Rome II

[Dolan50]

Rome was your prototypical fascist regime whose economy was based on slavery.

"Slavery in the ancient world and in Rome was vital to both the economy and even the social fabric of the society. While it was commonplace throughout the Mediterranean region, and the Hellenistic regions in the east, it was not nearly so vital to others as it was to the dominance of Rome. As the Romans consolidated their hegemony of Italy and Sicily followed by the systematic conquest of western Europe, countless millions of slaves were transported to Rome the Italian countryside and Latin colonies all over Europe.

Though slavery was prevalent in households throughout the city itself, it was on the farms and plantations where it had its greatest effect. The Roman conquests of Carthage, Macedonia and Greece in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC altered what was once a luxury and privilege for the ruling elite into the predominant factor driving both social and economic policies for the Republic as a whole. The mass influx of slaves during this time period first was a sign of great wealth and power, but later destabilized an already fragile Roman class system. Farms originally run by small business families throughout Italy were soon gobbled up and replaced by enormous slave run plantations owned by the aristocratic elite. Cheap slave labor replaced work for the average citizen and the rolls of the unemployed masses grew to epidemic proportions. These issues had a great destabilizing effect on the social system which had a direct role in the demise of the Republic. As the rift between Senatorial elite (optimates) and social reformers (populares) grew, the use of the unemployed, landless, yet citizen mobs were an overwhelming ploy grinding away at the ability of the Senate to govern. Though there are many factors involved in the Fall of the Republic, slavery and its effects rippled throughout every aspect of that turbulent time period.

Not only did slavery help push the Roman lower classes into organized mobs, but the slaves themselves understandably revolted against oppression. The 3 servile wars in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC, with the rebellion of Spartacus in the 70's BC the most notable, showed that the social system was dangerous and unhealthy. By the end of these civil wars and general social disorder, slaves were abundantly present in Rome. The slave population was at least equal to that of freedmen (non citizens), and has been estimated at anywhere from 25 to 40% of the population of the city as a whole. One such estimate suggests that the slave population in Rome circa 1 AD, may have been as much as 300,000 to 350,000 of the 900,000 total inhabitants. In outlying provinces, the numbers are certainly far less substantial, dropping to between an estimated 2 and 10% of the total. Still though, in some places such as Pergamum on the western coast of present day Turkey, the slave population may have been around 40,000 people or 1/3 of the cities total population. At the height of the Empire in the mid second century AD, some have estimated that the total slave population may have approached 10 million people, or approximately 1/6 of the population as a whole.

In the ancient world, slaves were taken simply based upon need or want. There was no ethnic or territorial preference for the taking of slaves. As the vast majority was captured as the result of Roman wars, wherever there were Roman victories, there would be new slaves. There is no evidence to suggest that the Romans placed any preference for slavery, or exceptions, based on race or country of origin. The only thing the Romans held in deference was whether or not someone was a Roman. By the mid to late imperial period, citizenship was a rather non-exclusive status, and ethnicity played little part. They were rounded up first from among the Italian tribes, where it spread to Carthage, Greece, Macedonia, Gaul and all over the eastern provinces, with little regard for origin. The Romans simply needed to replenish the stock, and the legions provided the means to do so. As examples; at the end of the Third Macedonian War in 168 BC, it was recorded that as many as 150,000 residents of Epirus were sold in Roman bondage. It's also been estimated that Julius Caesar, upon his conquest of Gaul, may have captured and enslaved 500,000 people."

http://www.unrv.com/culture/roman-slavery.php

Sure life was better if you were a landed Roman citizen or one of their boot licking bribed lackeys in charge of insuring that Roman law and order was upheld in their conquered colonial territories,but I doubt any of the countries or regions that Rome invaded actually invited them or wanted them to stay.

[MengJiao]

Rome was your prototypical fascist regime whose economy was based on slavery.

  That's true.  Quite literally, but I think it doesn't tell the whole story.  First, Roman citizenship was eventually expanded to cover a lot of the population of the Empire and second, there's just really no alternative model to tell us what the ancient world would have been like without some relatively oppressive super state like Rome.  Persia is the big counter-example to both Hellenic Imperia and Rome, but I have no idea what life in Persia was like except that the most cosmic Imperial theocratic excesses of the Byzantines seem to have been modelled on Persia.
Moreover, its not like Rome has ever completely vanished -- so for better or worse we are still in a kind of Rome in terms of law and infrastructure and armies and Senates and religions.  An expert on Ancient Egypt once made the a similar remark when somebody asked him what the ancient Egyptians were like.  He said, "Just turn on the TV.  What do you see?  Marching Armies, supernatural wonders?Immense constructions?  Theocratic Leaders?"

