Slaves will be Slaves Essay -- essays research papers

Petronius Arbiter, in Trimalchios Dinner Party, the third chapter of his maintain Satyricon, mocks the nature of slaves. He was a top official in Rome, viz. the "Judge of Taste" in Neros court (129). Regardless of the responsibilities he had, he was an aristocrat. The history of Rome was written from an aristocratic perspective because they were the ones who had the money, ambition and give up time to document history. Petronius believed that slaves are low class, and that a slave that has been go down free, id est a freedmen, is still a slave at heart, ergo worthless. non with all the money in the world could he develop the seek of the upper class. In ancient and modern times alike, money good dealnot purchase a good personality or healthy-disposed sophistication.While the freeborn Roman boy went to school to learn rhetoric, math, et cetera, the slave boy worked from a very(prenominal) young age. Whether they worked physically, mathematically or sexually, they st ill worked, which is a rash difference between them and the freeborn (although the poor freeborn worked, they often were displaced by slaves because slaves were free labor). Sarah Ruden, the translator of this edition of Satyricon, comments that freedmen were like immigrants in America today. alone the particularly ambitious won their freedom. This process has a modern like in which only the most ambitious immigrants tend to make it to American soil. This process of "self-selection" weeds out the lazy (155). Slaves that had won their freedom had worked very hard from a very early age and thus had the run through needed to be successful and amass fortunes. However, what the freedmen could not possibly lose learned from that kind of experience is the behavior and manners of a respectful Roman aristocrat. Personality is naturally instilled by living among others in your social class. One cannot completely learn a foreign culture unless he is adopted at an early age by a f amily in that culture. Although slaves lived with families, they performed completely different functions ergo had completely difference experiences and upbringings. Unfortunately for the freedmen who that do it and became rich, they were still socially inferior to the freeborn.Petronius shows that the host of the dinner party, Trimalchio is a crying(a) freedman. He has no respectable virtues. He is cruel to his slaves despite the fact that he was ... ...laying in the funeral procession were too loud and it sounded like a fire alarm. The commotion is taken advantage of and they make their escape (60).At Trimalchios dinner party the theme was drunk and disorderly as debate to relaxed and enjoyable, the nature of the traditional Roman dinner parties (166). It is though this story that Petronius tells us the aristocracys views on uneducated slaves and freedmen. Comparisons can be drawn to its modern same of new money. Exempli gratia, when the latest rap artist from a ghetto makes an album and by and by gets rich, there is no moral improvement. Money cannot buy character throw. It cannot change behavior, improve social skills or refine the personality. Lacking a tippy childhood upbringing to set in good manners, as well as protection from sexual predators, slaves never came close to matching the behavior, values, virtues, ethics and decency of the "Good Roman Citizen." In this ancient equivalent to the verse from a Snoop Dogg song, You can take the boy out of the hood, but you cant take the hood out of the Homeboy, no matter how ofttimes money and freedom slaves gained, they still are slaves at heart.