In Ancient Rome, slavery was seen as perfectly acceptable, and seizing and trafficking other humans was a useful trade supplying a demand. But there were circumstances in which the Roman authorities tried, more or less successfully, to clamp down on it. Jacquie Rogers examines the evidence.
Trafficking is ‘dealing or trading in something illegal’ according to the OED. In our world, human trafficking is very much frowned upon, and traffickers are pursued assiduously across national boundaries by the law. Shocking images of suffocated Vietnamese youngsters, and kidnapped Eastern European women spring to our modern minds.
The Roman imperial administrations and their supporting legal codes, however, did not regard the trading and sale of humans being against the law, or even morally dubious — for the most part. (We’ll come back to ‘for the most part’ later.) Neither did the Romans invent slavery. They inherited the notion of enslaved classes in society from their neighbours, the Greeks and the Carthaginians.
Free human labour was considered essential to create a surplus in the economy, from which was funded all the trappings of Roman civilisation. So any opportunity arising from warfare to capture and trade slaves was happily seized on, and regarded as a Good Thing.
Perhaps 15 per cent of the Roman population was enslaved, mostly in cities; probably significantly less in rural provinces like Britannia. Slaves existed at all levels of society, and came from all ethnicities within and bordering the Roman empire. There were no racial connotations; a slave was more likely to be an educated Greek, or a blue-eyed German, than an African. They were not seen as sub-human, but were expected to accept their place.
As Mary Beard says, “slaves shared the single defining characteristic of being human property in someone else’s ownership.”
Enslaved people in Roman times were not exclusively the products of war. They could be sold, or sell themselves, into slavery to pay off debts; they could be born to slaves, and hence inherit servitude. Slavery could be a punishment imposed for a crime; such slaves often ended up living a short terrible life in the mines, or working vast imperial agricultural holdings, but not — pace Hollywood — as crew in naval galleys. The Roman navy was a paid and respected profession.
But my topic is the trafficking of humans in the Roman republic and empire, legal or otherwise, so I’ll limit myself to the seizing of people for sale into forcible servitude. There were two main ways this was done: warfare, and piracy.
During the expansion of the Roman Republic, and up to the reign of Hadrian, the capture of enemies for slavery was commonplace.
Tacitus writes of Caledonian prisoners of war being sold into slavery in the late first century, during the Scottish campaigns of Agricola; and the same occurred under Emperor Septimius Severus during the final Roman attempt to conquer Scotland, in the early third century.
Given the attested price of one contemporary slave girl sold in Londinium at twice a legionary’s annual pay (some £40-50,000 in modern money), that was quite a lot of loot. Also recorded are the earlier efforts of the Scipio family during the Carthaginian wars, who between them reduced Carthage to rubble and sold all the inhabitants into slavery.
In my recent Roman Britain novel, The Loyal Centurion, I feature women being captured and traded from Scotland into Britannia in exchange for Roman swords. This may sound far-fetched, but there are records in the Roman law code of a foreign woman captured by ‘bandits’, and sold to a Centurion Cocceius Firmus.
Altars dedicated by a soldier of the same name in northern Britain suggest that this woman had been taken by native tribesmen in a raid north of Hadrian’s Wall, and traded to her new Roman owner in Britannia. It is known that Roman weapons, despite their trade being restricted, were often exchanged with barbarians for slaves.
So what about my “for the most part” caveat?
The trading across borders of kidnapped human beings into slavery was not always happily accepted by Roman authorities. The sale of barbarian prisoners of war was one thing, part of the expected booty of an expanding empire. Piracy and banditry were regarded rather as threats to the Roman state, not a crime against those held hostage or sold into slavery.
Much of the time the authorities were quite half-hearted about piracy, although the more philosophical regarded it as a crime against humanity. Even Julius Caesar was taken hostage by pirates as a young man; though that pirate band lived to regret their choice of hostage when he had them all crucified.
But nothing could be allowed to threaten the hegemony of Roman power. When the state and its trading routes were under threat, savage action against piracy could be taken. In 67BC, when pirates based in Cilicia were hampering the food supply to Rome, Pompey the Great was given extraordinary powers by the senate to sweep the Mediterranean clean of pirates. He did this to great acclaim.
In the third century, a powerful Rhine admiral, Carausius, rid the North Sea of Germanic pirates who were interrupting trade between Roman Britain and the continent.
At the same time, a blinder eye was turned to slave trading across the Irish Sea. We have the testimony of St Patrick for this, who famously began his time in Ireland as a slave kidnapped from Roman Britain.
There were other legal constraints on slave trading, at least in principle. The Lex Cornelia made it illegal to sell Roman citizens into slavery. But slave dealers were unlikely to ask questions of provenance.
Once a person had been kidnapped, he or she could plead for restoration of freedom before a magistrate, but in practice it would be very difficult for a slave to do so. Society was often sympathetic to slaves claiming they had been kidnapped and trafficked, but once in that position the law was not helpful.
Ultimately, slavery was regarded as an essential part of the economic machinery that kept the empire great. Taxes on the profits of slave-manned businesses and estates maintained the civilised lifestyle Romans so appreciated. It was not in the interests of the mighty to end slavery.
That would be left to later generations, when the industrial revolution and new working practices allowed changed attitudes to slavery, and ultimately led to the criminalisation of human trafficking.
The Loyal Centurion by Jacquie Rogers was published on 6 September, 2023.
Jacquie Rogers was a childhood ten-pound Pom who came back to England just in time for the three-day week. She had careers in advertising and university teaching before finding writing suited her best. Her short stories have been published in several countries. In 2020 and 2021 she was runner up in the Lincoln Book Festival story competition.
She is the author of the Quintus Valerius series of Roman Britain mysteries. The Governor’s Man was published in May 2021, followed by The Carnelian Phoenix in summer 2022.
Further reading:
Invisible Romans by Robert Knapp
Pax Romana by Adrian Goldsworthy
SPQR by Mary Beard
Jacquie has written another feature about the background to her Quintus Valerius series, How Roman was Roman Britain?
Here are some more related Historia features you might enjoy:
I’m Spartacus! Slave revolts in Rome by Harry Sidebottom
Agricola’s victories in Britain by Simon Turney
Vanity project or lasting legacy – was Hadrian’s Wall worth all the effort? by Douglas Jackson
Why the Roman Empire grew so big by Harry Sidebottom
Sex in Ancient Rome by LJ Trafford
Images:
- Detail from marble relief depicting two pairs of collared slaves being led on ropes by helmeted men, AD200, Ashmolean Museum: Carole Raddato for Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0 Deed)
- Roman slave collar offering a gold coin for the return of the escaped wearer to his owner, Zoninus: Mary Harrsch for Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Deed)
- The Dying Gaul, Capitoline Museum: BeBo86 for Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 3.0 Deed)
- Fresco of a Roman servant girl from tomb in Silistro: Konstantin Tanchev via Mary Harrsch for Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Deed)
- Parthian prisoner in chains, led by a Roman, Arch of Septimius Severus, Rome, cAD200: Wikimedia (public domain)
