Thinking Tools: agricultural slavery between evidence and models.

by Ulrike Roth (Artist)

Thinking Tools sets out to question the prevalent assumption that the slave economy of late Republican and early Imperial Italy was based on a largely adult male slave population. The author draws on a close reading of the Roman agricultural writers and on visual and archaeological evidence to argue that Roman villas of the Italian countryside were normally staffed by slave families.

In doing so, she both demonstrates the role of female labour in the productive landscape of Roman Italy and radically revises our estimate of the economic potential of the slave estates in Italy created by the development of the Roman empire overseas.

Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some great work on an under-studied aspect of Roman slavery.