Modern society is so remote from the lived reality of ancient slavery that we struggle even to understand what it was. Our mental models are shaped overwhelmingly by the Atlantic slave trade and the racialised plantation systems of the 18th and 19th centuries. These images obscure the complexity of Roman slavery. As Morris Silver argues in his penetrating article, Contractual Slavery in the Roman Economy (2011), much of what passed for slavery in the Roman world was not the brutal, involuntary system we assume. Instead, a significant number of Roman slaves were volunteers.
This is a disconcerting idea, not least because it flies in the face of modern assumptions about coercion and freedom. Yet it is supported by legal texts, literary references, inscriptions, and economic logic. The aim of this essay is to explain the logic, legality, and prevalence of contractual slavery in the Roman world, and to show how our unfamiliarity with such a system has distorted our view of antiquity.
One of the most valuable sections of Silver’s article is his discussion of how we define coercion. He draws on the work of welfare economists to distinguish between a coerced act (“Your money or your life”) and a constrained but consensual choice (e.g. paying a high price for water in the desert). In Roman terms, a person who sells himself into slavery for food or economic opportunity is acting under pressure, but not coercion in the strictest sense.
This is not to excuse slavery, nor to claim that the Roman system was humane. It is simply to say that many individuals voluntarily entered servitude because the alternatives were worse. In many cases, slavery represented an economic opportunity, particularly in a society where borrowing against future labour was virtually impossible.
As Silver notes, “The point is not that being a Roman contractual slave was ‘not so bad’ but instead that self-sale moved Roman society closer to what welfare economists call a Pareto-efficient allocation.”
Roman legal sources are clear that self-sale into slavery was recognised by the law. The Digest of Justinian (1.5.5.1) contains a statement from the jurist Marcian, who notes:
A free man is able to make himself a slave by agreement and by consent, and if he shares in the price he is rightly reduced to slavery.
Gaius, writing in the second century CE, gives a detailed description of the mancipatio process by which a free Roman might sell himself:
Mancipatio is a kind of imaginary sale, done with certain formal words, and in the presence of five witnesses… This is how a man can transfer himself into the condition of another.
Even more tellingly, Roman jurists made fine distinctions about the legitimacy of such sales. Ulpian and Paul both discuss cases where people pretended to be slaves, or where both buyer and seller were unaware that the person being sold was actually free. Yet in cases where the individual shared in the sale price, the law consistently upheld the validity of the enslavement.
The law did try to protect truly involuntary victims of kidnapping. But it had little objection to free individuals selling themselves, even if the motive was financial desperation.
Economic Context: Why People Chose Slavery
Why would anyone make such a choice? The answer lies in the economic constraints of the ancient world. There were few ways for a poor man to migrate, train, or secure employment in a different region. The Roman world lacked the institutional structures (e.g. credit markets, employment agencies, state benefits) that make economic mobility possible today.
By selling themselves into slavery, individuals could secure food, lodging, job training, and even access to capital. Many slaves managed property, worked in finance, or acted as estate stewards. These positions were not available to the poor freeborn, but were accessible to trained slaves. For these individuals, slavery was a calculated risk—a step down in status, perhaps, but a step up in material security.
Some roles, such as dispensator (financial manager), could only be held by slaves. As Silver and others note, free men would be a liability in such posts, since they could not be held accountable in the same way.
Contractual slavery is not a modern academic fantasy. It appears repeatedly in ancient sources. Petronius’ Satyricon includes the character Hermeros, who says:
I sold myself to avoid the tax-man, who was hunting me like a beast. Better a collar on the neck than a chain around the ankle.
Dio Chrysostom refers to “great numbers” of men who sell themselves under harsh conditions, and describes one such individual:
He sold his liberty for bread and shelter, and did not think himself a fool for it.
Pope Clement, writing to the Corinthians in the first century, mentions Christians selling themselves to feed the poor:
Many among ourselves have surrendered themselves to slavery, and received the price for the benefit of others.
Seneca, in On Benefits, says explicitly:
Slave dealers are a benefit to their wares, for they place them in households better than the streets. (De Beneficiis 4.13.3)
This would be incomprehensible if slavery were always and only an act of violence.
