"Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is perhaps the most famous phrase of all in the American Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson's momentous words are closely related to the French concept of "liberte, egalite, fraternitye"; and both ideas incarnate a notion of freedom as inalienable human right that in the modern world we expect to take for granted. In the ancient world, by contrast, the concepts of freedom and equality had little purchase. Athenians, Spartans and Romans all possessed slaves or helots (unfree bondsmen), and society was unequal at every stratum. Why, then, if modern society abominates slavery, does what antiquity thought about serfdom matter today?
Author(s): Page DuBois
Series: (Ancients & Moderns)
Edition: 1
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Year: 2010
Language: English
Pages: 224
Tags: Slavery
Cover
Half-title
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Preface
Chapter I: Living Slaves
Slavery Defined
Numbers and Places
The Poetics of Slavery
Slavery in the Media
Slavery and ‘Race’
Abolition: Or, What is to be Done?
Differences
Chapter II: Racialised Slavery
Sherley Anne Williams’ Dessa Rose
The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself
The History of Racialised Slavery
Slaves in America
Frederick Douglass
Legacies of Racialised Slavery
Chapter III: Ancient Ideologies
Slavery in the Hebrew Bible
Slavery in Ancient Greek Political Theory
Slavery in the New Testament and in Christianity
Ante-bellum Arguments for Slavery in North America
Chapter IV: Ancient Slavery
Slavery in Israel
Slavery in Greece
Slavery in Rome
Chapter V: Spartacus and Gladiator: Slaves in Film
The Ten Commandments
Spartacus
Gladiator
Epilogue
Some Suggestions For Further Reading
Notes
Index
