Gregory Aldrete: evaluation

Transcript context

…So we’re talking a bit about the details of the laws. Is there some big picture laws that are new innovations or profound things like all Roman citizens are equal before the law, founding fathers type in the United States, in the western world, these big legal ideas? I think maybe one of the things that was really stressed in Roman law early on, even as early as the Twelve Tables, is the notion of Roman citizenship. So if you were a Roman citizen, it came with a set of both privileges and obligations. So the obligations where you’re supposed to fight in the Army, you were supposed to vote in elections. The privileges were, you had the protection of Roman law. And at least in theory, if not in practice, everybody was equal under that law. Now of course, keep in mind, we’re talking about men here. And even at the height of the Roman Empire, so let’s say second century AD, there were about 50 million human beings living within the boundaries of the Roman Empire, maybe 6 million were actual citizens. So we tend to go, “Oh, it’s so great. If you’re a citizen, you have all these things.” Well, adult free men who are not slaves, who are not resident foreigners, they have this great stuff. And that’s always a tiny minority of all the human beings who existed in this society. But still, the notion, the notion of citizenship is huge. And citizens, for example, early on, you had to be tried at Rome if you were accused of something. And there’s this very famous moment in Sicily where an abusive governor who’s corrupt is punishing a citizen arbitrarily. And this person cries out, “Civis Romanus Sum,” meaning, “I am a Roman citizen.” And it really was this hugely loaded statement that that gives me protections. It is wrong for you to do this to me. It’s wrong for you to beat me because I am a citizen and that gives me certain protections. So that notion of citizenship is something that I think, the Romans really emphasize and becomes a legacy to a lot of civilizations today, where citizenship means something. It’s a special status. So you mentioned slaves, slavery, that’s something that is common throughout human history. What do we know about their relationship with slavery?…

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