Servus: How Slavery Made the Roman Empire
by Emma Southon
Genres: History, Non-fictionPages: 448
Rating:
Synopsis: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.
I’ve enjoyed Emma Southon’s books on ancient Rome quite a bit, and that’s partly due to her writing style (well evidenced but fairly flippant) and partly due to her particular angle, which often focuses on women. I actually originally got Servus to review, but didn’t finish it before I lost access to the ARC, so my reading was pretty drawn out.
Which honestly helped a little in one way, because this history of slavery in the Roman Empire is really horrifying. Southon spares little detail — indeed, to the point where it begins to feel a touch fetishistic, wallowing in the misery, though I do believe that the intention is to highlight how truly awful it was and make it clear that the claims of Roman slavery being remarkably tolerable are bullshit. It definitely succeeds at that.
For me, though, the level of detail and the number of times Southon reiterated that we don’t have direct evidence but this is what slavery in America was like all sort of wore on me. There are definitely interesting things and things I didn’t know, but less so than in her other books, perhaps because I’m fairly familiar with evidence about slavery in ancient Rome and I knew very little about murder in ancient Rome or about Agrippina.
And… given the heaviness of the topic, repeatedly emphasised, sometimes the flippant tone I usually enjoy didn’t entirely work for me here.
It’s definitely a detailed look at slavery in ancient Rome, and it’s plentifully furnished with citations, but it didn’t quite hit the spot for me.
Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)
