DB>You can see the same pattern in the western Greek colonies, and
DB>eventually in Republican Rome.  Cato documents what happend when
DB>Crassus had his cronies appointed grain inspectors on the Tiber
DB>docks while he bought up all the grain on the Roman market.  He
DB>told his friends to be very scrupulous in checking for vermin
DB>until the price went up to what he wanted; then he let the ships
DB>come on up to town and watched the price collapse.  It did not
DB>take very long for this kind of manipulation to bankrupt yeomen
DB>farmers all over Italy.
Fascinating.  Without this fine-grained picture of them days,
it's horribly easy to accept the obviously cartoonish picture
we learned in high school.  Crassus sounds just like Carnegie
or Jay Gould.
DB>At the same time, St. Paul was going around telling the slave he
DB>would be rewarded in heaven for all his labors by Jesus.  Imagine
DB>the slavedriver considering the effect of a stoic or Christian
DB>preacher on his crew, and realizing that if Jesus is going to
DB>reward these turkeys in heaven, they will be more amenable. In
DB>his letter to Philemon, Paul makes it perfectly clear that he
DB>respects the laws concerning slavery.
I'm going to leave Paul aside (for one thing, the more I learn about
him the less I like him).  Scholars in the Jesus Seminar have noted
that Jesus's early missionary work was remarkably Stoical in
character.
 * SLMR 2.1a *   We're doomed! the world will _not_ end soon!
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