# What happened to the Roman slaves when the empire fell? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 12, 2003, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-roman-slaves-when-the-empire-fell/181383 "2003-06-12T17:16:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2003, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-roman-slaves-when-the-empire-fell/181383/1 "2003-06-12T17:16:25Z")
Whenever I read history about the Roman Empire, or historical fiction in a Roman setting, the authors always point out that Roman society was based on slavery, to an unprecedented degree in Western history. Slaves farmed the _latifundia_ estates of rich senators. Slaves rowed the galleys, worked the mines, built the roads, built all the monumental structures that still remind us of Rome. All domestic servants were slaves – there was no such thing as a free domestic. But when I read something about Dark-Ages Europe, or the Byzantine Empire, slaves are nowhere on the scene. Serfs, perhaps, but not chattel slaves. Presumably there was a significant portion of the population who were held in bondage right up until the last century of the Western Empire. And I don’t think the institution of slavery was ever formally abolished, in the East or the West. The latter-day empire was Christian, but not that Christian! What happened to the slaves? I don’t think they simply became serfs – as I understand it, the serf class started out as the empire’s free smallholding farmers, and Constantine issued a decree binding them to the land they worked, and when the various German tribes moved south and conquered, they simply stepped into the shoes of the old Roman state/landlords. So what did happen to the slaves of the West? Did they take adantage of the turmoil to run away? Or did their servile status gradually fade with all the other elements of Roman civilization? And what about Constantinople? Was there slavery in the Byzantine Empire? Did it exist on the same scale as it had at the height of the united empire? By the way – does anybody know what percentage of the Roman Empire’s general population was enslaved, at any particular period? Say, around the time of Caesar, or the time of Trajan? I remember reading that during the Republic, the Senate debated a bill to require slaves to wear a distinctive dress, and Cato the Elder shot it down with the words, “It would be dangerous to allow the wretches to discover how numerous they are.” ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2003, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-roman-slaves-when-the-empire-fell/181383/2 "2003-06-12T17:58:41Z")
“What happened to the Roman slaves when the empire fell?” Remember those serfs you mentioned? ---
**Author:** ![Nametag](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nametag/32/406_2.png) [@Nametag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nametag)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2003, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-roman-slaves-when-the-empire-fell/181383/3 "2003-06-12T18:24:26Z")
[http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/bus/A0861124.html](http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/bus/A0861124.html) > [@](#): > > The introduction of Christianity toward the end of the Roman Empire had no effect on the abolition of slavery, since the church at that time did not oppose the institution. However, a change in economic life set in and resulted in the gradual disappearance of the agricultural slaves, who became, for all practical purposes, one with the coloni (tenant farmers who were technically free but were in fact bound to the land by debts). This process helped prepare the way for an economy in which the agricultural slave became the serf. > > The semifreedom of serfdom was the dominant theme in the Middle Ages, although domestic slavery (and, to some extent, other forms) did not disappear. The church began to encourage manumission, while ignoring the fact that many slaves were attached to church officials and church property. Sale into slavery continued to be an extreme punishment for serious crimes. > > Slavery flourished in the Byzantine Empire, and the pirates of the Mediterranean continued their custom of enslaving the victims of their raids. Islam, like Christianity, accepted slavery, and it became a standard institution in Muslim lands. One form of Muslim slavery was in the eunuch guardians of the harems; eunuchs had been widely known in Grecian, Roman, and especially Byzantine times, but it was among the Muslims and in East Asia that they were to survive longest. > > In Western Europe slavery largely disappeared by the later Middle Ages, although it still remained in such manifestations as the use of slaves on galleys. In Russia slavery persisted longer than in Western Europe, and indeed the serfs were pushed into the classification of slavery by Peter the Great.