Slavery In The Roman Empire Essay

The pericope occurred in Capernaum, part of the Galilee region of Palestine under the occupation of the Roman Empire. At the very start of the occupation the ruler Hyrcanus was placed as the highest leader of the land. He was a weak an ineffectual man, thus allowing the eventual usurpation of Herod Antipater. This event installed the Herodian dynasty which culminated in the rule of Herod Antipas at the time of Jesus. The area became a veritable battleground of political unrest as the nation had been continually overtaken by various other groups. The Romans were unbearably oppressive to the Jewish people. The religions of the two bodies clashed in nearly every aspect. The Romans were a polytheist empire who worshipped many gods and treated …show more content…
Typical slaves were seen as little more than property. The men were used primarily for labor while the women were kept for sexual acts. Race and ethnicity were of no specific consequence; they were often war captives, debtors and their families, or the children of those currently held in slavery. It was eventually written into Roman law that though they possessed “inner subjectivity and moral agency,” the slave was still owned by someone and was therefore automatically inferior. There was a heady enslavement process with the Romans that involved three crucial steps. The first was that the slave had to be made a “beast of burden.” They were forced into menial and backbreaking labor. Next they suffered repeated beatings that often included random acts of violence and aggression which encompassed sexual violence as well. Lastly they were sold and resold as a passive commodity on the market. On the other hand, the Romans did recognize that slavery was a convention by the nation, created by laws, and not by nature. They enslaved the people because they were stronger, not because natural law dictated it. However, no matter the view, the average life of a slave was full of hardship, suffering, and