Brief Description of Slavery in Roman Times

[David Lockmiller]

Man's limitless inhumanity to his fellow man and beast:

The brutality of the working conditions in the mills of the time is graphically described in Book IX of “The Golden Ass” by the second-century author Apuleius, the archaeological site noted in a statement issued Friday.

With their feet chained, and dressed in rags, Apuleius describes the workers as having “eyes so bleary from the scorching heat of that smoke-filled darkness they could barely see, and like wrestlers sprinkled with dust before a fight, they were coarsely whitened with floury ash.”

The donkeys were no better off: “Their flanks were cut to the bone from relentless whipping, their hoofs distorted to strange dimensions from the repetitive circling, and their whole hide blotched by mange and hollowed by starvation.”