Slavery :: Slavery Essays

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 wouldn't matter. This especially didn't 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 wouldn't 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 didn't 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.