Why did slavery stop in ancient Rome?

Answer 1

Slaves in ancient Rome, like in the rest of the ancient world, were primarily enslaved war captives. When Rome's wars of expansion ended, the supply of new slaves swindled. The majority of slaves worked in the fields of the large landed estates. Many worked in the households of the rich. Miners were slaves because in those days mining was like a death sentence. Some slaves worked in mills and bakeries and some worked for the state as archivists or petty bureaucrats. The economy of the Roman Empire was not necessarily a slave economy. Slave labour was concentrated in Italy and in the Roman province of Africa (Tunisia and western Libya). In most parts of the empire there were no or few slaves. Tenant farmers and agricultural labourers were common sources of labour for the landed estates.

With the economic crisis of the period historians call the Crisis of the Third Century, many urban people and tenant farmers moved to the large landed estates. The urban economy suffered due to the devastations of war (there were many civil wars and repelled invasions of the empire), hyperinflation and a collapse in trade, leading to urban-rural migration in various areas of the empire. The small farmers left their farms because of the ravages of wars in the areas affected by the mentioned conflicts and/or to escape the burden of heavy taxation. Funding a large army and paying its soldiers and officers was a heavy drain on the coffers of the state, which was continuously struggling to raise enough revenue. With the economic downturn and the decrease in circulating coins due to hyperinflation, tax collection became extremely difficult and the emperor Diocletian resorted to force the tax collectors to pay for their shortfall form their own pockets and to collect taxes in the form of confiscations of goods.

Diocletian doubled the size of the imperial bureaucracy, which was an added burden for the coffers of the state. He also issued a decree which tied urban workers to their professions and tenant farmers to the landed estates of their landlords. This was to control occupational and geographical mobility and to ensure efficient tax collection. In exchange for the economic benefits of tying labour to their land, the landlords facilitated tax collection among their tenant farmers. Thus, the economic crisis led to the creation of servile labour, which was a precursor of the later medieval serfdom. After this crisis the Roman economy recovered. However, servile labour remained and several emperors issued edicts on servile labour in the period of the Later Empire.

Servile labour did not become the mainstay of the rural economy throughout the Roman Empire. It was most prevalent in the areas which suffered from the devastations of war. In the areas which had not been affected by this the hiring seasonal agricultural labourers was widespread. The raids of the Franks and Alemanni into northern Gaul in the fourth century destroyed the rural economy of this area and caused many farmers to go to the landed estates and become servile farmers.

When the Romans defeated an invasion of Italy by some Germanic peoples in 405, the slave market of Rome was flooded with slaves and briefly collapsed. This did not greatly impact the economy of the empire because it fell into chaos and stated to crumble following the invasions by other Germanic peoples which started the next year.