Latest / Trade Routes That Changed Human History Forever — Fexingo History / The Slave Who Took Rome: Spiculus and the Neronian Trade
Transcript
- Lucas: So far in this series we've talked about silk, spices, incense, even rhubarb — but there's one trade that ran alongside all of them, often on the very same ships and caravans, and it's one that's easy to gloss over because it's so uncomfortable. I'm talking about the slave trade. Luna: And not just any slave trade — the Roman one, right? Lucas: Exactly. Under the Pax Romana, the Roman Empire wasn't just trading goods across its vast territory; it was trading people on an industrial scale. We have records from the second century BCE through the fifth century CE that show slaves moving from Britain to Arabia, from the Danube to the Sahara. And the numbers are staggering. Luna: How staggering? Lucas: Well, the best estimates suggest that at the height of the empire, somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of the population was enslaved. That's millions of people. And the trade itself was a massive economic engine. There were dedicated slave markets in cities like Delos, which could handle thousands of sales in a single day. The island of Delos became so infamous that the phrase 'Delian slave market' was shorthand for the trade itself. Luna: So it was a massive, organized business. Lucas: Absolutely. And it had its own vocabulary. A slave dealer was a venalitium, and the places where they were sold were called venalitia. There were also specialized agents, called mangones, who would buy slaves in one part of the empire and sell them in another, often dressing them up or even dyeing their hair to make them more appealing to buyers. Luna: That is grim. And I suppose the most visible slaves in popular imagination are the gladiators. Lucas: Right. Gladiators were a specific category of enslaved people, often prisoners of war or condemned criminals, but also volunteers who sold themselves into the life. And one of the most famous gladiators of all — at least in his own time — was a man named Spiculus. Luna: Spiculus? I've heard the name, but I don't know the story. Lucas: Spiculus was a gladiator in the mid-first century CE, during the reign of Nero. And he became something of a celebrity — not just for his skill in the arena, but because Nero personally favored him. According to the historian Suetonius, Nero showered Spiculus with gifts, including palaces and estates that would have been unimaginable for a slave. Luna: Wait — a slave owning palaces? Lucas: It sounds contradictory, but it happened. Nero was so infatuated with Spiculus that he treated him almost like a courtier. There's a famous story that when the Praetorian Guard revolted and Nero was about to be overthrown, he actually tried to find Spiculus so that the gladiator would kill him — a kind of honorable death at the hands of a champion. But Spiculus wasn't there, so Nero had to have a secretary help him die. Luna: That's a tragicomic end. So even a favored slave was still property. Lucas: Exactly. Spiculus's story is a window into the bizarre extremes of Roman slavery, but it's also a reminder that for every Spiculus, there were tens of thousands of anonymous slaves who worked in mines, on latifundia — those huge agricultural estates — or as domestic servants in Roman households. Their lives were brutal, short, and almost entirely unrecorded. Luna: And the trade itself — how did it work logistically? Where did they get all these people? Lucas: The sources were many. The most common were prisoners of war. Every time Rome conquered a new territory, tens of thousands of captives were enslaved. Julius Caesar, for example, claimed to have enslaved over a million Gauls during his campaigns. Then there were people born into slavery — children of enslaved women were automatically slaves themselves. And there was also a thriving market in people who had been kidnapped by pirates or raiders. Luna: So the trade routes we've been talking about — the Silk Road, the incense route — they also carried human cargo? Lucas: Yes. In fact, the same infrastructure that moved silk and spices also moved slaves. Caravans crossing the Sahara would include enslaved people from sub-Saharan Africa. Ships sailing the monsoon winds from India to the Red Sea carried slaves alongside pepper and cinnamon. The Roman author Strabo writes about the port of Berenike on the Red Sea, where slaves from East Africa and Arabia were unloaded and then marched overland to the Nile. Luna: And what about the legal side? Did Romans have laws about slavery? Lucas: Oh, they had a whole legal framework. The Digest of Justinian, compiled in the sixth century CE but drawing on earlier jurists, devotes entire sections to the status of slaves. One key principle was that slaves were res — things — not persons. They couldn't own property, marry legally, or testify in court except under torture. But there were also protections, at least on paper. A master who killed a slave without cause could be charged with murder, though in