In ancient Rome, how did slaves bought by slave owners live?

Slavery, as an important stage in the evolution of social system, must be experienced by both East and West.

Slaves, as the most pathetic existence in the social system at that time, were even inferior to cattle and sheep. Even in ancient Greece and Rome, where democracy was unprecedentedly developed, there were clear rules?

Slaves are not citizens, they are just the production tools and private wealth of slave owners!

The miserable life of slaves was particularly evident in ancient Roman society.

As we all know, the ancient Romans advocated war, and the Roman Empire was built under a powerful national war machine. So what can war bring? Land, wealth and slaves! Slaves plundered by war can be slaughtered directly or traded freely in the slave market. At this point, slaves are no different from ordinary commodities, and the only difference may be that they can talk.

Then a slave was bought by a slave owner. What about his life? Generally speaking, slave owners only spend money to buy slaves in order to obtain labor, so no matter whether they are male slaves or female slaves, they have only one task, that is, to work and keep working!

In order to ensure that slaves will not rebel and escape, slave owners often choose to put heavy chains on them, or carve words on their faces to indicate that this is their own property. Once a slave chooses to be lazy, I'm afraid a beating is inevitable, and if a slave is sick and injured and can't work, I'm afraid it won't end well. After all, it means losing the value of existence.

More importantly, Roman law fully guaranteed the rights of slave owners, not only buying and selling slaves at will, but also having the power of life and death of slaves. Slaves can be killed when they make mistakes or are in a bad mood In a word, slave owners hold the life and death of slaves in their hands.

What are the living conditions of these slaves who work hard every day? Basically, it is the worst living standard, not much better than livestock, because ancient Rome was a traditional agricultural social country, and social production required a lot of labor input. There is no doubt that these slaves are the main workforce.

Moreover, a slave owner often owns a large area of land, even as much as 2000 mu, which means that slave owners need to buy a large number of slaves to meet production. In this way, feeding a large number of slaves has become an important expense. How can slave owners who are bent on exploiting slaves be willing to let them eat, drink and eat well?

What's more, there has always been a saying in ancient Rome that productive farm tools can be divided into three categories, namely, silent, silent and talking.

Obviously, those who can't make noise refer to hoes, those who can make noise refer to cattle, sheep and other livestock, and those who can speak naturally refer to slaves. In that case, slaves are just a production tool. How can anyone sympathize? Once used or worn out, throw it away.

Therefore, most slaves often do odd jobs day and night after being bought back, but the food they give is so dirty and little that they can't even meet the standard of barely eating. The place to sleep is usually a heavily guarded dungeon or prison room. In this way, how can slaves hold on? Once a slave gets sick, it will be even more simple, and he will often be directly abandoned or killed!

According to statistics, there were more than 2,000 slaves trading in the slave trading market in ancient Rome every day, which shows that there were many slaves in ancient Rome and the frequent trading also reflected the exuberant and serious loss of slave demand from another side.

Of course, with the progress of productivity and the decrease of the number of slaves available for plunder, the living conditions of slaves in ancient Rome improved slightly. After all, the price of slaves is getting higher and higher, and it is not cost-effective for slave owners to kill them.

Moreover, with the expansion of the production scale of slave owners, they often choose a group of young and flexible slaves as slaves to help them manage their own industries and other slaves. At this time, the status of slave owners was obviously improved. What's more, it is possible to become a liberated slave directly because of being loved by slave owners, get rid of slave status and enter the ranks of citizens.