Presented by Dr. Jared Benton, UN

That tasty roll you bought at a roadside shop in Rome or Pompeii? Do you know who baked it?

It might have been a free businessowner, but maybe a slave... or even a prison inmate.

Dr. Benton argues that Roman bakeries existed along a "continuum of coercion," raising questions about the overlap between slavery, punishment, and incarceration in the ancient world. Monetizing prison labor is not a new concept.