practice that was rare. Luna: There's something I've always wondered: did any Roman thinkers question the morality of slavery itself? Lucas: A few did. The Stoic philosopher Seneca argued that slaves were human beings and should be treated with kindness. He even said, 'They are slaves, but they are also human beings; they are slaves, but they share the same roof as you.' But he never called for the abolition of slavery. He just wanted masters to be less cruel. There was a more radical voice in the early Christian writer Paul, who wrote that in Christ 'there is neither slave nor free,' but even he didn't advocate for freeing slaves. The institution was just too deeply embedded. Luna: Speaking of being embedded — it's hard to imagine the Roman economy without slavery. Lucas: It's almost impossible. Slaves worked in every sector: agriculture, mining, manufacturing, domestic service, even as doctors and teachers. The poet Horace was the son of a freedman. The philosopher Epictetus was born a slave. So the trade was not just a source of labor — it was a source of talent and intellect as well, though of course those people were still property. Luna: And the trade continued to evolve, right? It didn't just disappear after the fall of Rome. Lucas: No, it changed shape. Under Constantine, there were laws that made it harder to enslave Christians, and the Church sometimes bought slaves' freedom as an act of piety. But the trade itself continued through the Byzantine and Islamic periods. In fact, the slave trade along the Silk Road actually intensified in the early Middle Ages, with Central Asian Turkic peoples being sold to both the Abbasid Caliphate and the Byzantine Empire. Luna: So the Roman slave trade was really just one chapter in a much longer story. Lucas: Exactly. And that's what makes it so important to study — not to sensationalize, but to understand how human beings have been commodified across time. The Roman case is well-documented, and it shows patterns that recur in the Atlantic slave trade, the Arab slave trade, and even in modern forms of trafficking. The specifics change, but the dehumanization is constant. Luna: You know, we've been so focused on the commodities — silk, spices, incense — that it's easy to forget the human cost behind all that luxury. Lucas: Right. And that's a good place to take a moment. If you've been stepping into history with us episode by episode, you know we try to keep these conversations ad-free and accessible. That's only possible because listeners like you toss in a couple of dollars now and then. A few dollars a month genuinely makes a difference — it helps cover hosting and research costs. So if you've gotten something out of these episodes, you can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Just a small way to keep the show going. Luna: And it really does help. I know it's not much, but it adds up. Lucas: It does. And on that note — let's get back to the trade. One of the most remarkable things about the Roman slave system was how it managed to be both brutal and sophisticated. Take the slave market in Rome itself: the Saepta Julia, which was originally designed for elections, became a kind of auction house. Buyers could inspect slaves like merchandise, and the prices varied wildly based on skills, appearance, and origin. Luna: Were there any rebellions that threatened the system? Lucas: The most famous is the Spartacus revolt in 73–71 BCE. Spartacus was a gladiator who led an army of escaped slaves that eventually numbered in the tens of thousands. They defeated several Roman legions before being crushed by Crassus. After the revolt, 6,000 captured slaves were crucified along the Appian Way. It was a brutal message, but it also showed how fragile the system could be when slaves found leadership. Luna: And yet the trade continued for centuries after that. Lucas: It did, because the demand was relentless. The Roman economy was built on slave labor, and the supply seemed endless — at least until the empire stopped expanding. When the frontiers stabilized in the second century CE, the flow of war captives slowed, and the trade shifted more toward internal reproduction and long-distance commerce. That's when we see more elaborate networks of slave trading, with merchants specializing in certain ethnicities. Luna: So it became a globalized business, even by ancient standards. Lucas: Exactly. And I think that's the key takeaway. The trade routes we've explored in this series — they weren't just about exotic goods. They were about moving people as commodities, across thousands of miles, with all the human tragedy that implies. The story of Spiculus is just one spark in that vast, dark network. Luna: And it connects directly to later histories — the transatlantic slave trade, the coolie trade, modern trafficking. Lucas: Right. The mechanisms change, but the core dynamics of supply, demand, and dehumanization remain. So when we talk about trade routes changing history, we have to include this one, too — not as a footnote, but as a central, painful thread.