I love these posts, since it’s controversial, the comments were full of interesting discussions, so much better than regular doom scrolling.
Historical revisionists like to find exceptions and present them as if they were the norm. There was a particular subset of slaves who served wealthy families as teachers, cooks, nannies, etc. that enjoyed a decent standard of living and were often considered a part of the family. This kind of slave contract was closer to being a sort of patronage and people with high social status but little wealth often sold themselves to wealthy families they had social connections to. The philosopher Diogenes did this and it shaped the way he viewed Roman slavery (he remarked that slaves should not try to free themselves because it’s worse to be poor; easy for him to say in his position as a well-liked and respected teacher serving a wealthy family). This kind of arrangement made up an incredibly small minority of Roman slaves.
This kind of slave contract was closer to being a sort of patronage and people with high social status but little wealth often sold themselves to wealthy families they had social connections to. The philosopher Diogenes did this and it shaped the way he viewed Roman slavery
That would be remarkable considering that Diogenes of Sinope was enslaved after being captured by pirates and sold to fellow Greeks.
You probably know more about it than me, I’m just repeating it how I heard it. My understanding is that Diogenes sold himself to a wealthy family who admired him for his philosophy and wanted him to teach their kids. This was before he decided to live on the street in a clay pot, and after he fled the previous city he lived in due to being caught committing fraud (counterfeiting coins).
I think you’re confusing the order of events. Diogenes, after he was captured and enslaved by pirates, when he was being sold as a slave, at the slave market, picked out a buyer, and convinced the man to buy him as a teacher, presumably to avoid being sold to a less-survivable fate.
Ah, that makes sense. Even more hypocritical of him then to suggest slaves shouldn’t try to free themselves. He leveraged his privilege to obtain a favorable outcome for himself and then allowed that experience to paint the way he viewed the institution of slavery as a whole.
I also don’t remember him advising slaves not to free themselves.
So I looked back at where I got this from - an episode of Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff about Diogenes - and it seems this is more of an interpretation of Diogenes’ teachings by Margaret (the host) rather than something he said directly. Here’s the relevant portion:
Speaker 2 (27:57): Because he also wrote books, so he clearly owned more than and just these things. You know, at various points, maybe he’s like borrowing a pen to write a book. I don’t know whatever, And basically he’s like, hey, sell me to that guy, and people are like, oh, it’s because he believes so much in this philosophy. I think Diogenes is being canny and knew it would go better with that guy, probably because he knows he’s educated, like
(28:20): he himself is educated, and he’s like, oh, I can get myself into like a teaching job instead of a fucking mining job, you know, right. He works for Zeniades for a few years, running the man’s household and tutoring his kids, who apparently all loved him, and then he was freed. Letting people buy their own freedom was a
(28:41): way to recoup capital costs. You steal a few years of someone’s life and then you let them pay you back. Your upfront cost. And also if you promise the slave you’re going to free them, they’re much nicer to you.
Speaker 1 (28:53): Yeah, and you are able to extract their labor.
Speaker 2 (28:55): Yeah, totally. And so it’s technically hypocritical of him to want to become free again and to like buy himself this freedom. And I do not blame him for this hypocrisy at all. This is a completely natural thing. He taught that if you desire to better your station in society, like a slave who wants to be free, as the example uses, it’ll never be enough. You’ll get free, and
(29:15): then you’ll want to be a slave owner, obviously, naturally, that just happens to everyone, and then you’d want to be a landowner, and then a citizen, and then an officer, and then a king and then godhood. Where does it stop?
Speaker 1 (29:28): I know, it’s just too much slop, very slope.
Speaker 2 (29:31): But like whatever is a philosopher, he’s going to make random as philosophical points, and he sharees oak the freedom that was offered him, and he didn’t go and buy someone, so good on him.
The transcript is kinda terrible so maybe just skip to this part and listen, but that’s where I got it from. There are sources linked in the first episode description but I couldn’t find the specific quote about not improving one’s station in life after a quick search, so ¯\(ツ)/¯.
In general, Diogenes did advocate against ambition, but that advocacy was largely oriented towards the idea that man is happiest in a ‘natural state’.
In other words, Diogenes worked towards freeing himself from slavery, because slavery was not a natural state. Once free, he made no efforts to accumulate wealth or power, because accumulation of such things was unnatural. He wanted to live as close to his ‘natural’ state as possible - hence the anecdote of him throwing away his water bowl when he realized he could drink with his hands alone.
Reading the transcript it seems very, uh, off-the-cuff rather than a serious examination of Diogenes.
I’ll see if I can find a source for that and get back to you. I could be misremembering.
