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Slavery is an issue we may never be free of, we may think this is bad but the Romans including people such as Hammurabi and Aristotle believed that slavery was essential to life and would have thought that this wouldnt matter. This especially didnt matter since slaves were only seen as objects or tools. Although there are still people who probably believe in what the Romans did, but now we now classify all people as equal. Anyone could have become a slave if they either: 1. Committed a crime 2. Were a prisoner of war 3.
Not have roman citizenship 4. Sold into slavery These were the most obvious reasons for becoming a slave in roman times and yet only one of these points are still popular for today and that is number 4, because most slaves of today come from poor families. It is the poorer class of people today that are the target mainly because they would be so desperate that they would sell their children into slavery for a small profit. Nowadays slavery is restricted to jobs in more remote locations for obvious reasons so you wouldnt find slaves working for or around the city, But rather in and around households in the country.
Slaves back in roman times however were forced to work in the city and for anyone they were sold to. They had a huge range of jobs stretching from household slaves to field slaves and mining slaves to gladiators (Gladiators were created solely for the purpose of entertainment due to a lot more slaves). This was normal for Romans since they depended on slaves to do everything that they didnt want to do. Today some of them are given the very worst jobs like prostitution, work in factories, sugar cane fields and even private forms of work.
As I stated before, it is mainly poor families that are somewhat involved in either been taken or sold into slave labor but it can also be people from several different racial backgrounds. Many come from places like China, Africa, Russia, South Africa and Egypt. In ancient times war was a popular place for capturing people to be sold into slavery this gave the army a lot of its money and power, what I am saying is that Romans captured merciless people and sent them back to their country. Hammurabi had a basis of discipline on the slave and also one on its master that the master be fair to his slave. It was also him that believed that slavery was needed. Aristotle believed that slavery was a part of life and so did Christians and Jewish religions.
Viewed as a possession, a slave was not able to keep anything of theirs instead the master had control of over anything a slave owned. A master could do anything he wished with a slave because they had no rights apart from been able to let them free or maybe kill them (if the master had a proper reason to do so). Now slaves are nothing but people who have nothing no rights, no possessions and no one to help them. This can be sad because often they are treated with no respect whatsoever. Manumission was a process for once a slave had worked hard enough or grown too old to serve. Often a slave would come back to the master as a freedman and receive money and advice from their master.
The most common way a slave was set free was when they had worked well for a long time and was faithful towards the master. There is no such thing as manumission today which is not fair. Slaves were treated however their master desired which in many cases resulted badly for the slave since it could be beaten cruelly or left to starve for a while without food or water sometimes they were treated well and were freed earlier than others. A story I read about on the Internet was about a 12 -year-old sex slave forced to work for a box of cereal each month. As far as I was concerned she may have died in if the local police didnt find her as soon as they did. More of these cases I found were higher than I expected maybe some slaves today may actually be treated fairly so I think that the harshness and kindness to slaves havent really changed much at all.
When people think of slaves they think of people who work for no money to repay a debt and become free of it, which is what I think is quite true. If you think about it if you hear someone say to you that you have to be his or her slave for a week because you did something wrong this is most likely to spring to your mind. Today there may be more cases of slavery than there was back in ancient times but I think that could be a little over exaggerated.
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Research essay sample on Sold Into Slavery Forced To Work
