Hierarchy, Resistance and Rebellion
Hierarchy Within the Enslaved Household
Not all enslaved people in Rome held the same status. Historians studying the Roman familia — household — believe there was a clear hierarchy among enslaved members. Position depended on skill, education, cost, length of service, gender, whether someone worked in the city or the countryside, and how close they were to the master. A trusted secretary or tutor stood far above a field hand or mine worker.
Status among enslaved people in a familia depended on skills and education, cost, length of service, gender, location (urban or rural), and closeness to the master.
The vilicus — overseer — sat near the top of this hierarchy on a country estate. The agricultural writer Varro advised that an overseer needed basic literacy and farming experience so the enslaved workers under him would respect his authority. He wrote, “Slaves should be neither timid nor brazen,” and warned against forcing obedience with the whip “rather than words if words can achieve the same result.”
Varro recommended giving a trusted overseer rewards to keep him loyal: a female companion from among the other enslaved workers, and a peculium — a personal fund. He also warned owners not to buy too many enslaved people of the same nationality, since this “is very often accustomed to cause domestic quarrels.”
Attitudes of the Free Towards the Enslaved
Attitudes towards enslaved people varied enormously. Some owners treated household slaves almost as family: Cicero wrote anxiously to his sick secretary Tiro himself, telling him not to risk the journey until he was fully recovered and saying that without him his studies were at a standstill, and Pliny worried when his reader Encolpius began coughing blood, praising the man’s skill and intelligence. Other owners were harsh — Seneca criticised masters who made their slaves stand silent and starving through an entire dinner, punishing even a cough with a beating.
Seneca argued enslaved people deserved kindness because, in his words, “they are men,” not simply property. He criticised the saying “count every slave your enemy,” arguing that Romans made enemies of their slaves by treating them cruelly in the first place, not the other way round.
Seneca’s Letter 47 argued owners should talk to and even dine with their slaves, since decent treatment reduced the risk of resentment and revolt.
Resistance to Slavery: The Spartacus Revolt
The gladiator Spartacus led the largest slave rebellion in Roman history, sometimes called the Third Servile War, from 73 to 71 BC. He escaped from a gladiator school at Capua with around seventy other enslaved people. Thousands of runaways joined him — Thracians, Gauls, German survivors of earlier wars, and herdsmen who already carried weapons to guard animals on southern Italian estates. His forces grew to more than 70,000 men, women and children.
In 73 BC the rebels easily beat the first Roman forces sent against them, and in 72 BC they defeated the armies of both consuls and the governor of Cisalpine Gaul, marching the length of Italy plundering as they went. The alarmed senate gave imperium — military command — to Marcus Licinius Crassus, who had been praetor — a senior magistrate — in 73 BC.
After one of his officers was defeated, Crassus punished the fleeing soldiers by reviving the old practice of decimation, dividing the 500 most cowardly men into groups of ten and having one from each group executed by lot. He then built a wall across an isthmus to trap Spartacus’s army, forcing a final battle. Appian records that the slaughter of Spartacus’s men was too great to count, that “the Roman loss was about 1000,” and that the body of Spartacus was never found. Around 6,000 survivors were captured and crucified along the road from Capua to Rome.
Running away remained the most common form of resistance for individual enslaved people, even after the revolt. Some wore metal collars inscribed with instructions for whoever found them: “I have run away; hold on to me. When you have brought me back to my master Zoninus, you will receive a gold coin.” Branding or chaining runaways reduced their resale value, but the risk did not stop people trying to escape.
The Spartacus revolt (73–71 BC) grew to over 70,000 people before Crassus defeated it; around 6,000 survivors were crucified along the road from Capua to Rome.
The scale of the Spartacus revolt shows why writers such as Seneca worried about the enslaved population growing too large and too resentful to control. Resistance ranged from this mass uprising to the quiet, constant risk of an individual enslaved person running away or, in the case of Larcius Macedo, being attacked by their own household.