Servus

We associate the Romans with majesty and greatness: we marvel at their straight roads and innovative underfloor heating, at the dominance of their army and navy, at the grandeur of their palaces and temples. 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 the Roman world, 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 their 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 were the bedrock of the Roman Empire. 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 it so dominant. Just as the stories of the emperors are sometimes joyful, sometimes horrific, sometimes poignant and sometimes downright weird, so too are the stories of slavery. There is enormous suffering because to be enslaved is to inherently suffer lack of freedom, and sometimes that also involved violence and horror. But enslaved people are people, and they left fragments of themselves behind, so there are also love stories, lifelong friendships, high highs and low lows. Tiny victories abound, and sometimes there are big ones too - especially in the lives of those freed from slavery, able to choose their own destinies.