Quote:
Originally Posted by Plane
The treatment of people who are presently incarcerated (or a woman unable to divorce in societies where they are treated like property of husband) also begs the question of the difference between being "property in name" v "property in function". Whether or not you are technically considered property, when your freedoms/movements are restricted (as is done to prisoners) deservedly or not, the line between free/slave can become blurry.
That prisoners/wives have "rights" wouldn't really be a dividing line, because societies like Rome also passed laws protecting slaves from certain things, effectively giving them rights. Claudius gave freedom to abandoned slaves, Nero gave them the right to file complaints against masters in court, Antoninus Pious made it criminal for masters to kill slaves without just cause, Constantine freed slaves whose masters mutilated them, and Constantius II made genitally mutilating slaves a capital offense. So it's more like the lack of specific rights which would define them, such as right to choose where to live, which prisoners clearly also lack
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One could also say that a slave is defined by the lack of a right to HIT BACK. If someone assaults a freeman he is guilty of assault in a civil society and starts a feud, a duel, or a brawl in a less well organized one. Assaulting a slave requires compensation to the owner, because the slave cannot be wronged.
One notable point in English law is when Alfred declared the King the avenger of any travellers in his realm. Presumably before every patriarch avenged locals but travelers were either guys-with-swords or slaves who had not been captured yet.
I remember that brought home in Wouk's duology. In the beginning Slote was able to tell the SS officer effectively, "What the heck is it your business whether or not we have Jews in our diplomatic convoy under the flag of a nation that has a big bad navy and a bigger badder industrial complex? At Auschwitz at the end, Jews if they survived, were SLAVES. And worse off slaves then most. They had no strength to hit back on their own and no one had anyone to hit back for them.