Civilization and Beyond - Scott Nearing

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commerce, industry, mining, transport, and the domestic life of the well-to-do was carried by slaves. Basically, therefore, the Roman world was divided first into Romans and non-Romans and second into masters and slaves, with a third category which consisted of an immense bureaucracy (including the military), a professional and technological group and a heavy burden of persistent parasitism.

      4. Growth of the abyss that separated wealth and the wealthy from mass poverty in the cities and the countryside. The abyss was widened and deepened by the presence of slavery. More extensive and more frequent foreign conquests added to the volume of slave labor in a market already glutted and reduced the price of slaves. Against this super-abundant cheap slave labor, free labor could compete only by reducing its standard of living and thus deepening the abyss of poverty. At the other end of the social arc, the rich were able to surround themselves with multitudes of slaves who provided the energy needed to carry on the complex life of Roman civilization. As the Roman world expanded, the abyss widened, deepened and became all but impassable. It was from such lower depths that Spartacus and other leaders of rebellious slaves drew sufficient manpower to challenge and for a time even defeat the full military power of Rome.

      5. Built into the structure of Roman civilization was the potential of civil war. The contradictions of mass slavery and poverty side by side with boundless leisure and abundance was only one side of the picture. Each of the more distant provinces became a possible base from which ambitious governors or generals could wage wars of independent conquest at the expense of Roman authority. Each newly subjugated people, smarting under defeat and the heavy hand which Rome laid on its dissidents and opponents, became a potential center for disaffection, conspiracy and rebellion against Roman authority.

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