The Roman Guide to Slave Management Read Online Free

difficult task of buying a slave.
    Firstly, the where. Many will tell you to go to the Roman forum, behind the temple of Castor, but you would do well to ignore their advice. Only the lowest and roughest sorts of slave are offered for sale there. Far better are those to be found from the slave traders who operate in the Saepta Julia, close by the Pantheon. This is particularly so if you are seeking to buy a soft boy, or something from one of the more exotic regions of theempire or even beyond, from such places as Ethiopia. All of these are to be found among the traders there, although you must be sure to ask them directly if they have anything special tucked away in the back of their shops. They always keep their best hidden from public view so as to retain them for their premium customers. You will have no trouble finding a castrated boy there too, if that is your desire, even though the law in theory prohibits such a trade.
    Legally speaking, slaves are either captives from war or descended from female slaves but in reality there are other avenues into servitude. Some of the destitute illegally sell themselves into slavery to clear debts, or they might sell one of their children to help feed the remaining offspring. It is common practice for people to abandon unwanted babies at the rubbish dump on the edge of town and people sometimes raise these abandoned infants as their own slaves, even though such children technically remain freeborn. It is also to be suspected that slave dealers often buy their wares from traders who have simply kidnapped their goods, using pirate raids to snatch adults and children from far-flung coastal regions.
    There is no doubt at all, however, concerning the legitimacy of those whom our armies have captured in war. These individuals owe their very lives to the mercy of our soldiers who chose, in the flush of victory, not to massacre them but spare their miserable lives so that they might provide us with services as payback for their military resistance. Captives from the wealthiest families might be given back to them after the payment of a satisfactory ransom. The rest pay for their lives through slavery.
    I myself once took part in the sack of a small city in the border region with the Persian empire. After initial attempts to persuade the inhabitants to surrender peacefully in return for their lives had failed, we attacked vigorously and quickly broke through the city wall with our battering rams. Gaining control of the suburbs, we began to slaughter anyone we came across, whether man, woman or child. Most of the inhabitants fled into the old part of the city, in the centre, from where they sent out ambassadors in order to try to save their lives. What fools they had been not to accept our generous offer before. It was agreed that those who could pay the equivalent of 2,000 sesterces could go free, and fourteen thousand were in a position to do that. The rest, who amounted to some thirteen thousand, as well as all the other booty we could obtain, were sold.
    Our commander was generous enough to distribute half of the slaves to us as a reward for our loyal service during the campaign. The rest he sold for the benefit of the state, to pay for the erection of a small votive shrine in gratitude to the gods for our victory, and for his own financial gain. The numbers involved here were, of course, nothing in comparison to the great booties which the likes of Julius Caesar acquired from his conquests. He is reputed to have taken one million slaves captive in Gaul. Or the mass enslavements which took place after the capture of Jerusalem, when it seemed that nearly the entire Jewish race fell into servitude, or in Dacia, when the great Trajan subjugated that warlike people. No, ours was small beer by comparison.
    Once a slave has become a slave, by no matter whichroute, if he is to be sold he will in time find himself in one of the aforementioned slave-dealer shops. There the slaves will generally be