num_pages: 166
description: "Life, liberty &amp; the pursuit of happiness" is perhaps the most famous phrase in the American Declaration of Independence. Th Jefferson's momentous words are closely related to the French concept of "liberte, egalite, fraternity ". Both ideas incarnate a notion of freedom as inalienable right that in the modern world we expect to take for granted. In the ancient world, by contrast, the concepts of freedom &amp; equality had little purchase. Athenians, Spartans &amp; Romans all possessed slaves or helots (unfree bondsmen). Society was unequal at every stratum. Why, then, if modern society abominates slavery, does what antiquity thought about serfdom matter today? Page duBois shows that slavery, far from being extinct, is alive &amp; well in the contemporary era. Slaves are associated not just with the Colosseum of ancient Rome &amp; films depicting ancient slaves, but also with Californian labor factories &amp; S. Asian sweatshops, while young women &amp; children appear increasingly vulnerable to sexual trafficking. Juxtaposing such modern experiences of bondage (economic or sexual) with slavery in antiquity, the author explores the writings on the subject of Aristotle, Plautus, Terence &amp; Aristophanes. She also examines the case of Spartacus, leader of a Roman slave rebellion, &amp; relates ancient notions of liberation to the all-too-common immigrant experience of enslavement to a globalized world of rampant corporatism &amp; exploitative capitalism.
language: English
title: Slavery: Antiquity and Its Legacy
publisher: Oxford University Press (NYC)