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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]
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]
A few writers and philosophers of the Roman era were former slaves or the sons of freed slaves. Some scholars have made efforts to imagine more deeply the lived experiences of slaves in the Roman world through comparisons to the Atlantic slave trade, but no portrait of the "typical" Roman slave emerges from the wide range of work performed by ...
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 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. [109] According to the English historian Emma Dench , it was "notoriously difficult to detect slaves by their appearance" in Ancient Rome. [ 105 ]
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.