When I first decided to take this course, I knew that I would be immersed in ancient history, but it was only during this past week that I realized the extent to which that this was possible. In attempts to work on wall preservation, I re-enacted the process that the Roman slaves would have used\u2014from hammering bricks into dust to slapping the mortar mixture (composed of the aforementioned brick dust, lime, and sand) onto the now-crumbling walls. The moment my TA mentioned that this was eerily similar to the same methods of the Roman slaves, I cannot say that I was thrilled by the comparison. I mean, I volunteered for this, whereas they were forced. I was performing actual slave labor out of my own volition\u2014it made me feel like I could be putting my time to better use. The night after we began wall preservation, the lecture was focused on Roman housing, but a well-phrased question got us on the topic of slavery in the Roman Empire. Slavery was very different from that of the United States\u2014even the field slaves were allowed to get married and had days off. But was perhaps more interesting were the \u201chigher class\u201d slaves\u2014individuals who sold their expertise and service on the streets in the hopes of later acquiring Roman citizenship. Many of these individuals were tutors; it is an odd thought that every teacher and professor I have ever learned from has performed the same work as a slave (insert joke about teachers\u2019 salaries here). Indeed, many of the careers many of my peers aspire to\u2014in teaching, in business\u2014were once shackles to escape on the road to freedom. The parallels to modern day life are unsettling, like those \u201cworking for the weekend\u201d or keeping a well-paying job that they hate in the hopes that they will have enough money to do what they actually like in their old age\u2014an unlikely prospect (let\u2019s be real, most of us will be too rickety with arthritis and other ailments by the time we have paid off our student loans to complete the crazier items on our bucket lists). Looking at my future from this perspective, it seems pretty depressing; one form of slavery or another seems inevitable. But unlike the slaves of Rome, I have a choice in what I do, and many more opportunities to create the best life for myself. I do not have to choose from masonry or tutoring, but a whole world of choices. That can sometime seem like a scary problem to deal with\u2014what if I go on the wrong path?\u2014but I am glad to have it nevertheless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I first decided to take this course, I knew that I would be immersed in ancient history, but it was only during this past week that I realized the extent to which that this was possible. In attempts to work on wall preservation, I re-enacted the process that the Roman slaves would have used\u2014from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1417,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Iz8A-l7","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1417"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1309"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1310,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1309\/revisions\/1310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}