(i) Royal servants are free and well paid:
"'We have no slavery or serfdom in Ys. Too much have we seen what they have done to Rome.'" (p. 133)
(ii) "'Ys lives mainly by her ships. Most are fishing craft or merchantmen. A few are raiders...'" (ibid.)
(iii) "Ys required the hauling away of rubbish." (p. 134)
(iv) "...sewers did not drain into the sea, which would have angered Lir, but into tanks of fuller's earth in chamber excavated below the city. From time to time these were emptied and the muck carted inland, where farmers were glad to have it for their fields." (ibid.)
(v) "...folk generally looked happy." (p. 135)
(vi) "The city-state is at peace, safe, less prosperous than formerly but in no dire want, seemingly well governed." (ibid.)
(vii) "'...the Gallicenae command the weather...'" (p. 139)
(ix) "'You've a livelier commerce than aught I've seen elsewhere, even in Londinium...'" (p. 141)
2 comments:
I've always found this a little implausible. Slavery was ubiquitous throughout the Roman and pre-Roman Mediterranean worlds, -including- Carthage and Phoenicia before it. If anything it was even more common in cities than in the Roman world in general, and slave-ownership extended quite far down the social scale.
As an aside, the older historical view that the status of Late Roman -colonii- (tenant farmers) was a prefigurement of medieval serfdom has been rather thoroughly debunked.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
You beat me to making similar comments! I was going to write it would have been more plausible to have seen SOME slaves in Ys.
Ad astra! Sean
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