Roman Slavery Was Not Like America's -- Kyle Harper [0:45]

YouTube ^ | April 25, 2025 | Dwarkesh Patel

[SunkenCiv]

The Roman ideology of slavery is not racialized. It's not like the Romans think that the Greeks or the Germans are like some fundamentally separate kind of human that justifies their exploitation. The Roman ideology of slavery is really rooted in the law of property and status. So they think that slaves are people who've been conquered and rather than killed, they've been spared and they've been sold into the condition of being somebody else's property. And this seems to mentally explain to them where their slave system comes from and why it's justifiable. 

It's sort of like disturbing in a way, isn't it? You see, even in the ancient world, there are different models that people use to say that slavery is okay. I mean, Aristotle develops a theory of natural slavery that actually some people deserve to be slaves by their very nature and that it's actually good for. 

Roman Slavery Was Not Like America's -- Kyle Harper | 0:45 
Dwarkesh Patel | 1.2M subscribers | 10,522,770 views | April 25, 2025

 

YouTube transcript reformatted at textformatter.ai follows.

---

TOPICS: History; Science; Travel
KEYWORDS: dwarkeshpatel; godsgravesglyphs; kyleharper; romanempire; rome; slavery; youtube

[SunkenCiv]

Transcript

The Roman ideology of slavery is not racialized. It's not like the Romans think that the Greeks or the Germans are like some fundamentally separate kind of human that justifies their exploitation. The Roman ideology of slavery is really rooted in the law of property and status. So they think that slaves are people who've been conquered and rather than killed, they've been spared and they've been sold into the condition of being somebody else's property. And this seems to mentally explain to them where their slave system comes from and why it's justifiable.

It's sort of like disturbing in a way, isn't it? You see, even in the ancient world, there are different models that people use to say that slavery is okay. I mean, Aristotle develops a theory of natural slavery that actually some people deserve to be slaves by their very nature and that it's actually good for.

[SunkenCiv]

800 years before the Black Death, the very same bacteria ravaged Rome, killing 60%+ of the population in many areas. Also, back-to-back volcanic eruptions caused a mini Ice Age, leaving Rome devastated by famine and disease. I chatted with historian Kyle Harper about this and much else: Rome as a massive slave society. 

Why Rome actually fell: plagues, slavery, & ice age 
-- Kyle Harper | 1:24:12 
Dwarkesh Patel | 1.2M subscribers | 230,806 views | April 24, 2025

00:00:00 - Plague's impact on Rome's collapse
00:07:08 - Rome's Little Ice Age
00:12:35 - Why did progress stall in Rome's Golden Age?
00:24:39 - Slavery in Rome
00:37:06 - Was agriculture a mistake?
00:48:26 - Disease's impact on cognitive function
01:00:30 - Plague in India and Central Asia
01:06:00 - The next pandemic
01:17:32 - How Kyle uses LLMs
01:19:35 - De-extinction of lost species

[SunkenCiv]

[rexthecat]

Slavery worked well for the Romans, except for that fateful day when a slave in a household of sixty slaves and four Romans said to his colleagues, “Hey guys, look around you. We outnumber these guys!!

[Jonty30]

It was worse. You were considered an objected and you were renamed by your function.

[ProgressingAmerica]

The Transatlantic slave situation was unlike the rest. It's a shame the needle for this record keeps getting moved back to the beginning.

Rome didn't found any of the 13 colonies. Rome had no slave ships land at St. Augustine. Rome is irrelevant.

[Adder]

“Aristotle develops a theory of natural slavery that actually some people deserve to be slaves by their very nature and that it’s actually good...”

Sounds vaguely familiar...

Aristotle was THE last science word for centuries. “Trust the science”?

[exPBRrat]

Separate but equal.

[C210N]

Roman Slavery was much like the American Slavery of today, except today there are many more slaves and we aren’t generally aware that we are.

Slaves of Rome were provided peculium/denari. They could buy food with this, some saved it up to buy manumission.

Today, we slaves work our entire lives to buy the provided food, shelter and clothing. We provide over 50% of our incomes to the various levels of “government”.

The monetary system was more benign then, as over hundreds of years the denari devalued from 95% precious metal to 35%. With increasing clipping to boot.

Today, we have inflation, fiat, and devaluing of the currency from 1913 levels to just 3% of that value today.

[A_perfect_lady]

Is he sure it wasn’t racialized? I always heard that the word “slave” came from the Slavs that were enslaved, and yes, it was very racial.

[SunkenCiv]

There were three Servile Wars, the last one is familiar to most because the leader was Spartacus. All of these occurred during the "Roman Republic", and led to the rise in importance of Crassus, Pompey, and his protege Julius Caesar.

Most of Italy was owned or controlled by about 35 extended families (basically, households of the same 35 surnames but related as cousins and whatnot) which made up the Senate, called all the shots, and owned most of the slaves. They had multiple estates, many of which were supervised by skilled small groups of slaves and/or freedmen and produced food for market.

The population of Rome was made up of a lot of slaves, who did the shopping, cooking, cleaning, tailoring, carrying litters, tending horses, errands, courier work, spying, etc. Higher-end professions such as tutors were generally well-educated (often Greek-born) men who entered slavery as indentures, as they were in demand and the children of the household wouldn't need their services for that many years.

[SunkenCiv]

You heard wrong. Slav is a term from the Slavic root language and (it sez here) means 'those who speak the same language'.

[wintertime]

p

[A_perfect_lady]

No, I mean that the Romans used Slav to mean slave because most of them were Slavs. And that’s how the word slave came into our language.

[SunkenCiv]

No, that’s not what happened, at all.

[A_perfect_lady]

So where does the word “slave” come from?

[FLT-bird]

Yeah but.....what they’re not mentioning is that because Rome took so many slaves, they viewed them as disposable and did not hesitate to send them to the arena to fight to the death or to mines where they would soon die due to horrible conditions, etc. Slaves in America were expensive. Owners did not want them to die. Indentured Servants got more dangerous jobs and died at higher rates than slaves did. From an economic point of view that makes sense. You only “owned” the indentured servant for a limited period of time. Your financial loss was therefore nowhere near as great if they died.

[SunkenCiv]

14th century (IOW, NOT from ancient Rome), Noun

Middle English sclave, from Anglo-French or Medieval Latin; Anglo-French esclave, from Medieval Latin sclavus, from Sclavus Slav; from the frequent enslavement of Slavs in central Europe during the early Middle Ages.

[FLT-bird]

The Romans overcame that by having laws which dictated that if a slave murdered the owner/owners, EVERY SINGLE SLAVE in the household would be put to death.

[SunkenCiv]

Yeah but, my ass.