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For anything historical, you really need to objectively put yourself in the context of the people you're looking at. Rome had cruelty laws for how to treat sla

For anything historical, you really need to objectively put yourself in the context of the people you're looking at. Rome had cruelty laws for how to treat slaves. I'm not an expert but perhaps if the slave did their job then floggings, torture, and crucifixion were illegal, but were allowed if they broke the law. People will look back and probably think US execution is terrible and cruel while currently, a large portion thinks its acceptable. Heck, they may think we're cruel for eating meat or running over crickets with our tractors. We just don't know what lense we'll be judged by yet. We should afford the same understanding for past peoples while not condoning it.

cogman10 5y ago
This works to an extent. You have to be careful to make sure you aren't just softening history with a "product of their time" argument. A good example is US slavery. You might mistakenly fall under the understanding that slavery was just a common and well accepted practice. Yet, from the founding of the US and earlier it was HIGHLY controversial. You can't just take the perspective of the slave owner, you must also consider that abolitionists have been around at the same time periods. It's complicated and messy, but, IMO, entirely right to condemn slavery and slave owners as a modern reader. Just as you'd condemn someone running a con or a ponzi scheme in the same era.
- xeromal 5y ago
  It works the further out a historical event goes. US slavery is still very recent compared to Roman slavery. Once 1000 years has passed from the US slavery, historical takes will probably be different from what we have now.
  - cogman10 5y ago
    Fair point. I'm more advising caution due to my background as an exmormon. "Product of their time" is used frequently by mormon apologists to excuse the racist or predatory behaviors of the founders of the religion. I also see it used for excusing the actions of the founding fathers or confederate generals. When I see someone say "we can't judge the romans for their actions" my mind instantly goes to thinking "Well, what are their peers saying?" I think it's fair to judge them based on how their peers judge them. Maybe that's completely missing from the historical record (again, not a roman historian), but something that I think everyone should keep before taking the mental shortcut of "product of their time".
    - zozbot234 5y ago
      > my mind instantly goes to thinking "Well, what are their peers saying?" The classical Greek and Romans were incredibly civilized by the contemporary standards of their vicinity. Basically everyone was keeping slaves back then, but the Romans were pretty unique in not sacrificing infants to Baal or Moloch, and not collecting the severed heads of their enemies as trophies of mindless cruelty. And even the whole slave-holding thing was in the process of being slowly reformed over centuries, thanks to the ascendance of Stoic philosophy with its ideal of equal God-given dignity for all humans - which by the way was ultimately a key influence on Christianity, and an important contributor to its early spread within the Roman elite.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
  How is "product of their time" in any way softening it? If your life is short and brutal, odds are you will have niceness kicked out of you early on. And Roman life could be very brutish. One of the things we inherited from them was the word decimation, which came from a punishment of picking every tenth person to be put to death ( usually used for soldiers or uncooperative city ). It does not soften it. It just explains it.
  - cogman10 5y ago
    > How is "product of their time" in any way softening it? If your life is short and brutal, odds are you will have niceness kicked out of you early on. I don't know enough Roman history to really say if "product of their time" works that way. But I do know enough about US history and figures where "product of their time" is meant solely to excuse horrendous behaviors. That was more my point. You do have to be careful applying today's morality against yesterday's figures. However, you also have to be careful that you aren't using "it was a brutal time" as an excuse for yesterday's atrocities. Was everyone calling for decimation or was this a tactic meant to shock the enemies? Did everyone agree with it or were there critics? We know of the extremes of roman culture, but was that because historians needed to paint them as the extreme?
    - A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
      I had to think about it a little before I posted. Part of me is perfectly willing to superimpose my cultural norms ( how US dealt with 9/11 and integrated it into its history being an example of that ). I am just interested in history of Rome. If a Roman expert could chime in, it would probably be best since it is just a speculation on my end. In other words, I am no expert. That said, while I am willing to believe that propaganda effect alone was probably worth the trouble ( not to mention the unpractical nature of killing your own troops ), it is difficult for me to believe that the concept would have survived this long without..uhh.. reinforcing it. I did find some interesting sources, but I think this conversation[1] covers it well from several angles including ones you suggested. In other words, I think it is possible. [1]https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/26019/how-common-was-decimation-in-the-roman-army/26026 https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/26019/how-common...
- fallingknife 5y ago
  It was both a common and well accepted practice and highly controversial. They are not mutually exclusive, e.g. abortion.
  - cogman10 5y ago
    > It was both a common and well accepted Slavery was not common. There were few slave owners and the populations of slavery states was minimal. Slavery was, by it's nature, very expensive. Only the very wealthy owned slaves. You had to be able to house the slaves and have work for them to be productive (or enough capital that productivity didn't matter). In fact, before the cotton gin, slavery was on it's way out because not enough people could afford it. The gin made it possible to harvest and process mass amounts of cotton without specialized training.
    - fallingknife 5y ago
      Not true that there were only a few slave owners. https://socialequity.duke.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/8.10.20.pdf https://socialequity.duke.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/8.1...
      - cogman10 5y ago
        > So, according to the Census of 1860, 30.8 percent of the free families in the confederacy owned slaves. That means that every third white person in those states had a direct commitment to slavery. This is probably quibbling over numbers, but I'd point out that we are talking about 30% of the white people in states that had slavery. Not 30% of the population at large. The states with slavery were underpopulated. The total population of the US in the 1860 was 31 million and the slave states had a population of 12 million (most of those slaves). 300k out of 31 million is, IMO, a few. Even if they are highly concentrated in a few states. None of this really negates what I was saying. Owning slaves was expensive and only the wealthy could afford them. The fact that 30% of white people in slave states were wealthy enough to own slavery isn't a contradiction.
        5y ago

