The way slaves were recognised by people was probably they way they usually did not fit in society and work or cruelty they were put up against. The main jobs they did were household work and field plantation work (agricultural or farming basically).
In a middle class home there would probably be 3 slaves per household and in total especially in higher-class homes, it would add up to more than 100 slaves. The life expectancy of a slave was quite short actually but usually it depended on when they were set free. If they were set free, some came back to actually wanting to be a slave again, because they thought as a freed person they wouldn’t be able to survive out there in world. So they would rather prefer having being sheltered, fed, cleaned, and taken care of by their master.
Rights of a Slave
Once a person was classified as a slave the person's rights were diminished immensely. The slave was not a person but a property, or a thing of its master, and the slave had no lawful place other than to benefit the master. The slave, however, did retain a couple of humane rights with regard to a peculium and in accordance with the ius sacrum (international laws). The slave, viewed as a human, was allowed to manage some personal property called a peculium. This peculium could consist of a myriad of things including money and a slave's slave called a vicariu. The slave in many ways could use the peculium, but the slave was restricted in that all contracts entered by the slave involved the master, and the slave could not give his peculium to someone else so that the other person might use it to buy the slave's freedom. The slave could save peculium and buy its freedom, but this usually only happened when the peculium outweighed the slave's value. The ius sacrum, on the other hand, allowed the slaves to practice certain aspects of religion, to be properly buried and to join certain religious associations.
If a slave attempted any way of escaping and succeeded but was caught later on, a harsh punishment might be given to him but it would basically depend on the master’s choice. He might as well also have his rights of a slave taken away from him.
Rights of a Master
In turn, masters had certain rights in dealing with their slaves. From the very beginning, masters had rights to protect themselves in transactions with slaves. In the agreements made with a slave dealer, law that the slave had neither defects nor was currently in the possession of another person guaranteed the buyer. Since the slave was regarded as the property of the master, a master could then inflict upon the slave as much or as little abuse as he or she found necessary. Being property, a master also owned everything the slave acquired while serving this master, including the slave's small property. Therefore, the little amount that a slave could acquire as personal property was, in legal terms, not even the slave's but rather the master's. Along with this, because the slave was property to a master, if a third party committed any harm to a master's slave, this person could be prosecuted under the laws relating to the damaging of another's property.
Freed persons
As a result of informal manumission, the slave is now a freeperson. Freepersons (libertus) had more rights than the slave, but still had less rights than a Roman freeperson (ingenuus). The freed person had the rights of a restricted citizen in that the freed person can only vote in the city assemblies, but could not enter a legion. However, the children born to a freed person are classified as freepersons, and thereby gain access to the better privileges. Freed persons and their former masters also enter a new relationship, typically as a client-patron relationship. The old masters as patrons must respect the right of succession, right to respect, and the reasonable amount of days worked. In terms of succession, if the freed person has male heirs, the patron will get no money, but if the freed person does not have any male heirs, the patron will get half of the acquired fortune. The right to respect merely refers to the fact that the former master must treat the freed person as a freed person and not a slave, while the proper amount of days worked varied, but should not be overly hard.
The former master may also take on the role of the paterfamilias to the new Informal manumission did not grant the freedman Roman citizenship, and at his death any accumulated property reverted to his former owner. Former slaves could work as craftsmen, midwives, and merchants, and sometimes-achieved wealth. But, in Rome's status conscious world, even successful freedmen found the stigma of slavery hard to erase.
