Brief Description of Slavery in Roman Times

[David Lockmiller]

New York Times December 8, 2023

Archaeologists excavating parts of the ancient city of Pompeii made public new discoveries on Friday that provide a grim glimpse into the bleak existence of enslaved people two millenniums ago, including the existence of a “bakery-prison.”

The newly excavated area consists of a cramped space where donkeys and enslaved people lived, slept and worked together, milling flour to make bread. The single window that was found there provided dim light: it opened not to the outside world but to another room in the house, and was crossed with iron bars.

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.

[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.”

[AussieMick]

Slavery in the 19th century was just as bad.

Ive been researching details relating to Sir Roger Casement (Irish diplomat hanged for treason) ... and have been led into 'rabbit holes' on the internet. He did a lot of work documenting slavery in Africa and Peru.

These pointed me to (warning: very sad reading)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9s_O%27Donnell
and also to
Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness novel.

[David Lockmiller]

We can see massive "inhumanity to man" every night on the national TV news (any and every major news channel).

And, we can silently protest, in vain.