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The extent to which slaves were used as a labour force in farming is disputed. It is certain that rural slavery was very common in Athens, and that ancient Greece did not have the immense slave populations found on the Roman latifundia. Corinthian black-figure terra-cotta votive tablet of slaves working in a mine, dated to the late seventh ...
Slavery was the direct result of poverty. People also sold themselves into slavery because they were poor peasants and needed food and shelter. Slaves only attempted escape when their treatment was unusually harsh. For many, being a slave in Egypt made them better off than a freeman elsewhere. [13]
In 748, Venetian slave traders were noted to buy slaves in Rome. [7] Trade in Christian slaves from Western Europe was however deeply disliked by the Catholic church and was stopped early on. In 840, Venice signed a pact with other Italian cities to return fugitive slaves, and to not seize Christians to be sold as slaves. [8]
"Slaves are either born or made" (servi aut nascuntur aut fiunt): [166] in the ancient Roman world, people might become enslaved as a result of warfare, piracy and kidnapping, or child abandonment—the fear of falling into slavery, expressed frequently in Roman literature, was not just rhetorical exaggeration. [167]
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. [25] According to the English historian Emma Dench, it was "notoriously difficult to detect slaves by their appearance" in Ancient Rome. [22]
In the Mediterranean region, individuals became enslaved through war and conquest, piracy, and frontier raiding. Additionally, some courts would sentence people to slavery, and even some people sold themselves or their children into slavery due to extreme poverty. [152] The incentive for slavery in the Mediterranean was the greed of the slavers.
The Greeks did not have central heat in the same way that we have it today, but they were undoubtedly pioneers in the field of keeping homes warm. The system utilized by the ancient Greeks was ...
However they did not gain freedom if they did. The children of slaves remained slaves even if the father was their master. Many of the slaves became drafted in the army. The socio-economic status of slaves did not necessarily coincide with their legal status. Slaves of the rich had a higher standard of living than free persons who were poor.