Classical Coercion: The Treatment of Women and Enslaved People in Ancient Athens and Rome
Introduction
Rome and Greece, particularly Athens, are often exalted for their political genius. Largely, this reputation is warranted, as the conception and refinement of representative government is one of the greatest achievements in history. Often, less credit is given to Roman and Athenian political thinkers than is deserved, as this development is often regarded as inevitable. If, somehow, we ran a simulation with the same conditions,many believe representative government would come about again. This is the belief that democracy or republic is the necessary conclusion of political history. However, history from the rise of Caesar to the Enlightenment suggests otherwise. In these centuries, representative government existed mostly as a series of sparse, failed experiments. Surely, the inability or disinterest of many rulers and societies to realize this paramount political invention signals to us the unique creativity and administrative prowess of the Athenians, and its refinement tells us something similar about the Romans.
Of course, no idea or superintendence is without fault. In their respective phases of representative government, Athens and Rome—and perhaps this outcome was inevitable—were nonetheless animated by remnants of the value systems according to which their monarchy and empire were governed. Since monarchy and empire are, by nature, more authoritarian than representative democracy and republic, it follows that ideals informed by the latter two government styles are more coercive. Here, I take coercion to mean “threat or use of punitive measures against states, groups, or individuals in order to force them to undertake or desist from specified actions.” This definition is especially useful because, unlike many others, it maintains precision without being so specific that its application cannot be stretched to evaluate the expanse of Greek and Roman histories.
Importantly, this is not a philosophical—that is, moral or ethical—undertaking. As such, my aim is not to measure the Greeks and Romans for any of, what the modern mind might consider, their shortcomings. While word choice and phrasing might betray distaste for slavery and the depletion of women’s rights, it is often commented upon that the Classical world cannot reasonably be held to modern moral and ethical standards. As such, my aim is to make this paper’s analysis and conclusions as evenhanded and amoral as is possible.
And further, these examples of moral inclinations were not chosen at random. Given the vastness of Greco-Roman history and the virtually endless complexity of each at any given time in this history, facets of the topic of coercion are as multitudinous as the subjects of Athenian and Roman domain themselves. Hence, to keep its focus to a manageable and consistently integrable scale, this paper will center enslaved people and women in Athens and Rome. These groups were specifically chosen because, as will be made clear throughout this paper, they bore the brunt of coercion in their societies. Like the proposed definition of coercion, these groups of people lend themselves to analysis by their indefinite presence in Greece and Rome.
Applied to the lives and conditions of the groups in question, this definition of coercion can guide us to a better understanding of the forces that moved Athens and Rome. Specifically, through this analysis, we might better understand the operation of coercion in authoritarian and representative democracies, as well as the differences between them. I will analyze the operation of the coercion of women and enslaved people through the enterprises of political theory & jurisprudence, governance, and culture. Accompanying my analysis, I will argue for the relevancy of each enterprise in their respective sections. My analysis will advance two conclusions: First, despite popular assumption, Athens and Rome maintained similar types and degrees of coercion in their authoritarian and representative democratic states. Second, many of the differences in coercion that do exist between the governing forms are purely aesthetic—that is, the differences exist superficially and in such a way that has little material effect on enslaved people and women.
I. Political Theory & Jurisprudence
An investigation into political theory and jurisprudence is illuminative in that it answers three crucial questions with regard to a given society’s degree of coercion: How do intellectuals, defined for this paper’s purposes as Athenian and Roman theorists and jurists, view the state ideally? What is deserved, and by whom are those things deserved, according to intellectuals? And, in what way does the state depart from the aspects of government that theory dictates are superior? Setting aside, for now, the last of these, the prior two questions privilege the opinions of intellectuals. Due to the inaccessibility of education throughout classical antiquity, careers as jurists and theorists were limited to those of noble birth. As such, theory and jurisprudence most closely approximate the philosophy of the heads of state because they are being produced by those with conditions closest to that of the heads of state, and are sometimes produced by those leaders themselves.
