How the Roman Republic Made Italy Wealthy & Gaudy

A History of Mankind (185)

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All in all, the Roman wars fought in the East between 201 and 167 BC led to the sale of around 300,000 slaves in Italy, not including those taken in the conflicts in northern Italy and Spain in the same period.

Spoils and tribute made many Romans incredibly rich, and drove a property boom focused on the purchase of private agricultural land – a wise, time-honored investment for all those who could afford it – that in the case of the wealthiest segment of the elite was often added to public land already being toiled by their clients.

The abandonment of the land by farmers who became soldiers and then heroic casualties¹, disgraced prisoners² or colonists far from their birth-places, and their replacement by slaves and/or unemployed rabble in the cities, was a time-honored Roman tradition, the most important loop in the Roman imperial machine.

The difference from the Second Punic War and, particularly, the Greek wars, was that the new slaves increasingly were foreigners rather than Italians.