Freed Roman slaves became citizens, a rule that startled Greek observers
Slavery underpinned Rome, from mine labourers to doctors and bankers. What set it apart was manumission: a freed slave could become a Roman citizen. By the 2nd century AD most free people in the capital probably had an enslaved ancestor somewhere in their family tree, a fact that surprised the Greek historian Dionysius.
Roman slavery had tiers. Low-skilled workers in fields, mills and mines had little hope of release, while educated slaves served as accountants, secretaries, teachers, librarians and physicians and could follow recognised legal routes to freedom. Free workers, freedpeople and the enslaved often did identical jobs. Legally, though, a slave was property with no personhood, open to punishments citizens were spared, and food, clothing and care depended on an owner's view of their usefulness. Even ordinary households might hold two or three.
People entered slavery by birth to an enslaved mother, by capture in war, or through kidnapping and piracy, which from the 2nd century BC endangered freeborn people across the Mediterranean, poor children above all. The earliest law code, the Twelve Tables of 451/450 BC, took slavery for granted but already mentioned freedmen who were citizens. A late 4th-century BC law stopped creditors privately enslaving debtors. The conquest of Veii in 396 BC led to the enslavement of its people, and the first two Punic Wars, between 265 and 201 BC, brought the sharpest rise in numbers.
Romans could be victims too. After Cannae the Senate refused Hannibal's ransom terms, wanting soldiers to win or die; he sold the captives to Greeks, and Flamininus eventually recovered 1,200 survivors some twenty years later. When Crassus lost at Carrhae in 53 BC, the Parthians seized 10,000 survivors and force-marched them some 1,500 miles east; nobody knows what became of them. In AD 260 Valerian became the first emperor held captive, seized by Shapur I.
Revolts ended with Spartacus's defeat in 71 BC; afterwards, running away was the usual resistance, and chasing fugitives was the empire's most organised policing. Ancient moralists argued about how slaves should be treated, almost never about abolishing slavery. The jurist Gaius, writing in 161 AD, still called it contrary to nature yet recognised by the law of nations. Founding legends embraced the mixture: Livy said Romulus peopled his city with runaways and former slaves, and King Servius Tullius was said to be a slave woman's son.
Source: Slavery in ancient Rome
