Property and person
Roman law divided people into free and enslaved, and the enslaved were in most respects the legal property of their owners. Like land or livestock, a slave could be bought, sold, bequeathed, hired out or given as security for a debt. Slavery was a widespread institution across the Roman world, and legal writers treated it as an established feature of the law of nations.
Yet the law could not entirely ignore that enslaved people were human beings. Roman jurists acknowledged that slaves could act, could be punished, could be questioned as witnesses under compulsion, and could be freed. The result was an uneasy mixture: owners had great power, but in some cases the state intervened. This article describes the rules as they appear in Roman legal writings. Those texts mostly reflect the views of jurists, so they do not tell us everything about how enslaved people lived.
How people became enslaved
Several routes led to slavery. Many were captured in war, and the scale of Roman conquests, from the Punic Wars to the later campaigns of Roman legions, brought large numbers of captives to be sold. A child born to an enslaved mother was normally enslaved too. Others were sold into slavery through the slave trade, including victims of piracy and kidnapping, and exposed infants were sometimes raised as slaves. In early Rome, people could be bound in debt service, but the sources describe reforms that ended enslavement for debt to Roman citizens, traditionally in the later fourth century BCE.
Powers of the owner
In Roman law the head of the household held broad authority over everyone in his power, and that included slaves. Early law gave him the power of life and death. Over time, the imperial government placed some limits on cruelty. Ancient authors report measures attributed to emperors such as Claudius, who is said to have decreed that slaves abandoned when sick were freed if they recovered, and Antoninus Pius, who is reported to have treated killing one’s own slave without cause as equivalent to killing someone else’s. Slaves who were ill-treated could reportedly seek refuge at certain statues of the emperor and request to be sold to another owner. Such measures were limited, and it is hard to know how often they were enforced.
The law also sometimes protected the interests of other owners more than the slave. A person who killed or injured a slave belonging to someone else was liable to the owner for the loss of property.
Family, property and the peculium
Enslaved people could not contract a legal marriage. Unions between them, often called contubernium, had no standing in civil law, although they could matter a great deal to the people involved, and some are recorded on tombstones. Children born to an enslaved woman belonged to her owner. The household was the setting for most enslaved labour, and Roman matrons managed many domestic slaves day to day. Families of the enslaved could be broken up by sale, although some legal writings suggest that owners were encouraged not to separate close relatives.
A slave could not own property in law. In practice, many owners allowed a slave to manage a fund known as the peculium, which might include money, goods, or even other slaves. Legally it belonged to the owner, but in practice it let enslaved people run businesses, work as agents, or save toward buying their freedom. Roman commercial life made extensive use of enslaved managers and agents in this way, a pattern that touches on ancient banking and trade as much as on household management.
Courts and punishment
Enslaved people generally could not bring a lawsuit in their own name. Their testimony was usually taken under torture, since Roman procedure assumed that a slave would speak truthfully only under compulsion. A harsh example is a decree from 10 CE, the Silanian decree, which required that if a master was murdered, all slaves under his roof at the time could be questioned under torture and put to death. The text was criticised by some Romans, but it was applied.
Punishments for enslaved people were also harsher than those for free citizens. Crucifixion was a punishment closely associated with slaves and non-citizens, and enslaved people could be sentenced to the mines or to the arena, where the gladiatorial games drew on both enslaved people and volunteers. The great slave uprising led by Spartacus in 73 to 71 BCE was put down severely, and it left a lasting memory in Roman society.
Manumission
Freedom could be given by manumission, which was a formal act by the owner. The sources describe three traditional civil-law methods: a ceremony before a magistrate, inclusion in the census with the owner’s consent, and a provision in a will. Informal manumission also existed, and the law gradually recognised some of its effects.
Legislation of the Augustan principate placed limits on this practice. Two laws, the Lex Fufia Caninia and the Lex Aelia Sentia, restricted how many slaves could be freed in a will and set minimum ages for owners and slaves, with some exceptions. These laws are usually seen as reflecting concern about the makeup of the citizen body. Slaves freed informally or below the required age generally became Junian Latins, a status with limited rights.
Freedmen
A freed slave of a Roman citizen normally became a citizen too, though with restrictions. The former owner became a patron and kept certain rights: the freedman owed respect and, often, a set number of days of work or services. Freedmen could not usually hold the major magistracies or serve in the Senate, but their freeborn children were not so restricted. Many freedmen became prosperous, and Roman literature both mocks and acknowledges their wealth. The prospect of freedom may have worked as an incentive for enslaved people to cooperate, though historians debate how far this was true.
Limits of the evidence
Our evidence comes mostly from legal writers, literary authors and inscriptions, nearly all produced by or for free people. The voices of enslaved people themselves are rare. Experiences varied widely, from enslaved workers in mines and on farms to household servants, managers and educated assistants. Modern scholars study the question from many angles, and the picture continues to be revised.