This kind of slave contract was closer to being a sort of patronage and people with high social status but little wealth often sold themselves to wealthy families they had social connections to. The philosopher Diogenes did this and it shaped the way he viewed Roman slavery
That would be remarkable considering that Diogenes of Sinope was enslaved after being captured by pirates and sold to fellow Greeks.
You probably know more about it than me, I’m just repeating it how I heard it. My understanding is that Diogenes sold himself to a wealthy family who admired him for his philosophy and wanted him to teach their kids. This was before he decided to live on the street in a clay pot, and after he fled the previous city he lived in due to being caught committing fraud (counterfeiting coins).
I think you’re confusing the order of events. Diogenes, after he was captured and enslaved by pirates, when he was being sold as a slave, at the slave market, picked out a buyer, and convinced the man to buy him as a teacher, presumably to avoid being sold to a less-survivable fate.
Ah, that makes sense. Even more hypocritical of him then to suggest slaves shouldn’t try to free themselves. He leveraged his privilege to obtain a favorable outcome for himself and then allowed that experience to paint the way he viewed the institution of slavery as a whole.
So I looked back at where I got this from - an episode of Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff about Diogenes - and it seems this is more of an interpretation of Diogenes’ teachings by Margaret (the host) rather than something he said directly. Here’s the relevant portion:
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Because he also wrote books, so he clearly owned more
than and just these things. You know, at various points,
maybe he’s like borrowing a pen to write a book.
I don’t know whatever, And basically he’s like, hey, sell
me to that guy, and people are like, oh, it’s
because he believes so much in this philosophy. I think
Diogenes is being canny and knew it would go better
with that guy, probably because he knows he’s educated, like
(28:20):
he himself is educated, and he’s like, oh, I can
get myself into like a teaching job instead of a
fucking mining job, you know, right. He works for Zeniades
for a few years, running the man’s household and tutoring
his kids, who apparently all loved him, and then he
was freed. Letting people buy their own freedom was a
(28:41):
way to recoup capital costs. You steal a few years
of someone’s life and then you let them pay you back.
Your upfront cost. And also if you promise the slave
you’re going to free them, they’re much nicer to you.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Yeah, and you are able to extract their labor.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Yeah, totally. And so it’s technically hypocritical of him to
want to become free again and to like buy himself
this freedom. And I do not blame him for this
hypocrisy at all. This is a completely natural thing. He
taught that if you desire to better your station in society,
like a slave who wants to be free, as the
example uses, it’ll never be enough. You’ll get free, and
(29:15):
then you’ll want to be a slave owner, obviously, naturally,
that just happens to everyone, and then you’d want to
be a landowner, and then a citizen, and then an officer,
and then a king and then godhood. Where does it stop?
Speaker 1 (29:28):
I know, it’s just too much slop, very slope.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
But like whatever is a philosopher, he’s going to make
random as philosophical points, and he sharees oak the freedom
that was offered him, and he didn’t go and buy someone,
so good on him.
The transcript is kinda terrible so maybe just skip to this part and listen, but that’s where I got it from. There are sources linked in the first episode description but I couldn’t find the specific quote about not improving one’s station in life after a quick search, so ¯\(ツ)/¯.
In general, Diogenes did advocate against ambition, but that advocacy was largely oriented towards the idea that man is happiest in a ‘natural state’.
In other words, Diogenes worked towards freeing himself from slavery, because slavery was not a natural state. Once free, he made no efforts to accumulate wealth or power, because accumulation of such things was unnatural. He wanted to live as close to his ‘natural’ state as possible - hence the anecdote of him throwing away his water bowl when he realized he could drink with his hands alone.
Reading the transcript it seems very, uh, off-the-cuff rather than a serious examination of Diogenes.
No worries if you can’t. It’s just that Diogenes is, in general, very much on the side of “Fuck all human institutions, and fuck your hierarchies in particular” in most of the reliable accounts of his life and philosophy. “There is nowhere to spit in a rich man’s house except his face”, and all that. Or “If my slave can live without me, why can I not live without my slave?” when questioned, earlier in life, even before he became a homeless philosopher, why he didn’t make any effort to catch the slave who ran away from him.
That would be remarkable considering that Diogenes of Sinope was enslaved after being captured by pirates and sold to fellow Greeks.
You probably know more about it than me, I’m just repeating it how I heard it. My understanding is that Diogenes sold himself to a wealthy family who admired him for his philosophy and wanted him to teach their kids. This was before he decided to live on the street in a clay pot, and after he fled the previous city he lived in due to being caught committing fraud (counterfeiting coins).
I think you’re confusing the order of events. Diogenes, after he was captured and enslaved by pirates, when he was being sold as a slave, at the slave market, picked out a buyer, and convinced the man to buy him as a teacher, presumably to avoid being sold to a less-survivable fate.
Ah, that makes sense. Even more hypocritical of him then to suggest slaves shouldn’t try to free themselves. He leveraged his privilege to obtain a favorable outcome for himself and then allowed that experience to paint the way he viewed the institution of slavery as a whole.
I also don’t remember him advising slaves not to free themselves.
So I looked back at where I got this from - an episode of Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff about Diogenes - and it seems this is more of an interpretation of Diogenes’ teachings by Margaret (the host) rather than something he said directly. Here’s the relevant portion:
The transcript is kinda terrible so maybe just skip to this part and listen, but that’s where I got it from. There are sources linked in the first episode description but I couldn’t find the specific quote about not improving one’s station in life after a quick search, so ¯\(ツ)/¯.
In general, Diogenes did advocate against ambition, but that advocacy was largely oriented towards the idea that man is happiest in a ‘natural state’.
In other words, Diogenes worked towards freeing himself from slavery, because slavery was not a natural state. Once free, he made no efforts to accumulate wealth or power, because accumulation of such things was unnatural. He wanted to live as close to his ‘natural’ state as possible - hence the anecdote of him throwing away his water bowl when he realized he could drink with his hands alone.
Reading the transcript it seems very, uh, off-the-cuff rather than a serious examination of Diogenes.
I’ll see if I can find a source for that and get back to you. I could be misremembering.
No worries if you can’t. It’s just that Diogenes is, in general, very much on the side of “Fuck all human institutions, and fuck your hierarchies in particular” in most of the reliable accounts of his life and philosophy. “There is nowhere to spit in a rich man’s house except his face”, and all that. Or “If my slave can live without me, why can I not live without my slave?” when questioned, earlier in life, even before he became a homeless philosopher, why he didn’t make any effort to catch the slave who ran away from him.