Role Of Slavery In Roman Empire

Register to read the introduction… During the first two centuries of the Roman Empire the number of slaves increased dramatically. These slaves were mainly war captives, kidnapped and sold in Rome’s large slave trade. Slaves had no rights and the immoral Romans looked at slavery as part of everyday life. During the early Roman republic, debtors would be forced to work for landowners in order to work off their debt. When this practice was outlawed, slave labor was needed. Slavery was thus of immense economic importance. Slaves were needed as agricultural workers as peasant farmers enlisted into the army and also to help in building roads and other architecture to help the army. After this reliance on slave labor began, it grew, shifting Italy into a slave society. Slavery made a main impact on technology because of its large population. It was the backbone of the Roman economy. Roman inventors made discoveries that could have led to an industrial revolution earlier than it was actually achieved. This may be credited to the fact that slavery made labor cheap. Machinery was not thought to supply the economic benefits it could have. There was a dependency on slave power for all the Roman’s needs especially in helping to building Rome’s great architectural landmarks. Slave labor was used in building every Roman accomplishment from roads to aqueducts. There was a large fear in Rome that if this human labor was replaced the economy …show more content…
With a decline of morals in the Roman empire, slavery was not looked at as wrong. With a “don’t fix whats not broken” attitude the Romans were not able to advance technologically. This attitude is demonstrated in an incident during Vespasian’s rule when an inventor designed a machine that could haul huge columns at a minimum expense. Vespasian offered the inventor money to destroy the machine, because “I must always ensure that the working classes earn enough money to buy themselves food” (Suetonius). The fact that Roman historians did not record details of the machine is one indication that such inventions were unwelcome. For all of the physical remains of Roman construction and engineering, we have surprisingly little of the actual works from these engineers (Engineering and …show more content…
In the early ages Europe was left in a state of anarchy and chaos. Most of the land once ruled by Rome sought guidance in feudalism, the system that led them economically and politically. The early Middle Ages were times of new beginnings. Survivors of the fall of Rome lived in the remains of the broken empire, and what values that they could not hold onto from the empire, they tried to rediscover. The Early Middle Ages or “Dark Ages” are often looked at as a bridge between two large historical eras: classical Greek and Roman times and the Renaissance (1 Corrick). As Joseph R. Strayer supports, “Too many people still think that the Middle Ages are merely a stagnant pit which lies between the heights of classical and of Renaissance civilization, and that all our legacy from the past was carried over the bridges which Renaissance thinkers threw across the medieval pit to the firm ground of Graeco-Roman