Slavery in the Roman Empire

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Slavery is present when one person has absolute power over another individual. The slave in this case, has no control over his life, his liberty and his fortune whatsoever. When regarding Roman law, slavery was quite common as to say and accepted by the people. As slavery was practiced by most of the citizens in Ancient Rome, there had to be rules and regulations as to which these citizens has to abide by so as to maintain order. Given that Roman law was practically made of codes, it was only fair to have a set of rules that regard the rights of the slaves, rights and responsibilities of the slave owners and the treatment of the slaves itself. As jobs, the slaves did practically almost everything; starting from manual labour up to professional work which required a lot of skill and precision. On the other hand, there were also unskilled slaves which performed jobs which were quite uncomfortable, in dangerous environments and so on. These slaves would usually be those under punishment which had to be slaves by force and not by choice. Slavery was such a common thing in Ancient Rome that it almost didn’t feel unjust towards those who suffered. It was never considered as something bad but on the contrary, it was considered as a necessity. A person would become a slave when taken after losing a battle, or also could be born a slave given that the individual’s mother was also a slave. In slavery, a person would earn a status of a slave but completely loose his/her dignity. In fact there were slave markets which as the name states were markets in which signs would be given to the slaves to display their virtues and abilities. Here the slave owners to be would be wandering about trying to find the most adequate slave according to his/her preferences. Also, the number of slaves would vary according to the status of the slave owner; for example ordinary slave owners such as business owners would have one or two slaves, but on the other hand wealthy slave owners could have up to a hundred slaves for different purposes. The more slaves an individual had the better. Slaves were only seen as a status symbol not as persons – they had no rights at all. Slaves didn’t live, they just existed. Just to give an example that slaves did almost every existent job, one could find slaves working in mines, vines, education, accounting, the military, construction and much more.

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