On Wed, 13 Feb 2002, Shriner-Midland Company wrote: > who were themselves former slaves. More recent research seems to suggest > that in many ways ancient "slavery" was little different from modern > "employment" on a self-contained work site with employer-provided room and > board, with the quality of the employer, working conditions, and the > sustenance varying widely. The same is likely to have been true in both > the North and South both prior to and after the US Civil War. Nothing is > ever quite as clear cut and simple as some people try to make it seem. Just a brief note: in ancient Greece and Rome, you became a slave largely because your side lost the war and you got captured and sold. Or, of course, if you were born to slave parents. It had nothing to do with innate inferiority. It was not all of that unusual to come across slaves with much better education than their masters, slaves who tutored their masters' sons. Certainly in the Roman empire, freedmen could end up being quite powerful. (Consider Pallas and Narcissus during the reign of Claudius, for example.) However, what was true for some was not true for the majority, and believe me the life of slaves could be miserable. Moreover, and I think more importantly, I do not recall ever coming across any ancient arguments that slaves were slaves because it was their natural condition to be subservient, because they were less than human, because their brains were simpler or more primitive, because they were happier being slaves and taken care of. I gather one does come across all of these arguments vis a vis slaves in the U.S. That makes one heck of a difference, ultimately, when the very colour of your skin marks you as being inferior and either a slave or an ex-slave. Add to that the poor quality of the education you were likely to have had (assuming you had been allowed an education in the first place), and you have an entirely different situation. The comparison between the two systems of slavery is not as simple and as uncomplicated as your analysis appears to imply. The cultures and circumstances are too vastly different. > REAL LIFE IS USUALLY COMPLEX AND COMPLICATED! PLEASE DON'T > OVER-SIMPLIFY!!! Absolutely. With that part of your argument, I can agree. There's always more to things than meets the eye -- alas, more than can often be reliably recovered from the surviving records. > :-) Bob Shriner Mario Rups [log in to unmask] To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html