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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 ...
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]
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 ...
Typically the freedmen in these inscriptions — a "staggering" 27,000 have been found [13] — have Greek names. [83] Most slaves in urban Rome originated from the Greek East, and were relatively well educated. [84] Their fate was very different from the slaves who laboured in the Roman latifundia or mines. [84]
The Greek community in Venice dates back to the Middle Ages, when the Republic of Venice was still formally part of the Byzantine Empire. Settled mostly in the sestiere of Castello , it reached its height in the centuries after the Fall of Constantinople , when many Greeks, including merchants, soldiers, and scholars, fled the Ottoman conquest.
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 ...