cogman10 5y ago

This works to an extent. You have to be careful to make sure you aren't just softening history with a "product of their time" argument. A good example is US slavery. You might mistakenly fall under the understanding that slavery was just a common and well accepted practice. Yet, from the founding of the US and earlier it was HIGHLY controversial. You can't just take the perspective of the slave owner, you must also consider that abolitionists have been around at the same time periods. It's complicated and messy, but, IMO, entirely right to condemn slavery and slave owners as a modern reader. Just as you'd condemn someone running a con or a ponzi scheme in the same era.

xeromal 5y ago
It works the further out a historical event goes. US slavery is still very recent compared to Roman slavery. Once 1000 years has passed from the US slavery, historical takes will probably be different from what we have now.
- cogman10 5y ago
  Fair point. I'm more advising caution due to my background as an exmormon. "Product of their time" is used frequently by mormon apologists to excuse the racist or predatory behaviors of the founders of the religion. I also see it used for excusing the actions of the founding fathers or confederate generals. When I see someone say "we can't judge the romans for their actions" my mind instantly goes to thinking "Well, what are their peers saying?" I think it's fair to judge them based on how their peers judge them. Maybe that's completely missing from the historical record (again, not a roman historian), but something that I think everyone should keep before taking the mental shortcut of "product of their time".
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    > my mind instantly goes to thinking "Well, what are their peers saying?" The classical Greek and Romans were incredibly civilized by the contemporary standards of their vicinity. Basically everyone was keeping slaves back then, but the Romans were pretty unique in not sacrificing infants to Baal or Moloch, and not collecting the severed heads of their enemies as trophies of mindless cruelty. And even the whole slave-holding thing was in the process of being slowly reformed over centuries, thanks to the ascendance of Stoic philosophy with its ideal of equal God-given dignity for all humans - which by the way was ultimately a key influence on Christianity, and an important contributor to its early spread within the Roman elite.
A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
How is "product of their time" in any way softening it? If your life is short and brutal, odds are you will have niceness kicked out of you early on. And Roman life could be very brutish. One of the things we inherited from them was the word decimation, which came from a punishment of picking every tenth person to be put to death ( usually used for soldiers or uncooperative city ). It does not soften it. It just explains it.
- cogman10 5y ago
  > How is "product of their time" in any way softening it? If your life is short and brutal, odds are you will have niceness kicked out of you early on. I don't know enough Roman history to really say if "product of their time" works that way. But I do know enough about US history and figures where "product of their time" is meant solely to excuse horrendous behaviors. That was more my point. You do have to be careful applying today's morality against yesterday's figures. However, you also have to be careful that you aren't using "it was a brutal time" as an excuse for yesterday's atrocities. Was everyone calling for decimation or was this a tactic meant to shock the enemies? Did everyone agree with it or were there critics? We know of the extremes of roman culture, but was that because historians needed to paint them as the extreme?
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
    I had to think about it a little before I posted. Part of me is perfectly willing to superimpose my cultural norms ( how US dealt with 9/11 and integrated it into its history being an example of that ). I am just interested in history of Rome. If a Roman expert could chime in, it would probably be best since it is just a speculation on my end. In other words, I am no expert. That said, while I am willing to believe that propaganda effect alone was probably worth the trouble ( not to mention the unpractical nature of killing your own troops ), it is difficult for me to believe that the concept would have survived this long without..uhh.. reinforcing it. I did find some interesting sources, but I think this conversation[1] covers it well from several angles including ones you suggested. In other words, I think it is possible. [1]https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/26019/how-common-was-decimation-in-the-roman-army/26026 https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/26019/how-common...
fallingknife 5y ago
It was both a common and well accepted practice and highly controversial. They are not mutually exclusive, e.g. abortion.
- cogman10 5y ago
  > It was both a common and well accepted Slavery was not common. There were few slave owners and the populations of slavery states was minimal. Slavery was, by it's nature, very expensive. Only the very wealthy owned slaves. You had to be able to house the slaves and have work for them to be productive (or enough capital that productivity didn't matter). In fact, before the cotton gin, slavery was on it's way out because not enough people could afford it. The gin made it possible to harvest and process mass amounts of cotton without specialized training.
  - fallingknife 5y ago
    Not true that there were only a few slave owners. https://socialequity.duke.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/8.10.20.pdf https://socialequity.duke.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/8.1...
    - cogman10 5y ago
      > So, according to the Census of 1860, 30.8 percent of the free families in the confederacy owned slaves. That means that every third white person in those states had a direct commitment to slavery. This is probably quibbling over numbers, but I'd point out that we are talking about 30% of the white people in states that had slavery. Not 30% of the population at large. The states with slavery were underpopulated. The total population of the US in the 1860 was 31 million and the slave states had a population of 12 million (most of those slaves). 300k out of 31 million is, IMO, a few. Even if they are highly concentrated in a few states. None of this really negates what I was saying. Owning slaves was expensive and only the wealthy could afford them. The fact that 30% of white people in slave states were wealthy enough to own slavery isn't a contradiction.
      - 5y ago