[TechBro8615]

I can see the argument that it's definitionally impossible to enslave someone without dehumanizing them, if you believe that certain inalienable freedoms are part of being human, and thus you cannot take them away from someone without dehumanizing them.

But if by "dehumanization" you really mean "racist," then yes indeed, slavery was originally based more on generic power imbalances (prisoners of war, or offspring of existing slaves) than any racial component. The racist aspect of slavery only became prominent with the emergence of colonialism and exposure of Europeans to "the new world." I'm not sure that race was even an attribute that the ancients felt worthy of mentioning - after all, Rome was an empire spanning many disparate races and cultures. Wikipedia [0] seems to agree ("skin tones did not carry any social implications"). I'd be curious to read more about it though.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_people_in_ancient_Roman_...

[wsgeorge]

> I'm not sure that race was even an attribute that the ancients felt worthy of mentioning

> Wikipedia [0] seems to agree ("skin tones did not carry any social implications")

When I read this comment (before your edit), I was a bit surprised, since ethnicity and "blood/familial" relations were absolutely huge in ancient Rome.

I generally use a definition of race that's much broader than skin tone, and I see it as interchangeable with loosely defined ethnicity and cultural background.

[TechBro8615]

Oh they definitely had enslavement from birth. But generally the original reason for enslaving the parents/grandparents was because they were a prisoner of war, or ended up on the wrong end of some power imbalance - it's unlikely they were enslaved for any reason directly related to their physical attributes like skin tone.

(I guess you could argue that an empire that invaded another culture/nation/territory and then enslaved its people was effectively enslaving them based on something akin to "race," but that argument is slightly weakened by the fact that the Roman army didn't only conquer "barbarians" but also went to war against their contemporary civilizational peers, often driven by familial disputes between emperors.)

So while enslaving someone from birth is undoubtedly bad, I'm not sure it's fair to characterize it as enslavement based on racial attributes, if the slave's ancestor was originally enslaved for reasons unrelated to race. Like, I guess you could call it racism if you squint, but only in the sense that skin color (or whatever other physical attributes you might associate with race) is an inherited characteristic, which seems like self-referential reasoning.

[wsgeorge]

Ah yeah, thinking about it a little more carefully, I see your point, especially on the topic of slavery.

Although the ancient Romans were absolutely big on ethnic/racial discrimination, the specific institution of slavery was not based on this. And their strong sense of the rule of law allowed for more civic forms of discrimination. For example, Germanic peoples weren't enslaved because they were non-Italian. They were just denied citizenship and its privileges, etc.