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I think your take on the article is interesting to me because it shows how timely your apperceptions are. I take for granted that everyone has encountered the r

I think your take on the article is interesting to me because it shows how timely your apperceptions are. I take for granted that everyone has encountered the riposte that the Bible nowhere gainsays the institution of slavery, and that slavery in the U.S. was legitimized, in part, on repulsive pseudo-Darwinian grounds and further misses the way in which the article is blandly suggesting that the institution of slavery (extant at some time in every culture) has merely become sublimated in our own. Two things are of interest to me about the institution of slavery in republican (or later) Rome: chiefly the lack of racial rationalization for the institution, and that the institution itself probably retarded the industrial and scientific revolutions[1]. In Rome, the most prized slaves were Greeks, for whom the Romans had both admiration and a cultural inferiority complex. As Horace wrote: > Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes intulit agresti Latio. (Captured Greece captured her wild capturers and brought the arts to those agrarians Latins[1a].) I mention this because I think it shows the opposite of U.S. rationalizations for slavery. Further, domestic slaves were called famulus -a; probably something on the order of "the lesser family" (more expendable were those working the fields or -- gods forefend -- the mines). Greeks enslaved Greeks, Latins enslaved Latins, Sumerians enslaved the nearby mountain-dwellers. As a species, we lack talons or fangs. Ours survival strategy depends upon cooperation. Cooperation can be willing, bargained, or forced. I join company with the parent insofar as the choice of frame for this article is too untimely: perhaps better would have been Solzhenitsyn's chapter "The Trusty" from "The Gulag Archipelago". It provides a sort of fourth movement to a symphony of betrayal of serf to serf, peasant to peasant, Kulak to Kulak. Here, the damned betray the damned. But we must be upbeat! Life is getting better![2] Hence "la serva perdrona"! --------------------------------------------------- [1] Hint: a Roman factory was merely a building filled with slaves "manufacturing" (making by hand) some good. See also the works of Vitruvius who describes (among other things) how an odometer should be made to accurately place mile-markers. They had the ingenuity and engineering capability, but not the economic incentives to birth both revolutions. The Romans were (like us) trapped in a local maximum. [1a] a turn of phrase most worthy of his cultural ideal; not unlike (and also wildly dissimilar to) the way in which the only original American culture (pardon to those in the southern continent) is Black. One can't help but find patterns and anti-patterns. [2] also sprach Stalin

s1artibartfast 5y ago
>Rome: chiefly the lack of racial rationalization for the institution Interesting thought indeed. If I were to settle into my historian armchair and speculate, I would say that it had to do with the following: In the Roman and many contemporary ethos, ruling based on strength was considered the natural order. Countries might war over competitive interests and by right of victory, gained the possessions of the conquered. Almost an ancient version of realpolitik. That is to say, human rights were not derived from an enlightenment idea of human quality. Roman's generally didn't need to resort to a racial justification because the power to do so was justification enough. That isn't to say Roman's weren't racist, they were. Interestingly, southern philosophy of slavery as a positive good was actually derived from Greek philosophy, and Aristotle specifically. However, Aristotle's argument that inferior humans benefit from slavery did not use race to define the inferior.
- nescioquid 5y ago
  > ruling based on strength was considered the natural order. Indeed. Athens vanquished Myteline in the Peloponnesian war and offered just this as justification. After Thuycidides, doubtless this was an increasingly bankrupt claim and so had to become more subtle. > ... Roman's weren't racist, they were. Were they? At base the poor modern idea of "race" is probably best rendered scientifically as "phenotype". In the classical world, new peoples could be still created (we call this ethnogenesis today -- we can read about it from classical sources). It was not larded with pseudo-Darwinistic conceits; some peoples spoke differently, appeared differently, had different customs, worshiped different gods (which Romans were keen to either adopt or accept as the same god by a different name, i.e. syncretism). To your point, "might makes right" -- that's all there was too it to them. It is a little more complex though, in that the Romans felt themselves inferior to the Greeks culturally (probably also the Etruscans, who were in turn influenced by Greek colonists), and so had to contrive the idea of the genius of their ethnos being one of administration (probably the genesis of this article's conceit). I'd be much more interested in an article about how to be a better Greek in a Roman world, candidly. > Almost an ancient version of realpolitik. Well, exactly that, though it would have simply been regarded nakedly as Politik. I love the ancient world because they saw some things so much more clearly than we do (without the subtlety, probably because they still had to worry about the corn supply -- erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral). That we care not today for the ancient world serves us poorly, and only delivers us as prey to today's howlers. > human rights were not derived from an enlightenment idea of human quality In point of fact, the Enlightenment draws its origins to early humanists dredging up the wreckage of the ancient world. Timely controversies about whatever-the-fuck Joe Rogan said are drowned in a benighted sea of censorship lust, ignorant of the humanists' salvage and our universal birth-right. Give me your debunking of Voltaire or explain where Poggio went wrong, and I'll give you my earnest attention. If you want to speak of Greek rationalizations for slavery, you may as well conduct a census of the Realpolitik of the region. A student of the hotchpotch of ancient tongues will be confronted with a hotchpotch of causes ranging from contesting neighbors to debt-bondage. Little different in Latium. > However, Aristotle's argument that inferior humans benefit from slavery did not use race to define the inferior. Right, and when you read the ethics and see what friendship is about -- you understand they saw relationships as being about mutual benefit between the superior and inferior. A couple millennia of Christianity haven't removed the question in the back of our minds, "but what's in it for me?" Again, they saw some things so much more clearly and without bullshit than we do today, and yet, yes, Aristotles' ideas about cuttlefish reproduction are sources of great mirth (and stuff like Plato's Timaeus great fodder for a thinking-man's Art Bell episode). Again, at the risk of over-simplifying, slavery in the ancient world (and throughout history) was a quite different institution than what we think of today, thanks to the U.S.'s constitutional pusillanimity (wake me up when the U.K. abolishes the monarchy -- that's apparently harder to do than abolishing slavery; I guess it's easier to become a subject than a citizen under some empires).

