Although he doesn't come out and say anything about it plainly, I'm starting to wonder where Marrou stands on the matter of slavery. When he writes of Roman slavery practices he seems to romanticize them. As he describes it, the Romans treated their slaves fairly well, though covering them extensively isn't part of Marrou's work in the History of Education in Antiquity.
Nonetheless, that slaves and their masters would share common interests and hold conversations on these topics, that they would take on the role of teachers (again, a profession despised and of low esteem, as in ancient Greece), and get to be close enough to their charges to be their moral instructors makes Roman slavery sound not half bad. Of course, slaves would have had no rights, owned no property or land, and been largely disregarded in public forums. I'm sure a fair few members of Generation Y feel that they can relate.
This romantic image of the slave and master getting along swimmingly is bolstered by the romantic passage from an ancient Roman text book that chronicles a day in the life of a Roman student. The account has some large silences and the student it chronicles is almost as upbeat about things as announcers in 1940s PSAs.
What's a little worrying, though, is that Marrou doesn't analyze this account as much he should. Though, writing in those same 1940s no doubt meant taking historical evidence at a much cleaner face value than historians are expected to today. This slips in analysis is still troubling, though, since everything else that I've come across in the book is quite firmly grounded.
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