#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

[communistkenobi]

On the one hand, slavery represented the most radical rural degradation of labour imaginable - the conversion of men themselves into inert means of production by their deprivation of every social right and their legal assimilation to beasts of burden: in Roman theory, the agricultural slave was designated an instrumentum vocale, the speaking tool, one grade away from the livestock that constituted an instrumentum semi-vocale, and two from the implement which was an instrumentum mutum. On the other hand, slavery was simultaneously the most drastic urban commercialization of labour conceivable: the reduction of the total person of the labourer to a standard object of sale and purchase, in metropolitan markets of commodity exchange.

— Perry Anderson (1974), Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism, pp. 24-25

I always knew that the Roman Empire probably wasn’t great to live in for a variety of reasons but reading about the obscene amounts of chattel slavery they were doing is really driving home why all the fascist guys on twitter are obsessed with this period of history

[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!?

[evavertun]

Is 2025 going to start with conversations about race consciousness (or the lack therof) in the marauders fandom? it’s going to start with conversations about race consciousness (or the lack therof) in the marauders fandom, isn’t it?

[mythologypaintings]

Cupid Fleeing from Slavery

Artist: Joseph-Marie Vien (French, 1716–1809)

Date: 1789

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Musée des Augustins, Toulouse, France

Description

"Cupid Fleeing From Slavery" depicts the Roman god of love, Cupid, escaping from a situation where he is being held captive, often symbolized by chains or bonds, usually with a frantic and energetic movement, signifying his desire for freedom and the inherent power of love to break free from constraints; it's a classic representation of love's rebellious nature and its resistance to being controlled

[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.

[mountedeverest]

Dreamt of a BuckTommy ancient Rome AU where Tommy is a Centurion (named something like Tiberius or close to his name) and Buck is a young Gael warrior (named Eogan) who was captured during a roman raid. Anyway, Eogan is feral at first and they don't understand each other because they don't speak the same language and also, Tiberius is roman so Eogan hates his guts but there's something about the square man in the red cape, how he cares, how there's a question in his eyes, a desire to leave this campaign, leave Rome, leave it all, and for Tiberius it's the same, he had never really wanted for anything, or even anyone until he met this ragged, savage warrior, covered in blood and mud with his twisting tattoos and warpaint, and still the ghost of a boy hidden behind his hardened features.

[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

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