<DIV>My impression is that there was a sort of division between something like house slaves and field slaves. "House" slaves were often not only better educated but sometimes even richer than some masters, could own slaves themselves (right?) and even be paid; and those were the ones where educated Romans would say, There but for the grace of the Gods go I. Then there were the disposible field slaves whose lives were used up in the latifundia, galleys, and mines -- and they were viewed as naturally subordinate. Not necessarily because of anything Aristotle said, of course. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Is that right? </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>jks Chris Doss <lookoverhere1@yahoo.com> wrote:</DIV> <BLOCKQUOTE class=replbq style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #1010ff 2px solid"> --- andie nachgeborenen <ANDIE_NACHGEBORENEN@YAHOO.COM>wrote: As fara s I can tell, one difference wasn't the idea that there were special groups of people, races or whatever, tahtw ere natuiral slaves, but just that siome (many) people, even Romans or Greeks or whatever, who were natural slaves. --- I think it's interesting to look at Seneca's letters in this context. As an advisor to Nero, he was hardly antiestablishment. Insofar as I recollect, in his letters advising people to treat their slaves fairly and with dignity, he often uses the argument that it is only because of a quirk of fate that you are this slave's master and not vice-versa, that history could have turned out such that Egypt, say, conquered Rome, and the Egyptians would have enslaved the Romans. He also has that great anecdote about the master who treated his slave disgracefully, and then, after the slave was freed, became a favorite at court and wealthy, the former master came grovelling for favors. (This shows BTW, I think, how much more flexible and less malevolent ancient slavery, at least in Rome, was in comparison to slavery of Africans in the New World, probably because there was not an ideology of racism in the Roman Empire -- the idea seems to have been that might makes right and that you enslave the people you conquer b/c that's just the way things are, not b/c they are inferior. And may slaves were very well-educated. I don't think the Romans appropriated Aristotle's idea of natural slavery much, just like the hardly used any Aristotle outside of the works and logic and maybe natural philosophy. Epictetus was a freed slave, after all.) __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk </BLOCKQUOTE>__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com