Roman Enslavement of Epirus

167 BCE · Balkans, Anatolia & the Caucasus

Displacement Territory Seized

Displaced

150,000

150,000 enslaved from seventy towns is the figure given by Polybius and repeated by Livy and Strabo, and it is accepted in the modern literature — Adam Ziolkowski's study in the Papers of the British School at Rome calls it 'the largest manhunt in the history of Rome'. Polybius was a contemporary Greek eyewitness of the period and a hostage in Rome at the time, which makes his testimony better than most, but the number is still a literary one and is very large in relation to the likely population of Epirus. Some scholars regard it as an upper bound or as including the whole of the Epirote population brought under Roman control rather than those physically shipped out.

Share of the population affected

60%

of the population of Epirus, and principally of the Molossian territory sacked in 167 BCE, 167 BCE

Open on the interactive map →

What happened

After the defeat of Macedon at Pydna, the Roman Senate ordered the punishment of the Molossians of Epirus, who had sided with King Perseus. Lucius Aemilius Paullus placed garrisons in seventy towns on a single day and gave the signal for a simultaneous sack, enslaving their populations — 150,000 people according to Polybius, Livy and Strabo. The operation was conducted with the machinery of a state, not as opportunistic plunder: the towns were secured in advance, the timing was coordinated to prevent flight, and the captives were moved to the Adriatic ports on the army's route home. Ziolkowski's study argues that the primary motive was economic, to replenish an Italian slave supply depleted by the plague of 175–174 BCE, rather than punitive. Archaeological survey in Epirus shows a long collapse of settlement afterwards, consistent with severe depopulation. The 150,000 figure is a literary one, but it comes from a contemporary and is generally accepted in outline.

Parties

On the Senate's instruction, Lucius Aemilius Paullus sacked seventy towns of the Molossians in Epirus in a single coordinated operation and enslaved their inhabitants

Disputed

Whether 150,000 is a literal count or a round contemporary estimate is debated, as is whether the operation was primarily punitive or driven by Italy's demand for enslaved labour.

The denominator

No enumeration survives. Modern estimates built from settlement archaeology and army sizes (Beloch's classical demography, Hammond's study of Epirus) put the whole of Epirus at roughly 200,000-300,000 in the Hellenistic period. Several scholars regard Livy's figure of 150,000 enslaved as implausibly large for Molossia alone and treat it as a rhetorical or inflated total.

Both numerator and denominator are ancient-literary and modern-reconstructed respectively; the resulting share is an order-of-magnitude statement about the scale of the sack, not a measured percentage.

Where the baseline comes from

Epirus (ancient state) — Wikipediaopen-edited
Molossians — Wikipediaopen-edited

On the death toll

No death toll is recorded and none is implied by the sources: the operation was designed to capture people alive for sale, and the ancient accounts emphasise enslavement rather than killing. Mortality during transport and sale is undocumented.

Documented forms of violence

Destruction of Property

Polybius, Livy and Strabo record the simultaneous sacking and demolition of seventy Molossian towns, discussed in Ziolkowski's study.

Movements mapped

Epirus → the slave markets and estates of Italy via Brundisium and Tarentum150,000

Countries touched, on present-day borders

Greece, Italy

Related entries

Part of: Mass Enslavement as a Consequence of Roman Conquest
The enslavement of 150,000 Epirotes in 167 BCE is one of the named operations within Rome's mass enslavement of conquered populations.

Sources

A. Ziolkowski, 'The Plundering of Epirus in 167 B.C.: Economic Considerations', Papers of the British School at Rome (Cambridge Core)scholarly