Kyle Harper

And there must have been sort of what we would think of as abolitionist movements or spirit that we just don't have really good records of.

But it is like this curious thing that the Romans are able to build this huge system that's really brutal and really violent.

But

has this kind of flimsy ideology where they tell themselves these stories.

But the deeper lesson of that is that humans can create these systems of belief that will exclude others and justify almost any form of exploitation and convince themselves that it's okay.

Well, there's a pretty gruesome chapter, I'll say that.

I mean, how did they do this?

I mean, they have a really elaborate system of repression.

They're worried about it.

And probably –

The parts of Roman society where there are 20, 30, 40 percent slaves are pretty limited to certain regions and certain time periods.

And partly because once you cross some kind of threshold, the challenges of repressing sort of direct violent resistance.

But it's –

It's a system of exploitation.

That means there's always a mix of carrots and sticks, to put it crudely.

Like the Romans extract people's labor partly through physical violence but also partly through like systems of manumission that try and incent people to –

to obey and not to rebel in order to earn their freedom.

They're using everything from literal chains to like enticements to try and keep rebellion from ever sort of coalescing in a way that can turn into collective violence.

It's a little bit challenging for us to look back and say, I mean, we know like in Pompeii, the slave population in Pompeii is huge.

It must be 30%.