House and urban slaves weren't much worse off than a regular citizen, having a good chance of manumission (release), after which they became freedmen - still not full citizens, but their children would be, and some freedmen became very rich.
Given that those slaves are the ones that we know the most about (from both archeology and written sources), it skews our perception of Roman slavery to being more benign than it actually was.
Rural slaves which worked in agriculture were worked very hard and they were much more numerous than house slaves. Not an enviable fate, though one must admit that ancient agriculture was a backbreaking work regardless of personal status.
Slaves sent to mines were basically sentenced to death. Few of them would last more than five years. Ancient Rome had very extensive mining operations and mines "ate" men by the thousands. These were mostly enslaved men, because they were cheaper and could not say "no". Mining safety back then was basically zero.
This is not to take away from the stress and precarity of their situation, but materially, almost everyone in the US is better off than almost everyone in ancient rome.
I do think the fact that you decided to counter and declare that the US meets the incredibly low bar of "better living conditions than ancient Rome" is an interesting point to reflect on, and probably relates to the previous poster's point.
Or for the fate of one of the real slaves.
What is different today, is that slavery is mostly viewed as a bad thing. That is a accomplishment, but it doesn't mean we got rid of the misery.
It's less bad now, but being a miner is not much better nowadays, even more so since most of the mines are in poor countries with little care for the workers and rich countries would prefer not to think too hard where the iron for their eco-conscious steel bottle is coming from.
And with that said due to the level of influence from the unions, also have great safety ratings compared to other regions. Though admitedly still quite dangerous, but less so than cinsteuction, agriculture and warehouse work (3).
(1) https://www.minerals.org.au/news/australian-mining-provides-...
(2) https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/industry_business/minin...
> In 2019, the country was the 2nd largest world producer of gold;[1] 8th largest world producer of silver;[2] 6th largest world producer of copper;[3] the world's largest producer of iron ore;[4] the world's largest producer of bauxite;[5] the 2nd largest world producer of manganese;[6] 2nd largest world producer of lead;[7] 3rd largest world producer of zinc;[8] 3rd largest world producer of cobalt;[9] 3rd largest producer of uranium;[10] 6th largest producer of nickel;[11] 8th largest world producer of tin;[12] 14th largest world producer of phosphate;[13] 15th largest world producer of sulfur;[14] in addition to being the 5th largest world producer of salt.[15]
Disasters happened infrequently, but when they did, they were ugly. A spark at a wrong time in a wrong place, and sixty fathers would never come back home again.
Mining is freaking dangerous. The forces of nature involved are enormous, and human is but a small ant facing them.
To me, Tulsa is either 24 hours away, or the place Chandler went to for Christmas in Friends.
It is not about the 1921 massacre of 300 blacks in Tulsa, but that serves as the backstory.
Both shows are first rate TV.
The environment is much better, though. The air is mostly clean, while it smelled like burnt tires in my childhood.
Also, neighboring Poland has undergone an economic boom in the last 30 years, and the network of connections between the region around Ostrava and Poland is becoming very helpful to the local economy.
"Into the truck, Then into the bath, Ground to dust And then in a flash, Turns into fire That turns into ash, Hey, coal miner."
it's allright there are rough aspects but in the end it's worth it, especially since bitcoin is doing well
I don't believe that. People who work in any activity will always learn what's dangerous and take precautions to avoid dying. 2,000 years is not as long a time length as we sometimes think, people then were pretty much exactly like us, except for their culture. And I don't think there's any culture where people don't tend to try to not die.
> These were mostly enslaved men, because they were cheaper and could not say "no"
Huh, that's new to me. Did enslaved women have some kind of legal right to opt out of the mines, or was it just that other uses were found for them?
In a fairly graphic comparison, Seneca recorded the suicide of a German slave who was being trained as a gladiator for animal fights. He took advantage of the only freedom he was given to choke himself to death on a xylospongium, one the communal sponges the Romans used instead of toilet paper. Think about how you’d get into a state of mind where that seemed like the best option.
