GMAT 考满分题库

     It is a counterintuitive but well-documented historical truth that the economies of the classical cultures typically seen as the progenitors of western liberalism and political freedom were all founded on the development and perpetuation of agrarian slavery. Because the cultures of antiquity are often associated with Periclean democracy and Roman republicanism—both oligarchical political systems at least nominally dedicated to principled and representative rule—students of history are often confused to learn that the populations of these societies contained large numbers of disenfranchised individuals who were often indentured to members of the middle and upper classes for a lifetime of brutal servitude.

     Many historians attribute this confusion to the triumphalist mythmaking of previous generations of scholars of classical history; indeed, most interpretations of classical literature and history have been distorted, but one would nonetheless expect modern revisionism and understanding of the concept of presentism to provide balance.

     Historians note that there is little discussion of slavery or its moral significance within classical sources, seemingly because individuals in the classical period saw it as both an economic necessity and inherent to the world's natural order. They cite the example of the writer Heraclitus (535 B.C.E.–475 B.C.E.), a pre-Socratic philosopher. Heraclitus is known as the “Weeping Philosopher,” and he was among the most incisive thinkers working in antiquity but, even so, the omnipresent institution of slavery struck him as an immutable element of human affairs; he wrote that “War is the father of all, the king of all … he turns some into slaves and sets others free,” implying that slavery is beyond the power of political determination—and beyond intellectual moralizing. Heraclitus is not alone in his failure to question the moral underpinnings of a slave society. Aristotle, too, suggested that the taking and keeping of slaves was a component of natural law, a fundamental consequence of military activity rather than a conscious policy that could be actively perpetuated or proscribed by the laws of man. In promoting this view, though, Aristotle demonstrates an unusual degree of circumspection, wondering whether the taking of slaves could be justified if the war in which they were acquired was itself “unjust.” The figures of early modernity saw themselves as heirs to the classical tradition and inherited the Greek and Roman attitudes toward slavery and citizenship as well as their commitments to democracy and rational inquiry, and modern historians have, in their studies of these times, endeavored to avoid the interpretive trap of imposing their modern ethics on the people of ancient times.