Not Built in a Day: How Slavery Made the Roman Empire
Southon writes Rome from the position of the enslaved rather than the owners, arguing the institution was not incidental to the empire but the thing holding it up.
Southon writes Roman slavery from the position of the enslaved rather than the owners, arguing the institution was not incidental to the empire but the thing holding it up. Aggressively readable, and deliberately unwilling to soften what it describes. She is impatient with accounts that treat Roman slavery as milder than the Atlantic kind, and marshals the evidence against them.
Recommended by 1 Person
Tyler Cowen
A very good and aggressively readable book about how terrible slavery was in the Roman Empire. A useful corrective to other sources as well. While my general view is that interpretative disputes over antiquity are difficult to resolve, I find her interpretations more intuitive and more convincing than the other side of the debate.
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