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Slavery Imagine that you wake up everyday to work for a guy you don’t even know. You were sold to him at a public auction, and now you must work for him. You are a slave in Ancient Rome. You are forced to do work all day long, you are paid very little, and you don’t have any choice of who you’re sold to. This page is all about Roman slaves, how they were treated, how they ate, and what kind of jobs they could have.

Source: Wikipedia  1. Most slaves in Ancient Rome were captives from war. 2.  The reason for this was because turning defeated soldiers into slaves brought much income, and could also serve as an alternative to imprisoning or killing them. 3.  People could sell their children into slavery and creditors could claim insolvent debtors as slaves. 4.  Slave ownership was most widespread in Rome from the second Punic War (218 B.C. - 201 B.C.) through the fourth century A.D.  5.   The sale of slaves was mostly done by wholesale dealers who followed the Roman armies. 6.   An official called aediles would oversee sales, which would be done in a public auction or sometimes in shops, though more private sales might take place for more valuable slaves. 7.  Slaves were treated harshly by some and nor as harshly by others. We don’t know if one type of treatment was more common than the other. 8.  The experience of slavery depended heavily on the general type of labor to which a slave was assigned, which had a great range. 9.  For slaves who were assigned to mines and galleys, it was often a sentence of death. Farm slaves were generally better off than those assigned to mines but were not as good as who were assigned to rich Roman families. Those slaves likely enjoyed the highest standard of living among Roman slaves. 10.   Domestic slaves could be found working as barbers, butlers, cooks, hairdressers, maids, nurses, teachers, secretaries and seamstresses. Slaves with more education and intelligence could even work in professions such as accounting, education and medicine.