Tech Levels - understanding and creating vs manufacturing

[GypsyComet]

Pseudolus's master: "I have the most worthless slave in all of rome"
Random passer-by: "Oh ! You speak of Pseudolus"

One of my favorite lines....of many in that movie; and, as you point out, straight out of Plautus, IIRC.

My question for that scene is why the Doctor would be in Rome long enough to know of Pseudolus...

 

[captainjack23]

Pseudolus's master: "I have the most worthless slave in all of rome"
Random passer-by: "Oh ! You speak of Pseudolus"

One of my favorite lines....of many in that movie; and, as you point out, straight out of Plautus, IIRC.

My question for that scene is why the Doctor would be in Rome long enough to know of Pseudolus...

Are you kidding ? He's known throughout Latium, and the surrounding provinces, I'm betting. This is the slave who put the LESS in worthless.

 

[Infojunky]

Pseudolus's master: "I have the most worthless slave in all of rome"
Random passer-by: "Oh ! You speak of Pseudolus"

Actually the scene is between Marcus Likus and the ship's captain Crassius (sp?) in a wine shop.

Though the funny thing right now I cannot find either my Script or the DVD.

My 13 year old loves the movie.

 

[aspqrz]

Yes, though I must say that in stuff I have read recently, the statements are more hedged than they were many years ago.

Thank you very much.

The "link period" between Etruscan and Roman has always been rather
"hazy", especially because of the few reliable knowledge about the ori-
gin of the Etruscans and therefore their specific cultural heritage.

I wonder whether some clever geneticist may one day be able to solve
the mystery for good, but until now I have not yet seen any truly con-
vincing results - although the latest (known to me) hypothesis that they
are descendants or close relatives of the Hittites of todays Anatolia is
rather fascinating.

Yeah, I've seen the speculation, and ISTR that they've been looking for some DNA evidence to do connections, but, I believe, last I read anyway (and, like I said, its not my area of interest, per se), they were having a remarkably hard time finding viable remains to get DNA from.

Phil

 

[aspqrz]

On a related point, and not to stir up argument, some pretty cogent arguments have been made that the lot of the houshold slave was also pretty grim; especially when one considers the often overlooked class of "poor slaves" which, in fact are the slaves owned by the poor, and greatly outnumbered the upper and (pseudo) middle class household servile population. They were far less likely to ever see freedman status, could have children but had no rights to retain them (being a useful commodity) and often very short lifespans.

Indeed. Even slaves could own slaves :shock:

Which is not always mentioned in survey texts.

They were quite literally often shared household appliances, and as they were often either rented out or owned in a club, were worked HARD, and generally "replaced" rather than cared for when sick or injured. Think of a middle class house slave as being a washing machine in a nice suburban house; now think of being a washing machine in a cheap laundromat in a tenement neighborhood.

Indeed, just as "domestics" were in the period up to the beginnings of household mechanisation (which really only gets in its stride after WW1) ... appliances ...

And, BTW, you are spot on about the segregation of slaves in the latafundia, mines and sweatshop factories; keep in mind though, that they were generally forced labor of the Dachau concentration camp variety, and generally worked to death in about a year -six months in any place with a hard winter (guess why ?). I suspect that the segregation was more for control purposes than to prevent breeding; hard to see how much of that would be possible under those conditions (and no, I'm not being sarcastic).

Yes, as I noted, it was generally acknowledged that sending criminals to the Mines was an effective death sentence, and that few survived 12 months. Often in that period, at least in the larger and therefore deeper and more extensive mines, they would never see the light of day ... even their pens were below ground.

One of the well known Roman authors (Cicero? Nah. Can't remember offhand) actually goes into some detail as to the relative economic costs of slave vs free labour ... and slaves got damn all, as we all might guess.

You are quite correct, as I tried to point out, non-household slaves were seen as tools, to be used and discarded when no longer useful ... at least, that's the way they were regarded as long as the Roman state was expanding and slaves were cheap and plentiful ... as this changed, and as slaves became less and less common, part of the slack was taken up by the gradual effective enslavement (enserfment?) of the previously free peasantry and partly by, as I noted, encouraging slaves to marry and, effectively, become sharecroppers.

This isn't my unsupported opinion, either ... de Ste Croix and others have suggested it and argued (I think) cogently for it.

Lots of unwanted or unaffordable household slaves, especially "poor slaves" ended up in these labor camps; indeed , Rome had an insatiable need for slaves, and little opportunity to breed the ones they had - thus the lack of generational slaves -although they did exist in pleanty of areas outside the agribusiness areas of rome. And thus the constant need for slaves as tribute and captives. The Roman entrepot island (I forget its name) specializing in slaves, handled literally thousands a day , if I recall correctly -the number was staggering.

Delos? (No. Rhodes? Can't remember offhand) One of the Aegean Greek islands, anyway, which had a similar function in pre-Roman times, unless my memory is faulty (ask me about Classical Athens and I can give a pretty good rundown, at least down to the end of the Peloponnesian War, anyway ... but I'm spotty beyond that).

Phil