Daily Life In The Roman City

Daily Life In The Roman City

This article speaks of what slavery in ancient Roman times was like.  It explains that slavery was not based on race, but rather on prisoners of war.  Slavery was also a “permanent boundary,” and sometimes slaves were freed, and sometimes people became slaves.   Generally, people became slaves because of “military conquest.”  There was even a market located outside of Rhodes that had thousands of slaves going through it every day.  Slave trade dramatically increased after the Third Punic War, and after Caesar’s campaigns in Gaul.  People possessed the ability to sell themselves into slavery, and sell members of their family into slavery.  Children of slaves, and abandoned children also generally were sold into slavery.  Better skilled slaves were sold for more money, and less skilled for less.  Slaves were considered property, and by running away from their masters, they were committing theft.  There were two types of slaves, the rural slaves, and the urban slaves.  The rural slaves were the less valuable, ones, who usually worked on farms.  Their life was extremely harsh, and they were highly abused.  The urban slaves had much better lives.  They usually worked in the house of their owner, had families, and were friends of their owners.  These types of slaves sometimes earned a peculium.  A peculium was an amount of money which slaves built up, and once they had enough money, they could buy their freedom from their master.  The slaves generally inherited about a five percent profit from their master’s sales.  It usually took them about seven years to build up a peculium.  Many of these slaves experienced manumission, (being freed by their masters).

Since their was such a large number of slaves in the Roman empire, the Romans were often fearful that a slave rebellion was eminent.  There are examples of this in Roman history where slaves were severely punished for small errors.  Through the Roman Republic, the slaves rebelled a few times.  The most well-known rebellion was that led by Spartacus.  Spartacus had been the Thracian who had served in the Roman army.  After becoming a slave, he was sent to become a gladiator.  He had gathered together a band of about 90000 rebels, and defeated a total of three Roman armies.  He and his army had reached the alps on their way to Italy, and Spartacus had suggested to his followers to escape to their homes.  His followers refused, and they continued on their journey to Italy.  He and most of his followers were killed soon after in a battle, and crucified (as a warning of the results of revolt).  Through the following years, slaves started to become treated with more respect, and less torture.