Servus: How Slavery Made the Roman Empire

by Emma Southon

We associate the Romans with majesty and we marvel at their innovative aqueducts and underfloor heating, at the dominance of their army and navy, at the grandeur of their palaces and temples and the magic of the tiny coins and mosaic tiles we dig up in fields. But the Romans were also enslavers. They built an empire on the backs of millions of people snatched from their homes in the aftermath of war, kidnapped from the streets, sold into slavery as punishment or, simply, born enslaved.

Servus takes us into the invisible spaces of Rome, where millions of enslaved lives were unwillingly dedicated to the perpetuation of the empire that owned them. From the fields of wheat required to give every Roman his daily bread, to the actors and gladiators who provided their circuses, and the miners who kept Rome a city of gold and marble, enslaved people held up the empire in all its glory. These enslaved people were ubiquitous, but silenced. Through the fragments they left behind, historian Emma Southon traces the pain and tragedy of their lives alongside the love stories, lifelong friendships, small victories and hard-won freedoms.

Servus tells the truth about the Roman empire and the unseen lives that made its history.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Ancient History, Roman History

352 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication May 21, 2026

About the author

Dr. Emma Southon holds a PhD in ancient history from the University of Birmingham.
After a few years teaching Ancient and Medieval history, followed by some years teaching academic writing, she quit academia because it is grim and started writing for her own enjoyment.
She co-hosts a history/comedy podcast with Janina Matthewson called History is Sexy.

Reviews

[Lottie Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you so much for the proof copy!

This book is absolutely great! It’s a perfect handbook to the world of Roman slavery, from sex slaves to slaves working in mines to gladiators. Emma Southon fills the book with examples from written sources that truly paints the picture of the world of slavery.

If you enjoy reading about Roman history then this book is a must!

[Mergulum · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a book which is replete with details and insights on the practice of slavery in the Roman Empire. This despite the relative dearth of evidence from the victims of slavery themselves (which is a well established challenge faced by historians). So any reader with little or no knowledge of the subject will find the book enlightening. My principal difficulty with the book was the authorial tone which throughout was foul mouthed, sarcastic, sneering, smug and overly idiomatic (sometimes resulting in my utter incomprehension of what the author was trying to say).
Initially the author tells us how she thinks slavery was really bad and everyone who practiced it was totally evil. There is a longstanding debate on whether it is appropriate to apply contemporary morals and judgements to ancient societies. This author clearly thinks that it is appropriate and it’s completely within her rights for her to hold that view. But I really couldn’t understand why, throughout the book, she constantly needed to say how each aspect or example or experience of slavery was so appalling and totally shocking to her.

She is also someone who loves to express her outrage through foul language which also peppers this book. I don’t know all the rules of the various sites where I am posting this review so I won’t quote any of the swearing here but suffice it to say that like many foul mouthed people this author doesn’t have a very broad swearing vocabulary so there is one swearword that turns up for the vast majority of time so the reader doesn’t even have the relief of variety.
Diverse sources are cited in the book and the author appears to give them equal weight. Again I know that there is debate as to whether, for example, Martial’s satires provide totally accurate descriptions of daily life. Clearly the contemporary Roman audience would need to recognise the world portrayed in these works but given that they were produced for entertainment, would there not have been some exaggeration for effect? So some assessment of the relative validity of these sources would have been helpful.
Of course the author does make clear her contempt for Martial (and Juvenal and others) because they make jokes about slavery that she thinks are not funny at all. I have some sympathy with that perspective having read some Classical comedies and - quite frankly - not realising that they were even supposed to be funny. But I think it’s a bit rich for this author to criticise the ancients when her sense of humour is essentially puerile: graffiti about someone excreting is, she thinks, funny; Clutorius Priscus is a funny name because Clutorius sounds a bit like clitoris; and the Lex Fufia Canina is a funny law because it sounds a bit like a swearword. How I laughed. Not.
I also found much of her idiomatic mode of expression rather jarring. Agrippa was Augustus’ “bestie”. Polybius thought that the Romans were a “great bunch of lads”. I was confused by how she was able to “go by vibes” to work out the modern values of Roman currency. And as for Onesimus whose being a slave didn’t seem to “have harshed his vibe”. Well I have no idea on what that means.
Now I suspect that that there may well be an audience that finds this authorial tone to be refreshingly different and to them I’d have no hesitation in recommending this book. But if you are someone who maybe thought that plentiful swearing was big and clever when you were seven but you’ve now got over that, you’ll probably want to skip it.

