An Outline History of the World - Essay Example

An Outline History of the World The ancient Roman civilization was based on an intricate web of social relations. According to Roman scholars, Rome is believed to have been found in 753 BC, on April 21, which is the day of the festivities to honor Pales, the ancient goddess of shepherds. Though this assumption can be considered rather a mythical one which is distanced from the time, historical explorations have also brought in evidence that this must indeed have taken place in the middle of the 8th Century BC. The original settlements on the Palatine hill consisted of specific communities or pagi. It is possible that these pagi consisted of specific clans which later migrated and got divided into large families which were headed by the father, the pater familias. Each of these in turn had acquired possession of slaves of both genders, called famuli, in the beginning from the native land and later from other regions. The slaves, like women and children, were excluded from the participatory realm of governance in the polis. Individual rights were restricted to the adult male community, in a similar manner to the Greek system, on which the early Roman civilization has borrowed a lot. However, as Boris Piotrovsky points out, there is a different version to the legend of the founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus, as “they were the sons of a slave woman and the hearth deity”. 1 Hence the history of ancient Rome, the rise of its Empire, glorious battles and its eventual fall is replete with references to slaves, predominantly from the perspective of the dominant community but interspersed with events that were the first instances of slave revolts which led to legendary epochs. Tacitus’ Annals presents a case of the city prefect Padanius Secundus’s murder by his slaves. The general sentiment regarding the case was to execute all the slaves who were employed in his house. There was a riot in which some members of the senate were concerned about the cruelty involved in such a decision, taking into account the fact that the slaves included many women and children who were ostensibly innocent. However, the strong arguments made by Gaius Cassius in support of the decision to execute all the slaves won over this concern by some senators to “eliminate excessive cruelty”2. According to him, “if we must die, we will not be unavenged nor will the guilty survive”. He talks from the authoritative stance of a slave master with the necessity to exercise constant power on the slaves: “You cannot control these dregs of society except through fear”. These words reflect the contempt for slaves and the view that they are expendable, meek creatures who need to be controlled continually so as to stop them from getting rebellious. Varro, On Agriculture observes that the instruments by which the soil is cultivated was divided into three categories: “1. articulate instruments, i.e. slaves; 2. inarticulate instruments, i.e. oxen; and 3. mute instruments, i.e. carts…”2 This reveals how the status of the slaves was reduced to a mere instrument in the Roman culture. However, the necessity to show some generosity, similar to what is shown to animals, with regard to food and clothing is also emphasized, in the hope that when they are punished or given a difficult task, “their loyalty and good will toward their master is restored by the consolation of these former generosities”. The cruel treatment of slaves used for risky tasks like mining often causes their lives. In general, their health conditions in danger due to the excessive hard labour. Diodorus Siculus points out how “they are given no rest or break from their toil. But rather are forced by whiplashes of their overseers to endure the most dreadful of hardships”.3 Slaves in such abject conditions of existence have no scope to rebel or to escape from their work schedule, and they would have more hope in death than in life. The slaves who manage to run away may not survive long, as historical records show that the people who get them caught and returned are rewarded generously. This would mean an extended life of torment for slaves in worse situations. M.I. Finley observes that the cruelest aspect of classical slavery was that the children of slaves were made slaves by their birth, and were quickly subjected to hard labor from a very tender age. For this, the children were separated from their families and introduced to various spheres where they were forced to contribute their physical labor. The existence of Roman families was mostly dependent on the use of every single person from the slave community for domestic work and labor in the fields. Finley observes that “the exposure of children, legal in the classical period, was an effective means because enslavement severed ties to the family and permitted them to be put on the market and bought by those who wanted and could pay for the labor”. 4 Referring to mint workers in the 5th Century, A.H.M. Jones records that there were cases of slaves co-habiting with freemen. He states that “the workers in the imperial mints had always been imperial slaves, but had become a hereditary group, since their children, if they cohabited with the slave women of the group, were born slaves of the emperor.” 