C. the little island of Delos had come to be used as a convenient
centre for the slave trade. Strabo tells us in a well-known passage
that 10,000 slaves might be sold there in a single day.[307] But Rome
herself was in the time of Cicero the great emporium for slaves; the
wars which were most productive of prisoners had been for long in the
centre and the west of the Mediterranean basin. All armies sent out
from Rome were accompanied by speculators in this trade, who bought
the captives as they were put up to auction after a battle, and then
undertook the transport to Rome of all who were suited for employment
in Italy or were not bought up in the province which was the seat of
war. The enormous number of slaves thus made available, even if we
make allowance for the uncertainty of the numbers as they have
come down to us, surpasses all belief; we may take a few examples,
sufficient to give some idea of a practice which had lasting and
lamentable results on Roman society.
After the campaign of Pydna and the overthrow of the Macedonian
kingdom, Aemilius Paullus, one of the most humane of Romans, sold into
slavery, under orders from the senate, 150,000 free inhabitants of
communities in Epirus which had sided with Perseus in the war.
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