page_title: Slavery
section_title: Ancient Greece and Rome
hierarchical_section_title: Slavery / History / Classical antiquity / Europe / Ancient Greece and Rome
caption_attribution_description: English: Woodcut for "Die Bibel in Bildern", 1860. Joseph Is Sold into Egypt Deutsch: Holzschnitt aus "Die Bibel in Bildern", 1860. Français&#160;: Gravure en bois pour «Die Bibel in Bildern», 1860. Português: José, filho preferido de Jacó é vendido por seus irmãos a comerciantes que iam para o Egito. Gn 37:23-30.
context_page_description: Slavery and enslavement are the state and condition of being a slave. A person is enslaved when a slaver, by means of physical restraint or threat, has forced, coerced, or intimidated him or her into unwilling work. In chattel slavery, the enslaved person is legally rendered the personal property of the slave owner. In economics, the term de facto slavery describes the conditions of unfree labour and forced labour, where people are forced or compelled to work against their will. In the course of human history, slavery was often a feature of civilisation and legal in most societies, but is now outlawed in most countries of the world.
  In 2019, approximately 40 million people, of whom 26 percent were children, were enslaved throughout the world. In the modern world, more than 50 percent of enslaved people provide forced labor, usually in the factories and sweatshops of the private sector of a country's economy. In the industrialised countries, human trafficking is the modern variety of slavery; in the unindustrialised countries, enslavement by debt bondage is a common form of enslaving a person, such as captive domestic servants, forced marriage, and child soldiers.
context_section_description: Records of slavery in Ancient Greece date as far back as Mycenaean Greece. It is certain that Classical Athens had the largest slave population, with as many as 80,000 in the 6th and 5th centuries BC.  As the Roman Republic expanded outward, entire populations were enslaved, thus creating an ample supply from all over Europe and the Mediterranean. Slaves were used for labour, as well as for amusement (e.g. gladiators and sex slaves). This oppression by an elite minority eventually led to slave revolts (see Roman Servile Wars); the Third Servile War, led by Spartacus, (a Thracian) being the most famous.
  By the late Republican era, slavery had become a vital economic pillar in the wealth of Rome, as well as a very significant part of Roman society. It is estimated that 25% or more of the population of Ancient Rome was enslaved, although the actual percentage is debated by scholars and varied from region to region. Slaves represented 15–25% of Italy's population, mostly captives in war, especially from Gaul and Epirus. Estimates of the number of slaves in the Roman Empire suggest that the majority of slaves were scattered throughout the provinces outside of Italy. Generally, slaves in Italy were indigenous Italians, with a minority of foreigners (including both slaves and freedmen) born outside of Italy estimated at 5% of the total in the capital at its peak, where their number was largest. Those from outside of Europe were predominantly of Greek descent, while the Jewish ones never fully assimilated into Roman society, remaining an identifiable minority. These slaves (especially the foreigners) had higher death rates and lower birth rates than natives and were sometimes even subjected to mass expulsions. The average recorded age at death for the slaves of the city of Rome was seventeen and a half years (17.2 for males; 17.9 for females).
caption: Ishmaelites Purchase Joseph, Schnorr von Carolsfeld, 1860
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