Mass Enslavement as a Consequence of Roman Conquest

c. 264 BCE – 180 CE · Europe & Northern Eurasia

Displacement Sexual Violence

What happened

From the First Punic War to the high empire, enslavement of defeated populations was a standing and legally normal outcome of Roman warfare: commanders sold captives on the spot through dealers who followed the armies, and the proceeds went to the soldiers and the treasury. Named operations give the scale — 150,000 Epirotes in 167 BCE, some 50,000 survivors of Carthage in 146, 53,000 Aduatuci in Gaul, tens of thousands from Judaea after 70 CE, and captives from Dacia after 106 — and the aggregate enslaved population of the early empire is usually estimated at five to ten million, or 10 to 20 per cent of the total. Modern demographic work has changed how this is understood: Scheidel argues that reproduction within the enslaved population, not conquest, was the dominant source of supply, which means that mass enslavement should be read as a recurrent catastrophe for specific conquered communities rather than as the engine of Roman slavery overall. It is treated here as a single systemic entry because the individual episodes are scattered across the record and no aggregate count exists.

Parties

The Roman state and its commanders systematically enslaved the populations of conquered and rebellious communities across the Mediterranean and moved them to Italy and the provinces

Disputed

The relative contribution of war captives, natural reproduction and the slave trade to the Roman enslaved population is disputed; Scheidel's demographic argument that reproduction dominated has revised earlier views that conquest was the principal source.

The denominator

No single denominator exists for a practice spanning four and a half centuries and the whole Mediterranean world. Modern estimates give a sense of scale rather than a base: Walter Scheidel and others reckon the Roman world absorbed on the order of 100,000 new slaves a year at the height of expansion, with the slave population of Italy alone put at 1-1.5 million against a Roman empire of roughly 45-60 million in the first century CE.

Where the baseline comes from

Slavery in ancient Rome — Wikipediaopen-edited
Demography of the Roman Empire — Wikipediaopen-edited

On the death toll

No death toll can be attached to enslavement as a practice. Deaths occurred in the sieges and campaigns that produced captives, and in transport and labour afterwards, but neither ancient sources nor modern demography provide a basis for quantifying them.

Documented forms of violence

Forced LabourSexual Violence

Roman legal and literary sources, summarised by the British Museum, document that enslaved people were compelled to labour and had no legal capacity to refuse sexual demands from those who owned them.

Movements mapped

Greece and the Balkans → Italy
Gaul → Italy
Judaea → Italy and the provinces

Countries touched, on present-day borders

Italy, Greece, France, Palestine

Related entries

Includes: Roman Enslavement of Epirus
The enslavement of 150,000 Epirotes in 167 BCE is one of the named operations within Rome's mass enslavement of conquered populations.
Overlaps with: The Roman Destruction of Carthage
The roughly 50,000 Carthaginian survivors sold into slavery in 146 BCE are among the named cases in the entry on Rome's mass enslavement of conquered populations.
Overlaps with: The Roman Destruction of Corinth
The women and children of Corinth sold in 146 BCE fall within the scope of the entry on Rome's mass enslavement of conquered populations.
Overlaps with: The First Jewish–Roman War and the Destruction of Jerusalem
Judaean captives enslaved after 70 CE are cited among the cases in the entry on Rome's mass enslavement of conquered populations.