classical Roman religion; the
Genius venalicii normalizes the trade in slaves as like any other prosperity-seeking marketplace. Slaves were also sold widely by people who made their main living in other ways and by merchants dealing primarily in other goods. In late antiquity, itinerant Galatians protected by powerful patrons become prominent in the North African trade. By comparison, the sales tax on slaves in
Ptolemaic Egypt had been 20 percent The slave-sales tax was increased under
Nero to 4 percent, with a misguided attempt to divert the burden to the seller, which only increased prices
Tariffs on slaves imported to or exported from Italy were taken at harbor
customs, as they were all around the Empire In AD 137, for example, the customs dues in
Palmyra for teenage slaves was 2 to 3 percent of value. and Romans of the governing class regarded wage-earning as equivalent to slavery.
Household slaves (in present-day Tunisia) depicting two female slaves (
ancillae) attending their mistress Epitaphs record at least 55 different jobs a household slave might have, including barber, butler, cook, hairdresser, handmaid (
ancilla), launderer,
wet nurse or
nursery attendant, teacher, secretary, seamstress, accountant, and physician. Rich households with specialists who might not be needed full-time year round, such as goldsmiths or furniture painters, might lease them out to friends and desirable associates or give them license to run their own shop as part of their
peculium. A "poor" household was one in which the same few slaves did everything without specialization. In
Roman Egypt,
papyri preserve
apprenticeship contracts written in Greek that indicate the training a worker might require to become skilled, usually for a full year. A beautician
(ornatrix) required a three-year apprenticeship; in one Roman legal case, it was ruled that a slave who had studied for only two months could not be considered an
ornatrix as a matter of law. In the Imperial era, a large elite household (a
domus in town, or a
villa in the countryside) might be supported by a staff of hundreds; The living conditions of the
familia urbana—slaves attached to a
domus—were sometimes superior to those of many free urban poor in Rome, though even in the grandest houses, they would have lived "packed in to basement rooms and odd crannies". Still, household slaves likely enjoyed the highest standard of living among Roman slaves, next to
publicly owned slaves in administration, who were not subject to the whims of a single master. The work done or the goods made and sold by enslaved labor from these storefronts complicates the distinction between household and general urban labor. Through the end of the 2nd century BC, skilled labor throughout Italy, such as pottery design and manufacture, was still predominated by free workers, whose corporations or guilds
(collegia) might own a few slaves. In the Imperial era, as many as 90 percent of workers in these areas might be slaves or former slaves. Training programs and apprenticeships are well if briefly documented. Slaves whose ability was noticed might be trained from a young age in trades requiring a high degree of artistry or expertise; for example, an epitaph mourns the premature death of a talented boy, only age 12, who was already apprenticing as a
goldsmith. Girls might be apprenticed particularly in the textile industry; contracts specify apprenticeships of varying durations. One four-year contract from Roman Egypt that apprentices an underage girl to a master weaver shows how detailed terms could be. The owner is to feed and clothe the girl, who is to receive periodic pay raises from the weaver as her skills level up, along with eighteen holidays a year. Sick days are to be tacked onto her term of service, and the weaver is responsible for taxes. The contractual aspect of benefits and obligations seems "distinctly modern" and indicates that a slave on a skills track might have opportunities, bargaining power, and relative social security nearly on a par with or exceeding free but low-skill workers living at a subsistence level. The widely attested success of freedmen might have been one possible motivation for
contractual self-sale, as a well-connected owner might be able to obtain training for the slave and market access later as a patron to the new freedman. )'' near the
forum in
Ostia Antica: all aspects of food preparation and service employed both free and slave labor In the city of Rome, working people and their slaves lived in
insulae, multistory buildings with shops on the ground floor and apartments above. Food therefore was widely prepared and sold by free and slave labor at pubs and bars, inns, and food stalls
(tabernae, cauponae, popinae, thermopolia). But
carryout and dining-in establishments were for the lower classes; fine dining was offered in wealthy homes with an enslaved
kitchen staff comprising a head chef
(archimagirus), sous chef
(vicarius supra cocos), and assistants
(coci).
Columella decries the extravagance of
culinary workshops that produce chefs and professional servers when
schools for agriculture don't exist. Seneca mentions the specialized training required for poultry-carving, and the habitually indignant
Juvenal rails about a carver
(cultellus) who rehearses dance-like moves and knife-wielding to meet the exacting standards of his teacher. In the Roman world,
architects were usually freeborn men for hire or freedmen, but the names of some high-profile enslaved architects are known, including Corumbus, the slave of Caesar's friend
Balbus, and Tychicus, whom the emperor
Domitian owned.
Agriculture on a relief from
Roman Gaul Farm slaves (
familia rustica) may have lived in more healthful conditions than their urban counterparts in trade and manufacturing. Roman agricultural writers expect that the workforce of a farm will be mostly slaves, Prison sentences for citizens were not a part of the Roman criminal justice system; jails were meant for holding prisoners transitionally. Instead, in the Imperial era the convicted would be sentenced to hard labor and sent to camps where they would be put to work in the
mines and quarries or the mills.
