Unseen and not heard.
Roman slavery was conducted on a scale so immense that she couldn't have survived and prospered as she did throughout her long history without the institution of slavery.
Public slaves provided the muscle power for the building of her aqueducts, buildings and public works while other slaves toiled ceaselessly on the large latifundia (farms) of the patrician class and the noveau-riche.
And privately owned slaves worked in the homes of their wealthy owners ensuring they lived lives of unparalleled ease and luxury.
Obviously, some owners - perhaps for reasons of privacy or did the sight of their slaves offend them - went to elaborate means to "hide" their slaves from their view by having dark passageways built into their homes which allowed the household slaves to move silently and unseen from one part of the house to another.
Pictured here is such a passageway in a Pompeiian domus.
Picture sourced from the internet: text is mine.
Very meaningful and fully historically correct post that significantly expresses the enormous abyss that separated Masters and slaves in the Roman society, and the profound contempt that free men and women felt towards their enslaved “talking animals”.
ReplyDeleteIn the enormous and splendid Villa Hadriana, the immense Imperial Palace that Emperor Hadrian had built in Tivoli on the hills East of Rome, there was, under the Palace, a whole “underground town” dug in the rocks of the subsoil, where the many hundreds slaves (probably not less than 800 to 1000) who served the Imperial family and the courtiers, worked, slept and lived most of the time ……. apart from the occasions when their presence was demanded by their Masters for serving them ………. so that the sight of their labours and even of their persons would not “disturb” the eyes of the noble Roman Lords and Ladies !
K
Also, in those dark "slave quarters" there were small statues representing the Master and Mistress in secluded alcoves where the slave properties could worship their owners as "gods". The owners were like gods to their owned slaves...deciding every aspect of a slave's life, even up to life or death.
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