slavery, Roman

The Roman Empire probably had as many slaves as free people, and some wealthy Romans owned as many as 10,000 slaves. They were employed on large farms (latifundia), in mines and workshops, as personal slaves in the home, and by the Roman state. Slaves in mining and farming were often very badly treated but a few slaves were trusted secretaries and stewards. Many were freed and some became wealthy slave-owners themselves.

Roman slaves had no rights, and were regarded as personal property; legally, they could have no possessions, and all the produce of their labour belonged to their master. They could not enter into a Roman marriage; the equivalent of marriage between slaves was called contubernium. Originally an owner had complete power of life and death over his slave but this power was gradually reduced, and in the Christian era the killing of a slave began to be treated as murder.

Public slaves in Rome belonged to the state or to public bodies, such as a municipia (a provincial town), a collegium (a religious body), or to the emperor's staff; some were employed in public duties of a highly honourable nature, for example as keepers of public buildings, prisons, or other state property, while others were employed as road repairers, watchmen, lictors, and scavengers.

While some Roman writers suggested that slaves should be worked to death, as this was cheaper than trying to keep them well, educated Greek slaves could work as doctors and clerks, and could become trusted advisers to their owners (the Roman writer Cicero worries in a letter about the illness of a favoured Greek slave). City slaves who had served their master personally or in business were often freed in his will. Even after ‘manumission’ from slavery, they did not become full Roman citizens, but ‘freedmen’ or ‘freedwomen’. Some freed slaves bought slaves themselves, and became wealthier than many citizens.

Both Stoic philosophy and, later, Christian teaching, led to a gradual change in attitude to slaves, with legal penalties for ill-treatment, but there was no movement in Rome for abolishing slavery.