Damnati in metallum ("those condemned to the mine", or
metallici) lost their freedom as citizens (
libertas), forfeited their property (
bona) to the state, and became
servi poenae, slaves as a legal penalty. Their status under the law differed from that of other slaves; they could not buy their freedom, be sold, or be set free. They were expected to live and often die in the mines. In the later Empire, the permanence of their status was indicated by a tattooing of the forehead. Convicts numbering in the tens of thousands were condemned to the notoriously brutal conditions of enslavement in the mines and quarries. Contrary to modern popular imagery, the
Roman navy did not employ
galley slaves except in wartime when there was a shortage of free oarsman. While it's likely that merchants regularly used enslaved oarsmen for shipping, the practice is not well attested.
Public and imperial slaves in Ostia, where he held several governmental positions up to that of procurator of the grain supply (
annona)'' A
servus publicus populi Romani was a slave owned not by a private individual, but by the
Roman people. Public slaves at Rome worked in
temples and other public buildings and were attached especially to the public treasury
(aerarium). Most performed general, basic tasks as servants to the
College of Pontiffs,
magistrates, and other officials. They were often employed as messengers. They might be assigned to revenue collection, archives, waterworks, firefighting, and other
public works. Less savory tasks also fell to public slaves, such as carrying out executions. Some well-qualified public slaves did skilled office work such as accounting and secretarial services: "the greater part of the business of Rome seems to have been conducted through slaves." Because they had an opportunity to prove their merit, public slaves could acquire a reputation and influence, and their chances for manumission were higher. During the
Republic, a public slave could be freed by a magistrate's declaration, with the prior authorization of the
senate; in the
Imperial era, liberty would be granted by the
emperor. A public slave acquired his own position and it was not passed down to a son. Since women did not serve in the government, women were not themselves public slaves in the privileged sense of a
servus publicus, though they could be in the possession of the state temporarily as captives or confiscated property, and as the quasi-marital partner of a public slave would share some of his privileges. , along with his wife, Ulpia Fortunata; Ulpius Telesphorus, of likely
Trajanic freedman lineage and a relative of the wife or a
conlibertus; Gaudenia Marcellina, the natural daughter of Evangelus from a previous union; and their freedpersons and descendants The term "imperial slave" is broader and includes not only slaves owned by the emperor and serving in the imperial bureaucracy but also more generally the
familia Caesaris, the slaves employed in the emperor's household, including those on his wife's staff. Women were therefore part of the
familia Caesaris. Because public slaves primarily assisted the
senatorial functions of government, the institution waned in the Imperial era as the emperor's own slaves assumed their administrative roles. Vast numbers of imperial slaves helped drive the large-scale public works of the Roman Empire; for example,
Frontinus (1st century AD) says that personnel for the city of Rome's
aqueducts alone numbered 700. Municipal slaves were owned by the
municipalities and served similar functions as the public slaves of the Roman state. Municipal public slaves could be freed by their municipal council. Imperial and municipal slaves are better documented than most slaves because their higher status prompted them to identify themselves as such in inscriptions.
Business managers and agents A slave whose master gave him "free administration"
(libera administratio) could travel and act independently on business. One common managerial role was the
institor, someone who ran a business that remained fully owned by the
principal. The
institor (translated loosely as "agent")—who might be the business owner's slave, another person's slave, a freedman, or a freeborn person such as his son—could operate a branch business in the provinces on behalf of a business owner living in Italy, or in Italy on behalf of a provincial owner. Other managerial positions regularly held by slaves were
actor, a general term for manager or agent;
vilicus, originally the overseer on an agricultural estate but later in an urban setting a general supervisor; and
dispensator, a keeper of accounts who handled disbursements in the household and served generally as its steward. Because Roman
contract law permitted only
direct agency, slaves were placed in these roles for the very reason that they lacked independent personhood and legally could act only as an instrument of their master rather than as a third-party representative.
Dispensatores in particular could expect to become wealthy and be manumitted; their wives were often free. Although these most lucrative financial positions were held most often by male slaves, inscriptions also record women in the role of
dispensatrix. The owner who set aside money or property as a
peculium for the slave to manage in effect created a company with
limited liability. But the agency of slaves in conducting business could raise complex legal issues, with hazards for the slave and potential blowback for the master. If a slave was accused of fraud, for example, or a suit was brought in civil court, the master faced a dilemma: he could acknowledge his ownership and defend the slave, making himself liable for paying damages if they lost the case, or he could decline to defend the slave and surrender all claims to ownership and future patronage. The slave was therefore vulnerable to the master's calculations on the relative advantages of defending him or not. This situation was more than hypothetical; some local laws in the provinces seem aimed at dealing with the legal peculiarities of the relative freedom Romans gave slaves at this operational level. A city in
Caria, for example, spelled out that if a Roman slave violated local banking regulations, the owner could either pay a fine or punish the slave; the punishment was specified as fifty blows and six months of prison. If the slave had to testify in cases involving contract law to defend either his master or his own actions, there is no indication that he was exempt from the law that his testimony could be accepted only under torture; the slave therefore had a compelling incentive to meet the most scrupulously high standards in conducting business. Slaves may even have been routinely preferred to paid free labor in areas of employment such as
banking and accounting. At times, an estate might be managed by slaves while free persons provided manual labor. Households that are settings for narratives in the Christian
Gospels also show privileged slaves acting as estate managers and agents, collecting rent and produce from tenant farmers, or investing money and conducting business on behalf of their master, as well as serving as
oikonomoi (household managers or "economists") in charge of allocating and disbursing food and funds to other members of the
familia.
