> [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 la

> [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.