Hello and welcome to ancient warfare answers episode 168. I am Yoss Porthaus. I'm the editor of

Ancient Warfare Magazine and with me is Murray Don and he is the assistant editor of the magazine.

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But today, Murray and I, or mostly Murray, I think, are going to talk about the question of slaves,

specifically slaves that were, well, the result, the defeated turned into compliance slaves.

How did they do it?

Well, we need to preface this obviously with the idea that slavery in any form is abhorrent and reprehensible.

But the other reality, of course, is that the world relied upon slave labor until very recently.

We tend to ignore and gloss over the fact that until the 18th century, most world economies were based on slavery and then obviously into the

19th century. And some might even say it still happens. So in the ancient world, the big issue

you have, of course, mostly at the end of wars is that the populations from defeated enemies were turned into slaves are not normally menfolk

we find throughout vast tracts of ancient warfare that male populations are slaughtered and killed

and it's the female and children who are enslaved that in itself is obviously going to make a population reasonably

compliant because they've seen what's what the alternative is and the options on the table

are live and be a slave or die. At the same time, there must have obviously been male slaves

turned into gladiators, for instance, and defeated foes.

We get stories of complaints of Julius Caesar flooding the market with Gallic slaves during the

conquest of Gaul so that, you know, slaves are basically so cheap it's ruining the economy.

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