More humane slavery

[caesar novus]

Rome is increasingly demonized for slavery, ignoring the softer edge it often had relative to peer societies. In fact, a few tweaks of their law might have made it much nicer, if i fairly interpret the depiction by the book "as the romans did".

 

That book enumerates all the ways you may become a slave, and i note almost all of them could be considered as a rescue from possible death. Children left to starve, political or military rebels given a reprieve... only very briefly was this applied to debtors as opposed to indentured servitude. Ok, some folks were illegally put in chains, but that wasn't condoned. The regretable exception are those born into slavery... better if the romans made them indentured servants beside their parents until adulthood.

 

There is the positive issue of the many ways of exiting slavery, both given and earned. The children of these freedman gained treasured citizenship, and one source claims most of the citizens of rome descended from these freedman and upset the others due to sometimes not sharing values, etc. Here i think the romans were maybe too generous and should have required some earned way to citizenship.

 

As for the treatment of slaves, some urban ones had it extremely easy and could either enjoy life or make themselves rich (then free). But what about most of them, like the farming slaves? I think they could have improved things by not allowing a slave to be a foreman. This is a well known way to create a sadist, as we know from the example of concentration camps. The oppressed person gets an outlet for revenge, and does not value the owners need for wellbeing of human property.

 

The worst case treatment seems to be in mining. I can only guess the owners squandered the health and lifespans of those slaves because it was so profitable relative to the price of replacement slaves. Even in southern us the most dangerous construction projects were not done by slaves, but new irish immigrants eager for any wages. This is because the us had very early banned imports of slaves which made their replacement cost sky high... so rome might have at least introduced a slave sales tax.

 

Mine work isnt inherantly hard... you could have many short shifts thru the day for instance, but this would skyrocket the costs. The us south was equally uniqely cursed after the invention of the cotton gin. Beforehand slavery seemed to be slowly and thankfully dying out, but the cotton gin made it lucrative in rich muddy soils that were hard to otherwise make productive because plow animals sunk in them. Little natchez mississippi had more millionaires than manhattan, but maybe if they were charged a big sales tax for slaves this activity could have dried up without war.

Edited November 12, 2012 by caesar novus

[Pompieus]

Since "Spartacus" and "Ben-Hur" were both on TV here recently the "demonization" is rife! Good movies both - but bad history.

 

Nearly all depictions of ancient slavery in the movies are inevitably anachronistic. Until recently so were depictions of "modern" slavery (viz "Gone With the Wind"). The moral taint to slavery is a product of the ninteenth century.

[caesar novus]

From 'as the romans did' i note even the romans could recognize slave health was an asset to protect. Varo, on agriculture, says 'it is more profitable to work unhealthy areas with hired workers than with slaves'... and presumably better than jeopardizing indentured servants promise of work, which he was also discussing.

 

Also that book quotes 'the digest of laws' as saying in spite of laws declaring slaves as nonentities, 'according to the law of nature, all men are equal'. I note that the US constitution tried to head off a socialist interpretation of this by saying 'all men are created equal'.

 

I guess it all depends on the point of time... the early republic didn't even have slaves iirc. Later in the empire, there seemed to arise more humane rules for slave treatment although i dont know if well enforced. Hadrian got positively soft hearted in banning the torture of all slaves before testifying in court... well he at least banned fishing expeditions of torture then testifying of slaves who probably weren't witnesses.

[GhostOfClayton]

From 'as the romans did' i note even the romans could recognize slave health was an asset to protect. Varo, on agriculture, says 'it is more profitable to work unhealthy areas with hired workers than with slaves'.

 

Looking at it unemotionally, this makes huge (but unnerving) sense, and remains interesting to this day. Allow me to explain why I think it's unnerving. If you've invested money into a slave, it would be in your financial interest to invest in his/her health to prolong the return you get on investment. Much as you would regularly service and maintain a car you'd spent thousands on. If you're the owner of a sweatshop in the back streets of some third world city, there is no financial incentive to invest in the health of your work force. If one falls ill, you just get another. If they become so weak, their work falls below accepted quality levels - get another.

[caesar novus]

Ho ho he he... yes, i felt that "unnerving" aspect was the elephant in the room, and had considered defending it in my first example of irish immigrants dying on jobs too dangerous for US slaves (digging malarial canals and such). Before proposing the greater good of that arrangement, allow me to unburdan what unnerved me.

 

The whole issue of romans torturing innocent slaves as a routine procedure before they are called to legally testify irks me, to say the least. Actually the rules do address real issues where the slaves would be motivated to hide important truths, and later laws were issued to apply this less widely. I think we dont know much of how this was implemented, so i propose to dream up an acceptable modern version.

 

Many murders in the US are done in public with witnesses. The witnesses wont say a word when police ask, because their neighborhood is under threat of revenge killings by the thugs. So how about we reinstate torture of witnesses, for the good of all?! Force them to eat only healthy food in moderation, watch only educational tv (ballet?), and listen only to opera. Bam, they will finger the street gangs so comprehensively, the neighborhood becomes quiet except for the crunch of cheese doodles.

