How Slavery Built the Roman Empire

In the British Museum sits a small statuette rarely displayed: an African child, curled into a fetal position, a wooden tag around his neck, tears on his face. He is being sold. The Romans knew exactly what they were doing when they stripped a person, examined their teeth, and hung a price tag on them. They knew it was horrific. That was part of the point. As historian Dr. Emma Southern puts it, the process of enslaving a person was designed to "break them down and force them to submit." And that process was not a footnote to Roman history. It was the engine.

The Empire Could Not Function Without Enslaved Labor

Southern is direct: "The Roman Empire doesn't exist without slavery. Literally the empire doesn't work." You do not get roads, stone moved from one place to another, the army paid, or anything done without enslaved labor. Every level of Roman society was defined by reliance on it. A lawyer's entire staff would be enslaved or formerly enslaved. A silversmith would likely be enslaved himself, with an enslaved workforce beneath him. To remove slavery from the Roman Empire, Southern says, is "like taking one leg off of a stool and expecting it to stand up."