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> ruling based on strength was considered the natural order. Indeed. Athens vanquished Myteline in the Peloponnesian war and offered just this as justification

> 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).

zozbot234 5y ago
> In the classical world, new peoples could be still created (we call this ethnogenesis today -- we can read about it from classical sources). New peoples/ethnic groups basically sprung up from localized subcultures. But the whole process could easily take many generations. We read about it comfortably in the sources because oral history of that ethnogenesis ended up being recorded in myths, and we can factor out the commonalities. Really though, it was no quicker or easier back then than it would be today. > was a quite different institution than what we think of today I'm not sure I would agree about this. If you asked me about a significant difference, I would have to point to just how normalized it was within the ancient world. Pretty much every group practiced it. That's why the idea of a 'justification' of it from nature was probably not even taken all that seriously, even by those who thought about the issue. Ultimately, the Stoics were the most consistent in wanting to mitigate it, and their main concern was the slave's overall welfare within the arrangement, not necessarily some abstract idea of freedom. Naturally, increased freedom could be a side effect of such changes. (Of course, as is reasonably well known, there was no similar reforming impulse in the U.S. prior to abolition proper.)
- nescioquid 5y ago
  > [the processes of ethnogenisis] could easily take many generations... I grant you. In fact, it is the very subject of the Roman national epic. Oh, what a labor it was to found Rome, and all that. But we know that that peoples were never-the-less founded by virtue of the force of individuals. I don't think there were any rules about about how many saecula must be in favilla solvenda before you had a new nation, a new people. > the idea of a 'justification' of it [slavery] from nature was probably not even taken all that seriously We can say the same about atheism in the ancient world. Certainly by the time of Lucretius (if not much earlier), we can expect a world on the brink of de facto atheism, on the brink perhaps, of the scientific and industrial revolutions, but for the economic regime. First bread, then morality, then later aude sapere. > Ultimately, the Stoics were the most consistent in wanting to mitigate it [slavery] This, I think, is a misunderstanding, and why I mentioned the Bible had no reproach to slavery. Yes, the institution was mother's milk to everyone born of that time, but was much more a part of a client-patron relationship than ideas of racial superiority (which I have gone to pains to suggest are a fundamentally modern conception, stemming more from social contract theorists than pseudo-Darwinists, as I said earlier, beg my pardon -- in fact I think it comes even before that, as one can read in Montaigne's essay on cannibals). As I suggested earlier, our modern ideas about slavery are more informed by legitimization around savage and civilized which are merely sublimations about who can bring more power to bear and were lately made even more subtle with pseudo-Darwinist idea. All this is anachronism to the historical institution of slavery in the ancient world. That is the untimely and the timely at logger-heads. When you speak of the stoics, you embrace both a crippled slave (later freed for his brilliance) and a staggeringly rich noble rhetorician. The fundamental dictum of stoicism (follow nature) suited Rome: accept your place in the nature of things. Epictetus addressed his students as "slave" and taught them to consider what is truly in their power and what isn't. Seneca wrote consolatory letters drawing on his struggles with asthma. The lessons were the same.

zozbot234 5y ago

> In the classical world, new peoples could be still created (we call this ethnogenesis today -- we can read about it from classical sources). New peoples/ethnic groups basically sprung up from localized subcultures. But the whole process could easily take many generations. We read about it comfortably in the sources because oral history of that ethnogenesis ended up being recorded in myths, and we can factor out the commonalities. Really though, it was no quicker or easier back then than it would be today. > was a quite different institution than what we think of today I'm not sure I would agree about this. If you asked me about a significant difference, I would have to point to just how normalized it was within the ancient world. Pretty much every group practiced it. That's why the idea of a 'justification' of it from nature was probably not even taken all that seriously, even by those who thought about the issue. Ultimately, the Stoics were the most consistent in wanting to mitigate it, and their main concern was the slave's overall welfare within the arrangement, not necessarily some abstract idea of freedom. Naturally, increased freedom could be a side effect of such changes. (Of course, as is reasonably well known, there was no similar reforming impulse in the U.S. prior to abolition proper.)

nescioquid 5y ago
> [the processes of ethnogenisis] could easily take many generations... I grant you. In fact, it is the very subject of the Roman national epic. Oh, what a labor it was to found Rome, and all that. But we know that that peoples were never-the-less founded by virtue of the force of individuals. I don't think there were any rules about about how many saecula must be in favilla solvenda before you had a new nation, a new people. > the idea of a 'justification' of it [slavery] from nature was probably not even taken all that seriously We can say the same about atheism in the ancient world. Certainly by the time of Lucretius (if not much earlier), we can expect a world on the brink of de facto atheism, on the brink perhaps, of the scientific and industrial revolutions, but for the economic regime. First bread, then morality, then later aude sapere. > Ultimately, the Stoics were the most consistent in wanting to mitigate it [slavery] This, I think, is a misunderstanding, and why I mentioned the Bible had no reproach to slavery. Yes, the institution was mother's milk to everyone born of that time, but was much more a part of a client-patron relationship than ideas of racial superiority (which I have gone to pains to suggest are a fundamentally modern conception, stemming more from social contract theorists than pseudo-Darwinists, as I said earlier, beg my pardon -- in fact I think it comes even before that, as one can read in Montaigne's essay on cannibals). As I suggested earlier, our modern ideas about slavery are more informed by legitimization around savage and civilized which are merely sublimations about who can bring more power to bear and were lately made even more subtle with pseudo-Darwinist idea. All this is anachronism to the historical institution of slavery in the ancient world. That is the untimely and the timely at logger-heads. When you speak of the stoics, you embrace both a crippled slave (later freed for his brilliance) and a staggeringly rich noble rhetorician. The fundamental dictum of stoicism (follow nature) suited Rome: accept your place in the nature of things. Epictetus addressed his students as "slave" and taught them to consider what is truly in their power and what isn't. Seneca wrote consolatory letters drawing on his struggles with asthma. The lessons were the same.