> Ancient Greece was far from an utopia - even "enlighted" Athens used slave labor in nearby silver mines and regularly voted to declare wars on other peoples.

> Ancient Greece was far from an utopia - even "enlighted" Athens used slave labor in nearby silver mines and regularly voted to declare wars on other peoples. Considering there are still wars being fought in the modern world, even if we often choose not to call them such, I don't know that we can look upon that from a moral high ground. As for slavery, some periodization / historical perspective is important here. "Modern/American slavery" is based upon a notion of racial superiority, but that was not always the case. I'm not well-acquainted with Ancient Greece in particular, but consider Ancient Rome[1], where slavery was much closer to a social class. Further, there was a lot of mobility in and out of this class. You could become a failing to pay your debts, or being captured in war. Slaves, although property themselves, could earn money and own property; they sometimes recieved salaries from their masters. Freeing slaves was a common occurrence (not necessarily out of altruism; freed slaves often became clientes[2] of their former master). Freedmen (former slaves) were a very influential political blok). Due to the amount of mobility, it was not uncommon for freedmen to own slaves, or former masters to become slaves; there was a very acute sense of "that could be me", exemplified in the Roman concept of humanitas[3], the concept that we are all human, and certain standards of empathy toward and treatment of one another (it's hard to translate well because there's no 1:1 concept that covers both the definition and connotations, nowadays; maybe the closest modern parallel is "one love"). I do not mean to imply slavery was a good thing (it wasn't) or that slaves were never abused (they were). But it is worth recognizing that the character of slavery has changed over the centuries/millenia. [1]: Please note the Ancient Roman Empire spanned many hundreds of years; the above was not true for the entirety of its existence. [2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronage_in_ancient_Rome https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronage_in_ancient_Rome [3]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanitas https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanitas