What it was like to be a Slave in Rome?

Despite all the veneration we often throw Ancient Rome’s way, the truth is the Ancient Romans built their empire on the backs of slaves, with an estimated 35% of the total population of that society in the 1^st century BCE comprised of slaves. So how did slavery start in this civilization and what was it actually like to be a slave in Ancient Rome?

As to the former question, it may or may not come as a surprise to you, but slavery in this region had been around as long as we have documented evidence of anything that happened there. Thus, by the time Rome became a thing it was already firmly established as a societal norm. For example, the 5^th century BCE legal code, The Twelve Tables, had laws relating to slaves and freed slaves. What was a little different in these earliest references, such as in The Twelve Tables is that there was a taboo against slaves taking part in religious rituals such as anointing corpses. This is odd considering that in later years slaves commonly helped high ranking priests with rituals important to the running of the state concerning augury and the Sibylline Books. What was not odd and seemingly pretty much par for the course in slavery the world over is that in The Twelve Tables, slaves often faced a harsher punishment for crimes than free people. For example, if a free person was caught stealing, part of his corporal punishment was flogging, while a slave well… let’s just say they would swiftly after being caught cease to continue breathing.

As for where the Romans got their slaves, these most commonly came from any peoples the Romans were at war with. Unsurprisingly from this, slave numbers ramped up significantly once Rome began their conquering ways. As Rome expanded its empire into Italy, and then out into the Mediterranean and beyond, captured peoples became slaves and were brought to Rome and other provincial cities. Sometimes these prisoners were sold to dealers during the campaign or taken by the soldiers themselves for use in their respective households. As an average Roman who wanted to buy slaves, you went to specific slave dealers depending on your needs. As to this, slave dealers sold slaves in different markets depending on what type of slave you wanted, with hardier ones sold in one area of the city, while domestic individuals sold in others.

All this said, the sale of war prisoners was not the only source of slaves in Rome. There was also a robust slave trade between the Romans and other cultures. This was commonly used to bring in slaves while bypassing certain restrictions. For example, it was illegal in the later empire to castrate slaves. One way around this was to import already castrated slaves from Eastern reaches such as Persian held Armenia. Piracy was also another source of slave stock as pirates commonly kidnapped and sold people, Roman or otherwise, into slavery. It is even known that pirates operated private slave prisons on the Italian peninsula where freeborn kidnapped citizens were held before being sold into slavery.

People could also be born slaves. Regardless of the father’s status, if a slave woman were to bear a child, even by her master, that child by default became her master’s slave. As such, pairing and breeding was encouraged by masters as a natural means to supply their estate with more slaves. It was also known for Romans themselves to enter slavery either within Rome, often after a civil war or the like, or as captives in the hands of an enemy. Abandoned children were also at risk of becoming slaves in the Roman Empire.

As for the legality of it all, legally, slavery was related to death in Roman codes. As far as the law was concerned, you existed in a state like death, and your owner owned you in body and soul, with almost no restrictions, save something like the aforementioned eventual ban on castration. You otherwise had no rights. You could own no property; you could not legally start a family and, again, any children you had belonged to your master. Slaves did sometimes have a limited pool of money to spend from called a peculium, but even though they may have accumulated those funds or possessions themselves in some way, that still technically belonged to their masters. Slaves with high status could even have underslaves who waited on and worked for them and were otherwise at their bidding, but the underslaves were still in effect owned by their master, not the higher-ranking slave.

Beyond this, physically abusing a slave in pretty much any way you please was very common and was usually the go-to response of an agitated master. Sexual gratification with a slave was also an accepted action for slaveowning men, and at times for women, although it was generally frowned upon for a woman to have sexual relations with her slave. In the end, as property, Roman slaves arguably had fewer rights than modern-day pets in many societies, since our pets are protected by some level of law, though of course pets can be castrated… So that’s one win for the Roman slave.,, Yet despite the ethical ramifications from a modern day lens, Romans saw slavery as a normal and regular facet of life. Even lower class individuals potentially owned a slave or two.

This all brings us to what slaves got up to when they weren’t polishing their master’s trophy. It turns out, saying concisely what a typical slaves’ day to day life was like in Ancient Rome is an effort in futility as this could be as diverse as the lives of their masters, save sans any rights to do as they pleased except where their master willed. In the general case, slaves simply helped in production and tasks both in rural and urban areas, but with the majority of slaves being in the countryside.

