Transcription
The ancient Roman elite cared very little for the average person. Obviously, they owned slaves, but they also showed little regard for freeborn Roman citizens. A really good example of this comes to us from Marcus Terentius Varro, who was a rich senator during the late Republic. He wrote about absolutely everything, but unfortunately for us, only fragments of his work survive.
Luckily, three books on agriculture do survive, in which he gives advice to his fellow rich senators about how to properly manage an agricultural estate. He says that, quote, "All fields are tilled by men, either slaves or freedmen or both. Freedmen are either those who till their own fields, as many poor people do with the help of their families, those who are working off debts, or those who are hired when the major farming operations have begun." End quote.
Many of these free men were proper Roman citizens. They just didn't have any land, so had to accept seasonal work on large agricultural estates, which were owned by the Roman elite. This part of Varro's work is particularly telling. He goes on to say, quote, "With regard to all these classes of free men, I have to say it is more profitable to work unhealthy areas with hired workers than with slaves." End quote.
Varro is not some slavery abolitionist. He's being very calculating here. By unhealthy areas, he means very hot or cold areas or places infested with malaria mosquitoes. He advocates for hiring free men, often Roman citizens, because when they got sick or died, he can simply stop employing them. If he sent his slaves into these areas and they got sick or died, that would have affected his bottom line. He would have lost his property.
Reading this kind of stuff really makes my skin crawl and reminds me of how little most of the Roman elite valued human life. Such is history.