[Gusington]

There's also the need to define 'Roman.' Were the conquered and assimilated truly Roman? If the conquered and assimilated were able to enjoy all the benefits of being a Roman citizen, then how bad was it?

[mikeck]

There is now doubt that Rome's economy was based on slavery and new conquest, but what isn't discussed much is the lack of rebellion among these so horribly oppressed people. After vercingetorix, there were very few (if any) rebellions in Gaul over the course of Rome's 400 year occupation. After the Iceni rebellion in Britain, there was no rebellion there until the Romans left. Sure , you had isolated rebellions in Israel and such , but throughout Spain, Gaul, Britain and Greece, people seemed happy to be under the Roman thumb. They had to pay tax and many of their I itial army was take. As slaves...but they didn't need an army anymore anyway and their taxes bought them sanitation, roads, aqueducts, baths, safety and security, trade to the rest of the world along with products from around the world, a unifying language and other benefits. No...all things being equal, if I am a blacksmith with a wife and 2 kids, I would prefer to live in Gaul under Roman rule than east of the Rhine under whatever warlord happened to be strong enough to kill the last one.

Nope, if you agreed that Rome was boss, were wiling to follow the rules and pay tax...things were pretty good. Otherwise rebellions would have been common and Rome would never have been able to hold together the western world for 450 years

[Dolan50]

The so called Pax Romana or "Augustan Peace"( 27 B.C.E. to 180 C.E. in the Roman Empire.)was also sowing the seeds of the empires eventual decline in the 3rd century AD.

"The slave-based economy seemingly worked well but only as long as there was a large supply of slaves. The slavery institution declined significantly as a result of the "Augustan Peace". Although Gibbon sees the decline in war and piracy in this so-called "golden-age" as an entirely positive thing for the empire he does not see the other side of the story which is that these two activities were the main source of slaves. The days of the great Delian Slave market were over and there was now a severely diminished workforce. Growing humanitarian sentiments within the empire also facilitated this problem as many of the remaining slaves were freed. The fundamental basis of ancient economic activity was significantly undermined but the system of exploitation was too well established now for it to be abolished. Perhaps if the institution of slavery had been challenged much earlier on then things would have been different but unfortunately even the most enlightened philosophers of the Republic seemed to support it. For example, Aristotle stated that "from the hour of birth some are marked out for subjection, others for rule". There remained no choice after the collapse of the slave market other than to try to compensate for this loss. What we see here is the increasing exploitation of free men by a highly exploitative ruling class. This group was really an aristocratic clique whose wealth was derived primarily from the land so it was very much in their interest to maintain their own superiority at the expense of what was beneficial to the empire. They were against any form of economic improvement which threatened their power and so their actions tended to maintain senatorial authority but at the huge price of economic retardation. In the absence of a slave class which they could exploit, they increasingly tightened the screw on the lower classes so that their legal, political and constitutional privileges could be diminished. In this way they would have little power to defend themselves against exploitation. This whittling away of the rights of the poor took place mainly during the 'good' Antonine period and by the Severan period the poor had virtually no rights whatsoever. Citizenship therefore came to mean almost nothing for the vast majority and therefore the onset of universal citizenship was really a fairly unremarkable development. The fact that it came about only reflects the financial problems of the empire (discussed later) and the need to increase tax revenue. Finley states that in this period we see "a cumulative depression in the status of the lower classes among the free citizens". What we essentially see here is a switch from slave production to serf production. From this development, Rostovtzeff sees a major cause for the upheavals and rebellions of the third century. He sees the upheavals of the third century as "a deliberate and class conscious attack by the exploited peasantry, using as its spearhead the large army which was mainly recruited from its ranks". This argument is problematic however, as there is much evidence to suggest that peasants were generally scared of the soldiers and would therefore not see them as their representatives. Even so, this argument does not ignore the fact that the massive exploitation by the urban propertied class of the poorer members of society (for example the rural population, retail traders, artisans) and their indifference towards working for the public good had bad effects. The problem of slavery and exploitation was really one of the root problems of Roman society. The empire was built upon the labor of the exploited but they were the very people who could not benefit from their work. This division of society ensured that the masses of the empire never tasted the fruits of their labor. The two major problems which this lead to were that people lacked the incentive to master their work and they also had little consuming power so there was a shallow internal market as a result. "

To what extent were economic factors to blame for the deterioration of the Roman Empire in the Third Century A.D?

http://www.roman-empire.net/articles/article-018.html

[BanzaiCat]

It's funny, I was just reading about Roman slavery earlier today.

