Resisting Slavery:

[AntoniaR.]

on a review sheet i was working on I was having some trouble with these 2 questions. from the information i know so far, i know that Their role was to provide labour, or to add to their owners' social standing as visible symbols of wealth, or both. Some slaves were treated well, but there were few restraints on their owners' powers, and physical punishment and sexual abuse were common. Owners thought of their slaves as enemies. By definition slavery was a brutal, violent and dehumanising institution, where slaves were seen as akin to animals. but that information is kind of hard to understand. is there any way some one could help me by giving me another answer, or help explain the answer I found?

 

Thanks for all your help!

 

 

1.) What was the role of a slave in ancient Rome? What rights did they have?

 

2.) What percentage of the population in Rome were slaves?

[caesar novus]

Don't take the following as facts, just amateur observations from half remembered presentations. I think treatment varied thru time... republic vs empire, and whether they had a horde of captives from warfare. I will attempt some examples that might scare up some debate and shed light:

 

It was not racially based and didn't have to be a lifetime sentence, so didn't have the finality as more modern slavery. I think their children were born free? Slaves could buy their freedom and often got paid enough to do so after about 7 years if they saved it all. Not that unlike indentured servants of 200+ years ago. I seem to recall that mining slaves and a few others got worked to death quickly though. There may have been sexual abuse, but I think this applied to freeborn male apprentices and so on too.

 

Some citizens voluntarily became slaves for a while, to escape severe punishment for debt or the like! A few slaves became very rich due to being skilled artists or merchants, and after buying freedom became equivilent of billionaires. Gladiator slaves weren't casually sacrificed, but often groomed for low risk success over the years. Now I forgot my last purported fact, but keep in mind this is a controversial area where a professor may either be biased towards demonizing or seeing the nuances.

Edited February 9, 2011 by caesar novus

[Bryaxis Hecatee]

A slave is indeed not considered as a person, despite some philosophical treaties on the subject. Still it did not prevent them from being treated with humanity, especially household slaves. For slaves could be laboring in the houses of their masters or working in their shops or their fields if they were owned by private citizens. Other slaves were property of the state or of local administrations.

Depending on their origin or their background or on their capacities they could be used in all kind of functions : some were private secretaries, other worked as personal assistant for ladies, helping them to make themselves beautifull. Others worked in the kitchens or were tasked with the cleaning. But let's face it, most did not have such kind of live : they worked replenishing wood for a kiln or an oven, they clensed the streets or worked in the fields and, especially dreadfull, in the mines.

They could officially have no mariage, their children were the property of their masters and their only possession was their savings, made with the ultimate goal of freeing themselve, something most could never achieve.

It was considered being beyond poor to be free and not to own a slave, and it is often said they were 1 free person for two or three slaves in the empire.

I have to go right now but others should be able to provide you with more infos.

[Kosmo]

The biggest problem for a slave owner was control. The state could afford to send convicts to mines in the mountains and keep them under the guard of soldiers but this was not possible for a private person, especially for those not very wealthy (I don't consider convicts really slaves because they were not freed or sold).

The city of Rome was too big and too cosmopolitan to be effectively policed for runaway slaves that blended in the general populations (unlike blacks in Americas) so the owners were forced to treat better their slaves. In Rome only the super wealthy had houses, the rest lived in rented apartment buildings where space was limited and expensive, so an owner was more likely to house his slaves in cheap top-floor housing rather then in his own first-floor rooms.

Some slaves worked directly for their master as servants and was shameful not to have at least one personal slave. Others worked together with the master and his family in farms, shops etc., while others just payed a regular amount of money and lived largely independent lives.

Often slaves and freedman of powerful people became rich and powerful themselves. Sometimes slaves were trusted to manage businesses and properties (including slaves) or were sent with tasks in a different corner of the empire.

The emperors did not had a civil service in the beginning (especially because the fiction of the Republic was still maintained) so a lot of the administration of the empire was done by the slaves of the imperial household.

The percentage of slaves is unknown and varied greatly across regions and periods.

[Melvadius]

Antonia,

 

This looks like you are being asked to do a school project; you will find some general information on slavery here but the key points have already been mentioned. How slaves were treated changed over time and depended to a great extent on what work they were being told to do and who owned them. A few could eventually buy their freedom to become freedmen and a few became very wealthy but not all. While any children they had after they became free could become full citizens of Rome although children they had while slaves also automatically became slaves.

 

For a Roman citizen being able to own a slave meant that you did not have to do some things for yourself and you did not have to pay someone to do it for you

[AntoniaR.]

Thanks to all to help me on this quetion, you guys provided me with so much info.could not have done without you.

thank you again.

[caldrail]

1.) What was the role of a slave in ancient Rome? What rights did they have?