 

Well, back to the sweatshops. Maybe rome as well as a few modern places has congealed social mobility, but normally this can be a ladder for motivating folks to better themselves. The irish climbed out of desperation and hostility as famine immigrants to the US, just like 3rd world asian immigrants leapfrog to sucess today (in spite of highly discriminated against by univ. Calif. admission racial quotas, due to predicted good success). Meanwhile the long time residents of rustbelt declining cities, instead of relocating towards jobs like their recent ancestors did, are encouraged to stagnate as a paid off victimology group.

 

I traveled thru crummy third world areas long ago that have uplifted themselves tremendously since, thru willingly tackling bad jobs such as in east asia. Counterexamples, like enduring indian sweatshops actually seem the product of blind compassion rather than tough darwinian love. Their govt puts a smothering restraint on details of the economy like preserving outdated jobs, and little attention on the normal functions of govt. Southern europe is also suffering from superficial generosity rather than tough fairness.

 

Aww, i'm running out of steam before completing the case, but it is natural for free people to better themselves unless there is social or environmental interferance. The slaves were the oppressed ones (with some roman exceptions), but at least had a slight safety net in being worth more when healthy. The bottom rung of free workers at least had a shot of changing their profession or location.

 

I was trying to connect the dots to this amazing psychology book presentation of how blind compassion sometimes leads to unfairness and loss of liberty, but time is up...

http://www.booktv.org/Watch/13277/The+Righteous+Mind+Why+Good+People+Are+Divided+by+Politics+and+Religion.aspx

Edited November 27, 2012 by caesar novus

[caldrail]

Slavery was a matter of expedience and profit as it usually was with the Romans in all things. The treatment of slaves was hugely variable according to circumstance and indeed changed over the period. It is worth noting that officially a slave was no longer human. By becoming property a slave was no longer free to self-determine, and that freedom was an inherent part of Roman culture since they dumped Tarquin Superbus by the wayside. They believed that a man should be responsible for his own fate by his own decisions (and note that Dio frequently refers to men being made slaves of when all that happened was that they were forced to obey someone else - no actual condition of slavery having occurred). Therefore being unable to act at your own volition meant by default that you were no longer human, therefore slaves were not.

 

In the expanding late Republic slaves were common, largely via war. The slave market at Delos boasted they had traded ten thousand slaves in one day (although that level of trade vanished later). With such a surplus, human life was cheap, and we have reports of the wretched state slaves could get into, which was part of the inspiration for the Slave Revolts in Sicily and also the temporary success Spartacus enjoyed in accumulating followers.

 

The attitude of owners to slaves became gradually more humane as the supply dwindled in imperial times. Although slaves by definition had no rights (and never would), laws on slavery increasingly restricted what owners could or couldn't do. Nonetheless slaves were beneath the horizon. The majority were kept in barracks or housed in poor conditions in cellars. On estates it was not unusual for the bulk of the labouring to be kept out of sight of those arriving at a villa. Those who worked in industries were treated without care, as miners and quarrymen had short and hard lives (which was why lanistas often went to such places to find new stock - fighting in the arena was sometimes considered a better bet than being worked to death in unhealthy conditions).

 

It is true that some slaves did well. On occaision people found it advantageous to become slaves, such as those seeking possible fortune in the arena, or those that sought a better living via slavery at the cost of social credibility. Wealthy men in imperial times sometimes kept a boy as a pet, eventually selling or reassigning him when approaching adulthood made it publicly embarrasing. Jealous wives could easily make a slaves life hell, as men were entitled to have sex with their property at will (and women weren't - though this was a risque activity in imperial times as women became independently wealthy and stories of well to do ladies sneaking into the ludus for a liaison with her favourite gladiator were known.

 

For some slaves their fame made them exceptions. Athletes, charioteers, and gladiators attracted the attention of the wealthy classes because they were valuable prize possessions, and whilst they were still a means to an end as far as their owners were concerned.

[DecimusCaesar]

A slave's life was horrible by any standards, but even more so if you were forced to do cheap labour such as working down the mines. Even if you were a slave in a well to do house your life could still be utterly miserable. Roman aristocrats would often take out their anger on their slaves, which was accepted as normal at the time. One famous example is the Emperor Hadrian (one of the good emperors) who in a fit of rage poked out the eye of a nearby slave with a stylus. It just goes to show that even if you were lucky enough to find yourself in the court of one of the more humane emperors, you were still subject to brutal behaviour on a whim. Slavery was a brutal business whether you were worked to death in a gold mine or whether you lived in constant fear and stress on a nobleman's estate.

[caldrail]

Some slaves did well for themselves. A generous owner might allow them to raise a family or run a business on their behalf. Whilst I agree that for many slavery was not a good thing, it was a fact of life in tha ancient world and part of their daily lives. Their view of things wasn't quite coloured by our modern revulsion, but then, even today people can find themselves enslaved in one way or another. It's not just a question of ownership, but also perspective. The same was true back then.