2. Introduction
2.1 Ancient Sources of slavery
It is cogent and relevant to turn to primary sources of slavery. This subheading lists the headings as far as practicable and then comment on their usefulness and limits. In consideration of the omnipresence and importance of slaves in ancient daily life, there is surprising little discussion of them by ancient authors. The intellectual vacuum is unimaginable. However, both Aristotle and Anthenaeus tried to imagine a world without slaves. They could only envision a Fantasy Land, where tools performed their work on command, utensils moved automatically, shuttles move cloth and girls played harps without heathen hands to guide them, bread baked itself and fish not only voluntarily seasoned and basted themselves but also flipped themselves over in frying pans at the appropriate times.137
The visionary wit of Aristotle and Co. cannot be over-estimated. They intended to illustrate how preposterous such a world without slave would be. It is however, paradoxical that intellectual philosophical heavy weights like Aristotle and Co. could descend or rather reduce the Homo sapiens to such imponderable state of nothingness and inhumanness.
The effect of such options can only be viewed through the lenses prescribed by Aristotelism and the influence it had over people and through his generations. He was an authority and still an authority at least in Europe, whose actions or inactions during his days were like biblical injunction. In short, he accorded legitimacy to slavery. What definitions can one make of the primary sources: in comparison or different from our sources or secondly sources today?
136 Friedman, Saul S., Jews and the American Slave Trade, 1998, p. 18-19.
137 Aristotle’s, Politics. 14. (125 3b) (350 B.C.E.); Aristotle’s, Politik, Erstes Buch (1973), pp. 46-48; Athenaeus The Deipnosophist 6, Harvard Studies in classical prologue with an English tran. By Clarles Burton Gulick, in 7 Vol. Harvard University Press, 1936, p. 267.
The primary sources fall, however, into the following categories:138 1) Archaeology
a) Architectural remains b) Skeletal remains
c) Relia (Chains, whips, collars, e.t.c.) 2) Inscriptions
3) Papyrus and parchments fragments 4) Literature
5) Legal material
6) Histories and biographies 7) Personal and other letters 8) Moral literature
9) Advice literature on household management
Economics handbooks for large agricultural estates
Domestic codes for all households, large or small 10) Imaginative literature
Satires
Poetry
Drama
Parables and myths
Proto-novels
I. Virtually all ancient authors were themselves owners of slaves, therefore, their information should be taken with a pinch of salt. Their literature, which does not mention slaves, reflects the views of the masters, not necessarily of slaves.
II. Extant evidence is principally limited to urban slavery. The treatment of slaves in the rural areas must have gone into oblivion.
III. No quantifiable data is available
a. The total number of slaves is unknown (census data only from Egypt) b. The size of individual slave holding is only a matter of conjecture.
c. The number of slaves working in manufacturing or agricultural industry were not recorded.139
138 Compare Aristotle, Politics, 1255b pp. 11–15; Id. 1254b pp. 16–21; Thomas, Hugh, 1997, p. 68ff.
139 ibid. Thomas, p. 68ff.
IV. The documentary of evidence is inadequate
a. No account ledgers survived except from Egypt b. No estate archives survived
V. No slave Literature (e.g. autobiographies, personal letters) survived and slaves oral literature is irretrievable.140
Unlike those who study the modern period, ancient historians simply have no oral repository out of which to reconstruct slave life or folklore. Those studying American slavery, for example, can fall on at least four major sources both written and oral of slave Literature.
1. The extant black slave autobiographies, which numbered over one hundred.
2. The many biographies and autobiographies stories published in the 19th century abolition’s newspaper and church organs.
3. The folk music of “Negro”
4. The forty-one volume slave narrative collection.
This last item, over 10.000 pages of typescript, contains over 2,000 personal interviews with ex-slaves transcribed in 1920s and 1930s by several groups of investigations. As an evidence of ancient slavery, their respective masters erected Epitaphs of slaves. One such neurological notice has importance for understanding ancient slaveholders “ideology”. It reads, “I am yours”, “to you even now under the earth, yes master, I remain faithful as before”.141 Manifestly, the master-slave relationship was, though, in some instances extended beyond death, masters kept their slaves even in Hades and slaves like Cicero, Epictetus, Terence, Marcus Aurelius and Seneca (in Diogenes) etc. are still faithful to their masters. This only portrays the state of mind of certain human beings during this time; however, it will be foolhardy or a blatant lie to argue, that the state of mind of mankind today had changed for the better, as we shall see in the on-going work. Additional tombstone illustrates an antithesis.
140 Aristotle, Politics, 1255b, pp. 11–15; 1254b, pp. 16–21; Thomas, Hugh, 1997, p. 68ff.
141 Rawick, George P., ed., The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography, vol. 1, From Sundown to Sunup: The making of the Black community, Contributions in Afro-American and African Studies, Westport, Conn: Greenwood publishing, 1972, XIII-XXI, pp. 163-178; Craton, Micheal, A cresting Wave? Recent Trends in the Historiography of Slavery, with Special Reference to the British Caribbean Historical Reflections/Reflections historigue 9, 1982, p. 413.
It reads, “I am Zosime, who was formally a slave only with my body; but now I have found freedom for my body and as well as my soul”.142The Roman legal evidence143 has a much wider base of source materials; the Justinian compilation called the corpus iurus civillis and extant secondary law school text-book, the institute Gaius.144 The compendium of Gaius, for example, reveals the enormous importance of slave for commercial purposes and other acquisitions.145