s1artibartfast 5y ago

>Rome: chiefly the lack of racial rationalization for the institution Interesting thought indeed. If I were to settle into my historian armchair and speculate, I would say that it had to do with the following: In the Roman and many contemporary ethos, ruling based on strength was considered the natural order. Countries might war over competitive interests and by right of victory, gained the possessions of the conquered. Almost an ancient version of realpolitik. That is to say, human rights were not derived from an enlightenment idea of human quality. Roman's generally didn't need to resort to a racial justification because the power to do so was justification enough. That isn't to say Roman's weren't racist, they were. Interestingly, southern philosophy of slavery as a positive good was actually derived from Greek philosophy, and Aristotle specifically. However, Aristotle's argument that inferior humans benefit from slavery did not use race to define the inferior.

nescioquid 5y ago
> ruling based on strength was considered the natural order. Indeed. Athens vanquished Myteline in the Peloponnesian war and offered just this as justification. After Thuycidides, doubtless this was an increasingly bankrupt claim and so had to become more subtle. > ... Roman's weren't racist, they were. Were they? At base the poor modern idea of "race" is probably best rendered scientifically as "phenotype". In the classical world, new peoples could be still created (we call this ethnogenesis today -- we can read about it from classical sources). It was not larded with pseudo-Darwinistic conceits; some peoples spoke differently, appeared differently, had different customs, worshiped different gods (which Romans were keen to either adopt or accept as the same god by a different name, i.e. syncretism). To your point, "might makes right" -- that's all there was too it to them. It is a little more complex though, in that the Romans felt themselves inferior to the Greeks culturally (probably also the Etruscans, who were in turn influenced by Greek colonists), and so had to contrive the idea of the genius of their ethnos being one of administration (probably the genesis of this article's conceit). I'd be much more interested in an article about how to be a better Greek in a Roman world, candidly. > Almost an ancient version of realpolitik. Well, exactly that, though it would have simply been regarded nakedly as Politik. I love the ancient world because they saw some things so much more clearly than we do (without the subtlety, probably because they still had to worry about the corn supply -- erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral). That we care not today for the ancient world serves us poorly, and only delivers us as prey to today's howlers. > human rights were not derived from an enlightenment idea of human quality In point of fact, the Enlightenment draws its origins to early humanists dredging up the wreckage of the ancient world. Timely controversies about whatever-the-fuck Joe Rogan said are drowned in a benighted sea of censorship lust, ignorant of the humanists' salvage and our universal birth-right. Give me your debunking of Voltaire or explain where Poggio went wrong, and I'll give you my earnest attention. If you want to speak of Greek rationalizations for slavery, you may as well conduct a census of the Realpolitik of the region. A student of the hotchpotch of ancient tongues will be confronted with a hotchpotch of causes ranging from contesting neighbors to debt-bondage. Little different in Latium. > However, Aristotle's argument that inferior humans benefit from slavery did not use race to define the inferior. Right, and when you read the ethics and see what friendship is about -- you understand they saw relationships as being about mutual benefit between the superior and inferior. A couple millennia of Christianity haven't removed the question in the back of our minds, "but what's in it for me?" Again, they saw some things so much more clearly and without bullshit than we do today, and yet, yes, Aristotles' ideas about cuttlefish reproduction are sources of great mirth (and stuff like Plato's Timaeus great fodder for a thinking-man's Art Bell episode). Again, at the risk of over-simplifying, slavery in the ancient world (and throughout history) was a quite different institution than what we think of today, thanks to the U.S.'s constitutional pusillanimity (wake me up when the U.K. abolishes the monarchy -- that's apparently harder to do than abolishing slavery; I guess it's easier to become a subject than a citizen under some empires).