The foundation for deducing the character of the ideal state was the concept of natural law. For Plato, likely ancient Greece’s foremost monarchical thinker, natural law is dictated by nature itself, a position that—despite its intuitiveness—is not commonly held. He argues that guardians, those with who have wisdom and provide good counsel in “the science of government,” are far more scarce than their counterparts who best serve in roles as soldiers and producers. This, in Plato's view, is the natural and unvarying distribution of skill sets in the polis. If one can afford Plato the reasonable presupposition that the state ought to be governed by those with a talent for governing it, and because it is true that “a city established on principles of nature would be wise,” it must follow that those few who are wise enough to transcend into guardianship must have sole proprietorship over the polis. Plato continues, refining his ideal government to be headed by a philosopher-king who is advised by guardians. As Athens’ preeminent theorist, save for his apprentice Aristotle, Plato was at the forefront of a wave of Athenian pro-monarchical and aristocratic thought following the deposement of the Thirty Tyrants. Once the argument for a monarch and supporting aristocracy is made, the proposition that those leaders ought to have absolute authority to utilize violence to whatever ends they deem necessary is not questioned by Plato. Since, of course, the unchecked exercise of violence Then, the Athenians’ ideal government is one that heavily features coercion.
Further, Athenian natural law answers the second of the aforementioned questions: What is deserved, and by whom? Specifically, who deserves power and agency? In the arguments of Plato that have been discussed, there is a clear indication that there is some meritocratic determination of deserving. That is, the sole means through which guardians and philosopher-kings ascend to their stations is through possession of some mental faculty particularly suited for the governance of a polis. Yet, for Plato, this merit was largely dictated by an individual's immutable characteristics. For example, while Plato held, uniquely for his time, that women could perform in roles traditionally reserved for men (most importantly guardianship), he still reserved many intellectual endeavors for men. This is because, in Plato’s view, while women are capable of some intellectual tasks, the best of them “are as gifted only as the second best men.” Turning to his Laws, as The Republic is devoid of commentary on slavery, Plato says that enslaved people are able to “discern...but [are] unable to give any rational demonstration.” As is the case with women, Plato asserts lesser intellectual ability in enslaved people, such that they are inadequate in matters of government. Again, the overt endorsement of severe coercion in Athenian thought is apparent, as the state that exists in Plato’s theory legislates the necessity of, who they believe to be, lesser groups desisting from engagement reserved for male Athenians.
Democratic Athens’ theory also suggests a great degree of coercion, but is less concerned with coercion than their non-democratic counterparts. For example, Aristotle’s ideal Athenian democracy is comprised of citizens “who [have] the power to take part in the deliberative or judicial administration of [the] state,” a formulation which necessarily demarcates Aristotle’s democratic state as less coercive than Plato’s aristocratic-monarchy. Recall that Plato took it as rule of nature that the ideal polis is governed by the minority of its citizens, meaning that every other citizen is subject to the coercive force of the ruling few, whereas citizens in Aristotle’s polis are, ideally, subject only to the coercion that is democratically agreed upon. Yet still, while this ideal democracy is less coercive than its aristocratic-monarchical counterpart, it is not without its coercion. This is apparent in Aristotle’s conceptualization of natural law. In his view, the matter of whether slavery was a permissible instutition was forgone because he who can engage in “the exercise of mind is by nature intended to be lord and master, and that which can with its body give effect to such foresight is a subject.” Setting aside contradictions to Aristotle’s postulation here — those that arrive from slavery being most usually heritable or the result of economic desperation — he admits that his ideal democratic state violates the autonomy of an entire slave class, which was estimated to be as many as eighty-thousand people in the fifth and sixth centuries B.C. (57% of the estimated 140,000 Athenians in the fifth century). This coercive posture is similarly held for women. That is, for Aristotle, womens’ station was below Athenian men but above enslaved people. Indeed, Aristotle chastised foreign societies because, in them, “no distinction is made between women and slaves, because there is no natural ruler among [foreigners].” Alas, this half-way-human position of the woman in Aristotle’s society earned her some input in household and familial matters, as her husband was supposed to “exercise republican government” over his wife, but it could not garner her any such liberty in the handling of the state.
