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"The Romans recognized under the law of nations (ius gentium) a fundamental distinction between free and non-free. The non-free were legally the chattels of their owners, and their participation in society was limited. Even here there was a hierarchy; household slaves and slaves who worked in their master's business were in a much better position than farm workers, or worst of all those who worked in the state-run mines. Slaves of the emperor were at the top of the enslaved social tree with opportunities for advancement in the emperor's service. Servile status came about through capture in war, or the activities of slave-dealers, or by birth, in that children born to a slave mother would be slaves (vernae). There were also cases of self-enslavement for particular motives, often involving fraud (no. 3)"--
List of contents
List of abbreviations; List of maps; Preface; Introduction; 1. Status and responsibility: freedom, slavery, citizenship; 2. Public and private interests: Rome and Italy; 3. Public and private interests: the provinces; 4. Economic life; 5. Government, citizens and property; 6. Crime and punishment; 7. Appearing in court; 8. The emperor and the law; Glossary; List of jurists and principal authors; Index of passages cited; General index.
About the author
BRIAN CAMPBELL is Professor Emeritus of Ancient History at Queen's University Belfast, and Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford (2005). He has published on Roman military history (1984, 1994, 2002), land survey (2000), and Rivers and the Power of Ancient Rome (2012), and contributed extensively to the Oxford Classical Dictionary and Der Neue Pauly.
