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With predatory expansionism, unbridled ambitions for glory and honor, and the barely controllable turmoil endemic to a fiercely proud and competitive aristocracy.

Finally, dominium also involved the master's personal and structural relationship with his non-aristocratic subjects, the laboratores, and which expressed itself in three main ways, with the first being that of serfdom, a condition that could be as oppressive as slavery, but he was distinguished from her by some important traits.

With the serfs they could not be killed at the will of the lord, they had some freedom, although limited by the obligation to pay fees and provide services, they could not transmit inheritance, nor marry, nor leave the lordship without the lord's consent, and their condition in many regions was manifested through a public ritual of humiliating submission, which imposed an additional stigma of discrimination and shame on them.