The Role Of Slaves In Ancient Rome

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The large population of slaves and their abuse in the late Roman Republic at the hands of patricians caused significant resistance to the power of the patricians, and was a significant factor in the transition of Rome from a republic to empire. An important role in society and economy in Ancient Rome was filled out by slaves. Slaves would perform many different types of labour, such as manual and domestic services. Teachers, accountants, and physicians were often slaves. Unskilled slaves or those sentenced to slavery as punishment, worked on farms, in mines, and at mills. The living condition for slaves was brutal and their lives would be short. Under Roman law slaves were considered property and they had no legal personhood. Slaves would be subjected to corporal punishment, sexual exploitation, torture and summary execution, unlike Roman citizens. Unless a slave was tortured their testimony could not …show more content…

Over time, however, slaves gained an increased legal protection, which included the right to file complaints against their masters. The Romans didn't really have hourly wage work, or salaried work, as today' society does now, men and women who didn't own their own land and didn't own businesses of their own often found themselves enslaved. Some rich individuals are said to have had several thousands. Slaves were not esteemed as persons, but as things, and might be transferred from one owner to another, like any other effects. They could not appear in a court of justice as witnesses, nor make a will, or inherit anything, or serve as soldiers, unless first made free. The lash was the common punishment; but for certain crimes they were to be branded in the forehead, and sometimes were forced to carry a piece of wood round their necks, wherever they went, which

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