No worries if you can’t. It’s just that Diogenes is, in general, very much on the side of “Fuck all human institutions, and fuck your hierarchies in particular” in most of the reliable accounts of his life and philosophy. “There is nowhere to spit in a rich man’s house except his face”, and all that. Or “If my slave can live without me, why can I not live without my slave?” when questioned, earlier in life, even before he became a homeless philosopher, why he didn’t make any effort to catch the slave who ran away from him.
Check your privilege, Diogenes!
Uncle Diogenes ass motherfucker
At least Justinian was on the right track when he wrote that slavery is wrong when he rewrote the laws on slavery.
- Freedom, from which men are said to be free, is the natural power of doing what we each please, unless prevented by force or by law.
- Slavery is an institution of the law of nations, by which one man is made the property of another, contrary to natural right.
So close yet so far away haha
“this is wrong, but also really useful so we’re going to do it and pretend to feel bad”
That’s why I hate this idea that you can’t judge things by “modern” standards. People always knew it was wring but decided to do it anyway.
I really don’t think you understand pre-modern societies or pre-modern ethics.
I shouldn’t have used the word modern here, but I’m inclined to accept that there are some universal principles that rationally make sense, like not enslaving other people against their will or abolishing hierarchies.
This makes even more sense, if you assume that sympathy is a basic human function. To break it down to a personal level, it makes even less sense to keep slaves, for example, if you are able to feel with them.
But of course, everyone who acts in history has their reasons to rationally explain and justify their current set of morals, I’m not disputing that.
I shouldn’t have used the word modern here, but I’m inclined to accept that there are some universal principles that rationally make sense, like not enslaving other people against their will or abolishing hierarchies.
The exact opposite of your proposed principles can just as easily be proposed to ‘rationally make sense’, though.
It’s not even that I disagree with those principles. I agree. It’s just that they’re very much a product of our modern society and our upbringing in it.
This makes even more sense, if you assume that sympathy is a basic human function. To break it down to a personal level, it makes even less sense to keep slaves, for example, if you are able to feel with them.
Let me lay out a simplified, non-Roman scenario for you.
Your sedentary tribe has been feuding with another sedentary tribe for a very long time. Hatreds run deep, all that jazz, generations-long. They don’t speak your language, they don’t follow your gods or ways, they don’t share your moral values. But by a stroke of pure luck, you are in charge when the rival tribe is defeated, totally. There is disagreement within your tribe over what to do, so you are the one who must make the final decision. Do you:
A. Attempt to integrate them into your tribe without oversight despite the long-lasting enmity on both sides and the knowledge that the murders will begin again almost immediately without any robust cultural, philosophical, or institutional method of integration and reconciliation, and that said conflict will weaken your tribe against others, potentially leading to you and all of your friends and family being murdered by others?
B. Expel them, despite knowing that they have many other enemies in the region and there is nowhere for them to flee to, meaning condemnation to death by starvation or else by other hostile tribes?
C. Let them return to their village as though nothing happened, even though this will not end the conflict and very well may result in the total reversal of your fortunes and the death or enslavement of your own friends and family?
D. Attempt to integrate them into your tribe with significant oversight, even though this establishes a hierarchy by which ‘your’ tribesmen are given power of ‘them’?
If you read historical accounts of slavery before the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the common notion of slaves as conceptual enemies or foreigners, even when born into the condition, is not a coincidence.
You forgot option E: Exterminate
You are a tribe that has recently begun a labor-intensive agricultural form of existance. A tribe the next valley over sees your farms and raids your village. They kill your warriors, rape your women, and streal your food.
The next time they come back, you are ready, and you kill a bunch of them. Most flee, but a few are too wounded to run away.
What do you do with these people?
- Let them hobble away/escourt them back to their tribe, where they will presumably regain their health and then raid your village again.
- Kill them and be done with it.
- Restrain them so they can’t raid you anymore but also so you don’t have to kill them, as they are begging for their lives.
If you choose 3, then what? You have some kind of cage or shackles for them, and they do nothing all day while they are brought food and water? No one in the village will stand for that while they are going out and hunting, foraging, and farming. So what do you do with your prisoner? You make them work - probably doing the shittiest jobs - in order to earn their keep instead of getting their head smashed with a rock.
Hence, slavery. Then, do it for several thousand years, and it is part of your culture.
PJ rocking up on a wild history take? You know it is gonna be spicy.
Some days a man is just tired of people pretending that specific moral codes are an innate attribute of human beings instead of a complex construct and product of our societies.
… most days a man is just tired, period.
I mean, I think future generations will judge us harshly.
Can’t blame them. When billionaires exist, while hundreds of millions don’t have enough to eat, there’s plenty to judge.
Romans, and Roman law, didn’t regard ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’ as moral categories.
That’s not rewriting anything. That’s a long-standing principle of Roman law.
