List of Slaves - V

V

• Venture Smith (1729–1805), an African captured as a child and transported to the American colonies as a slave. When an adult, he purchased his freedom and that of his family - his wife Meg and their children Hannah, Solomon and Cuff. His history was documented and published by a schoolteacher, to whom he talked in his old age.
• The "Vestmenn" ("West Men" in Old Norse, referring to the Irish) were a group of Irish slaves brought to Iceland by Hjörleifr Hróðmarsson, one of the early Norse settlers there. He treated them badly, and they killed him and escaped to a group of off-shore islands. Ingólfur Arnarson, Hjörleifur's blood brother, tracked the escaped slaves and killed them all. Though their individual names are unknown, their memory lives on in Icelandic geography, the islands where they sought refuge being known up to the present as "Vestmannaeyjar" - "Islands of the West Men" (i.e. of the Irish).
• Vincent de Paul. (1576–1660) Taken captive by Turkish pirates, sold into slavery, freed in 1607.
• Vibia Calybeni, a freedwoman of the late Roman Empire, who unusually names herself as a madam on her tombstone.
• Violet Ludlow, an American woman sold as a slave several times despite her claims to be a free white woman.
• Volumnia Cytheris, a slave, later freedwoman, in ancient Rome. An actress and courtesan, her lovers include Brutus, Mark Antony, and Cornelius Gallus; her rejection of Gallus provided the theme for Virgil's tenth Eclogue.