Moreover, coercion is further implicated by the Athenian democrat’s answer to the question: What is deserved, and by whom? As was true in the discussion of Plato, Aristotle’s natural law has a significant impact on his idea of deserving. As has been discussed, Aristotle’s starting point for settling questions of deservingness is the man’s natural right to be the patriarch of his family, governing over his wife and the enslaved people in his household. Of course, this must necessarily assert a natural right of women to be dominated and for individuals, on the basis of heritage and economic destitution, to be owned and operated as property. Videlicet, Athenian men were owed coercive power over out-groups such as enslaved people and women, who themselves were, by their nature, owed almost nothing.
Furthermore, similarly to that of Athens, classical Roman theory supports democracy having downscaled, yet still extant, coercion when compared to its monarchical counterparts. Though, this is the case largely because Roman thinkers in the empire, especially the dominant schools of thought, being Stoicism and Epicureanism. Detailing the differences between these two schools, and then drawing distinctions between them and Plato and Aristotle, would be largely redundant. Having already discussed the two Greeks’ theory, recounting their philosophy any further would be overly granular and would require too much contextualization and explanation as to be sufficiently precise. As such, the only information requisite to an understanding of how imperial Roman theory is more coercive than republican Rome is this: Stoic philosophy places great importance in one’s natural obligation to govern themselves and regard outside forces with disinterest. This often resulted in a brand of, what the modern reader may recognize as, social darwinism, which has been rigorously evaluated for its coercive inclination in its own right.,
While Roman republican theory was also influenced by the work of Plato and Aristotle, it provides a rigorous application of philosophical frameworks to legal theory. Whereas the political opinions of stoics and epicureans must often be gleaned from ethical or metaphysical treatments, the political opinions of the republicans were made plain, due most notably to the efforts of first-century statesman and jurist Marcus Tullius Cicero. Cicero, like Plato and the Stoics, maintained that there was a divinely mandated law in nature which “has not had its origin in the opinions of men, but has been implanted by some innate instinct.” This law “summons to duty by its commands, and averts from wrongdoing by its prohibition.” As such the well-built and maintained state is one that, through meticulous reasoning, finds the fragments of natural law, unites them into a legal continuity, and abides by them fervently. Cicero concludes that one who does not use their divinely issued reason to engage civically denies their own nature as an inherently natural being. In this, Cicero’s thought is unique for his time, as this formulation is reminiscent of early modern humanism, in that it argues for the transformative power of intellectual engagement in both the individual and society. His encouragement of individuals to take part in their own governing and ward off coercion is starkly contrasted when considered against the proto-social darwinist attitudes of many Stoics. For this reason, in conjunction with the outspokenness present in his work, it is perplexing that Cicero rarely comments on how, or whether, natural law affects enslaved people. He apparently believes that his theory of natural law, which insists intellect is an inherent human trait, is not contradictory to his having owned people, or those peoples’ inability to engage civically, which he maintains is a naturally human act. The question that might naturally follow is to ask whether Cicero was of the opinion that enslaved people were people at all. Indeed, if Cicero was not convinced of the personhood of enslaved people, though we may think it grim, he would have maintained an ideological consistency. However, through trust placed in many of the enslaved people on his estate and his treatment of freedmen, most notably Marcus Tullius Tiro, we know that through Cicero thought enslaved people were, at least, capable of personhood once they were freed. This would mean that his owning enslaved people was not only denying their personhood, but actively suppressing it. This contradiction is again present in Cicero’s opinion on the rights of women. However, in this he is, rather unfortunately, as outspoken as he tended to be on topics of Roman civil and private issues. For example, Helen E. Wieand notes that Cicero, upset at new marriage laws that allowed women more autonomy than they had at any other point in Roman history, complains “that the lawyers had found ways and means whereby women no longer depended upon their guardians but their guardians upon them.” , Then, perhaps in offense to his own theory of natural law, Cicero accepts and perpetuates coercion when used against enslaved people and women with very little intellectual engagement. In this way, his theory is similarly coercive to that of his imperial predecessors, but is still less so due his theory being in favor of the liberty of free Athenian men.
