Talk:Slavery in antiquity

message: # while antiquity has been extended to cover China and even for all I know the Aztecs (and that is probably a good thing) it traditionally has meant before about 500 CE in West Eurasia. No one is going to be shocked to find the contents of the page not being so wide.
# in any case if someone wants to write a section on these other regions there is no problem
# the page concetrates on the three civilisations for who the most detailed sources exist.  Discusion on slavery in Parthia or among the ancient Germans logically belongs here.  Further the Roman Empire included Britania and that can not by any stretch of the imagination be considered part of the Mediterranean region.  Dejvid 17:42, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Why I reverted this page back to Slavery in antiquity from [[Slavery in the ancient Mediterranean]]

message: There is a common myth today, this myth states that slaves generate free time for their masters. This is untrue, slaves are less productive than free laborers, since free laborers receive the totality of its produce in forms of wages, and so tend to be more estimulated to be productive. Free time occurs when the marginal value of income falls bellow the marginal value of free time, soh slave lavour tends to increase the marginal value of income, since less income is produced, and so decrease free time.
Slaves did not contribute to the progress of ancient civilization of any sort, actually, the civilizations with had less slavevery, progressed much more than slave societies. For exemple, in medieval europe, serfs (with were economically inferior to slaves since they were not private property) corresponded to the vast majority of the population compared to slaves in ancient rome with corresponded to a large minority, this helps to explain why the ancients developed their civilization much further than medieval europe, with only progressed beyond the ancients with the abolition of serfdom in the modern age.--RafaelG 22:25, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Free time

message: Is currently just a mess; significant contradiction with cited statements in the main article; & the fuzziness of not defining types of slaves..will have a crack at aligning this piece with Slavery in Ancient Greece, Helots, & Penestai. The question of 'thought slavery was natural' and ' opposed slavery' was not simultaneous - this was a change over time (as it was in the modern west).Bridesmill 22:01, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Lets hope this is remedied; ancient slavery (indeed, all slavery through the early modern period) was a thoroughly multi-"racial" institution and the images in this article should reflect that.  Kemet 03:10, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd say that few of us are aware of that; when I learn how to upload the pictures I will fix it.  In the meantime those who are more familiar with wikipedia are free to do so.  Kemet 14:12, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Slavery in Greece

message: This series has a gaping hole; only slavery of antiquity and the early modern period are discussed, leaving out a good 1000 years of slavery.  Kemet 00:04, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Erm, I said "series."  Read carefully and try again.  Kemet 03:13, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

text: Done.  Kemet 14:18, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Medieval and Premodern Slavery 

message: This piece of apologetic should only be included if the consensus of modern scholarship:
:The Roman economy certainly depended heavily on slavery, but was not (as is sometimes mistakenly stated) the most slave-dependent culture in the history of the world. That distinction probably belongs to the Spartans, with "helots" (the Spartan term for "slave") outnumbering the Spartans around seven to one (Herodotus; book IX, 10). While we have from Herodotus an ancient source to place Spartan slavery at 7:1, few cite a similar source for the Roman proportion of 1:2, so one must view it as less reliable.
It is not; whoever wrote it has no idea how severely Herodotus's numbers are deprecated. Septentrionalis 18:57, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Apologetic

message: Erm, the first sentence of Slavery in Rome is part of the quote "Slaves … had no head in the state, no name, title or register: nor could they take by purchase or descent; they had no heirs, and therefore could make no will:… whatever they acquired was their master's: they could not plead nor be pleaded for, but were excluded from all civil concerns whatsoever:…they were not entitled to the rights and considerations of matrimony, and, therefore, had no relief in the case of adultery:…they could be sold, transferred, or pawned as goods of personal estate..."  Aside from not having an odd number of quotation marks, this appears to be from pages 31-32 of "A sketch of the laws relating to the slavery in the several states of the United States of America" by George M Stroud.  Now, I don't have that particular source on hand, but someone should check this source and confirm that the statement really is in reference to Roman law, particularly as I've seen this quote used applying to American slavery. Bitnine 19:36, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, given that it's not cited, appears to be paraphrased and gramatically incorrect (the same version of the quote appearing on a few web sites that give the quote without referencing the source), and there's no verification that it the statement has anything to do with roman law, I'm removing it. Bitnine 19:54, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Zounds!  Actually, looking that the section, the first paragraph seems to have been copied from the book "Apostolic Christianity: History of the Christian Church, Volume I" by Phillip Schaff.  You can do a google book search for "Slaves had no head in the state" and it'll pop up a preview to page 371, under the section "To Christianity we owe the gradual extinction of slavery."  It's complete with a "Copyrighted Material" watermark on the bottom right.  It's this author who gives part of the direct quote from "A sketch..." and then paraphrases the rest (the quote within quote somewhat explains the odd number there).  If I'm missing something here, please feel free to let me know, but it really looks like somehow a chunk of a copyrighted work has made its way into this article.  Seriously, am I missing something?  Because it looks like in the edit here the material was introduced into the pre-split Slavery article.  Anyways, due to this, I'm removing the paragraph.  If I've gone mad here, feel free to tell me what I missed. Bitnine 23:32, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Quick addendum, it actually looks like in this edit , user 24.247.116.201 added several paragraphs verbatim from the textbook, the later change merely readded some sections after blanking.  (Also, deleted accidental paragraph split above, bah.) Bitnine 23:41, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Slaves in Rome quote/Use of Copyrighted Material

message: Quoting from the article: "The provinces with more expensive labour (like Roman Italy) absorbed a large number of slaves that came from provinces with low wages."
I don't understand how wage pressure can affect the movement of slaves, since surely slaves by definition receive no wages? I could understand that a province with more expensive labour would make owning a slave more profitable and therefore we should expect to find a higher slave population in those provices, but this is not what the article is saying. If anyone with more knowlege of this area could clarify this article, I'd be extremely grateful. Pinkmouse (talk) 11:05, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: In Rome that was far from true. Slaves could sometimes amass large fortunes, buy other slaves for themselves, etc. I imagine that as wages went down that even more freeing of slaves occured as it because more expensive to house and feed the slaves than it is worth, and more slaves with saved up wages could buy their freedom and move to a more profitable region.  207.61.204.116 (talk) 19:10, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed with the pinkmouse, but do you think there is need of original research? OwnDealers (talk) 19:12, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Slaves in Rome: request for help

message: This section should also mention the notorious acceptance in Exodus 21:7-11 of the practice of selling female children into slavery.
I would also like to know when and how this type of patriarchal enslavement fell into desuetude.
--JamesWim (talk) 16:39, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Biblical slavery 

message: You cannot just put Biblical events next to proven historical events.
"The Old Testament also recounts tales of slavery in Egypt: slave-dealers sold Joseph into bondage there, and the Hebrews suffered collective enslavement (Exodus, chapter 1) prior to the Exodus."
is not relevant to a discussion about Slavery in Ancient Egypt unless we have reason to believe that it actually happened, and a good scientific reference.
In my opinion nothing from the bible belongs on this page and should have its own page where is clear that this is from a work of fiction.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.61.204.116 (talk) 19:25, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Biblical Events 

message: There's nothing on Ancient Persia (or anywhere else in the Ancient World outside of the Occident and its mother cultures). I frankly think I need to remedy the situation with a section myself; discussion is welcome. Jamutaq (talk) 19:30, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Persia?!