I can't recall the emperor, but I do remember that the practice of freeing slaves was so commonplace at some point that the emperor had to decree that no slave under 30 could be so freed.

Wiki says it was Augustus, which may be right. I don't know for sure, but found it interesting that the practice became so prevalent that an emperor had to call it out to stop the 'bleeding out' of 'good' slave talent.

[Nefaro]

Rome was certainly awash in slavery.  To be fair, that was the norm in those days. 

Comparing Ancient Rome's commonplace slavery during ancient times to Germany's usage of death camps in the 20th Century ( a rarity - not the norm at that time) is a poor one.  It wasn't all ice cream and sausages living in the ancient world, either way you cut it, but Rome didn't go so far above and beyond their peers as to stand out so far as German national socialism had in the mid-20th.

[mikeck]

Every society took slaves in Rome's time. It was quite common to rape and kidnap women, seize boys for slaves and kill the adult males after the defeat of their village. To suggest that somehow Rome was "different" or "bad" because of the slave trade is a bit disingenuous. That's the way things were done. If you were a member of one Gallic tribe and taken over by another, you could bet that things would go badly for the loser including Slavery.

To suggest that practice is comparable to Hitler rounding up 30 million Jews in an attempt to commit genocide doesn't really wash. Compared to other civilizations, Rome treated submitted societies quite well and offered many citizenship. I don't think any nation occupied by Germany or the Soviet Union after WW2 would claim the same.

You cannot apply 20th century morals to societies 2000 years ago. Back then, slavery was quite normal. For the record, it was also considered perfectly acceptable and fair to destroy a town and kill everyone in it if it resisted a seige for a certain period of time and forced the besieging force to assault. (Up to the 18th century minus women and children)

Certainly the same wouldn't apply now.

Like I said before, IDE rather be a peasant plowing fields in Roman occupied Briton or Gaul than one in some tribe in Germany or subject to net whims of some Persian god/king

[mikeck]

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ExWfh6sGyso

[Dolan50]

You can defend slavery all you like.The people that were subjected to slavery didn't like it any more then than they would now.

And I wasn't comparing ancient Rome to the 20th century Nazis.
I'm saying they were worse. Far worse!

[Gusington]

No one here is defending slavery.

[Jarhead0331]

You can defend slavery all you like.The people that were subjected to slavery didn't like it any more then than they would now.

And I wasn't comparing ancient Rome to the 20th century Nazis.
I'm saying they were worse. Far worse!

I'm going to stop this conversation at this point. The second someone starts saying that anything was worse than industrialized systemic genocide in a modern civilized society, some people are going to get angered and upset.

Its been interesting, but we have about 165 pages of this thread talking about the game...lets it bring it back to that.

Thanks.

[mikeck]

Solid play. I'm teaching the tipping point in my game.  Making a move to take Spain from the Arveni (I think that's them) if I can do it without shredding my armies and Economy,  I think I will be so much more powerful than anyone else, I will call it a game. I have found a great use for fleets which is raiding...placing a fleet off an enemy city and setting it to "raid" really messes up their morale.

When it's over I may....may...try Athens
But I need a mod that gives them a different look. I like more of a 4th century look than the 2nd century Macedonian look   

[Sir Slash]

While you guys have been discussing things ethical, I've been downloading the new Beasts of War DLC for $2.99 on Steam. Hear the thunder of my Armored Camel Corp bearing-down on your un-prepared asses-- free or slave. ;D ;D

[Swatter]

If Jarhead would allow me to cap off the ethical discussion, I would like to end it with one point. A history professor of mine once warned against looking at ancient cultures through the lens of modern ethics. Ancient cultures would seem quite alien to the modern people, so one needs to examine those cultures within the context of their times.