C.) Rome was drawn into extra-Italian conflicts it already had considerable experience of managing and accommodating a slave population through internal institutional mechanisms, and there are indications that in the early third century Roman attitudes toward slaves were beginning to harden, perhaps as a result of their growing visibility in society at large. (Bradley 19-20).

             Regardless of the reasons for the hardening of the Roman attitude with regard to slaves, which can be surmised to be associate with the visibility of slaves in society and can be marked by changes in laws and increases in recorded evidence of civil unrest involving slaves, not to say revolt but simply small legal occurrences such as theft, fighting, public indecency, and general overall social and legal situations in which slaves where either victims of or criminals engaging in unsettling behavior on an individual scale. It may also be noted that sensitivity to crime was probably at an all time high and "crimes" may have been what we would consider petty and that Roman society would consider petty if instigators where Roman citizens or of Roman lineage but because they were slaves involved were considered at a much more serious level and also probably thought by the people to be the sign of larger unrest. Additionally, the seat of fear as the numbers of slaves, especially in visible locations, e.g. in control of agricultural resources or household resources began to grow this situation would worsen, likely making Romans fear insurrection or at the very least collusion on the part of slaves to undermine Roman order. Yet incidences of petty crime, by slaves or otherwise are not recorded as, for the most part the crime that is recorded is of a more monumental kind, involving issues of serious need for enforcement and maintenance of order, like what we would consider felony crimes today. Some historians have taken this lack of recording of petty crime as a sign that the civil order in the Roman Empire was exceptional, yet most modern historians do not agree with this entirely and think it a simple issue of recording practices.