Question: Slavery in Ancient Rome

[Klingan]

But of course he didn't imply his slaves weren't profitable; au contraire, Varro was merely suggesting you to endanger (if required) hired hands and not your own valuable property. The slaves were valuable because they were profitable.

 

Or because they were a investment that was expected to last for a long time to pay off.

[ASCLEPIADES]

I think what makes it difficult to assess the number of slaves in Roman Society is that there does not appear to be a rigid definition. In other slave societies I can think of, a slave is a slave, is a slave - with few rights and no posessions. In Roman society we come across slaves who are paid by their masters, allowed days off work, and in some cases even own their own houses. Would it be correct to regard Roman period slavery as a social class?

 

I would say no. In the end a roman slave was a slave and nothing else. They were property.

 

All societies that allow slaves have different ways to handle them. Persian slaves were highly trusted, but we all know that many of them had to become eunuchs to earn that trust. In Athens they had a slave police force.

Edited December 2, 2008 by ASCLEPIADES

[ASCLEPIADES]

But of course he didn't imply his slaves weren't profitable; au contraire, Varro was merely suggesting you to endanger (if required) hired hands and not your own valuable property. The slaves were valuable because they were profitable.

 

Or because they were a investment that was expected to last for a long time to pay off.

We are saying the same things with different words; their slaves could only have been an investment if they were profitable. We can expect no less from the always prudent and sometimes stingy MT Varro.

[ASCLEPIADES]

BTW, regarding slave prices, their analysis is analogous to nowadays car prices.

Edited December 2, 2008 by ASCLEPIADES

[caldrail]

Until the cost of buying them becomes too high. Thats the whole point. It revolves around the profitability of farms over the course of the empire and whether the large estates of the principate were still economically viable in later times. In fact, the small farmer had originally been effectively forced off his land by being unable to compete profitably with the output of larger estates, which is one reason why Rome had such a large itinerant population dependent on the corn dole. The question also revolves on the use of the Frumentarii, the 'corn collectors', whose influence was increased from the reign of Hadrian until their disbandment by Diocletian.

[ASCLEPIADES]

So far, I have found no evidence of any substantial increase in the slaves' price.

Edited December 2, 2008 by ASCLEPIADES

[Kosmo]

... the private estates of wealthy individuals in the countryside might have employed a great many slaves to work the land.

They might have employed a great number of tenants or dependant workers rather then slaves. Many of the Roman landlords in the provinces were in fact the members of the former local pre-conquest aristocracies and they often continued what they were doing before the conquest, tax their subjects in various ways: money, products, labour etc. This took many forms and rural relations varied greatly across the empire.

I mentioned mines because while most of them were small, Romans had also some huge ones that employed a large workforce. Whatever the size of the operation, mining used slaves because it was a hard and dangerous work and the local workforce was often too small or unavailable on the spot, usually in mountains. That's why the state was making sure that he has a continuous flow of slaves available for mining by sentencing criminals to work in mines.

[ASCLEPIADES]

I mentioned mines because while most of them were small, Romans had also some huge ones that employed a large workforce. Whatever the size of the operation, mining used slaves because it was a hard and dangerous work and the local workforce was often too small or unavailable on the spot, usually in mountains. That's why the state was making sure that he has a continuous flow of slaves available for mining by sentencing criminals to work in mines.

Edited December 2, 2008 by ASCLEPIADES

[ASCLEPIADES]

Quick question:

 

I've read that 25-40% of the inhabitants in the city of Rome were slaves, and possibly an additional 5% were freedmen.

 

Assuming that the city of Rome had about one million inhabitants in AD 160, this would be between 250,000 to 400,000 slaves in the city of Rome.

 

This number seems high. Any thoughts?

 

guy also known as gaius

Edited December 2, 2008 by ASCLEPIADES

[caldrail]

After the Punic Wars, the free tenant farmer in Italy was gradually eliminated by great cattle-ranches run for absentee landlords by gangs of slaves. During the last two centuries BC Sicily, North Africa, and above all Italy posessed economies that were more ground on slave labour than ever, in any country, before or since. Italy remained the chief slave centre until the 2nd century AD. By then the supply of slaves from prisoners-of-war was drying up (the last big haul was after Trajan's Dacian wars), and the tenant farmer, so characterisitc of the later european society, was beginning to come into its own again.

The World of Rome - Michael Grant

 

During the latter half of the Roman Republic, the numbers of enslaved enemies sold in the market place reached astonishing figures, and some estimates have it that nearly half a million gauls were taken by Caesar alone. The markets of Delos, renowned as a centre of the slave trade, could boast that it had received, displayed, sold, and sent ten thousand in one day. These numbers were further increased by those infants left for dead by destitute parents and taken by slavers, or the unknown numbers kidnapped by pirates in the Mediterranean with the covert complicity of some influential romans. Slaves were sometimes bred by their owners, even though this reduced the profitability of their female possessions. Even in the time of Augustus travellers risked being forced into slavery by sword wielding gangs - and it was the rural slave-barracks to which they would be taken.

