Slavery Flashcards
Domestic Jobs
Cooking
Gardening
Cleaning
Childcare
Rural Slaves
Often lived better than poor urban free men.
Could marry and have children.
Worked in nice surroundings.
However, did often have harder jobs e.g. farm labourers, miners, shepherds.
Urban Slaves
Cooks, gardeners, labourers, musicians, secretaries etc.
Public slaves were often involved in large building projects like arches of triumph
Becoming a slave
Slaves were often either prisoners of war or had been captured by pirates.
Children born to slaves became slaves themselves.
Very poor people might even sell their children into slavery.
Rights of a slave
In Roman law they were seen as property of their master.
Slaves had no rights, they could be treated as well or as badly as their masters wished.
They were not Roman citizens.
Treatment of Slaves
The offences of slaves were punished with severity and frequently the utmost barbarity.
It was not illegal for a master to kill a slave.
However, most masters treated their slaves civilly, as they were costly and hard to replace.
The lash was the most common slave punishment.
In cases where a slave had murdered their master, all of the other household slaves would be killed alongside the perpetrator.