It did if they earned the rudis.
Also bear in mind at the time a military enlistment was a 25 year commitment. And a legionary didn’t really have more rights than a slave practically speaking. Both were in the manus of their legal superior.
Plus women were more suited for sex, these were not enlightened times so rape of slave women was not frowned on.
Roman slaves were property and could be treated as such, including sexual exploitation (eg made to be prostitutes) and being summarily executed.
And yes, slaves could be freed but that was also true in the American slave era. Just because something is possible doesn't mean it's accessible, particularly by the slave themselves. Also, freedmen in Rome had less rights than citizens.
The history of Rome is a fascinating one but it's hard to look at through the eyes of modern morality. I think this generally applies to the Ancient World: if somehow we could be transported back to that time I'm sure we'd find it quite alien.
My favourite example of this is the origin of the word "decimate" [1]. If, say, a military unit rebelled against Rome, groups of 10 would have to decide which one of the 10 would die and to kill them.
Slavery has always been brutal.
In the US slaves were used as collateral for loans. In a way slaves weren't owned by plantation owners, they were owned by the banks. That if anything explains some of the pernicious aspects of US slavery. Also likely the US banking system. And the mistreatment of blacks after the civil war.
But as far as I can tell, the Romans were similar in a lot of ways to the Spartans. Probably everyone was in the region, the Spartans were just a bit more extreme, and had the best propaganda.
But look at what the Romans had - pater familias (the father of a household could legally murder a weak infant, or technically anyone under them including any adult male sons), legends like Troy and Horatius Cocles, plantation slavery to keep the city fed, and a violent and hierarchical society run almost entirely by veteran officers from noble families - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursus_honorum
Just like in modern USA, it's nobody's business if I cut off one of my fingers, it would not be of concern for such a society if a family kills one of their members.
If you kill or steal from another family, legal systems usually step in.
I always keep i mind that through almost all history, compared to our modern life, people were incredibly poor, living near famine, disease, and death. In that light what seems barbaric is often just practical.
Honestly, I think you're the one who needs to be providing the evidence, especially if you're claiming anything close to the opposite of that (i.e. that most slaves in Roman times were freed).
Discourses 4.1 is perhaps the most direct example of this.
Unfortunately this argument is sustained all through history and today we have people going something like “actually, working multiple minimum wage jobs and struggling to pay rent is good”.
Within the framework of Stoicism, where worrying is one of the greatest evils, his argument makes every sense.
If most people didn't have to work to survive, they wouldn't know what to do with the time. An observation about slavery is that you've traded in the burden of responsibility that liberty introduces for the comfort of not having to worry about what to do with yourself
It's easier to just go do what you're told than it is to determine what must be done. Most people actually prefer that way of living. Left to themselves, they'd either become paralyzed with indecision, or they'd piss their lives away indulging their appetites and possibly commit suicide.
They are definitely hacks: the Enchiridion lists a few of them. Stoicism is anything if not a practical philosophy.
> An observation about slavery is that you've traded in the burden of responsibility that liberty introduces for the comfort of not having to worry about what to do with yourself
I interpreted it as a hedonic treadmill of responsibility; okay, you're not a slave anymore but a citizen so now you have the responsibilities of a citizen to worry about. You're no longer a citizen but a senator, so now you have senatorial responsibilities. You're no longer a senator but the emperor, so now you have to deal with all the problems an emperor needs to deal with it (as Marcus Aurelius can attest to).
Moving up in the world just means that you replace one set of problems with another set of problems. Slave or emperor, it makes no difference if the problems are beyond your control.
It’s much worse than that — today we have people justifying why they work for others as opposed to being entrepreneurs. “It’s not for everyone. It’s too much work. It’s all about luck. You have to be rich already. etc…”
Yep, it is true. It is not for everyone, but not for a lack of want.
The real problem comes in when someone in that situation gives up and does nothing.