II. Governance
In addition, Roman government reveals significant information about coercion. Here, differences in coercive capability and the use of coercion between monarchy and republic can be best examined because, as is to be expected, government is the area wherein the state is most able to exercise its influence. Specifically, this analysis will seek to reveal that, while the coercion that appears in the jurisprudence & political theory of classical monarchies and republics are more similar than one may initially expect, there is even less discrepancy in the coercion employed by classical governments. To explore coercion in this regard, this paper will turn to the treatment of women and enslaved people in Roman imperial pursuits. This is a worthwhile discussion in that imperialism is the most apparent realization of coercion—by its being the martial imposition of a government onto a, generally, unwilling second party—and, as such, an analysis of it best yields the coercive methods and intent of the Roman governments. Imperialism is specifically useful for this paper’s comparative purposes because, as this section will argue, there is little discrepancy in the execution of imperialism between Rome when managed by a senate and Rome under rule of an emperor. This section will most prominently feature Rome and will be supplemented by discussion of Athens where necessary, as to avoid redundancy.
Rome expanded rapidly through imperialism in the final stages of the republic during the first century B.C. A large cause for this increase in rate of expansion was the example set by Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix, or Sulla, who, through his civil war, proved that Rome’s republican mechanisms had deteriorated to the point that they could be felled by an individual with experienced legions and adroit political and military maneuvering. In Roman Republican law and popular thought, there existed “universally recognised ‘laws of war’ which essentially gave the victor the right to do as they pleased with those they conquered.” For the Romans, not only did war exist to maintain or bring about new political and economic realities, but it was also useful as a metric for determining which of the battling peoples were superior. That is, in the same way that tests of intellect or physical prowess might dictate the superiority of a master over their slave, conquest delineated the superiority of the triumphant party. It followed that once a group of people was conquered, it was thereby proven that those people’s natural state was as slaves to Rome. These examples of military pursuit and enslavement indicate the coercive nature of the Roman government in two respects. Similarly, many schools of Roman philosophy believed some variation of the idea that “men differed in native ability,” and because the Romans had superior “wisdom and virtue,” they should “rule for the benefit of the ruled.” These permissive attitudes about slavery and imperialism manifested themselves as coercive relationships between Rome and those subject to its imperialist persuits.
The Roman war against the Samnites epitomizes the conversion of these attitudes into coercive action. Rome was initially disinterested in the conflict but would be roused by the political submission of Campania—the Italian city-state being assaulted by the Samnites—along with the opportunity to seize immense Samnite wealth. Rome presented peace terms to the Samnite assembly who refused, prompting Roman aggression. After key victories in 343 B.C. the war drew to a close. In total, throughout this conflict, an estimated 58,000 to 77,000 Samnite war captives were enslaved by Rome. Combined, the bloody Punic Wars brought 279,000 to 319,000 war prisoners to Rome as enslaved people. In total, between the years 297 B.C. and 167 B.C, Rome captured 672,000-731,000 war prisoners who would then be enslaved in Rome. In Rome, legal rights were vestiges of personhood. As such, these rights did not extend to enslaved people due to the Roman doctrine servus non habet personam (the slave has no person). Further, because the capture and of war prisoners is a punitive measure taken to force captives into slavery, Roman imperialism—through its capture and enslavement of war prisoners—is an instance of coercion.
The second manner in which Rome’s military conquest is coercive can be formulated as follows: All acts of imperialism are instances of coercion, therefore the Roman government, through its sanctioning and execution of imperialism, is coercive. Keeping with the example of Rome’s interaction with Samnium, the first instance of coercion is the Campainian submission to Rome. Rome, through its unwillingness to assist them in resisting Samnite invasion, essentially forces Campania into a position of subservience. That is, Rome leveraged its dominance over the Italian peninsula by threatening to withhold assistance to impel Campania into a docile position. Then, Rome was again coercive in its military occupation and colonization of Samnium. Understanding that all occurrences of imperialism must have at least one (but often both) of these same forms of coercion, political extortion or military conquest, it follows that all occurrences of imperialism are coercive, a rule from which Rome is not exempt.