As for slaves belonging to lower class owners, they were often in charge of extremely diverse tasks from cooking, cleaning, stabling horses, going on deliveries, helping out in their masters’ business, etc., perhaps all on the same day. Even if one of these lower class owner slaves had specialized jobs such as weavers, they usually did more general tasks around the house such as cooking and cleaning. Basically they did whatever their master needed them to in a given moment.

Slaves in more well to-do households, however, tended to be much more specialized. For example, children of the elite generally had Attendant slaves, the title given to a slave whose job it was to do basically anything needed to care for the child, as well as do anything the child asked of them. They opened doors and windows for them, dressed them, fed them, washed them, walked them to school, and were otherwise addressed by their little charges by such fun terms as “boy”.

Beyond this, slaves of the elite could be dedicated maidservants, smiths, masons for repairing structures, ploughmen, shepherds, oil press workers, bakers, barbers, bailiffs, and much more depending on the size and wealth of the estate. There were also occupations that required more advanced training and learning such as treasurers, clerks, secretaries, and doctors. There were even artisanal slaves who worked as gold and silversmiths and pearl setters. A given slave might also be trained as a comic actor… pet child and… even a dwarf. No, really, those last three are found in records. In the end, basically any job a free person could hold, you could also find a slave trained and doing that profession for their master. Just about the only thing that slaves could not do was serve in the military.

There was even “job mobility” if you could call it that. Some slave jobs were meant to be grown out of such as hen keeping and gathering fodder, although older slaves could be assigned those roles later in life. You could also progress from one job to another, such as going from litter-bearer to cook. Some slaves were lucky and were allowed to pursue intellectual tasks, such as Timagenes of Alexandria who eventually became a historian.

It should also be noted that there were hierarchies of slaves, so not all slaves or their jobs were equal. As mentioned before, underslaves existed and served higher ranking slaves, although all involved belonged to one master. On this note, in general, urban slaves had a higher ranking than rural ones. The standing of one’s owner also counted in some ways; slaves belonging to a wealthier or more powerful owner were socially higher than those who belonged to poorer owners. Slaves with higher levels of responsibilities were also typically given more luxurious or spacious accommodations compared to lower ranking ones. Further, as alluded to, slaves could sometimes hold jobs that required great learning, and it is possible, although not thoroughly documented, that there is a career progression in those jobs. There were many such learned positions such as record keepers, tax-stewards, and assistants to priests. This all meant that there was no single class of slaves, there were several.

As you might imagine from this, slave rebellions didn’t tend to include all levels of slaves, as these different levels of slaves often competed and didn’t see themselves as one class of people. Further, some classes were more comfortable in their station than others. Combined with the fact that slave rebellions tended to be put down brutally, they weren’t common. For example, the events of a film you may have watched, Spartacus, started in 73 BCE, was the last major slave revolt for the rest of Rome’s existence. However, there were other ways to resist oppression, and a large-scale slave rebellion was just one form. Running away from your life as a slave was an occasional thing despite being punishable by death. However, some slaves lived such a poor quality of life that the possibility of death was preferable to continued mistreatment. Murder and conspiracy to murder were also not out of the question, and cases were recorded of slaves going postal and killing their masters and their master’s family. Some took, well… more imaginative approaches to resistance. In one case we know of, a slave took revenge on his mistress after she flogged his wife, via said slave then reporting his mistress’ cheating affair to his master. Much like in your soul crushing job, passive resistance was also a common thing, via slaves working as poorly as possible so as to just barely stay within acceptable means. This could mean doing your job slowly or incompetently, lying, and even sabotage; whatever negatively impacted the owner but didn’t result in much pain or consequence for yourself.

As to mistreatment, coercion was a large part of slave life. All were coerced to work for their masters, but some like bailiffs and overseers had the specific role of enforcing that coercion on fellow slaves in place of their masters. Failure to perform could mean demotion at best, physical or emotional harm such as beatings or separation from your “family”, and, in the end, death at worst.

