Roman Slavery

1) Slave society/ slave-owning society (society with slaves)

a) “ONLY 5 SLAVE SOCIETIES IN HISTORY”

i) - rare; where slavery is a central institution in the society; (implies most of population are
slaves, 30% give or take) –economy and keystone of the society is based around slavery.
ii) Examples: (Parts of) West Africa, Greece, Rome, Brazil, Caribbean, United States
b) Slavery Defined:
i) Slaves are “property
ii) Is slavery linked to race?? Noooo. Slavery isnt always tied to race i.e rome and greece
2) Sources of Slaves
i) Who is it okayy to enslave?? Justified how??
(1) Race, Religion, Ethnicity, etc
(a) You don’t enslave “us”, you enslave “others” or the people NOT like yourself
(otherness)
(b) “Social Death”- it extinguishes your kinship ties (no “kinship rights”), before you are
enslaved breaks the realtionships you have with your family(brother, mother,
father, daughter, etc); the slave can be “reassigned” to somewhere else..
(c) Although they had families, they had no “right” to them; the slave himself had no
right to dictate what happens to his kinfolk
(d) “Latifundia”
(2) Crops went to support the patricians and their villas (lavish lifestye lived by the roman
elite)
(3) Rome brought slaves “inward” to the empire which is different than the normally
sending the conquored peoples “outward” from the empire
(4) Rome was constantly importing slaves (at peak, enslaved est. 100,000 ppl/year
(a) But why did they have to import so many ppl? Why couldn’t they have relied on
natural reproduction?
(i) Slave populations historicly don’t reproduce, except for the United States. They
not only reproduced, but the pop. Eventually grew.
Manumission– to free a slave; to manumit
b) Peculium- (refers to right of a slave to earn money to buy their own freedom); saving money to
purchase own freedom, by custom but not by law
i) Easier to earn in urban areas