#roman slavery

[hacked-wtsdz]

Why do so many Americans, and non-Americans too, seem to think that slavery was a specifically American thing? Like, I presume that most people know that it wasn’t, but I hear so much discussion of American slavery and its impact, and so little of any other kind. It also makes slavery look like a strictly white-slaver black-slave dynamic, which, again, I presume most people know it isn’t, but nobody talks about it as much as about American-type slavery. The Roman slave market, which existed for centuries and had slaves of all races, the Korean slave market, which was gigantic, the Ottoman slave market, in which North Africans and Middle Easterners enslaved people of different races, including Europeans. My point being that slavery has existed for centuries, and has heavily impacted our whole world, and yet some people seem to believe that slavery existed only in an American-type way. At the moment, there are more slaves in the world than ever before, and yes, most of them are from Third World countries, but nobody talks of real-time slavery either. Not as much as of past American slavery anyway. I genuinely wanna know how that came to be.

[ancientstuff]

This sounds like it was an absolutely miserable existence.

[musewrangler]

“General,” he stated, chest heaving in exertion, but a small smile on his lips. “It is good to see you man alive, sir.”

“I would like to say the same of you, Piett, but I can see you are injured. Where…?”

But he’d spotted the arrow lodged in the man’s chest, right near the collarbone where the leather of his cuirass did not cover.

Piett nodded and made no effort to dismount even though his horse had stopped, her head hanging low and her sides heaving.

“Lucky shot,” he managed, listing a little in the saddle. “Not…not life threatening, but inconvenient. I…”

But he really did begin to tip here and Max swore, leaping forward along with Travus to catch him as he slid slowly from the saddle.

And that was blood all down the saddle and the mare’s sweating flank…

“Firmus,” Max breathed, fear freezing his lungs.

[duxfemina]

There's a really good book on Roman Slavery called

Slavery in the Roman World by Sandra R Joshel

To start thinking about Roman slavery is to stare into an infinite abyss of deliberate human suffering. The Roman Empire is considered to be one of the genuine slave states in human history, in that, like the antebellum Southern states of America, it could not exist without slavery. Slavery was the social and economic foundation upon which the entire Roman Empire rested. But while the slave states of Louisiana and Virginia lasted 150 years before abolition, the Roman Empire stood on the backs of unimaginable numbers of enslaved men, women and children for almost a thousand years. A thousand years is thirty-four generations of people enslaved to the Romans. A thousand years before the year I wrote this, King Cnut was glaring down the sea. A thousand years is an immense amount of time. And they didn’t just have domestic slaves, they had vast mines across the Empire for silver, lead, gold, iron and copper. Google the Las Médulas mines in Spain and imagine the sixty thousand enslaved people who worked there twenty-four hours a day to produce the gold the Roman Empire demanded, and then multiply that by hundreds of years and hundreds of sites and all those lives that were sent to toil for nothing and join me staring into this bottomless pit of Roman horror. Then picture the near infinite acres of land owned by the Gaius Caecilius Isidoruses and Melanias of the Roman world, each maintained by chain gangs of hundreds of enslaved people. And on top of that were those enslaved in the house, the cooks and cleaners and washers and dressers, the people enslaved by the state who maintained the aqueducts and laid the roads and built all those temples and fora across the vast Empire and fought fires and carried the emperor in his litter. A general estimate (which means, of course, a total guess but a guess from someone I’d trust in a quantitative situation) is that there were between 4.8 and 8.4 million enslaved people in the Roman Empire at any time, with the city of Rome‘s population including anywhere from ten to twenty-five percent enslaved people. Millions and millions and millions of lives, each a person with a heart full of love and hate and envy and joy and aching knees and sore eyes and dreams and thoughts and desires and hopes, all of whom were owned by another person and subject to the most extraordinary violence every day.

A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome by Emma Southon

[sforzesco]

Blood in the Arena: the Spectacle of Roman Power, Alison Futrell

[wanderingmind867]

"Oh, please! You're from the Roman Camp, aren't you? Rome was built on slavery. Don't get all high and mighty with me!"

Rick, why do you throw the jabs only at Rome? I'm pretty sure Ancient Greece had slavery too. And I know this is just an example of Phineas being evil, but this is slander against Rome! Treating Rome like it's worse than other cultures! When we all know many civilizations had slavery, not just Rome. So really: Why do you seem to hate Rome, Rick Riordan!?

The only major roman we meet who has no connections to the greeks or any other pantheons is probably Octavian, and you portray him like a monster! Yet when you had Luke doing evil on the Greek side, you tried to paint him as a sympathetic antagonist! Why do you have such a prejudice against the mighty culture of Rome!? Why!?

[artthatgivesmefeelings]

Marble bust of Claudius Caesar (10 BC-54 AD), 4th Roman emperor, ca. 41-54 AD Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, Campania The Roman conquest of Britain was the Roman Empire's conquest of most of the island of Britain, which was inhabited by the Celtic Britons. It began in earnest in AD 43 under Emperor Claudius, and was largely completed in the southern half of Britain by AD 87, when the Stanegate was established. - Slavery was an accepted part of everyday society in the Mediterranean world at the time when Rome made contact with Britain. As the Roman Empire expanded, many slaves were acquired as prisoners of war. Rome's initial contact with Britain, followed by the conquest, continued to supply British slaves onto the Roman Slave Market. This brutal way of life is reflected in the writings of Strabo (1st century BC - 1st century AD). He referred to slaves among the list of commodities exported from Late Iron Age Britain. Generally a slave's life expectancy was short. Their usefulness declined as they got older, often beyond the age of 30. Archaeological finds reflect the shocking trade across Britain and East Anglia. Slave shackles and other objects have been found in Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk. -Norwich Castle Museum, Slaves in Roman Britain.