On the flipside, there was a degree of independence depending on your job and position. Urban slaves could even end up working as managers in their owners’ businesses. They could run a bank or shop for their owners. A slave agent was even authorized to buy anything the owner required for their business such as cattle, tools, equipment, real estate, or other slaves. They could run inns, shops, and carry out money lending operations. This sort of agent was very common, and while it wasn’t necessarily just slaves that could be agents, it was common for slaves to be tasked with such. Freed slaves would even sometimes continue this agent work for their former masters after they were freed.

On this note of freed slaves, what happened after slavery? Well, usually death was the only release for the vast majority of slaves. But for some, manumission was possible, with slaves and their former masters then often having a client-patron relationship. In fact, inheritance laws made it so that former masters inherited their freedmen’s possessions if the former slave died without heirs.

Going back to life though, depending on the high status of your patron, you could get a boost in prestige and standing as a freed person from their household. Thus, a freed slave of a poor household held a lot less prestige than a freed slave of, say, the emperor. Depending on your patron, you could leverage that prestige to marry wealthy freed or free women and cement generational wealth for your free born children. Manumission did not always mean freedom from your old job, however. After all, you were trained in that job and may have done it all your life. Thus, as alluded to, many ex-slaves returned to their old jobs, simply now as free people, whether that was as secretaries, or as domestic servants. The difference being, of course, they could now accumulate their own wealth from their efforts, in some cases substantial if their trained trade was a lucrative one. These ultimately wealthy freed individuals sometimes had the airs of the nouveau riche, attempting to live like their masters, including with their own retinue of slaves. It was also possible for slaves to attain Roman citizenship, and even have descendants that achieved equestrian status. This social mobility away from slavery goes to highlight how diverse the slave experience was in Rome.

That said, as slaves made up upwards of 1 in 3 people comprising Rome’s population at any given time, there were rules about freeing one’s slaves. A rush of freed slaves, especially from larger estates which could have many hundreds of slaves could pose a risk to public order after all. As such, laws restricted how many slaves an owner could free upon his death depending on how big his retinue was.

But as for some of these freedmen, one of the elite remembered among them today is the aforementioned Timagenes of Alexandria, a historian and jurist. Originally a slave who was a cook, he was allowed to advance to a position where he could learn to read and write, ultimately becoming a noted historian. Unfortunately, his works did not survive primarily as he got on the wrong side of Augustus during his campaigns in Egypt, as Timagenes was thought to have helped Anthony and Cleopatra in the spat. In the end, he is thought to have been poisoned by Augustus in his home in modern day Albania.

A much more famous former slave was the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, born in 50 CE. Epictetus was a slave to Emperor Nero’s secretary Epaphroditus, himself also a freedman. While still a slave, Epictetus was allowed to study Stoic philosophy with Musonius Rufus, a prominent Stoic. We actually don’t have proof of Epictetus’ manumission, so for all we know he might have also died a slave. Nevertheless, he rose to prominence, teaching things like “Some things are up to us and some are not up to us… The things that are up to us are by nature free, unhindered, and unimpeded; the things that are not up to us are weak, enslaved, hindered, not our own… if you think that only what is yours is yours, and that what is not your own is not your own, then no one will ever coerce you… and no one will harm you, because you will not be harmed at all.”

It is easy to see this as the philosophy of a former slave, but this is in line with Stoic thought before Epictetus. Epictetus knew hardship under slavery, for example it’s thought he had some sort of physical disability from Epaphroditus, fascinatingly given he himself was a former slave, purposely breaking Epictetus’ leg, among other apparently brutal beatings.

Naturally, freedom was a theme in Epictetus’ work, but if you are expecting our modern sense of individual, political, or economic freedom, you would be mistaken. Epictetus taught of a spiritual freedom, the kind anyone can attain regardless of their condition. He is an important figure in the survival of Stoic philosophy because his works are some of the only complete texts to come down to us from this era.

In the end, the life of an individual slave in Ancient Rome could vary almost as much as the life of any free individual, with the exception of that the slave’s life was not their own in any way their master did not will. Thus, the world of a slave in Rome, as is the world of a slave in any society, was more often than not, a sad state of affairs. Considered quasi dead by the law, and with practically no protections, slaves were at the mercy of their masters. Sometimes those masters were benevolent and helped their slaves achieve success by affording them opportunities or even ultimately granting them their freedom. But often this was not the case. And, much like my basement dwelling writer monkeys, their day to day lives, and very life itself, was always at the whim of their master, with little hope of any way out, save the sweet release of death.

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