In Ancient Rome, slaves were considered legal property without basic human rights. How a pregnant slave was treated depended on the master's whims, the baby's value, and whether the father was a citizen.
The primary outcomes for pregnant slaves and their children included:
Forced Labor and Neglect: Masters often expected pregnant women to continue working, even in the fields, to maximize the labor extracted from them. If the mother worked for a harsh master, the stress and malnutrition frequently led to miscarriages or infant death.
Abandonment and Exposure: If a master deemed a slave's baby too expensive to raise or a distraction to the mother's work, it was common practice to abandon the newborn in public spaces
. Abandoned infants were often collected by others to be raised as slaves or for forced begging.
The Master's Children: Female slaves were frequently subjected to the sexual desires of their owners. If an elite master fathered the child, he might grant the mother a lighter workload or even free her, though the child typically remained enslaved. In some households, these children (called vernae) became playmates to the master's legitimate offspring and were given less physically demanding roles.
Profitable Reproduction: Because Roman slavery was hereditary (the child's status followed the mother's), successful pregnancies meant more free labor or valuable new property for the slaveholde