"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?
Page duBois shows that slavery, far from being extinct, is alive
and well in the contemporary era. Slaves are associated not just
with the Colosseum of ancient Rome, and films depicting ancient
slaves, but also with Californian labor factories and south Asian
sweatshops, while young women and 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 and Aristophanes. She also examines the
case of Spartacus, famous leader of a Roman slave rebellion, and
relates ancient notions of liberation to the all-too-common
immigrant experience of enslavement to a globalized world of
rampant corporatism and exploitative capitalism.
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