 

With a surplus of labour available in the Republic, the cruel treatment of them was not considered so. Cato the Elder wrote his treatise On Farming in the second century BC in which he discusses the handling and treatment of slaves as he would any other farm animal, and his work is primarily on how to profit from agriculture, which means he does not reach the worst excesses of cruelty. many others did, and so slave revolts began to make themselves felt, in Sicily, and mainland Italy under Spartacus. That above all struck deep into roman security. It was commonly said that every slave they owned was an enemy they harboured.

 

It was around this time that Varro described slaves as 'Talking Tools', and detailed his view of slavery in terms of more sensitive treatment, and their efficient use in agriculture. Seneca of Cordova, a novelist, went further and appealed to his audience to show humanity toward their slaves, as Cicero demonstrated with his own. There was a reaction of sorts going on concerning slavery, in that the brutal treatment of old was turning to an appreciation of value, and in some cases, genuine sympathy for their condition.

 

This increasingly humane treatment predates the influence of Christianity, which actually doesn't appear to affected roman attitude to slavery, and despite laws prohibiting it entirely, slavery would continue into the dark ages and beyond. This attitude can be traced through roman law as the Principate developed. Increasingly humane laws, rights, and prohibitions applied to slavery. Claudius, Hadrian, and Antoninus Pius all contributed to slave welfare.

 

Nonetheless, these laws were fundamentally urban in character. On the private estates slaves were largely out of public gaze, and the lot of rural slaves was not always desirable although the romans did like to portray romanticised scenes of rural bliss.

 

It has been rightly pointed out that cheap slave labour ruined Italian agriculture, exhausted the soil, and stagnated techniques; that many slaves could not handle complex processes; and that the consequent degradation of manual skill discouraged interest in technology. yet the versatility of certain slaves must not be under-estimated - nor must the likeliehood that, in the conditions prevailing in antiquity, slavery increased the available surplus in the hands of the propertied classes more than could have been done by other accessible means. Even during the late Republic, when the use of slaves in agriculture and industry had enormously increased, it is probable that they numerically exceeded free labour only on the cattle ranches. The subsequent replacement of slave gangs by free tenants suggests that under the Principate, when the influx of war-prisoners first diminished and then ceased, slaves were neither abundant nor cheap.

The World of Rome - Michael Grant

 

With slaves becoming neither abundant nor cheap, perhaps it isn't too suprising that Tiberius was tasked to uncover the scandal of kidnapping travellers as slaves in rural barracks, although this was also to uncover those hiding there as slaves to avoid military service. It appears then that rural masters were often somewhat unscrupulous, especially since there was little oversight away from the urban centres. Undoubtedly this was partly down to roman greed, but there is also a suggestion that the cost of slaves was such that slave owners were willing to kidnap travellers to replace them. But how many slaves actually worked the land?

 

The numbers involved varied from place to place. Egypt, with its largely peasant workforce, had few, whereas Spain was known for slave ownership in considerable numbers. Galen believed that in Pergammum a third of the population were slaves. In Italy, its estimated that ninety percent of the population needed to work for a living - that they did not have slaves or slaves in sufficient numbers to work for them (It must be remembered that most romans lived in outright squalor, whatever we read of roman art, culture, and luxurious decadence) and some estimates of Italian slavery suggest up to fifty percent were such.

 

The majority of rural slaves would have worked the land. It is true that some mines were large scale affairs with considerable organisation, and that the life expectantcy of its workers was not to be envied, but the demands of supplying urban populations was such that many who lived in towns worked the fields surrounding it.

 

The balance between slave and tenant farmer is sometimes disputed, and one contention is that there is no change of land use. There wouldn't be, since slaves were often awarded a peculium of small plots of land and animals to raise upon it, thus farming in identical fashion to the tenants. Although Varro suggests that the slave is more cost-effective, he is speaking from the point of view of a larger scale and well run estate, something that could not be guaranteed. Nor does Varro have any detailed accounting to prove his point, a problem common to roman landowners, which conventiently ignores the fact that slaves must be maintained and that they are unlikely to work at the same productivity as free tenant farmers. In fact, Cato the Elder acknowledges that fact and states that docile slaves, whilst less productive, are better servants because they are not rebellious. The average wealthy roman was not concerned with the poor, and hence our information of them, free or enslaved, is somewhat limited.

 

The quotes from Michael Grants work represent a cross section of conventional wisdom concerning rural slavery, but there are points that need to be addressed.

 

1 - Information about the poor is very limited.

2 - The return of the free tenant farmer cannot be verified and we know slavery continued.

3 - The numbers of slaves in rural activity was concentrated on large estates

4 - The cheap availability of slaves from the Late Republic had ceased, yet slaves were always available.

5 - The extent of kidnapping on the road, which was liable to be patchy and in small numbers.

6 - The extent of piracy, which too was intermittent by its very nature.

7 - The inability of breeeding to provide sufficient slaves.

8 - The numbers of debtors entering slavery voluntarily, even in rural communities.

9 - The numbers of exposed infants taken as slaves.

