I viewed the you tube video linked below and quite enjoyed the presentation. I would recommend it for children interested in history.

The Romans experienced their three Servile Wars.

Servile meant slavery, in ancient Latin and in early modern English up to and including the 1850s.

But in the Modern American slave mind only Slave—an Arabic term used in the 900s to designated European sex servants and later assigned exclusively to Africans—may mean unfree forced laborer, or chattel. Even lists of “chattel” including “servants” are not proof for the Modern American slave mind, as only those we worship in pale abasement may have been wronged. We, Gods repentant, stepping aside to worship the young gods, may never have been held in bondage. The ego of the American mind is such that he may only be mistreated or ruled by his own consent, never by force.

It has often astonished me that modern Christian scholars claim that the slavery condoned in the New Testament and Old Testament were not true slave conditions. This despite the fact that the Founding Fathers of Plantation America constantly patterned their economics and ethics on ancient Rome, down to and including the foundation of this misbegotten republic. The anti-slavery arguments of the Abolishionist Movement failed on the biblical level, with Cotton Mather crushing all such arguments before the fact. Abolishionist Christians used Enlightenment and other secular arguments conflated with Christian doctrine and Gospel to argue against slavery.

Why cannot we accept this?

Why must scholars deny the Roman definition of slavery to paint some benevolent picture of ancient forced labor?

I do not know.

I only care to set the record straight.

In the first two Servile Wars in Sicily, which were multi-ethnic, two pairs of co-rebel generals Eunus, the prophet and his general, and thirty years later, another prophet and his General Athenian, rose up much like Nat Turner, claiming a gift for prophecy. And, like Toussaint and Dessalines in Haiti, these men also claimed kingship. Kingship was regarded as a necessary step in protecting the common man from the Oligarchs. In a like mind the soldiers of George Washington wished for him to stand against the Oligarchs and take on the mantel of kingship. But he maintained his loyalty to his class and declined.

The honesty of the servile masses of freed slaves is astonishing. They fought across only one line—class distinction, Free Roman against Freed Slave. Of interest is the fact that the militarily able escaped slaves, generally outnumbered the actual Roman military in the theater by 3-to-1 across all three wars.

That settles the manpower question, as to whether more folk were free or slave. The soldiers were temporarily unfree but had volunteered in the main.

The traditional apology for slavery is that the slave is unfit for freedom and he must be taken care of by his master.

Really, even if he is more assertive, more imaginative, and more skilled and kills the free man in battle?

Interestingly, the two prophet leaders of the first two wars were equal in generalship and political acumen to the Counsels and Tribune sent against them. These religious saviors and would be emperors, in a very Mosaic way, both allied with a warrior, the warrior chief of the 2nd war being Athenian, who agreed, much like Joshua, to be the war leader of the rebellion. Both of these war leaders were better than all but one of the Roman generals, one being Athenian’s equal, and also morally exceeded the Roman commanders in hero qualities.

This indicates that there was no justice in Roman slavery, that better men—such as the philosopher Epictetus—were simply cursed by vile Fortune to serve lesser men.

The Third Servile War, featured Spartacus, Crixus and Oanamanus, professional fighting men, who allied with one another along ethnic lines. Among these three leaders, Spartacus proved totally superior to all of his Roman enemies, who was indeed the best man in the entire empire. There was a religious aspect to Spartacus’ rebellion, in that he seemed to be allied with a Thracian Priestess, in much the same way that various Mammaloi and Pappaloi religious figures in Haiti allied with Dessalines and Toussaint. The religious aspect seems to have been key for developing mass movements of slaves, which makes sense in that these slave societies depend on metaphysic ideologies to maintain power—in later stages Plantation America, this was the ideology of White Supremacy. This ideology had about a 30-year life span from the late 1820s thru 1850s and would be rebooted in later times, in increasingly in-authentic variations.

Most importantly, to deny the Modern Christian Abolishionist case made in such books as Timothy Keller’s The Reason for God, why would hundreds of thousands of slaves held in Roman bondage, revolt against an unbeatable military machine knowing that the ultimate result would be to be nailed to a cross along the Apian way and suffer the very fate of the Son of Man?

Even then, when tens of thousands of lowly gladiators and agricultural and pleasure slaves willingly marched to the fate of the Christ, without any notion of Heavenly redemption and resurrection at the hands of God the Father, how is it that that the Modern Christian yet denies that any human other than an African American was ever held in unjust bondage?

Why then did these men escape, fight against unbeatable odds and die, many committing mass suicide like the Zealots at Massada rather than give the Romans the pleasure of their humiliation in the Arena, and others accepting willingly the fate of Christ without the hope for heavenly intercession?

Did they perhaps disagree with Cotton Mather and other Founding Fathers who waxed grand about A Good Master Well-Served?

Perhaps they were simply not good slaves and deserved their cruel portion of fate.

The Three Servile Wars

How bad it sucked to be a Roman Slave