Slaves & Freedmen

Slavery at the Heart of Roman Society

Roman city life — its baths, its banquets, its great houses and its public buildings — depended on the labour of enslaved people. Slavery was not a marginal feature of the Roman world; it was embedded in every level of society. Wealthy households might own hundreds of slaves; a prosperous artisan might own two or three; and the Roman state itself owned slaves who worked in mines, on public building projects and in the administrative offices of the city. Modern scholars estimate that slaves may have made up somewhere between 20 and 35 per cent of the population of Italy during the late Republic and early Imperial period, though precise figures are impossible to establish.

A person could become a slave in several ways. The most common route in the earlier Republic was capture in war: defeated enemies were sold into slavery in enormous numbers. The children of enslaved women were born enslaved regardless of who their father was. People could also be enslaved as a punishment for certain crimes, or through debt, though debt bondage was abolished relatively early in Rome’s history. Exposure of unwanted infants — a practice that was legal in Rome — sometimes resulted in children being collected by slave traders and raised for sale.

The Legal Position of Slaves

In Roman law, an enslaved person was legally defined as a res — a thing, not a person. This meant they could be bought, sold, hired out, punished and even killed by their owner, though the law eventually placed some limits on extreme cruelty. Slaves could not own property, make contracts or appear in court. Any earnings or property a slave accumulated was technically their master’s, though in practice many enslaved people were allowed to accumulate a personal fund called the peculium, which they might use to buy their freedom.

The relationship between enslaved people and their owners varied enormously. Pliny the Younger, writing in his Letters (3.14), describes the murder of the senator Larcius Macedo by his own household slaves. This is worth reading carefully: Pliny is an elite male writing about elites for an elite audience, and his sympathy does not challenge the institution of slavery itself. Petronius’s Satyricon presents a different perspective: the nouveau-riche freedman Trimalchio boasts at his dinner party about having once been a slave and having risen to great wealth, but his treatment of the enslaved people at his table reveals the arbitrary cruelty that underpinned even a ‘kind’ master’s power.

Manumission: The Path to Freedom

Manumission — the freeing of an enslaved person — was a distinctive feature of the Roman slave system. It was far more common in Rome than in most ancient societies. Owners might free slaves as a reward for long service, as a provision in their will, as an act of affection, or (cynically) to avoid having to support ageing enslaved people who were no longer economically useful. An enslaved person who saved enough from their peculium could also purchase their own freedom. Formal manumission by a Roman citizen created a new legal status: the libertus (freedman) or liberta (freedwoman) became a Roman citizen.

Freedmen in Roman Commerce and Society

Freedmen played a vital role in Roman commerce and administration. Because Roman aristocrats considered direct involvement in trade to be beneath their social status, they frequently ran businesses through freedmen agents who could conduct transactions on their behalf. Many freedmen became wealthy merchants, bankers, craftsmen and contractors. The most famous literary example is Trimalchio in Petronius’s Satyricon (the Cena Trimalchionis, chapters 26–78): a former slave who has accumulated enormous wealth through trade and now hosts an extravagant dinner party, surrounding himself with every luxury money can buy.

Petronius presents Trimalchio as simultaneously admirable and ridiculous — his wealth is real but his taste is vulgar, his manners are ostentatious, and his constant references to his slave origins suggest someone who has not quite escaped his past. The Satyricon is satirical fiction, so we should not read it as a straightforward historical document. Nevertheless, it tells us a great deal about Roman anxieties around social mobility: the freedman who becomes too rich, too powerful, too visible threatens the established social order.