CLASSICS 2K03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 21: Ingenui, Manumission, Latifundium
2 Feb 2016
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Worked on farms of all sizes, but typically large farms. Cato: inarticulate tools (shovels, plows), semi-articulate tools (livestock), articulate tools (slaves) City slaves would be threatened with being sent to the farm. Similar to slavery in pre-civil war america. This led rich romans to buy larger and larger tracts of farmland (latifundia) to farm with more slaves. This pushed small farmers off the land and they typically went to rome where they were generally unemployed or underemployed. This was a significant source of tension and often a driving force in roman politics and history. Large numbers of roman slaves were freed by their masters. Unusual (other ancient slave-holding systems, eg. greece, did not routinely free slaves) Not all slaves were freed, but enough that freedmen made up a major social group. Manumission = the freeing of a slave. Slaves were often freed upon their master"s death.