Stoicism because popular with Roman elites specifically because it didn't ask the adherents to quit anything, but simply to adapt themselves to whatever adversity they might face[1].
[1] https://www.exurbe.com/stoicisms-appeal-to-the-rich-and-powe...
The Stoics inherited the Cynics attitude that death isn't an evil. If worse comes to worst, you can always just fall on your sword. They used to say that the door is always open. Marcus Cato weaponized this fact to rob Julius Caesar of complete victory: Caesar couldn't demand his submission if he fell on his sword first. They found him and patched him up. But he ripped out the stitches and disemboweled himself with his bare hands.
Aisopos was also a chattel slave, but he lived 600 years earlier, in a very different culture from that of Herculaneum; consider the difference between your own circumstances and the circumstances of domestic servants 600 years ago in Russia.
Herculaneum did not have very much social mobility; it was a society with much more persistent stratification than our own. Half of Herculaneum's citizens (the most privileged 20%) were freedmen, but most of the wealthy citizens were the great-grandchildren of wealthy citizens, and the great majority of people born enslaved died in slavery. Freedmen and often even their children were ineligible for most political offices. Throughout Italy, 80% of decurions had no slave ancestry at all, any number of generations back. (I'm not sure what the number was in Herculaneum.)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4436383
To liberals, enslaving someone is itself ill treatment and abuse, because we consider freedom to be the birthright of every human being, and its denial to amount to ill treatment. So we consider the idea of slavery without ill treatment and abuse to be a contradiction in terms. Even if a slave is not being beaten, raped, berated, or worked to death in a mine, they are being deprived of many of the most precious things in life by the very nature of slavery.
Was there no such thing as a lower economic class of free people that were working as either attendants or servants? This is after all, a villa in a resort area. Its not as if people throughout the annals of history didn't work as attendants alongside slaves.
All of a sudden "An intact servants quarters found in Pompeii's ruins" doesn't sound all that enticing of headline.
Incidentally, even today, "servants" (domestic workers) are often enslaved or work in conditions that are only nominally not slavery. Many are children at an age that is too young to work legally.
https://web.archive.org/web/20140930183517/http://www.antisl...
>> All of a sudden "An intact servants quarters found in Pompeii's ruins" doesn't sound all that enticing of headline.
The actual headline is not clickbait, if that's what you're suggesting, neither is it spiced up to make it more "enticing", or anything like that. Rather, the headline you propose is an anachronism because there were no free "servants" in ancient Rome. The role of "household servants" (domestic workers) was fulfilled by slaves.
Fun Fact: This interpretive problem comes up in translations of the New Testament, where the same word is very frequently used in the context of [servant|slave] of [Christ|God]. See different translations of Romans 1:1.
The Greek word, δοῦλος (doulos) literally means "slave", and is a reference to the contemporaneous Roman practice as can also be seen in other Roman works written in Greek.
But this then creates all sorts of translation issues for English readers:
* if you use the word "slave", then people think of slavery of Africans (people chained, working in fields, being constantly whipped, living in large group quarters). This is way too harsh. The key point of doulos is that he was forced to do something by another will. The emphasis is on the powerless and passive nature of the slave, not on harsh treatment. A slave might be treated well, but if he was, it was only because his Lord decided to treat him that way. But in practice, they were household slaves with better treatment than African slaves.
* if you use the word "servant", then people perhaps think of a butler, which is way too soft. A Butler can decide to leave. He may not have the means to leave, but he has his own will.
So some translations use the term "bondservant" as a compromise, given the fact that this refers to something between our modern conception of slavery and our modern conception of servanthood.
Fun-Fact 2: One of the related words is diakoneo which means "to serve", so one "serves as a slave". From this we get the English word deacon, who is supposed to be a slave/servant of a local church, again with the ambiguity that this is between African slavery and being a butler.
Therefore if you really wanted to remain ambiguous (and mess with your readers) you could call them deacon's quarters.
