Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius Quotes
Slaves no doubt, but still men.
Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius, Late 4th Century-Early 5th Century, Roman Scholar & Philosopher, Saturnalia, ~400
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He is often referred to as “of Lahore.” He was a much better theologian than a historian. His credit of Islam with the principles that would end slavery, ignored the fact that just as American founding fathers espoused equality and freedom yet some owned slaves, likewise Mohammed, the founder of Islam, was a slaveholder. Historically, long after most of the world had abolished slavery, it still existed in the Islamic nations. They were forced out of the African slave trade by the European powers in the 19th century. But slavery was legal in Saudi Arabia as late as the 1960s. Slavery was still practiced in Sudan in 2005 with Muslims attacking Christians and Animists and taking them as slaves despite the official laws banning such practices. The government itself aided the slavers. Also, although Islam is credited with a major assault on slavery, it was not slavery per se that Muhammad banned. It was the slavery of another Muslim. Sharia and the Koran allows slavery so long as the slave is an unbeliever.
Parker and other escaped slaves in Christiana fought off slave catchers and killed the slave owner leading them. Charged with treason, he escaped to Canada with his family and lived there the rest of his life. While not a polished writer, after he himself had escaped and went to Christiana and leaned to read and write. He wrote this narrative of his life as a slave—one of the few written works we have from slaves.
Even before we had a Constitution there was major opposition to slavery. The “price” of the American Union was the acceptance of the slavery of the South. But the hypocrisy of a country based on liberty to allow and enforce slavery was not lost on the founding fathers. Ironically the abolitionists among the founding fathers were certain that they could persuade the Southern slaveholders of the error of slavery in a few years and things would be set right in the land. Even George Washington {630626}, and Thomas Jefferson and some other slaveowners at the time wished to see its abolition. Slaveholding Southern Founding Fathers in general were so wary of the abolitionists that they achieved structural, disproportionate, power in the new Constitution to ward off the abolitionists attempts to reform slavery.
Christian had just briefed the President about the riots in many cities after the assassination of Martin Luther King. Christian had expressed surprise that the Blacks were so violent.
Macrobius, fully Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius, also known as Theodosius (fl. c. 400 AD), was a Roman provincial who lived during the early fifth century, during Late Antiquity, the period of time corresponding to the late Roman Empire to the early Middle Ages, and when Latin was as widespread as Greek among the elite. He is primarily known for his writings, which include the widely copied and read Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis ("Commentary on the Dream of Scipio") about Somnium Scipionis, which was one of the most important sources for Neoplatonism in the Latin West during the Middle Ages; the Saturnalia, a compendium of ancient Roman religious and antiquarian lore; and De differentiis et societatibus graeci latinique verbi ("On the Differences and Similarities of the Greek and Latin Verb"), which is now lost.
