A Study Of Roman Agricultural Slaves On The Basis Of Three Agricultural Writings-Second Century B.C. To First Century A.D.

The Roman territory relied on the weapon,but its rampart depended on agriculture.Agriculture was the basis of Roman society,thus the Romans used very large number of slaves in agriculture.The agricultural slaves had a great influence on the slave-holding society.The slavery system had the historical necessity in Rome,the Romans hardly made use of the slaves from the initial times,but later there was an enormous population of slaves,this was a long time from less to more.The Romans began to exploit the slaves in a large scale in the 3nd century B.C.They were distributed among agriculture,manufacture or business.The Romans acquired slaves through wars,debt slavery,practice piracy,verna and catasta.There was a peak time in the population of slaves,which was between the 2nd century B.C.and 2nd century A.D.Most of the slaves were used in agriculture.The wealthy masters acquired the land through purchase,merger or inheritance.Then they established big vineyards or planted olive in large-scale.Slaves worked on the estate of the masters.And there are three works of the Roman writers about agricultural slaves: De Agri Cultura of Marcus Porcius Cato;Rerum Rusticarum of Marcus Terentius Varro;De Re Rustica of Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella.These books mention the agricultural slaves many times.This thesis focuses on the agricultural slaves on the basis of these three works.This thesis is divided into three parts: introduction,main body and conclusion.In the preface,I focus on the definition of the agricultural slaves,then analyze the research status about the agricultural slaves both in China and abroad.The main body includes four chapters:Chapter 1: an introduction about the medium-sized manorial economy,and most important part,a detailed description about the use of slaves,including the source of slaves,the management of slaves and the situation of slaves.Chapter 2: an analysis of latifundium and also the detailed description about slaves,including the source of slaves,the management of slaves and the situation of slaves.Chapter 3:the introduction of coloni and detailed description about slaves,including the source of slaves,the management of slaves and the situation of slaves.Chapter 4: based on the comparison of the relative information of the slaves according to these three authors,I try to analyze the social situation for the changes in the position of slaves from the Republican period to the early Empire.The last part is the conclusion,which gives a brief summary about the influence of slaves.