Inscriptional evidence supports this picture. Many urban slaves were of Greek or provincial origin, not captives of war. They bore Greek names and often rose to positions of considerable wealth. Some, like the freedman Trimalchio in Petronius, became enormously wealthy. The number of freedmen commemorated in inscriptions—especially with occupational titles—far exceeds that of freeborn individuals. This suggests not only pride in achievement but also economic success.
Despite its relative legality and prevalence, contractual slavery posed challenges. There were constant concerns about distinguishing true volunteers from kidnapped persons. Roman law dealt with this by allowing challenges to the validity of sales where payment had not been received, or where fraud was suspected.
Children could also be sold, either by parents or through exposure. The practice was common enough to attract legal regulation under Constantine. Yet the sale of children was never fully abolished, and exposure remained a recognised path into slavery.
These facts are uncomfortable. They do not redeem the institution of slavery, but they reveal a different logic—one in which slavery was often a voluntary, even calculated, response to economic constraints.
Silver is right to insist that it is anachronistic to impose the Atlantic model of slavery on Rome. Unlike the racially based, plantation-driven systems of the Americas, Roman slavery was not defined by racial ideology, nor by forced migration across oceans. It was embedded in a different set of legal, economic, and cultural norms.
Moreover, many Roman slaves were eventually freed. Freedmen could become Roman citizens, accumulate wealth, and even enter elite circles. This was not true of slaves in the Atlantic system. In Rome, manumission was often expected, especially for educated or skilled slaves.
This openness is inconsistent with a system based overwhelmingly on force. A resentful, oppressed slave population would not have produced the large, upwardly mobile freedman class so visible in the epigraphic record.
Implications for Historical Understanding
Modern writers often struggle to make sense of this. As Silver points out, it is intellectually safer to ignore or downplay the evidence for contractual slavery than to be seen as sympathetic to slavery. But this skews our understanding of ancient economies and misrepresents Roman social dynamics.
The idea that someone might rationally choose slavery is deeply offensive to modern sensibilities—and rightly so. But it was not offensive to the Romans. For many, slavery was a way to escape poverty, migrate to a better city, gain training, or enter into useful connections. As one freedman put it on his epitaph:
Plura maluit emereri quam consumere – “He preferred to earn more than to spend.”
From Misunderstanding to Recognition
Contractual slavery does not excuse Roman slavery. It does, however, force us to think more carefully about what slavery was, and why it persisted. For many Romans, slavery was not simply a condition of abjection but a means of economic survival and even advancement.
We misunderstand Rome if we fail to recognise this. We impose our categories on a society that worked according to different logics. We call things coercion that the Romans called choice, and we miss the rationality behind decisions that, to us, seem inexplicable.
In doing so, we fail to understand the world they lived in—and, perhaps, fail to understand how constrained choices still operate in our own.
Endnotes
- Silver, Contractual Slavery, p. 74.
- Digest 1.5.5.1; Gaius, Institutes 1.119–121.
- Silver, pp. 77–78.
- Petronius, Satyricon 57.4; Clement, 1 Clement 55.2.
- Seneca, De Beneficiis 4.13.3.
- Digest 40.12.23 (Paul); Digest 40.13.3 (Papinian).
- Harper, Slavery in the Late Roman World, pp. 398–406.
- Scheidel, “Quantifying the Sources of Slaves,” pp. 156–169.
- Juvenal, Satires 3.58.
- Joshel, Work, Identity and Legal Status, pp. 48–51.
Reading List
- Morris Silver, “Contractual Slavery in the Roman Economy,” Ancient History Bulletin, 25 (2011).
- Keith Bradley, Slavery and Society at Rome. Cambridge University Press, 1994.
- Kyle Harper, Slavery in the Late Roman World, AD 275-425. Cambridge University Press, 2011.
- Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death. Harvard University Press, 1982.
- Susan Treggiari, Roman Freedmen During the Late Republic. Oxford University Press, 1969.
- Walter Scheidel, “Quantifying the Sources of Slaves in the Early Roman Empire,” Journal of Roman Studies, 87 (1997), 156–169.
- Roger Bagnall and Bruce Frier, The Demography of Roman Egypt. Cambridge University Press, 1994.
- Sandra Joshel, Work, Identity and Legal Status at Rome: A Study of the Occupational Inscriptions. University of Oklahoma Press, 1992.
- A.N. Sherwin-White, The Roman Citizenship. Oxford University Press, 1973.