Thanks to NetGalley and Hodder and Stoughton for this review copy.

[Emily]

Copied received from NetGalley

Servus by Emma Southon, publishing in may 2026 is a detailed and explorative book discussing slavery within the Roman Empire. It tackles slavery in various settings from the home, to the farm or even imperial buildings and institutions. The book does well at illuminating the brutal world of slavery in Roman society at home and throughout the territories across the empire, whilst discussing how slavery operated to keep a steady flow of free labour and compliance. The book also discussed the servile wars, allowing us to see some of the limited examples of opposition to slavery at this time.
I found Servus to be a very interesting book which was very well researched both in general forms of slavery but also in terms of presenting individual examples of slaves, allowing them to feel all the more real. The books structure was logical and efficient, my only problem with the book really was the relaxed tone of the author. It was not a totally massive problem but I found it did partly come across as undermining the authors work and arguments. Overall, I found the book to be good, interesting and worth reading, especially if you have an interest in either the ancient world or slavery in general and are eager to learn the life behind the slave and not just how they worked within in system of slavery.

[Violet · Rating 3 out of 5]

That was a really interesting book to read and I learned so much about the scale of slavery in the Roman empire (30% of the population would have been enslaved), and its diversity, not just in ethnicity (Syrian, Ethiopian, Bulgarian and British slaves all in the same household) but in status (captured slaves were seen as lesser than those who were born into slavery) and occupation (gladiators, soldiers, housekeeper but also miners, farm workers, hairdressers, accountants...) Emma Southon does a really good job showing a full picture of the reality of slavery, since the Romans liked to depict themselves as somewhat benevolent: mothers separated from their children, rape, torture, collective punishment, constant violence, backbreaking work...

It was really well researched and interesting which is why I am, like some others reviewers, puzzled by the very colloquial tone and writing. Why does an a academic like Emma Southon feel the need to write about "bad vibes" or that "it's giving" whatever... In the introduction she talks at length of her choice to refer to her subject as "enslaved people" rather than slaves, so why the jokey tone throughout? It read at times like subtitles from a TikTok video and it really undermined her great work for me.

Free ARC sent by Netgalley.

[Jen Burrows · Rating 3 out of 5]

Servus is one of those books where the content is so strong you just wish the delivery would just get out of its own way. Southon's research is excellent - genuinely illuminating and very good at showing how Roman slavery operated as a lived, everyday system. I came away with a much clearer sense of the social mechanics behind it all.

But the overly casual tone didn't always work for me - it's fine in short bursts, but stretched across a whole book it starts to feel repetitive and grating. It's a shame, because the underlying material is fascinating and deserves a slightly tighter, more focused approach.

Still, if you're interested in Roman social history, there's a lot here worth reading - Servus is thoughtful, well‑researched, and often eye‑opening.

*Thank you to Netgalley for the arc in exchange for an honest review*

[charlotte, · Rating 4 out of 5]

fascinating as ever from emma southon

rtc but as an aside i really hope this is going to go through copy edits again because there were soooo many typos

[Andrew Cutler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book that should once and for all explode the myth of “Benevolent” slavery in the ancient Roman world. Thanks to the author ( a fantastic writer), the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Could not put this down…..best book on Ancient Rome I have read since SPQR….Emma Southon writes in such an accessible style with razor sharp wit, bringing the past to life