"Walls, towers, battlements gloomed under Draco and the Milky Way." (p. 68)
This is a Milky Way reference that we seem not to have noticed before.
Slave children are caged in a stable. A boy has heard that the God in this city, Jesus, is kind and asks Gratillonius whether he is Jesus. Gratillonius has to say that he is not but he promises that Jesus will always watch over them. What else can he say? Neither he nor they are Christians but the name of the god hardly matters at this stage. He advises them to be brave. If they are brave and survive, then as adults they will have to make sense of their experience with or without reference to a god. In Poul Anderson's Technic History, the Terran Empire re-introduces slavery but does not seize children for non-payment of taxes.
"The faith of Gratillonius was pledged to the man who could save Rome. Later that man would set about restoring her true law, making her again the Mother of all." (pp. 74-75)
Gratillonius supports a usurper. Dominc Flandry in the Terran Empire opposes them - until there is no alternative.
3 comments:
Slavery had always been a part of Roman society -- like just about all other societies, from hunter-gatherer bands to empires.
It varied in prevalence and importance from time to time and place to place; for example, 1/3 of the population of Siam (Thailand) were slaves in the 1860's.
The first large area to actually -not- have chattel slavery was Western Europe in the middle ages; this was a substantial change, since as recently as Domesday Book the population of England had been 15% slave, and that was probably a sharp decrease from 1066.
The second, IIRC, was Japan in 1590.
Otherwise it was omnipresent until the 18th-19th centuries, when Europeans and northern Americans turned against it and then (via armies, gunboats and more subtle forms of coercion) forced everyone else to follow suit.
For example, Russian "serfdom", abolished in the 1860's, was actually more like chattel slavery, in that people could be bought and sold as individuals -- there were ads in Russian newspapers of the time, things like "Blacksmith for sale" or "chambermaid going cheap".
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Alas, these days, we are regressing. Some parts of the world, mostly in Muslim countries, are seeing a revival of chattel slavery. Precisely because Western influence, and fear of Western power and disapproval, seems to be waning.
Even if, blessedly, not enforceable at law, functionally de facto forms of slavery exists in Western nations, such as the sex slave victims (women and children) being trafficked, bought and sold, etc., by their pimps. Disgusting!
Ad astra! Sean
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