[p-clodius-pulcher]

Sexual violence and exploitation are inherent to imperialism and any discussion of imperialism that shies away from these subjects is disingenuous and flawed. I know lots of people on this site (myself included) engage with Ancient Rome and its history as a hobby, but that is not an excuse to not be aware or willing to discuss the unsavoury parts of its existence and legacy.

[fluentisonus]

getting a number of tags like these on my post and idk. like i want to say that i'm an extremely big fan of the importance of context & setting when it comes to approaching history, it's deeply important to keep in mind at every point. but at the same time i feel really weird about how much people feel the instinctive need to separate roman slavery and e.g. 19th century slavery, & how uncomfortable people seem to be with any comparison or association between the two beyond 'both being slavery'. there were absolutely notable differences (the racial aspect for a major one) but the way people seem to sort of historically quarantine them as things that happened entirely independently of each other & not acknowledge any similar systems or characteristics that might draw parallels between the two is. idk. i think historical comparison can be a very valuable tool & i feel like it's worth examining why people think there's nothing at all roman in 19th c slavery etc etc

[madame-helen]

[aristotels]

terfs so funny for defending hp and shitting on asoiaf lol. dany's White Saviour™ trope is annoying but at least she is going around freeing slaves and burning slaveowners to the crisp while everyone in the hp made fun of hermione for being into elf activism and it turned out slavery is okay actually bc elfs love being slaves lol

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

The Gift of God is Eternal Life in Jesus Christ

16 Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness? 17 But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. 18 Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness. 19 I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness. 20 For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness. 21 What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death. 22 But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. 23 For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. — Romans 6:16-23 | Cambridge Paragraph Bible (CAMB) The Cambridge Paragraph Bible of the Authorized English Version, by Scrivener, Frederick Henry Ambrose, 1813-1891. Published by Cambridge University Press. Cross References: Genesis 2:17; Genesis 4:7; Job 33:27; Proverbs 11:19; Proverbs 14:12; Matthew 4:23; Matthew 6:24; Luke 4:18; Luke 20:16; John 8:32; John 8:34; Romans 1:8; Romans 3:5; Romans 6:1-2; Romans 7:4; 1 Corinthians 14:6

Read full chapter

What does it mean that the wages of sin is death?

[libraryleopard]

my sister's roman history obsession was activated like a spring-loaded trap by the naumachia in the trailer for gladiator ii so she roped me into watching the first gladiator movie and i would like to state for the record that i think it's hilarious ridley scott and co. had over twenty years to mull over ideas for a sequel and in the end their main story innovation was "what if instead of one absolute freak of an emperor there was TWO"

[duxfemina]

I'm stating this in relation to ancient Roman history but I'm sure it applies to any time and place where slavery was/is prevalent so if you're triggered by discussions of slavery and the R word (rhymes with grape) maybe just scroll on...

So the Roman view of slavery distilled down to its simplest is; an enslaved person has no agency.

So that view established it's an appalling truth that slaves both male and female have absolutely no control over access to their bodies. Rape happened a lot in the ancient world as a general rule: sieges, raids, war, no legal repercussions if you were a low status victim etc. but it will literally make you a little ill when you factor enslaved people into that picture. Combine the overwhelming misogyny and entitlement of the classes that owned the most slaves and the general over inflated sense of self the Romans possessed and you know it though you hate to think about but they raped their slaves a lot and thought nothing of it. And if they didn't personally they didn't really make a fuss if someone else did. It's gross but it's true.

Now to the point here that blows my mind HOW MANY SLAVES WERE THE SPITTING IMAGE OF THEIR MOTHER'S RAPIST? Like we know the children of slaves were born as slaves. So here are the female victims giving birth (yes there were abortives and contraceptives in the ancient world but how much access did enslaved women have to those things??) To children who will grow up in the house of their mother's abuser. Another generation of property for their owner. And how can the person who owns these people look them in the eye day after day watching them grow up knowing that that's their kid...

Like I know we can't judge the past by modern standards of morality especially the ancient past but to me it's just sort of morbidly fascinating like watching a train wreck. Like this was NOT an uncommon thing. It couldn't be. Not with how the system of slavery worked in ancient Rome. So like how many times is "so-and-so's freedman" who Plutarch or Tacitus is talking about really in fact their son, or brother, or cousin? Or even the unfreed people. Like how often was some nobleman being raised around his enslaved half-siblings? How often did a child by a slave get sold off and lost to history.

For all we know some people in Crassus' army could have been not very distant relations to some of the people in Spartacus' army.

The ancient world is smaller than you think and ten times as disturbing. It's all not just kinda possible but VERY possible and quite likely.

[sforzesco]

CAESAR AUGUSTUS AND MARCUS LICINIUS CRASSUS

this is about the spolia opima that crassus was robbed of lmao. like, yeah okay octavian could've asked him not to claim it, but nevertheless. a kind of theft happened there.

Fact and Fiction: Crassus, Augustus, and the Spolia Opima, Catherine McPherson

[wanderingmind867]

Wait a second. Bunker 9 was created in the era of the american civil war? The roman and greek demigods had a civil war then? Don't… don't tell me that had any connections with the real american civil war. Rick Riordan, please confirm that it wasn't a battle between Greeks and Romans over slavery. Because i do not need to have that discussion in my escapist fiction. So… let's just collectively assume it was something else that sparked the demigod civil war, alright?