Imperialism in the Western Roman Empire was virtually identical to that of the republic. For instance, Trajan’s Dacian campaigns involved the same coercive elements as did the republican Samnite wars. The Roman relationship with Dacia was damaged in the late republic when Dacia offered to support Augustus in the budding civil war. Upon Augustus’ refusal, Dacia lent support to Mark Antony, which would spur a series of penal campaigns by Augustus against Dacia once he gained control of Rome. Dacia’s military capability, proximity to Rome’s allies, and vast wealth all contributed to building tension between the powers until Emperor Trajan marched in 101 A.D. Important victories at Tapae and Zermizegethusa would secure a Roman victory. Trajan would subdue Dacia once more after a revolt in 104. Emperor Trajan’s interaction with Dacia shares both of its coercive features of the republic’s conflict with Samnium: 1) as a pursuit of expansion, the empire’s campaign against Dacia is subject to the same reasoning that finds any other imperialist act coercive and, 2) though the exact numbers of war captives/would-be enslaved people from Trajan’s Dacian campaigns did not survive, “abundant visual material,” lends itself to these figures being “consistent,” with that of other Roman campaigns.
So, there appears to be an, in effect, identicality in the coercive nature of the imperialist pursuits of the Roman Republic and Empire. However, this similarity did not translate into the desire to justify expansion. That is, where republican officials wished to justify or altogether dismiss critiques of their military convention being coercive, writers in the empire had no such inclination. Here, the pattern of republics only aesthetically differentiating themselves from empire persists.
S. E. Smethurst notes Cicero’s belief that “worthy” governments “aspir[e] to perfect justice.” This expresses itself as a goal to “make the life of mankind safer and richer,” and “increase the resources of the human race.” From these premises Cicero concludes that “war can only be justified if undertaken to maintain fides or national security,” or for the purpose of defending their allies, as “the highest ambition of our magistrates and generals was to defend our provinces and allies with justice and honour.” Here, Cicero shows a sensitivity for the critique that Roman imperialism is unjust. due to its violation of other, formerly sovereign peoples. He disputes this notion of Rome’s conquest; Rome only engages militarily when they are forced to do so by foreign powers threatening themselves or their allies. Cicero thought that, because it only acted in the defense of itself or its allies, Rome “could be called more accurately a protectorate of the world than a dominion.” In this way, the republic's foremost thinker recognized an issue regarding the way Rome behaves militarily and attempts to remedy this moral impediment by disputing the coercive conduct itself, on which indictments against Rome are based. Though, as earlier parts of this section argue, the republic’s imperialist practices are more coercive than Cicero gives them credit for. However, Cicero’s position is still worth noting for its divergence from his Imperial counterparts.
Take, for example, one of Cicero’s contemporaries, the first Roman Emperor, Augustus. In his Deeds of the Divine Augustus, the emperor is not compelled to excuse his coercion in the same manner that Cicero did. Instead he wears his actions as a badge of honor. The closest Augustus comes to acknowledging the possible moral objections to his actions is waxing about his generosity for “spar[ing] all of the citizens who sought pardon,” and that fact that “for those countries for which [he] was able to safely forgive,” Augustus “preferred to preserve than to destroy.” Augustus recognizes that the same coercive elements which are the subject of Cicero’s apology exist in the actions of his own government but, unlike Cicero, Augustus has no reservations about them. Taken as representatives for their respective forms of government, Cicero and Augustus, along with the Samnite Wars and Trajan’s Dacian campaigns, illustrate that no disparity exists between the imperialism of the Roman Republic and Empire. Instead, the difference in coercion is solely philosophical—that is, aesthetic.
