Slave labor aggravated the situation. There was a time when Roman
farmers and craftsmen did their own work. That time ended with the
enslavement of war captives who swamped the labor market. Like any
parasitic growth, slavery and forced labor destroyed the fabric of a
largely self-contained economy based on peasant proprietorship.

Roman economy was honey-combed with problems created by deficit
spending, currency devaluation and exploitation. At its base was a
foot-loose urban proletariat made up largely of refugees from a
countryside given over increasingly to the employment of military
captives as slave labor. The city masses at the outset were extensively
unemployed. Increasingly they became unemployable, parasitic, restless,
demanding.

At the outset the slave revolts were local and occasional. As the slaves
grew more numerous unrest spread and hardened into organized resistance.
Spartacus, a slave, led a revolt which mobilized armies, defeated the
Roman legions in a series of battles and ended only with the death of
Spartacus and the dispersal of his forces.

Local and provincial affairs under the Roman Empire were administered by
a self-seeking corrupt bureaucracy.

Expansion by means of military conquest increased the influence of the
military at the expense of the civilian administrators. The consequent
burdens of militarism reached from the bottom to the top of Roman
society. Eventually, under the Caesars, the military selected emperors
from among the rivals for the purple of imperial authority, and used the
legions under their command to protect and promote their own political