5 However, in cases where slave men cohabited with free women, their children in then ordinary Roman rule were supposed to be free. It was possible for a slave to earn some money with their hard labor, and to pay the ransom to buy oneself from the master. But the work conditions and the reward given to their work were minimal so that this became a rare incident. Even when someone managed to earn enough money to buy his freedom, the masters quite often refused to free them. In the case where the Tacitus describes the murder of the city prefect, the slave was allegedly denied his right to free himself by paying his own price. Tacitus also points out the possibility of the masters using the slaves for sexual purposes as well. Though the family system in Rome was based on heterosexual relationships, homosexuality was an accepted element of life. Gaius Petronius’s Satyricon6 depicts the slave system and hedonistic life of the Roman gentry in close details. H.A. Davies observes that there were a very large number of slaves in Rome. “They were twice as numerous as free men in Italy, and probably the proportion was still higher throughout the whole empire”. But he also observes that there existed in some Roman households a system where the slaves were not treated cruelly. “Well-educated slaves might even be on terms of friendship with their masters”. 7 The extension of slavery to the eighteenth century and the outcome of different versions of slave existence prove how some slaves were able to benefit from their co-existence with compassionate masters who gave them an exposure to the world, and its knowledge systems. Olaudah Equiano’s autobiographical slave narrative The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, The African8 is a monumental work that presents the ambivalent nature of master-slave relationships. However, the fact that a slave-rebellion took place in Rome in the early stages itself shows that the general treatment of slaves was cruel, especially with regard to the work in fields and mines. The Agrarian system of Rome did not allow or promote industry or commerce. The Senators were in fact forbidden from commerce. This led a continued system of slavery and labor in the fields. R.W. Moore observes that gladiators, who were also slaves in that they were owned by people and forced to perform superhuman tasks, led a “bitter and brutal life”. However, he points out by referring to Tacitus and Seneca that there some distaste for the cruel entertainments involving gladiator games in Rome: “Though enthusiastically applauded and indeed demanded by the populace, such entertainments were not to the taste of all Romans.” 9 The most remarkable episode in Roman history is the slave revolt headed by the valorous gladiator Spartacus. He was originally in the Roman army but became a gladiator as he was captured in war and sold. According to Appian, he united the fellow gladiators and “persuaded about seventy of them to gamble for their freedom rather than be put on show at a public spectacle”.10 This group was joined by numerous runaway slaves and it became a slave revolt on the eyes of the Roman rulers, and they thought that this could be overturned by military action. However, the valorous moves of the group rose to the level of a freedom struggle and caused trouble on major levels for the rulers and the Roman social system. This revolt gained a historical significance, as Piotrovsky observes: “The Spartacus uprising….showed quite clearly that slaves had become a numerous class hostile to slave-owners, and that a strong state was needed to suppress it”. 11 The necessity to suppress it was related to the socio-political and economic stability of the Roman Empire, as it was intricately linked to the muscle power and subservient hard labor of the slaves. The fundamentally agrarian social system of Rome was in many ways upset by the slave-revolt, though the slave-owners succeeded in suppressing it. Poor peasants and others belonging to the lower social strata were made aware of the unequal social system and started to fight for their rights. The slave system in ancient Rome can be seen as an interesting instance of human coexistence where the inevitable traces of power relations pervade the general standards of life. It is an early instance of the ongoing struggle for equal rights and opportunities in world where the powerful and dominant sects exercise their agency to subjugate people who are economically and socially weak. With the contemporary ideological stance of wielding the tools within the system to contest it, various oppressed human communities have gained agency and started to gain their freedom in various ways. The Roman Empire and its slaves provide various instances of power struggles and conflicts. It is not fair to generalize the slave system of ancient Rome as something that exposes the quality human life there. It was a natural outcome of many factors, mainly linked to the socio-political, economic and geographic elements. References Appian. Roman Civil Wars. 1, 14 p.220. Davies, H.A. An Outline History of the World. London: Oxford University Press, 1985. p. 195-6 Equiano, Olaudah. The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. New York: Dover publications, 1999. Finley, M.I. ed. Classical Slavery. London: Frank Cass &Co.Ltd., 1987. p.69. Gaius, Petronius. The Satyricon. Translated by P.G Walsh. New York: Oxford, 1999. Jones, A.H.M. The History of Rome Through the Fifth Century: Volume II: The Empire. London: Macmillan, 1970. p. 31. Moore, R.W. The Roman Commonwealth. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1945. p. 165, 167. Piotrovsky, Boris. Ancient Civilizations of East and West. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1988. p.269 Siculus, Diodorus.The History of the World. 5.38.1 Varro, On Agriculture 1.17.1, 3-5,7 Read More