As was often the case in Rome, imperialism impacted women of coerced demographics uniquely, as “women and children represented the majority,” of war captives. Not only were women more subject to coercion through overrepresentation in war captivity, but they were also treated in especially cruel manners. For example, women war captives would be separated from their husbands, beaten and/or raped to extort the husbands into surrenduring what little money or possessions they had to secure their wives’ safety. This attitude towards women—that they were spoils to be won in battle—can be seen as having been spawned from the broader Roman view of women as necessarily subordinate and inferior to the men of Rome. Particularly illuminating is Roman womens’ legal rights. In Rome’s tiered citizenship system, the best women could have hoped for was being a second class system. This status would situate women between enslaved people and men with full citizenship. This granting of some rights, though not so much that they were equal shareholders in the society, exposed Roman women to unique sorts of coercion. Specifically, many forms of coercion were aimed at circumventing the rights women had, an effort that women could not resist because of the rights they were not afforded. Take the law in the Republic that required a man’s possessions, upon his death, must be distributed “among sui heredes,” (one’s own offspring) regardless of gender. For some men who did not believe women possessed shrewdness and enterprise, it was a better option to leave their infant daughters to die rather than risking the girls growing up to inherit and squander their estates; more overt instances the Roman government’s coercion of women are abundant (such as womens’ inability to vote or hold public office) but these anfractuous instances may more deeply illuminate the problem of the Roman government’s coercion of women by revealing its ubiquity—even in those places where the government would afford women rights, they were deprived of others just enough that a sufficiently motivated citizen male could bypass any woman’s rights that were inconvenient or undesirable to him.
III. Culture
Then, having considered the difference in coercion between monarchies and republics, the conclusion of this discussion must be an analysis of coercion in culture. This analysis is a worthwhile pursuit for this paper’s purposes because culture is an exceedingly difficult enterprise for governments to exercise control over. As previously discussed, jurisprudence & political theory as well as governance are the domains of those adjacent to leaders of the state, if not the leaders themselves as in the case of Cicero, and government is necessarily the enterprise of state officials. As such, culture has unique potential to yield insight due to its being the least government controlled pursuit of those discussed here. Scilicet, culture is a highly useful metric for determining the effectiveness of coercive forces in a society because it can measure the ability of government mandated coercion to manifest itself in the area most devoid of government. Then, to evaluate the success of the state in imposing coercion, this paper will conclude by evaluating instances of governmental coercive structures being perpetrated by the people’s culture, looking specifically at the cultural conditions of enslaved people and women, primarily through the cultural enterprise of story.
The treatment of Athenian women, as well as Greek women more broadly, in stories suggests that the coercion of women in theory and government was similarly held in culture. Consider womens’ lack of agency as it pertains to mythical marriages. An example of this is the goddess Hera’s marriage to the god Zeus. The sky god was unsuccessful in his many attempts to court Hera. Still enamored, Zeus resolved to, what G.W. Elderkin overly generously describes as, “gain his desires,” through tricking Hera by appearing as a cuckoo to have her lower her guard and forcing himself onto her. To avoid being shamed, Hera agrees to marry Zeus. Similarly, Persephone the goddess of spring was kidnapped and brought to Hades by the god of the same name. She was subsequently trapped in the underworld and released on the condition that she return for a portion of each year in the winter months. And, in the interest of quelling the scores of gods courting her, Aphrodite was married to the blacksmith god Hephaestus, against her will. All of these stories from Greek myth share the feature that the women at the forefront of them are stirpped of their decision making ability in the matter of their marriages, be it through the force of their soon-to-be husbands or having been volunteered by other, male olympians. This mirrors the posture of the Athenians in their theory and governance, in that the primary responsibility of women is to be married; when and to whom they are married is rarely under the control of the woman. Further, the point that Athenian stories observe the same coercive institutions with regard to enslaved people hardly need be argued beyond the fact that slavey exists inside mythological contexts and is passively accepted. And indeed, this passive acceptance is present, for example, in the Odyssey, where one of the epic poem’s leads proclaims that he will be “lord of [his] own house and of the slaves that [his father] won.” Here, not only is the institution of slavery accepted, but it is used in a similar fashion to that of the real Greeks, where enslaved people were seen a symbol of status and wealth. Through this, the human who has already been reduced to slavery is further reduced to on object of their enslavers gratification; the enslaved person in Greek culture is forced to take and dessist from whichever actions the enslaver dictates to the extent that their humanity is subject to their enslaver’s whims. In these ways, the coercive forces present, to varying degrees, in Athenian monarchy and democracy manifest themselves in the stories created by and shared among the Athenian people.
