Slavery

A slave is defined as a person who is legal property of another and is forced to obey them. Slavery is one of the oldest traditions in civilization. The hard work of ancient slaves is what the building of many empires can be attributed to. Slaves provided free people with the opportunity to do something amazing due to their ample amount of free time. People often overlook slaves impact on a civilization, but without slaves many of these places contributions may not have occurred.

Built modeling Hellenistic societies, Ancient Rome was one of the largest slave civilizations in history. Slavery was so ingrained in the Roman Empire that the free citizens didn’t even realize the injustice all around them. Despite this, slavery in Rome was unique in that slaves lived better lives than expected. Some slaves could own land vicariously through their owner an act as if it were theirs. Also, some slaves mainly the educated ones were capable of earning money and after a long enough time, they could buy freedom. After these slaves were either freed by their masters out of goodwill for the years of hard work or bought their freedom, they became citizens. Regardless of the heinous position of being literally owned by another human, these slaves had many perks that were only exclusive to Roman slaves.

There were many ways in which slaves were acquired. The most common method was captives from war. In each war, the Romans could gain as low as hundreds all the way up to tens of thousands of slaves. This was an effective way of attaining slaves, however these slaves could not be trusted. They usually were placed in some of the toughest labor like working the fields or the mines. In some rare cases they were used as gladiators to entertain the citizens. This ensured that they would not live long lives so they did not pose a huge threat on the empire. Another way an individual became a slave was if they were the children of a slave mother. Due to their mothers’ standing,...