You will sometimes hear it stated that no one in the ancient world
found any moral problem with slavery. This is very far from
being the truth. Not only the Christian Circumcelliones, but pagans
writers, did perceive moral dilemmas associated with slavery:
"But when you have asked for warm water and the slave has not heard, or if he did hear has brought only tepid water, or he is not even found to be in the house, then not to be vexed or to burst with passion, is not this acceptable to the gods? How then shall a man endure such persons as this slave? Slave yourself, will you not bear with your own brother, who has Zeus for his progenitor, and is like a son from the same seeds and of the same descent from above? But if you have been put in any such higher place, will you immediately make yourself a tyrant? Will you not remember who you are, and whom you rule? that they are kinsmen, that they are brethren by nature, that they are the offspring of Zeus? But I have purchased them, and they have not purchased me. Do you see in what direction you are looking, that it is toward the earth, toward the pit, that it is toward these wretched laws of dead men? but toward the laws of the gods you are not looking."
(Epictetus, Discourses, Book I, Chapter 13).
The Stoics were not abolitionists; they were not looking for
political reform of the slavery system, rather, they sought to solve
the problem, of how can our minds remain free while our bodies are
under the control of others. A recondite moral problem perhaps, but
not one which proceeds from the premise that slavery is entirely
unproblematical morally. Epictetus himself had been a slave. He is not
the Frederick Douglass of his people, but neither is he any great
booster of the slavery system. At the close of every year, the Roman
people celebrated the Saturnalia, in honor of King Saturn, a legendary
ruler in Italy with some imagined connection to the planet of the same
name. The observance, which unfortunately generally degenerated into a
drunken riot, looked back to the Golden Age believed to have existed,
before there was war, before there was slavery, when people lived on
acorns. "They established a holiday on which masters and slaves should eat together,— not as the only day for this custom, but as obligatory on that day in any case."
(Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Letter 47). Masters waited upon
their slaves. This, again, was not a practical program for abolition,
but neither was it an unvarnished endorsement of the existing system.
Everyone knew, and was reminded by the recurring Saturnalia, that life
could be different.
When slave liberations did occur, as under Moses or Solon the
Athenian, the liberators did not liberate all slaves for all time nor
intend to do so. Slaves were freed, but there was no 13th amendment
to follow in a mopping up operation. Solon intended to free those Greek
citizens who had fallen into slavery owing to debt, not foreigners. A stele is preserved recording
Nero Caesar as "the liberator" of Greece, but whoever he liberated, this blow struck for freedom was never in any danger of toppling
the slavery system. At least a part of this liberation was a reduction in
taxes: "All Hellenes living in Achaea and what until now has been
known as the Peloponnesus, receive your liberty and freedom from
taxation, a freedom which you never had even in your most glorious
days, for you were subject either to foreigners or to one another. .
.Other princes have given cities their freedom; Nero alone has set
free an entire province." (Inscription at Karditsa,
Greece, translation from Greek Reporter, 'The Statue of Emperor Nero
in the Isthmus of Corinth,' Philip Chrysopoulos, January 18, 2024).
Whether this edict freed any actual individuals held in a state of
bondage, or is just a high falutin way of saying he reduced taxes, is
subject to debate. Greece did not willingly surrender its autonomy to go
under Roman dominion; when Roman general Lucius Mummius subjugated the
Greeks, his pacification of the province involved large scale massacre
of the men and enslavement of surviving women and children. Were any
of the descendants of these individuals still held in a state of
bondage at the time Nero called his assembly? If so, he apparently
freed them, and should join the ranks of Solon, Moses, and Abraham
Lincoln as a liberator.
Even Indian Emperor Ashoka did not abolish slavery,
though he did ban the slave trade, as monuments attest. This reform seems to have fallen by
the wayside, even in the Buddhist world, although Pliny the Roman
encyclopedist says of Sri Lanka (Taprobane), "In this island no slavery exists;
they do not prolong their sleep to day-break, nor indeed during any
part of the day; their buildings are only a moderate height from the
ground; the price of corn is always the same; they have no courts of
law and no litigation." (Pliny, Natural History,
Book VI, Chapter 24). So these blanket statements that no one prior
to the modern world had any problem with slavery are doubly unfair,
both to the Christian church and also to the pagans. Why is this the
best people can do?
Readers interested in ancient pagan thought on slavery might find
interest in reading, in place of the contemptuous Aristotle, the
compassionate Stoic philosopher Seneca. While this is far from
abolitionism, there being no impetus to outlaw slavery, neither is it
quite as bad as is often assumed:
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