When it comes to ancient Rome, everyone should know that they are completely a slave country. For slaves, if it were in ancient Rome, it was basically impossible to turn over, and they had to be slaves of slave owners all their lives, and in their eyes they were just livestock and tools of labor. So how did these slaves live? Let's take a look at it with Xiaobian!
1. How did slaves come about?
In the slave markets of the Aegean Sea, before dawn came alive, groups of slaves waiting to be sold wore small wooden plaques around their necks with inscriptions of birth, age and skill. The buyers are like cattle, pinching their limbs to see if they have much strength; opening their mouths to see how their teeth are... Slaves who could read or have crafts naturally had higher prices and were usually bought to work as governesses, doctors, carpenters, and so on. The remaining young and energetic can be bought to do heavy work, such as mining, ploughing, and grazing.
More than 2,000 slaves are sold here every day, including blonde Caucasians (more literate), black-haired yellows, and curly-haired blacks. It was all Rome's constant aggression against the outside world.
History of Roman Aggression:
In the 3rd century, Rome conquered southern Italy, and 34,000 Italians were forced into slavery;
In the Punic War, 50,000 people were defeated in Carthaginia and taken into slavery;
In the battle of northern Greece, Rome gained 150,000 slaves,
During the Gallic Wars, 400,000 slaves were captured.
By the 1st century AD, the entire roman city had a population of 1.5 million, and slaves accounted for 900,000.
2. The life of a slave
Once the slaves were bought by the slave owners, it meant that the life of the animals was about to begin.
First, they would be chained like dogs, and if they were slaves doing housework, they could not speak when they were cleaning and serving their masters, and they could not even move their mouths. As soon as you burp or cough inattentively, you will immediately receive a fierce whip like a donkey. If it was a female slave, if she was good-looking, she might be insulted and tortured even more, and even if she was better off alive than dead, it was impossible to resist, because even if the slave owner beat the slave to death, it was legal, and there was once a slave owner who burned the disobedient slave alive in public.
If it is a slave who mines and does farm work, it is even more miserable. The mine is the graveyard of miners' slaves, who do not see each other all day long, and their ankles are already blurred with flesh and blood because they wear bulky chains, and if they collapse, they can only be crushed to death in them. The slaves in charge of farming, sun and rain during the day, eat chaff vegetables, are constantly whipped to work, and at night they are uniformly locked up in the dungeon, without any freedom.
The living environment of slaves is not optimistic, and once slaves are sick and unable to work, they can only ask for more blessings and pray that the slave owners will not throw slaves to feed the fish. Because there were so many slaves in the slave market, instead of spending money on treating slaves, it was better to spend money to buy a younger one.