I believe you but do you have a link so I can use that quote next time?
https://droitromain.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/Anglica/D1_Scott.htm
- Ulpianus, Institutes, Book I.
Manumissions also, are part of the Law of Nations, for manumission is dismissal by the hand, that is to say the bestowal of freedom; for as long as anyone is in servitude he is subject to the hand and to authority, but, once manumitted, he is liberated from that authority. This takes its origin from the Law of Nations; since, according to natural law all persons were born free, and manumission was not known, as slavery itself was unknown; but after slavery was admitted by the Law of Nations, the benefit of manumission followed, and while men were designated by one natural name there arose three different kinds under the Law of Nations, that is to say freemen, and, in distinction to them, slaves, and as a third class, freedmen, or those who had ceased to be slaves.
Ulpian, quoted here, was active around ~215 AD, and like most Roman jurists, was involved in expressing pre-established legal principles of Roman law.
Florentius, who your original quote cites, is a 2nd century AD jurist, for that matter.
I know Gaius, another 2nd century AD jurist, stated the same thing, but I’m trying to dig up the exact quote. I might give up, tbh, I don’t feel like pawing through my actual books to find the citation and search engines are just slop anymore.
There were people who were against slavery, but they were the exact equivalent of today’s vegans
This is such a bizarre take on both ends that I struggle with where to begin.
The lower one is just as wrong. With a large part of population being slaves, prostitution is not a typical slave job.
Doesn’t mean it was all sunshine and roses, but minority ruled states tend to not torture the majority population for their own benefit.
From Wikipedia:
Most prostitutes were female slaves or freedwomen. The balance of voluntary to forced prostitution can only be guessed at. Privately held slaves were considered property under Roman law, so it was legal for an owner to employ them as prostitutes.
In most circumstances, slave prostitutes could be freely and indiscriminately bought, used and sold. Some were slaves of slave pimps.
Sexual services were routinely offered by the slave attendants in Roman baths (thermae) where both male and female patrons were serviced by both male and female attendants
Sometimes, however, the seller of a female slave attached a ne serva prostituatur clause to the ownership papers to prevent her being forcefully prostituted once sold; if the new owner or any owner thereafter used her as a prostitute she would be freed. This may have been an attempt to conserve what honor was possible for the slave herself, or to remove any possibility of dishonour from the vendor, who might otherwise be thought to have played the part of a pimp, and contravened one of the most fundamental of Roman norms.
Under Hadrian, slaves were protected from being sold to pimps or gladiator schools “unless for good reason”. Septimius Severus made protection of slaves from forced prostitution a duty of the urban praetor
Seems like it was common enough that there clauses and later laws about it. ~200 years if you want to say Septimius Severus put an end to it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_ancient_Rome
People did regularly torture their slaves, even if you’re not considering the act of slavery itself torture. Do you have a reason to suggest that they did not?
Square Rectangle, rectangle square.
Not all slaves were abused in that way but most workers in said jobs were slaves or freed people.
I think the point of the meme was that people think Romans were “enlightened” with respect to slavery when in actuality they were not.
Suggesting that the bottom portion of the meme is wrong, that sexual slavery was not common despite contemporaneous accounts, and that the slaves were not tortured seems to prove the point of the meme. I don’t think the meme is suggesting that the majority of slaves were sex slaves, just that the Romans were brutal and depraved with relation to their slaves just like basically all other people were.
I’ve never gotten an impression that the general public has any particular notion of the Romans being “enlightened” with respect to slavery. Most people seem to know only that there were slaves, but have no idea how large the slave population was. People today are eager, almost desperate, to scold somebody for being horrible, but they don’t think beyond that point. To me the more significant thing by far is the sheer volume of slavery, and that Roman society was only able to exist because of it.
Calling it the reality of roman slavery implies this is the expected treatment, as opposed to a reality of roman slavery.
They seem to torture them just because. In pretty much any minority ruled states the majority were/are just generally abused. See South Africa, the US, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, India (castes), etc etc.
They also do a lot of labor. There is more to their existence than the worst of abuses. Looking at slavery and minority rules is abhorrent from a humanitarian perspective, but there is more to daily life than the worst of the worst.
Yet, the worst of the worst happened with enough frequency and banality. That’s really all the meme states. Being a slave has always been slavery no matter who the masters are.
Yet, the worst of the worst happened with enough frequency and banality. That’s really all the meme states.
The meme implies that “the reality” of Roman slavery involved branding and amputation, when neither are reliably attested to.
Yes but at least they were not poor and had better life than that and some could buy their way out of slavery…
Considering that purchasing their way out of slavery was an extremely high priority for most slaves, even when it left them impoverished, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that it was not a better life than being poor.
Maybe they were just bad at prioritizing?
Too much avocado toast.
