Tài liệu The Bitter Chain of Slavery'''': Reflections on Slavery in Ancient Rome pdf

Frank M. Snowden, Jr. Annual Lectures

Keith Bradley, Frank M. Snowden, Jr. Lectures, Howard University, 'The Bitter Chain of Slavery':

Reflections on Slavery in Ancient Rome,

http://chs.harvard.edu/publications.sec/online-print-books.ssp/frank-m.-snowden-jr./. Center for Hellenic

Studies, Washington, DC. November, 2005

'The Bitter Chain of Slavery': Reflections on Slavery in Ancient Rome

Keith Bradley

Towards the middle of the fifth century AD the Christian presbyter and moralist Salvian of Marseilles

composed a highly polemical tract, On the Governance of God, in which he explained to the decadent Romans

around him how it was that the destructive presence in their midst of barbarian invaders was the result not of

God's neglect of the world but of their own moral bankruptcy. In their general comportment the Romans,

though Christians, were full of moral failings and were far more morally culpable than the slaves they owned.

Their slaves committed crimes such as stealing, running away, and lying, but they did so under the

comprehensible and forgivable compulsion of hunger or fear of physical chastisement, whereas the Romans

were simply wicked and had forfeited all claims to forgiveness because of their terrible behaviour. Among

other things the Christian slaveowners had completely desecrated the institution of marriage: regarding their

female slaves as natural outlets for their sexual appetites and considering adultery unexceptional, they thought

nothing of acting upon their impulses and of satisfying their desires. As a result, Salvian said in an ironic

metaphor, they had become the bad slaves of a good Master, which meant that the barbarian invaders, while

pagans, were in fact their moral superiors. In Salvian's judgement it was this moral superiority that accounted

for the barbarians' stunning invasionary success (On the Governance of God 4.13-29; 6.92; 7.16-20; cf. 3.50;

8.14).

Despite his critical assault on Roman slaveowners, Salvian makes very clear the low esteem in which slaves

were held in his society. Slaves were naturally inferior, criminous, and corrupt, they lived only to satisfy their

1