andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
> I should look
> up what de St, Croix and Finley say about this. jks
Finley (explicitly invoking stratification as opposed to class theory) claims that the rationale in Rome was racism. I didn't find that persuasive when I read the book many years ago. I can't remember whether de St. Croix even raised the question of rationale. In reference to Athens (from memory here) several historians (Finley, Wood, several Wood cites) note that unlike other slave societies, in Athens there was a sharp distinction between free and slave -- i.e., the democratic revolution had wiped out the _degrees_ of subordination that one finds in other societies in which slavery existed. And several (still from memory, but I think this includes Finley) note that it was this sharp contrast between free & slave that grounded the Athenian "discovery" or "invention" of liberty.
Is it Plato or Aristotle that suggests a "free" man would die rather than be a slave, thus proving that slaves were by nature not "free"?
Carrol