10- The extent of personal land use, either as tenancy or as a peculium.

11 - The division between large scale estates and small holdings.

12 - The productivity of slave gangs outside of ideal enviroments described by Varro.

13 - The increasing influence of syrian religion amongst slaves during the Principate.

14 - The availability of collegium 'Guilds' to slaves in the countryside.

15 - The regional variations in numbers and employment.

16 - The reduction in producivity associated with christian influence (as complained of by Celsus)

17 - The discontent of the poor, accentuated in the late empire.

18 - The roman assumption that farm managers are also slaves.

19 - The financial success of freedmen, even in rural settings.

20 - "Men Without Hope" (Pliny the Elder) - The lack of rural manumission.

21

[Kosmo]

Very nice Caldrail. Your post it's both extensive and detailed.

 

I have to say that Grant's opinion is based on a very old model of the Late Republic that has come under great criticism from many historians.

 

The "great cattle-ranches run for absentee landlords by gangs of slaves" use much less workforce then arable lands. The next phrase "During the last two centuries BC Sicily, North Africa, and above all Italy posessed economies that were more ground on slave labour than ever, in any country, before or since" contradicts the first one because at least Sicily and North Africa, but also the most important parts of Italy: Campania, Tuscany and Latium were still agricultural and not cattle ranches.

 

I also believe that for an animal farm slaves were a good option because the workload it's evenly distributed during the year while agriculture needed a much more flexible workforce according to seasons.

When the Roman public supply system brought large quantities of cheap grain on the Italian market, coupled with a good transport network some Italian farms in a land generally unsuited for grain production switched to cattle raising and to a workforce with more slaves. When Rome lost North Africa to the Vandals the agricultural production in Italy increased in a reverse process.

 

But this case of regional change of production does not tells us much about an empire that stretched from Scotland to Mesopotamia.

[ASCLEPIADES]

Salve, K

The "great cattle-ranches run for absentee landlords by gangs of slaves" use much less workforce then arable lands. The next phrase "During the last two centuries BC Sicily, North Africa, and above all Italy posessed economies that were more ground on slave labour than ever, in any country, before or since" contradicts the first one because at least Sicily and North Africa, but also the most important parts of Italy: Campania, Tuscany and Latium were still agricultural and not cattle ranches.

Edited December 2, 2008 by ASCLEPIADES

[Kosmo]

The first phrase in the Grant quote speaks about cattle farms, while the second refers to large regions known as cereal production areas. We could see the 2 phrases as having no logical connexion, but my impression was that the second statement was based on the first and as such has a flawed logic.

That "the free tenant farmer in Italy was gradually eliminated by great cattle-ranches run for absentee landlords by gangs of slaves"(a fact that I attributed to cheap grain imports) does not imply that "During the last two centuries BC Sicily, North Africa,(agricultural production areas) and above all Italy posessed economies that were ... ground on slave labour... " especially because the decline of Italian agriculture was provoked by an increase in African production.

[caldrail]

The "great cattle-ranches run for absentee landlords by gangs of slaves" use much less workforce then arable lands.

Not so. If the romans had used the slaves as cowboys then you would be correct, as the herds could be handled with a minimum of labour. However, slaves weren't likely to have access to horses on a general basis, thus the herds would be divided into smaller manageable numbers tended by larger numbers of pedestrian slaves.

 

A point about Varro's assertion of slave profitability. How did he know that? Was he actually running his estate personally? A strange way to carry on for a wealthy Roman surely. More likely he was another absentee landlord, which means if he was running his estate according to standard roman practice then the slave managers were his slaves too. Since these slaves derived personal status and some power by their overlordship of their peers, it therefore stands to reason that they wanted to preserve the status quo and retain the current enviable position. Varro was, therefore, being told porkies.

 

When the Roman public supply system brought large quantities of cheap grain on the Italian market, coupled with a good transport network some Italian farms in a land generally unsuited for grain production switched to cattle raising and to a workforce with more slaves. When Rome lost North Africa to the Vandals the agricultural production in Italy increased in a reverse process.

The cheap grain from egypt was grown from free peasant labour, not slavery. Further, the supply of pruduce within the empire was predominantly local, in that food was unlikely to travel far from its source. People were tending farms around the towns they lived in to support the population and make profit from excess. The egyptian grain is one example of an exception, in that the produce was earmarked for the city of Rome and delivered there by sea, a great deal easier compared to the limits of land transport. I do like your point about the loss of egyptian supply, but that does not account for the decline in roman population of the ciy of Rome after the money went east to Constantinople.

 

But this case of regional change of production does not tells us much about an empire that stretched from Scotland to Mesopotamia.

Because the majority of food supply was local.

[ASCLEPIADES]

Salve, K.

This would mean a visible change in rural economy from the I C AD but we don't see that. As in other old economies slaves were present but not a decisive factor. Small land owners, colons and other dependant workers, permanent and temporary helpers would have been the great majority of the rural workforce. Egypt it's a great example of that.

Edited December 2, 2008 by ASCLEPIADES