| > There really weren't any practical differences between Roman and American slavery, at least from the slaves point of view. I really don't think that's true. Especially given that "Roman slavery" spans 1000+ years (ignoring the Eastern Roman Empire) and the legal situation was not static during that time. > The owner had the absolute power of life or death over their slaves If the owner was the paterfamilias, he also had that power over his children, including adult children. Legally, that is. It wasn't generally considered ok from a social point of view to kill your grown-up kids without provocation. The paterfamilias also had the rights to any income earned by his kids (with the exception of military wages), etc, etc. But I would still have a hard time arguing that there was no difference between his kids and his slaves in practical terms, even though the legal structures were not as different as one might think. Going back to that "change over time" bit, starting in the 2nd century CE killing a slave without a good reason would be tried as homicide, so even this "power of life and death" claim is not strictly true over what one would consider "Roman slavery". > Few slaves in ancient times ever saw freedom except by escape, I would actually love a good reference on this. My understanding is that manumission of household slaves was fairly common (double-digit percentages, and common enough in some periods that legislation got passed limiting how many slaves one could free), while manumission of agricultural/mining/gladiatorial slaves was nearly non-existent. So if you were an enslaved doctor or tutor or whatnot your chances at freedom were quite good. If you were a farmer, not so much. If you were a miner... well, you would be dead before it started to matter. But I have to admit I have not kept up with scholarship on this in the last 10-ish years. In _practical_ terms, it's probably more correct to talk about "Roman slaveries", because the actual conditions of one's existence as a slave in Rome (the polity, not the city) depended heavily on time period, occupation, etc, etc. |