 

The role of a slave was to perform as required by the owner. It really was that simple. The value of a slave wasn't just measured by a price tag alone. Some slaves had expert skills, others were trusted servants. Some slaves might be set up in business for their owners profit, and probably with a view to manumission later. On the other hand, an unlucky slave was condemned to hard labour or worse. A man could sleep with a female slave as he wished, but women were not supposed to do so with male slaves, even though it's obvious they did from time to time.

 

There were harsh penalties imposed for treachery. Should a slave kill his master, it was expected that all the slaves of that household would be executed, a policy designed to inhibit conspiracies. Also, even if you were freed by your master, you were stained by having been a slave, and could never seek public office again. Since they were not citizens nor even human, slaves were not allowed to marry. Some owners allowed them to cohabit and any children were the masters property, rather like breeding animals.

 

Strictly speaking, slaves had no rights. They were, by definition, not human beings. In fact, they were sometimes referred to as 'Talking Tools'. However, the maltreatment of slaves became a humanitarian issue as the Principate arrived, and bit by bit, the worst excesses of owners were curbed by law, such as the selling of slaves to a ludum, or the dumping of sick slaves to die. In effect, the slaves were protected not by giving them rights (you didn't want slaves quoting rules), but by denying them to their owners.

 

It should be pointed out that slavery was not always foisted upon the individual. In some cases, a person volunteered for slavery to avoid debt, or even improve their career prospects if they had suitable skills, experience, and could find the right owner. One of Claudius's administrators did exactly that.

 

There's a lot more to this subject, but that's just my two cents for now.

 

2.) What percentage of the population in Rome were slaves?

Nobody actually knows, because there's no accurate survivng census. However, information that has been recovered suggests that many homes, even some of the poorer ones, had one or two slaves. Only a minority of wealthy owners had hundreds of slaves to call upon.

 

PS - I've just remembered an oddity of Roman law. A slave could not own property because anything of his belonged to his master, but I note there was nothing in law to prevent a slave from owning another slave.

Edited February 10, 2011 by caldrail

[Jauchart]

Here's a few contemporary descriptions, which give an idea of the condition of the slaves:

 

Diodorus of Sicily (90-21 BCE)

the slaves who are engaged in the working of them [the mines] produce for their masters revenues in sums defying belief, but they themselves wear out their bodies both by day and by night in the diggings under the earth, dying in large numbers because of the exceptional hardships they endure. For no respite or pause is granted them in their labours, but compelled beneath blows of the overseers to endure the severity of their plight, they throw away their lives in this wretched manner, although certain of them who can endure it, by virtue of their bodily strength and their persevering souls, suffer such hardships over a long period; indeed death in their eyes is more to be desired than life, because of the magnitude of the hardships they must bear.

 

Diodorus Siculus, Diodorus of Sicily, Loeb Classical Library, translated by C.H. Oldfather, vol. 3, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952, Book V, 37, 38, 199-201.

 

 

Diodorus went on to provide the following description of agricultural slavery in his native Sicily:

 

The Italians who were engaged in agriculture purchased great numbers of slaves, all of whom they marked with brands, but failed to provide them sufficient food, and by oppressive toil wore them out?. There was a certain Damophilus, a native of Enna, a man of great wealth but arrogant in manner, who, since he had under cultivation a great circuit of land and owned many herds of cattle, emulated not only the luxury affected by the Italian landowners in Sicily, but also their troops of slaves and their inhumanity and severity towards them. He drove about the countryside with expensive horses, four-wheeled carriages, and a bodyguard of slaves, and prided himself, in addition, on his great train of handsome serving-boys and ill-mannered parasites. Both in town and at his villas he took pains to provide a veritable exhibition of embossed silver and costly crimson spreads, and had himself served sumptuous and regally lavish dinners, in which he surpassed even the luxury of the Persians in outlay and extravagance, as indeed he outdid them also in arrogance. His uncouth and boorish nature, in fact, being set in possession of irresponsible power and in control of a vast fortune, first of all engendered satiety, then overweening pride, and, at last, destruction for him and great calamities for his country. Purchasing a large number of slaves, he treated them outrageously, marking with branding irons the bodies of men who in their own countries had been free, but who through capture in war had come to know the fate of a slave. Some of these he put in fetters and thrust into slave pens; others he designated to act as his herdsmen, but neglected to provide them with suitable clothing or food?. Because of his arbitrary and savage humour not a day passed that this same Damophilus did not torment some of his slaves without just cause. His wife Metallis, who delighted no less in these arrogant punishments, treated her maidservants cruelly, as well as any other slaves who fell into her clutches. And because of the despiteful punishments received from them both, the slaves were filled with rage against their masters, and conceiving that they could encounter nothing worse than their present misfortunes, began to form conspiracies to revolt and to murder their masters?

 

Diodorus Siculus, Diodorus of Sicily, translated by Francis R. Walton, vol. 12, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967, book XXIV/XXXV.2.2, 77-81.

[Jauchart]

On your question:

2.) What percentage of the population in Rome were slaves?

 

See the string in this forum "Population of empire" started by Jauchart--has some numbers.