The conquest of Gaul and the logistics of Slavery

[Luke]

Hey,

I'm currently reading through caesars commentaries on the conquest of Gaul. I must say its great reading.

 

I've got a question though on some of the logistics. Throughout the campaigns Ceaser manages to sell absolutely stunning numbers of defeated people into slavery. How did it all work? Who got rich?

 

I can imagine a few possibilities. Were the slaves awarded to individual solders as the spoils of battle? I imagine then it would be up to the solder to care for their slaves for the rest of the campaign. I imagine this would get quickly get tiresome given the amount of marching around Gaul that went on. How could a solder be expected to keep an eye on a few slaves and still see to his duty? Did solders even try to 'bring a slave home for the wife and kids' or did they just try and convert them into cash at the first opportunity?

 

I imagine that following the camp around would be a very lucrative prospect for slave traders. But the problem would then become how to get these vast numbers of people back to the slave markets in Italy. Transporting that many people in captivity would be a burden even today - I cannot comprehend how they managed it 2000 years ago.

 

Given all the problems, the rates of escape must have been very high. When I read that 10,000 of such and such a tribe were sold into slavery, would it mean that literally 10,000 people would be shackled up, then shipped under guard back to Rome? Or would it be more the case that they could expect to be bullied around by a legionary for a few days, before running off at the first opportunity?

[caldrail]

Caesar did indeed give slaves to his men. having a legionary as a master probably didn't score highly on care of the slave. Many would have been set menial tasks like cleaning, cooking, or simply lugging stuff around in the baggage train. I don't know what became of these slaves - no further mention is made of them - and we have a surviving letter from egypt in which a soldier tells his family "Nothing happens around here without money" so the odds are many were conveniently sold quickly as transferable booty, which I suspect Caesar had in mind all along.

 

As for getting slaves to market, that wouldn't necessarily entail a journey to Rome though I imagine many of them ended up there. There is one precedent however in the case of a Roman general called Galba (not the later caesar) who duped lusitanian tribes into captivity. Having executed large numbers he put the rest in chains and sent them to Rome. In other words, having been cowed by the csrnage and chained, it only required a small detachment of soldiers to keep them on the journey.

 

As for slave escapes, we know this went on, and that shouldn't suprise us. However the escaped slave could expect severe punishment if caught and even if as in this case they probably had no identiying feature (other that being nervous gaul warriors), slavery was not unusual in the ancient world and there's often a grudging acceptance of their lot. The ability of an individual to rebel or escape depends much on their morale and spirit - I doubt those gauls had much of either left.