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this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2026
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Not all slaves were abused in that way but most workers in said jobs were slaves or freed people.
I think the point of the meme was that people think Romans were "enlightened" with respect to slavery when in actuality they were not.
Suggesting that the bottom portion of the meme is wrong, that sexual slavery was not common despite contemporaneous accounts, and that the slaves were not tortured seems to prove the point of the meme. I don't think the meme is suggesting that the majority of slaves were sex slaves, just that the Romans were brutal and depraved with relation to their slaves just like basically all other people were.
Calling it the reality of roman slavery implies this is the expected treatment, as opposed to a reality of roman slavery.
I've never gotten an impression that the general public has any particular notion of the Romans being "enlightened" with respect to slavery. Most people seem to know only that there were slaves, but have no idea how large the slave population was. People today are eager, almost desperate, to scold somebody for being horrible, but they don't think beyond that point. To me the more significant thing by far is the sheer volume of slavery, and that Roman society was only able to exist because of it.