Haha, I’m not the author of this thing, I’m only recalling what I remember off the cuff from my ancient history classes in highschool and the roman laws course in university. I’d have to dive into a university library to do proper research, I’m afraid.
But much like yourself I’m curious to how as to how much of the Roman slavery system the author is going to present will cleave as close to our best academic understandings of the reality of it and how much will be pure fiction.
Still if there are going realistic elements to it for verisimilitude then our mc’s are indeed the second worst category of Roman slave you could be. Roman citizens admired successful gladiators, that’s true but they also never fully trusted them and therefore if emancipated at all they become the lowest of the low with even fewer rights then many actual slaves. So in that regard manumission was a trap for them since it was certainly no “freedom”. Like you said the only class of slaves who had it worse were the damnati in metallum, who couldn’t even be legally freed and were expected to die in the mines.
On the other hand for many slaves the Roman system was “better” than say chattel slavery in Brazil, the US South or our own Dutch colonies. Unfortunately if the author values realism at all our mc’s are not going to be some of those “lucky” slaves who can become nearly full citizens eventually, save for the passive political rights.
Which is hardly surprising because that sort of treatment those slaves got easily fits into an easy sort of black and white morality of Hollywood and fiction writers everywhere. The educated slaves who were doctors or accountants for the most part lived absolutely boring lives as far as Hollywood drama goes and in fact they lived significantly longer on average then the lower strata of the “free” population, which is where our poor mc’s are going to end up if they’re ever even manumitted under a semi-realistic portrayal of the Roman slavery system.
In any case there are actually a great number of people on these forums whose knowledge of ancient Rome in particular and ancient history in general far outstrips my own. Right @Bryce_Kaldwin @ruhenri and numerous others?