From the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament entry for doulos[1]:
Hence we have a service which is not a matter of choice for the one who renders it, which he has to perform whether he likes or not, because he is subject as a slave to an alien will, to the will of his owner. → οἰκέτης is almost exactly synonymous, but in δοῦλος the stress is rather on the slave’s dependence on his lord, while οἰκέτης emphasises the position of the slave in relation to the world outside and in human society. This shows us again how strong is the passive element in δοῦλος, and in the whole word group to which it belongs.
- - - source:
[1] Rengstorf, K. H. (1964–). δοῦλος, σύνδουλος, δούλη, δουλέυω, δουλεία, δουλόω, καταδουλόω, δουλαγωγέω, ὀφθαλμοδουλία. G. Kittel, G. W. Bromiley, & G. Friedrich (Eds.), Theological dictionary of the New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
From archeology of Herculaneum they looked at a household with a slave and noted that one of the remains was fat, well fed man and had many signs of eating a meat rich diet, and a girl found was less nourished and had signs of malnutrition. They assumed from his healthy bones he was the master and the teen girl was the slave. The well fed man was the cook, a slave and the young girl was vegetarian by choice and the daughter of the master of the household.
Your assumptions of it being propaganda are not factually accurate.
> You see evidence for the sleep quarters and assume they’re locked in, what evidence do you have to claim that? Where is the evidence of slave abuse you feel is true?
People can be locked in by things other than a physical lock one the door. Didn't some slaves in classical times receive tattoos like "I belong to so and so, return me to him for a reward."?
Edit: here's a citation: https://archive.archaeology.org/9903/abstracts/tattoo.html
> A legal inscription from Ephesus indicates that during the early Roman Empire all slaves exported to Asia were tattooed with the words "tax paid." "Stop me, I'm a runaway" was another standard motto etched on the brows of Roman slaves. New research indicates that Roman authorities punished early Christians with forehead tattoos that condemned them to the mines. In A.D. 330, the first Christian emperor, Constantine, banned the practice of tattooing the faces of convicts, gladiators, and soldiers. Because the human face reflected "the image of divine beauty," he said, "it should not be defiled."
No it's not.
> You’re by that logic locked on the internet, the supermarket and tattood by your credit score.
You in fact are, but those things aren't as severe as a tattoo on your face declaring your widely-recognized status as someone's property.
The point is that social status and the conspiracy of the rest of society to enforce that can be just as confining if not more so than a literal lock. A prisoner that escapes from prison isn't free, so long as he's within reach of the society that put him there, and a prisoner who understands that may not bother to escape at all.
> You in fact are, but those things aren't as severe as a tattoo on your face declaring your widely-recognized status as someone's property.
How often did this happen and what evidence is there to support it’s widespread usage?
I suggest you do some research and find out to your satisfaction. For a comment thread, I've already provided a reasonable amount.
And far, far more slaves worked the fields or lived short nasty lives in mines, for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mines_of_Laurion (near Athens):
> Shafts were driven down into the ground and galleries opened where slaves, chained, naked, and branded, worked the seams illuminated only by guttering oil lamps. An unrecorded number were children. It was a miserable, dangerous, and brief life.
> ...The Romans provided cheap slave labor and new technologies gave the Greeks new means of extracting silver in more efficient ways.
I don’t cite Thomas Jefferson and his treatment of his slaves as the normative, in Roman times it was built into the system for slaves to buy their freedom and also have upwards mobility. That is not institutionalized for slavery in the US.
> One source of the story of Plato being sold into slavery is Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius. An English translation is available online [1] on Project Perseus. You can find the full story in Book 3 that discusses the life of Plato.
[0] https://history.stackexchange.com/a/37499
[1] http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...
If Plato had actually been a slave, his lifelong commitment to anti-democratic political organization would've been a little different, though maybe not, considering even this experience didn't change his philosophy, to the point that's likely not worth mentioning as a significant experience, unlike Epictectus who was born into slavery.
It completely ignores very real and deadly politics of that city prior and reasons why Socrates was hated.