Was there any such concept? Did any philosophers or holders of political office advocate the complete removal of slavery as an institution?
>>18493382>Ancient RomeIf we include period from Constantine to 476 AD, some Christian bishops actively opposed slavery, such as St. Gregory of Nyssa.
>>18493386I obviously wasn't including that period, as their history of abolitionism is already well documented.
>>18493382Perfect body 3: cute Women= love
>>18493411I'll be honest, I was largely testing whether Jannies would remove a historical art piece depicting female nipples on a blue board.Plus a lust provoking image is more likely to get me an answer to a question I'm actually curious about.
>>18493382There was Spartacus and the slave rebellion. They wanted to abolish slavery.
>>18493431>philosophers or holders of political office
>>18493419>Plus a lust provoking image is more likely to get me an answer to a question I'm actually curious about.Correct. Regarding your question, I think "abolitionism" in the Greco-Roman world is an anachronism.
>>18493382The only reason slavery is abolished today is because of the industrial revolution.
>>18493386Correction, they opposed the enslavement of Christians, not slavery as a whole.
>>18493436Leader of a slave rebellion is a political office, because forming an armed movement to abolish slavery is a political act.
>>18493438The thing that got me thinking about it was when all the statues of people in the 18th and 19th centuries who had made their money off of slavery kept getting toppled during the summer of Floyd a key argument for and against it is>we can't judge people by the standards of today, they didn't know slavery was bad!and then the follow up is:>Of course they knew it was bad, abolitionists ALWAYS existed, they chose to use slavery to make money despite knowing it was morally evilSo surely the same logic must apply to Rome, but I have literally never heard of any form of abolitionism as a concept in pre-christian Rome. But surely some such analogous concept must have existed?
>>18493452I meant people who had no immediate vested interests in ending slavery. I.E: No slaves themselves. I want to know if anyone independently came to the conclusion that slavery should cease to be a practice.
>>18493456I’d be extremely surprised if there weren’t some rare advocates for abolition, but as it is, our knowledge of Roman society is very limited and the only thing we really can infer for sure is that nobody like that ever ended up in decisively powerful political position. Which is hardly surprising, when slavery was so essential for the elite of Roman society.
>>18493439No. In the south of the US there was a delayed industrialisation but it was happening. RoI on slave staffed factories was higher than on freeman staffed ones. This isn't particularly weird if you consider that outsourcing and work visas exist and nobody claims they're economically unviable.From what we know abolitionism in antiquity didn't exist. Even one philosopher ridiculed by the classics who tried to come up with some sort of communism answered the question of "but who will tend the fields" with "slaves". He may have not even existed but it shows you how inconceivable abolitionism was to the ancients.I think it's reasonable to say that its origin lies with Christian insistence on not letting other Christians be enslaved that was then universalised by enlightenment thinkers.
>>18493465They were flirting with the idea of abolition but it was still a ways off. Large slave plantations were making work for the average person nearly impossible to find which drove them to the cities bread dole which strained logistics and all that. Look up the gracchi brothers who ran on land and slavery reforms. Not outright abolition of course but if the republic hadn’t slid into autocracy they may have eventually.
>>18493382>Abolitionism in Ancient RomeWhite slavery ended with the spread and adoption of christianity because they are the children of God set free in Christ.Non whites were set free recently because until then they were correctly regarded as the dark hell-spawned demons which seek their destruction.
>>18493382If there were, it was probably the stoics.
>>18493454Have you read about Phrygian hats? Some sources claim that the hat was a symbol of freedom, usually for former slaves, but even so, this wouldn't fit into a widespread abolitionism. However, the Romans had a notion that their slavery was more "ethical."
No, not really. Slavery was not only a part of life for thousands of years before the Romans, but was a big part of the Roman economy. They had a fairly high percentage of their population as slaves. But, Roman slavery was not anything like the chattel slavery practiced during the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, where people were racially enslaved, along with all of their descendants. The Romans did not believe in racial slave castes, nearly all of their slaves were prisoners of war or criminals. In the case of prisoners of war, the Romans captured many such themselves, but also purchased prisoners of war made into slaves from other places when they had need of additional labor.Because most slaves were people captured and turned into slaves, rather than being raised in a heritable slave caste, they came from a variety of backgrounds, and had a variety of skills. Romans did not hesitate to make use of skilled slaves, and did not waste them doing hard labor. Only slaves without useful skills were consigned to toil in the mines and fields. If you could weave, shape clay, read and write in Latin, were a good cook, or had skill at cultivating rare plants and herbs, or knew how to work metal or wood, could fashion clothing or shoes, were an excellent singer or musician or dancer, or had any other number of prized skills and abilities, then you'd be allowed to practice those skills, and usually be given the opportunity to earn your manumission through such work. There was in fact an entire class of "freedmen" within the city of Rome itself, who were former slaves. It wasn't a prestigious social rank by any means, but it did afford them basic rights as free citizens of Rome.There were even special festivals and such during religious holidays where slaves might be manumitted as an act of charity. So while Rome had a lot of slaves, it also had a lot of FREED slaves, which was exceptionally race in a society that practiced slavery on such a scale.
>>18493485>Look up the gracchi brothersOP here, exactly what I was looking for, thank you.
>>18493662"Chattel Slavery" is just slavery. Chattel means property. A slave is property. Therefore, slavery is chattel slavery. This term is only repeated by stupid ass leftists.
In 340 the Synod of Gangra condemned Manichaeans, for among other things, encouraging slaves to flee their masters.
>>18493442No. St. Gregory clearly stated that slavery in general and the idea that someone could own a being made in God's Image as a property was an unthinkable abomination.>'got me slaves and slave-girls'. For what price, tell me? What did you find in existence worth as much as this human nature? What price did you put on rationality? How many obols did you reckon the equivalent of the likeness of God? How many staters did you get for selling the being shaped by God? God said, Let us make man in our own image and likeness (Gen 1,26). If he is in the likeness of God, and rules the whole earth, and has been granted authority over everything on earth from God, who is his buyer, tell me? who is his seller? To God alone belongs this power; or rather, not even to God himself. For his gracious gifts, it says, are irrevocable (Rom 11,29). God would not therefore reduce the human race to slavery, since he himself, when we had been enslaved to sin, spontaneously recalled us to freedom. But if God does not enslave what is free, who is he that sets his own power above God’s?https://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2019/01/24/a-fuller-extract-from-gregory-of-nyssa-on-the-evils-of-slavery/
