Slave, the name of a feudal era, it symbolizes the development of ancient Rome. Of course, slaves are not all the same as we imagine being whipped, starving and freezing all day. Because some slaves came from different backgrounds, they were not only literate, but also very good at governing families, estates, and even the army. Why are there such a big difference between them, the same slaves? Then we must understand the slave life of ancient Rome.
The fate of slaves in ancient Rome was miserable, how miserable were they? It's not a human life
First of all, we must acknowledge the fact that slaves are generally very hard-working, even if it is like we said earlier: they are literate and manageable, but their identity is still slaves.
During the Roman Empire, slaves were worth almost as much as animals raised by slave owners. Therefore, when the slave owner is unhappy, he can beat the slave to death at will, which is not a problem at all.
Not only that, but slave owners never regarded slaves as adults when it came to treating them. For example, when slaves were bought and sold, it was like a commodity, they would mark the price of the slaves, and then sell them openly, and let others choose.
This system originated around the 6th century BC, and ancient Roman law clearly stipulated that creditors could keep those who did not pay back as slaves or sell them outright. In this way, we can get a rough idea of the actual position of the slave, which has really been lowered to the dust.
One would ask, what about slaves who had culture and management skills? Well, their lives are just as unruly. It's just that because their abilities are different, the types of work they are assigned are different.
In that era, some slaves could be teachers, librarians, and even grass-roots administrators. But most of the slaves come from the bottom, and no one cares if you live or die without identity.
In addition, slaves were a special group of people, and in order to prevent them from escaping or being indistinguishable from the slaves of other slave owners, they had to be given special marks. Some are directly chained, and some are engraved on the face.
Slaves, as high-level animals with human psychology, are bound to rebel against this kind of life that is not a human life, so some slaves will risk escaping. But if you get caught back in bad luck, the fate is even more tragic: cutting off the nose, going out the eyes, cutting off the arms or legs...
So there was a saying in ancient Rome called: As many slaves as there are enemies. Probably because there were too many enemies, the law could not be changed again and again, and later it was not allowed for slave owners to kill slaves at will. Of course, the forced nature of bringing slaves into arena gladiatorial fights has also changed.
There were many slaves in ancient Rome, where did they come from, and why were they bullied as slaves?
Some people will not understand that slaves are not ordinary people, and they are not born like this (except for the offspring born of slaves), so how did so many slaves come from? After all, the number of slaves in ancient Rome was already staggering.
In fact, it is not difficult to understand, first of all, the children born of slaves are slaves, which means that the identity of the "hereditary" system is destined to make it impossible for slaves to change their fate, so that slaves will only increase.
Second, slave owners will find ways to make slaves have more children. Therefore, some slave owners used female slaves as hens, allowing them to have relationships with many people and have children one after another. It was a creation of energy, and when the female slave could no longer reproduce, her body basically collapsed, so she was allowed to die, and no one cared about her fate.
Indeed, this method of creating slaves is very cruel, not to say that female slaves have no freedom, even the most basic gender respect. Their existence for slave owners is a machine, a machine that makes slaves.
However, among the many reasons for slave integration, there is one of the largest sources of slavery: war. In the slave markets of ancient Rome, one could see slaves of all skin tones and hair types, such as blonde caucasians, curly-haired blacks, and black-haired yellows.
And these people are the ancient Roman army in the foreign conquest, because of the victory, so that the other country's soldiers, civilians, etc. as prisoners to bring back to the country. Usually the slaves who had the culture and the ability to manage were captured by such soldiers.
In the 1st century BC, the total population of the city was about 1.5 million, while the number of slaves reached 900,000. From this, we can know what kind of number slaves were at that time, and what kind of development trend they were.
In addition to their work, the slaves of ancient Rome had an ultimate task, that is, to protect their masters at the cost of their lives
It can be said that foreign conquests in the Roman period were the norm, so wars were almost continuous for a while. In this reality, slaves not only had to take on the role of farming, herding, mining, etc., but also became the mainstream stormtroopers of the Roman war.
This is an inevitable result, the casualties of the war for many years are very large, and if only the civilians are recruited, this continuation will inevitably be affected. In order to fight, in order to win, Rome had to constantly inject a large number of people and horses. In the case of a shortage of normal enlisted personnel, the conscription of slaves became a routine operation.
Looking back at historical data, the Roman state has not been interrupted since the founding of the country until 265 BC. For example, the Punic War at that time was a total of three times, and the total duration was more than one hundred years. In fact, whether it is the Punic War, the Macedonian War, the Syrian War, etc., it is a process of large number of people.
Thus we can understand the reality that the wars of Rome were an act of unfolding without an end. Such wars have greatly affected the livelihood of the country, especially the large loss of personnel. In such cases, slaves became the main source of soldiers at war. As for their lives and deaths, no one paid attention to them, and it was the slave owners' business to benefit anyway.
Slaves in such a country, under such a policy, are definitely not treated as human beings. The quality of their lives is the same as that of animals, and the benefits they create are the most extreme.
From the early years when slaves were forced to be sent to the arena in the form of "animals" to win fame, profit and pleasure for slave owners, to later becoming "tools" that have been killed in the war, regardless of the number of deaths, their life's suffering is almost uncountable.
It is in this reality that the resistance of slaves is also gathering and intensifying from small to large. It was only after the great war of the slave revolt that the slaves finally changed the reality of their own oppression and exploitation.
It should be said that the existence of any life has its process of awakening. After hundreds of years of oppression, the slaves of ancient Rome had to choose to stand up against the slave owners when they could not survive. This is the price of being recognized and respected, and such freedom is more worth cherishing.