Slavery in the Age of the Roman Empire

Slavery had always been, and would always be, the bedrock upon which roman economic life was built. The romans were in constant fear of a great slave revolt that led to more than one sleepless night. New slaves were created in one of three ways: prisoners of war, men, women and children caught up in the nets of the legions following their latest conquest or civilian camp followers who travelled along with the legions on campaign. It is very difficult to estimate how many slaves lived in the empire at any given time, but working with the same population figure of one point two million or so for Rome, about 400 thousand of those were probably slaves.