Quote Originally Posted by wumpus View Post
While I tend to keep the fact that pre-20th centuries were population sinks, even then I don't realize the consequences. While all the offspring of slaves in Rome were slaves (from birth) plenty of them were their master's offspring and eventually freed. But either way, in a few generations all of their offspring (slave or not) would disappear and be replaced by new immigrants to Rome.

I'd expect the great patrician estates to be run by slaves (this was a huge political issue for plebs that voted), and the slaves repopulating themselves (I'm guessing that the "field slaves" weren't the master's or offspring and not freed, thus perpetuating enough slaves for the estate). While the slaves might be able to propagate themselves, the estates would require active slave markets to expand. So every time such an estate failed it would be replaced by free farmers while the Patricians would no longer be able to help themselves to free farmers lands (they probably could grab the land, but couldn't hold it without a slave market to buy enough slaves to run it).

I wonder if anyone knows how long those slave-run estates lasted? It might tell a bit about the dynamics of Roman times.
I don't know the answers to these questions - although I seem to recall that unlike in US slavery, children of slaves in the Roman Republic/Empire where NOT slaves themselves, they were freemen.

That said, the great estates were not long lived individually. One of the marks of the bad emperors of Rome (including the Republican "emperors" such as Sulla) was the tendency to combine purging of political enemies and boosting revenue by accusing the richest men that opposed them of some made-up crime, having them killed/commit suicide and seizing their lands. During succession crises (like the year of the four emperors), it was more likely than not that rich families would not be able to not pick sides, so a lot of such land was taken, and sold to other rich families (who then went on to piss off the next emperor, etc). In the process, the estates would be broken apart and re-combined, I suspect. Unfortunately, the History of Rome podcast (my primary source of knowledge on this topic) stopped talking about this other than "and so-and-so went on yet another purge" around the time of Caligula, when it literally became routine.

Grey Wolf