Slavery and Warfare
In certain periods, a great number of slaves for the Roman market were acquired through warfare. The Roman military brought back captives as the booty of war, and ancient sources cite anywhere from hundreds to tens of thousands of such slaves captured in each war. These wars included every war of conquest from 177-101 BC, as well as the Social and Samnite wars (91-88 and 82 BC, respectively). The prisoners taken or re-taken after the three Roman Servile Wars (135-132, 104-100, and 73-71 BC, respectively) contributed to this number. The Thracian slave traffic added many more numbers of imported persons, including perhaps the most famous Roman slave of all, Spartacus. Later generations of slaves worshiped the genius of Spartacus.
Piracy has a long history of adding to the slave trade, and the Roman Republic was no different. Piracy was one of the many crises with which the Republic had to contend, at least until 85 BC. In those days, an increase in piracy always led to an increase in slavery.
Read more about this topic: Slavery In Ancient Rome
Famous quotes containing the words slavery and, slavery and/or warfare:
“Slavery and servility have produced no sweet-scented flower annually, to charm the senses of men, for they have no real life: they are merely a decaying and a death, offensive to all healthy nostrils. We do not complain that they live, but that they do not get buried. Let the living bury them; even they are good for manure.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I remember the almost daily talks of my mother on the cruelty of slavery. I would say nothing to her, but I was thinking all the time that slavery did not seem so cruel. Master and Mistress Jennings were not mean to my mother. It was she who was mean to them.”
—Cornelia (1844–?)
“Dying is a troublesome business: there is pain to be suffered, and it wrings one’s heart; but death is a splendid thing—a warfare accomplished, a beginning all over again, a triumph. You can always see that in their faces.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)