Is the control over tax rate an index of how happy a population is?
It's a major factor, yes.
Still to see evidence about all this
In Rome and Italy, in the four centuries between 200 BC and 200 AD, perhaps a quarter or even a third of the population was made up of slaves.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/romans/slavery_02.shtml
The conditions were right to put the captives to work: private ownership of land; developed commodity production and markets; a perceived shortage of internal labour supply; and an appropriate moral, political, and legal climate. Roughly 30 percent of the population was enslaved. Roman slave society ended as the slaves were legally converted into coloni, or serfs, and the lands became populated and the frontiers so remote that finding great numbers of outsider slaves was increasingly difficult.
http://www.britannica.com/blackhistory/article-24157
Estimates for the prevalence of slavery in the Roman Empire vary. Some historians estimate that approximately 30% of the population of the Empire in the 1st century was slave. The Roman economy was certainly heavily dependent on slavery, but it was not (as is sometimes mistakenly stated) the most slave-dependent culture in history. That distinction probably belongs to the Spartans, with helots (the Spartan term for slave) outnumbering the Spartans by about seven to one (Herodotus; book IX, 10).
The actual proportion may have been less than 20% for the whole Empire, 12 million people, but we cannot be sure. Since there was a labor shortage in the Roman Empire, there was a constant need to find slaves to tie down the labor supply in various regions of the Empire.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Rome
Okay?
Oh, good.
I have to learn about history of the Roman Empire from a guy from.. New Zealand?
So it would appear. I fail to see what either of our locations has to do with anything.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica:
An owner could kill his slave with impunity in Homeric Greece, ancient India,
the Roman Republic, Han China, Islamic countries, Anglo-Saxon England, medieval Russia, and many parts of the American South before 1830.
http://www.britannica.com/blackhistory/article-24164
You are living in the land of fairy tales, are not you?
You're obviously not paying attention to what I said - I referred to slavery in the
Empire. I've also told you - several times - that slavery conditions
improved under the empire.
Under Nero, slaves were given the right to complain against their masters in court. Under Antoninus Pius, a slave could claim his freedom if treated cruelly; a master who killed his slave without just cause could be tried for homicide. At the same time, it became more difficult for a person to fall into slavery under Roman law. By the time of Diocletian, free men could not sell their children or even themselves into slavery, and creditors could not claim insolvent debtors as slaves.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Rome
Good.
You are saying that "Anyone who tried to rebel against anyone in those day got killed in a cruel way" and then you claim that life as a slave was not so bad.
Pleeeeeeeeeeeease!!
Compared to not being a slave? No.
The average American today has a better life style than a Roman Emperor. And most European countries have better quality of life than America. Life sucked for
everyone back then. Trying to argue being a slave was especially horrific by comparing it to life today is terribly dishonest. Try compare it to freeman of the same period, and you'll get a more accurate picture.
Does not change my point one bit.
You've failed to provide a single shred of evidence to support your point - that no one except the Romans liked living under the Pax Romana. This is utterly false.
As for the make up of Spartacus' army, it reinforces my point that Slavery under the Empire wasn't as bad as under the Republic. Why you cannot get this idea through your head I do not know.
And that is a prove of.. what?
Slavery under the Roman was a decent condition?
You claimed Spartacus was fighting for more rights for Slaves. This is false. He was not. He was fighting because he didn't want to die. I can't fault him for that, and you can certainly question whether he deserved it (I'm universally opposed to the death sentence so regardless of what he did I don't think he deserved it) but to attribute some higher moral purpose to his motives is retrofitting 20th Century ideals to a 1st Century BC world.
I like this sentence!!
Only about 6,000 were crucified
That makes a pair with the other one, only 2000 people died in South Ossetia
Don't be stupid, comparing death tolls in the ancient world and today is meaningless. You claimed tens of thousands died in cruel ways. Unless you're meaning that all death is cruel (a totally meaningless statement) I can only imagine you mean those the Romans crucified, which wasn't tens of thousands.
Mostly for slaves, not for Roman citizens
Crucifixion was used for slaves, rebels, pirates and especially-despised enemies and criminals
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion
It was used for traitors to Rome. Most traitors to Rome were not Romans, but Romans were known to be crucified on rare occasions.
Which means that, during the years of the Republic, if a master killed a slave without justification it was NOT considered murder?
We're talking about the Pax Romana which was during the Roman Empire, not the Republic.
Maybe they were people who could not pay off their debts and had no other choice
Well some were probably forced into it by debtors (although that was eventually prohibited) but it's still irrefutable that Romans
did on occasion
voluntarily sell themselves into slavery. That implies that being a slave wasn't considered so drastic a step down from free life that it was unbearable. (Although eventually the practise of selling yourself or family into slavery was banned too - damn those cruel oppressive Romans!)
Can your employer kill you?
No but they can leave you destitute on the street. I don't have an employer. Of course Roman Imperial slave owners couldn't just kill their slaves willy nilly either.
Daydreaming at maximum level
Not at all. Owners who mistreated slaves would lose ownership of them. Slaves were regarded as incredibly important financial assets. If you were a cruel master you wouldn't be able to hold onto slaves, and without slaves your business would flounder. If a few slaves won redress against you in court and you had to pay reparations to them it could ruin you.
Not to mention, all of the powerful slave owners had slaves who pretty much ran their business without oversight. A pissed-off manager could bring a latifundia to its knees in no time at all.
You do not understand a heck about the Roman Empire.
It has been built over the blood, and over the tears of slaves.
It was not a non-profit organization for the development of the world
I appear to understand a substantial amount more about Rome than you do. You're offering up the boring 20th C cliche of Rome, and marrying it with a ridiculous contrast that I've never suggested. If you actually take the time to learn about history you'll find things are seldom so clearly at one end of the morality scale as you seem to think. I'd recommend starting by reading some contemporary Roman historians - they'll give you a valuable insight into Roman attitudes and values of the day, and many of them were rather scathing of how the Empire did things.
Why do you think so many population fought to death against them in order not to surrender?
Well that's the funny thing. Many of them didn't. The Germanic tribes of the Rhine and Danube were notable for the amount of resistance they put up, and the Romans never got past them.
But certainly they were resisted, but that's to be expected - people who believe they hold dominion over a plot of land are seldom willing to just give it up without a fight to someone bigger and stronger than them - just look at Georgia's efforts to hold on to what they consider to be Georgia in the face of Russian invasion.
. The Russian position on this morning's CNN was very supportive.
(See its formation out of the British empire on the Sub Continent for why that makes sense.)
