This book offers an innovative way of both thinking about the history of Roman slavery and a method for finding and interpreting evidence of slave experience in the Roman world through the work of Plautus, one of the great Roman dramatists. • Ground-breaking new approach to Roman slavery creating a contextualized picture of slavery in the late third and early second centuries BCE • Uses literary evidence from Roman drama to study the interaction between masters and slaves, as well as issues of power and domination in Roman society • Presents an overview of the historiography of the period, as well as an explication of the comparative method • Discusses how slaves were captured and sold; their treatment by the master and the community; the growth of the conception of the slave as “other than human," and as chattel; and the problem of freedom both for slaves and society • Includes the difference between a so-called "slave society" and a society with slavery.