This is a wonderful little book. Written by Marcus Sidonius Falx (as told to Jerry Toner), it takes us one step at a time through the process of buying, training, managing, punishing and freeing slaves from the viewpoint of an experienced owner.
Although we may think we know about slavery in the Roman Empire, the amount of authentic, first-hand evidence is surprisingly small, and much of what we do have was originally written precisely because it was in some way unusual, so seeking the truth about slavery is more difficult than you would think. This book tries to weigh the evidence we have, and present a measured account of how slavery operated.
The majority of slave-owners were small businessmen, who perhaps owned one or two slaves to carry out the hardest work associated with their trade. For these people, buying a slave was a huge investment; a healthy, fit male slave could cost the equivalent of a years income. So there was every reason to look after that investment. But these people have left little or no evidence, so their story can only be teased out of what little we do have.
Those higher up the scale, who owned large numbers of slaves are better accounted for, but, by their very nature, less typical. An educated, skilled Greek secretary to a Senator is living a very different life to a Dacian cutting stone all day in a quarry, albeit that they are both still slaves. He is also likely to have left traces of his life, whether by accident or design. There was a slave hierarchy every bit as real as that among the free citizenry.
It is all too easy to impose our own morality on the subject of slavery. But it needs to be borne in mind that it was an integral part of most societies at the time (as well as before and since).
No one in the Roman era, as far as we know, questioned the right of one man to enslave another. Even then, slavery was an ancient way of life. Certainly individuals rebelled against their lot, but it tended to be against their own particular situation, rather than an intellectual or moral rebellion against the institution.
The book leads you, as the prospective slave owner through choosing, training, managing, and freeing slaves. Along the way, sex, fun, rewards, punishment and many other things are also touched on. By the end, you will be fully prepared when you next visit the slave market and take your purchase home!
Anyone who has read about Rome, either fiction or non-fiction, will probably be familiar with some of the information in the book, but it is very readable, along with lots of references and suggestions for further reading.
Finally, before we get carried away with our great moral progress, the most chilling sentence in the book for me was not those about ancient punishment, neglect or torture, but the very last in the book – ‘there are more slaves in the world today than there were at any point in the life of the Roman Empire.’
This is a review of the Profile Books 2014 paperback edition.
It is an extended version of my review previously published on Amazon and Goodreads.
