Kyle Harper

The Roman ideology of slavery is really rooted in the law of property and status.

So they think that slaves are people who've been conquered and rather than

killed, they've been spared, and they've been sold into the condition of being somebody else's property.

And this seems to mentally explain to them where their slave system comes from and why it's justifiable.

And so you have different kinds of criticism of the slave system from within.

But remember, most of what we have written is from the slave ownership class.

It's not like – I don't think the slaves were themselves –

you know, believing this ideology.

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.