Well slaves certainly did write a lot of stuff in Rome, like that Epictetus guy. These weren't societies that kept their slaves dumb and ignorant. Slavery was also equal opportunity, since any slave ownner in Greece and Rome knew that if he/she got captured by foreigners, or even some other city state in the case of Greece, he/she was probably going to wind up as a slave in Persia or the other city state or wherever. Enslaving your enemies is what you did.
We have no way of knowing what everybody thought, but given no evidence I am leery of ascribing our value system to them. It reminds me of attempts to find atheists in the Middle Ages.
--- Dennis Claxton <ddclaxton at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> But Jenny said she'd bet *slaves* were theorizing,
> not people running
> in Aristotle's circle. What the slaves were
> theorizing is anybody's
> guess, but this bet is likely a good one This is
> like a thread from
> a while back with references to what "the ancients"
> or "the Mayans"
> were doing in mathematics. What we're really
> talking about is a
> relatively small group of scholars. .
>
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