These same phenomena can be found in Roman stories. Because Roman myth is descendant from, or at least shares a common ancestor with, Greek myth, the stories of the goddesses also exist in the Roman cannon, and therefore the cultural implications of the stories of Hera, Persephone, and Aphrodite are true for their Roman counterparts Juno, Proserpina, and Venus. However, this coercive inclination in Roman culture which limits women to positions as only wives and mothers is made more apparent by Rome’s unique myths. The Roman historian Titus Livius, often referred to as Livy, describes an event that has since been named the Rape of the Sabine Women. This was an event in early Rome wherein, because they did not have enough women to begin populating their newly founded city, the men of Rome stole the women of Sabine from their homes and families in the interest of bringing them back to Rome so that they might marry and birth a new generation of Romans. Here again, the stipping of womens’ autonomy is glorified, as Rome’s founding myth features the mass coercion of a group of women for the perpetuation of Rome. This glorification of the coercion of women was a trait passed down Roman culture by its imperial and republican governments. And again, similarly coercive attitudes were held by Roman culture for enslaved people. An example of this Roman cultural feature is Titus Marcus Platutus’ play Captivi. The comedy follows an enslaved person, Tyndarus, and his slaver Philocrates as the pair are captured and forced into slavery under another man, Heigo. One of the play’s central goals is to present Tyndarus as courageous. This is primarily done through having Tyndarus stay in captivity to afford his master the opportunity to escape their predicament. This is presented as a noble undertaking on Tyndarus’ part, as evidenced by Philocrates’ expression of deep gratitude for Tyndarus’s sacrifice. This fact, that Tyndarus is noble because of his self-sacrifice, suggests a belief on behalf of Captivi that it is the moral obligation of the enslaved person to forfeit their safety and freedom to their enslaver, even when the enslaver is unable to force the enslaved person to do so. Then, the sort of coercive domination that this rendition of Roman culture wishes to impose onto enslaved people outscales that of the Roman government, be it empire or democracy. It not only seeks to coerce in the physical sense, where slavers dictate the actions of enslaved people, but this form of coercion also requires mental domination, since, even after Tyndarus essentially gains his freedom from his enslaver, he is noble because he recognizes that servitude to Philocrates is still his responsibility. In this way, Roman culture requires the metaphysical admission by enslaved people that they exist for the purpose of serving their enslaver.
Conclusion
The effects of coercion in Athens and Rome were ubiquitous, particularly as they acted on enslaved people and women. Coercion and coercive influences comprised a complex apparatus that permeated the society. Classical political theory and jurisprudence had the effect of society’s intellectuals, who were often adjacent to political leaders or were leaders themselves, deciding that they, themselves, were the only people deserving and capable of effectively utilizing civil rights. This attitude inspired governing that upheld these opinions, where the notion that enslaved people should be granted rights before they were freedmen was hardly ever considered, much less the notion that slavery as an institution might be foul. Moreover, where women were given limited rights, they were not so sound that a motivated man could not have circumvented them. This posture dominated political theory & jurisprudence as well as governance to the extent that it pervaded the least government controlled of the discussed enterprises, culture.
Here, an objection might be raised: this section’s meditation seems to be conducted in a more partial manner than the prior sections were intended to. I turn to the following sentiment to both respond and conclude. Ultimately, while coercion can be handled clinically, the other facets of its importance scarcely scale to its chief trait as an agent acting on people. That is, while coercion does have some inherent academic value, none of its qualities can ever supersede the critical nature of its effect on peoples’ lives. And yet still, we cannot reasonably hold the Athenians and Romans to account by our standards—and, indeed, it would do us no good, as the Classical world has risen and fallen, and its deeds are carved into history. Instead, we must glean what we can from our Classical precedent; we must make their example conform to our sensibilities and be inspired by their political genius and, in equal measure, nauseated by their coercive misgivings. Athens’ and Rome’s last gift to us should be the opportunity to learn from, and improve on, their society.
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