Gladiators, entertainers, and prostitutes Gladiators, entertainers such as actors and dancers, and prostitutes were among those persons in Rome who existed in the social limbo of
infamia or disrepute, regardless of whether they were enslaved or technically free. Like slaves, they could not bring a case in court nor have someone represent them; like freedmen, they were not eligible to hold public office. In a legal sense,
infamia was an official loss of standing for a freeborn person as a result of misconduct, and could be imposed by a
censor or
praetor as a legal penalty. Those who displayed themselves to entertain others had surrendered the right of citizens not to subject their body to use: "They lived by providing sex, violence, and laughter for the pleasure of the public." Those deemed
infames had few legal protections even if they were Roman citizens who were not subject to being traded as slaves. They were liable to corporal punishment of the kinds usually reserved for slaves. Their daily life probably differed little from that of a slave within the same area of employment, though they had control of their income and more freedom to make decisions about their living arrangements. Their lack of legal standing arose from the kind of work they did—perceived as a morally suspect manipulation of and simultaneous surrender to others' desires for pleasure—not the fact that they worked alongside slaves, since that would be true of nearly all forms of labor in Rome.
Lenones (pimps) and
lanistae (trainers or managers of gladiators) shared the disreputable status of their workers. ) Actors were moreover subversive because the theatre was a place for
free speech. Actors were known to mock politicians from the stage, and there was established law from the 4th century BC and into the late Republic that they could be subjected to physical punishment as slaves were. The comic playwright known in English as
Terence was a slave who was manumitted because of his literary abilities. In the Late Republic, about half the gladiators who fought in Roman arenas were slaves, though the most skilled were often free volunteers. Freeborn gladiators erased the distinction between citizen and slave by taking an oath to subject their bodies to physical abuse, including being branded and beaten, both marks of slavery. Enslaved gladiators who enjoyed success in the arena were occasionally rewarded with manumission but remained in a state of
infamia. Prostitutes in the city of Rome had to be registered with the
aediles, and prostitution was legal throughout the Roman Empire in all periods before
Christian hegemony. However, Romans saw prostitution as worse than slavery, since slavery did not inherently or permanently damage the slave's personal morality, and so a woman's contract might include a clause specifying that
she was not to be prostituted. Prostitutes who worked in brothels
(lupanaria) were more likely to be slaves than were
streetwalkers, who might start selling sex under economic duress and be self-employed. A few freedwomen who were former prostitutes amassed enough wealth to become public benefactors, but most enslaved brothel workers are likely to have received little or no payment for their own use. Male prostitutes also existed. Selling a slave against his will to a training camp for gladiators was a punishment. and the emperor
Hadrian banned the sale of slaves to pimps or gladiator managers "without cause", indicating that prostitution and violence in the arena were considered beyond the pale of standard servitude. Legislation under Christian emperors likewise forbade masters to employ slaves as stage actors against their will or to prevent actors from retiring from the theatre. Sexual slavery was forbidden by the Church, and Christianization was a factor in curtailing or altogether ending traditional spectacles and games
(ludi) such as gladiator matches and public theatrical performances.
Serfdom By the 3rd century AD, the
Roman Empire faced a labour shortage. Large Roman landowners increasingly relied on Roman freemen, acting as
tenant farmers, instead of slaves to provide labour. The status of these tenant farmers
(coloni) steadily eroded. Because the tax system implemented by
Diocletian assessed taxes based on both land and the inhabitants of that land, it became administratively inconvenient for peasants to leave the land where they were counted in the census. In 332 AD
Constantine issued legislation that greatly restricted the rights of the
coloni and tied them to the land. As a result, from the
3rd century onward, differentiating a slave, a worker hired under contract, and a peasant tied to the land became at best academic, as socio-legal status devolved into a bifurcation of
honestiores and humiliores: the tiny percentage of the populace who had access to power and wealth, having attained honors to the rank of
decurion or higher; and those of humbler free status who were increasingly subjected to forms of
control reserved for slaves in the Republican era. By the 5th century, the legal status that had distinguished free citizen from slave had all but vanished; what remained was the
honestiores who held legally defined privilege, and the
humiliores subject to exploitation. Some see these laws as the beginning of medieval
serfdom in Europe. ==Demography==