from Campania and elsewhere may have sometimes begun operations abroad by investing the profits of
war. Pompeii documents the prosperity of Campania, partly the result of such negotia.
Booty included slaves-either those already such, or prisoners of war (the Romans perhaps rarely allowed
ransom). Marxists, exaggerating the admittedly great importance of slavery in ancient society, have
supposed that Roman conquests were fuelled by the need for slaves. No ancient source hints at this, but
the sources are coy about the slave trade. Masses of slaves did result from Rome's wars; Aemilius
Paullus, the victor of Pydna, is said to have sold 150,000 inhabitants of Epirus in northern Greece, on the
Senate's order to deal harshly with the area; it became a virtual desert. Slaves were also acquired by
trade; we are told that some Gallic chiefs were so fond of Italian wine they would give a slave for a
single jar, and there is literary evidence for Gallic slaves in Italy. The geographer Strabo says that at the
height of its prosperity about 100 B.C. Delos could handle 10,000 slaves a day (some originally
kidnapped by pirates or slave-dealers, some foundlings or enslaved for debt, many bought from
barbarian tribes in Thrace and elsewhere). It is not strange that servile revolts broke out in Italy and
Sicily in the late second and early first centuries. Though the great expansion in the use of slaves in Italy
on the land and on a smaller scale for skilled jobs, including teaching (these were mostly easterners)
seems a result, rather than a cause, of the first transmarine conquests, it is likely that later the makers of
Roman policy gave some thought to the supply; landowners needed slaves more than anyone, though
they were used in every type of enterprise and small men too would profit from low prices.
Reverse Of Silver Coin (Denarius) Struck By Cn. Lentulus (76-75 B.C.). The symbols denote Rome's
world power by land and by sea: a sceptre with wreath, a globe, and a rudder. The obverse shows a