Slaves in the Roman Empire



Slaves in the Roman Empire

“Labour power then became one of the main commodities in the market-place.

With slavery, in contrast, the labourer himself is the commodity”

(Moses Immanuel Finley)

Introduction

Moses Immanuel Finley is one of the remarkable writers, who have a major contribution in the field of history. He served as a professor of history at Cambridge University. He was the author of great historical works and has published his extraordinary lectures delivered at the College de France in 1978. These lectures deal with the issues of slave societies and slave traditions mainly in ancient Roman and Greek civilizations. Finley not only highlighted the issues related to the slave societies, but also analyzed the situations of these slave societies, and transformation of the slave society to the labor system. He also discussed reasons for the substitution of the slave system with the new label of labors, which established in the early feudal system. In his book, “Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology”, Finley combined all these factors along with traces of economic impact on the Roman civilization due to the slaves and changes to labor system under feudalism. His work is an excellent piece of the history that is provided with complete evidences and well documented text, enriched with the logical reasoning.

In “Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology”, Finley discussed three distinguishing conditions of slavery that resulted in distinguish it from a new form of labor. The new slave tradition can be understood under the privately owned state with the capitalist and Marxist approach, commodity productions and market system in which, slaves are also treated as commodities and are to be paid for, third condition deals with the availability of internal labor supply. Finley in his book highlighted the issues of slavery associated with the historical, social, economic and humanitarian perspectives. He not only discussed the prevailing concerns of slavery in history, but also highlighted the decline of ancient slavery and the emergence of modern labor trend.

Discussion/Analysis

There have been various scholars who have highlighted issues associated with slavery and difficulties faced in different nations, especially great civilizations such as Greek, Roman, European, and American. One major contribution of the historical records is that these evidences not only served as the historical records of our preserved past, but have a major impact on our present conditions and future. Brunt reviewed Finley's work as a combination of “evidence and modern discussion”, which is expressed through Finley's knowledge of comparing a wide range of materials and theories. Title of the book clearly presents Finley's idea of combining and comparing “ancient slavery” and “modern ideology”.

1. Outline

Finley discussed all the important aspects associated with slavery in his book, “Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology”, which is divided into three major parts. Part I begins with the introduction of various important concepts associated with the ancient slavery and modern ideologies of that time. In the first part of this book, slavery is defined as the “dangerous bestial force that was both necessary and threatening for the ...