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Slavery was a widely accepted practice in ancient Greece, as it was in contemporaneous societies. [2] The principal use of slaves was in agriculture, but they were also used in stone quarries or mines, as domestic servants, or even as a public utility, as with the demosioi of Athens.
Besides manual labor, slaves performed many domestic services, and might be employed at highly skilled jobs and professions. Teachers, accountants, and physicians were often slaves. Greek slaves in particular might be highly educated. Unskilled slaves, or those condemned to slavery as punishment, worked on farms, in mines, and at mills.
Some well-qualified public slaves did skilled office work such as accounting and secretarial services: "the greater part of the business of Rome seems to have been conducted through slaves." [469] Often entrusted with managerial roles, they were permitted to earn money for their own use, [470] and they were paid a yearly stipend from the ...
Romans practised slavery extensively, but slaves in Ancient Rome were part of various different ethnic groups and were not enslaved because of their ethnic affiliation. [106] According to the English historian Emma Dench , it was "notoriously difficult to detect slaves by their appearance" in Ancient Rome.
Freedmen in ancient Rome existed as a distinct social class (liberti or libertini), with former slaves granted freedom and rights through the legal process of manumission. The Roman practice of slavery utilized slaves for both production and domestic labour, overseen by their wealthy masters. Urban and domestic slaves especially could achieve ...
Roman aristocrats warned of Greek influences corrupting Roman morals or Roman religious piety, and believed that excessive imitation of the Graeculus "Greekling" (a Roman slur for Greeks popularised by Cicero) would lead to the collapse of Rome. These views did not prevent the same anti-Greek Romans from adopting some elements of Greek culture ...
There is much of a debate as to whether sacred prostitution did truly exist in these ancient times. For example, Strabo points out that these “supposed” customs, which included having greater than 1,000 slaves located in a temple, would not be physically feasible, thus being clearly hyperbolic.
The asylum (temple of the god Asylaeus) that Romulus is said to have opened at Rome on the Capitoline Hill, between its two summits, in order to increase the population of the city [5] was, according to the legend, a place of refuge for the inhabitants of other states, rather than a sanctuary for those who had violated the laws of the city.