armies, slavery, rape
"But that's only going to be a factor in a society with relatively egalitarian marriages."
The laws don't really matter. You live with a woman [or a man for that matter] full time and you end up compromising whether you own her, or if she owns you. The law says you can have sex with your wife at your whim? Better ask her anyway, unless you like cold breakfast and shoulder...
"I don't know whether a noblewoman could divorce her husband in medieval times (on the grounds of adultery with a serf?)"
Legally, she had no right, at least in Catholic areas. But they had lawyers in those days too. Divorce happened, and since she usually had a lot of property in her name, it was definitely something for the nobleman to avoid.
"but if you go back to ancient Greece, women were thought incapable of intelligent thought! If you held a party, it was a bunch of men getting together, perhaps with some slave musicians or courtesans. Wives? Not a chance."
Not that much a difference really. A standard complaint by wives is that their husband never takes them anywhere.
"It was better in Rome, but not that much better. The head of a household had power of life and death over those in his house."
A power that was largely academic. Indeed, during most of Roman times, the slaveowner's power to kill even his slave was hampered. Any execution had to be carried out by the official executioner [who of course expected the owner to pay him, ignoring other complications].
"There's a gap in reasoning between your annecdotal LA Times reference (which I agree with you about) and the assumption that the "widespread attitude" is "completely fantasy (which I don't have enough evidence to agree or disagree about)."
The evidence is pretty much not there simply because it was not a matter of official interest. However, we can note that during slavery and for a century after the end of American slavery, blacks were led by those with white ancestry, and the more white the higher they ranked. [Mr. White was the 1st head of the NAACP, and was 63/64th white, at least.]
This in turn shows the owner parents gave their slave kids a considerable advantage, which is much more consistent with a friendly relationship between the parents than with simple rape.
["The laws of Islam give a man the right to have 4 wives. They don't give him the nerve." No matter what the law says about his right to hump his slaves, you are going to find durn few men who are going to do it in a way his wife will catch him."]
"This assumes that the wife can do anything about it if she does catch him. .. Who's a wife going to go to and what's she going to say when the majority have no problem with her husband beating her up just to "keep her in line"?"
She can do all sorts of things. Even when they are all petty, they are distinctly effective. The joke goes that Heaven has 2 windows for men, one for men who dominated their wives and one for men who were dominated by their wives. The only men who use the 1st window are those told to go there by their wives.
The joke dates back centuries, well into times when wifebeating was socially accepted.
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"As for running away? Life as a serial rape victim vs life as an escaped slave? I doubt terribly many slaves would view escape as the preferred option. "
In all cultures at all times, slaves ran away in large numbers. [A current estimate for the South was that 10% of all slaves were escapees at any given time. However, this counts those who stole a keg and stayed in the woods until they sobered up.] In cities they walked away and got free jobs. ["You are obviously an escaped slave." "I will work for you for half wages." "Obviously my 1st impression was mistaken."] It would have been the preferred option expect that master kept guards, whippings, and tended to be less brutal than he might have preferred. Due to the constant escapes, no society has managed to breed a stable population of slaves. Without a steady source of captured slaves, slavery dies out, tho this can take well longer than a human lifespan.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"There are precious few circumstances where any human has the right to use the phrase "In all cultures at all times". As an historian I bridle at its use. There are way too many dead cultures that we know nothing about to make this statement."
True, to a certain extent. But we do know a large number of civilizations, and we do know that as we discover the details of a civilization, the oddities rather vanish and the same patterns appear. [There are all sorts of claims of maternal dominated cultures, but in all cases literate enough to leave us the names of rulers, they were overwhelmingly male. Elsewhere the idea becomes more unlikely as more evidence is discovered.]
The slave obviously had incentive to escape, and keeping somebody from escaping is a pretty major task, so the default assumption has to be that slaves did escape, and any exception has to be proved.
"Without a steady source of anything the use of it dies out - "
Nobody needs to go capture wolves to maintain the supply of dogs. By contrast, one does need to capture additional slaves to maintain the supply of slaves.
A case in point would be Western Europe, which had a large supply of slaves until the Slavs became strong enough to defend themselves. Thereafter slavery declined to the point where a slave was a curiosity except in those areas that could capture additional slaves.
"Slavery did not ever die out in the Roman empire - the empire had slaves when it began and when it fell, slavery still existed."
The number of slaves at start and finish was rather low, when Rome was weak, and high in the days of expansive power when slaves were easier to capture. It fits the model.
"10% of the slave population is not a massive number."
10% of your "employees" are on "vacations" they schedule at their convenience and you don't consider that a serious business problem?
"Also, you haven't offered any information about how many of the escapes actually resulted in persistent freedom (not re-captured etc). "
The number is subject to considerable dispute and variation. However, it does not need to be at all high to eventually eliminate large-scale slavery. 1% per year is no problem if fresh slaves are coming in. If they are not, a century of that will make a very serious impact even if births balance deaths [& in most cases, deaths were far higher.]
"In most slave cultures at least ten percent would have been worked to death any way."
This varied with the supply of slaves and the value they could produce. The silver mines of Athens were said to kill slaves in about 5 years. The Ashanti of Africa, once the slave trade shut down, slaughtered slaves by the thousand. In societies where slaves were hard to get, they got better conditions and even could outlive their masters.
For game purposes, we likely prefer pretty brutal slavery, but conditions varied widely.
"Also, in a large proportion of slave cultures, branding and other forms of marking were common, as were laws which required that slaves dress differently, live in only certain areas and only do certain activities."
These are evidence of the problems societies had in trying to keep slaves from escaping. The very number of these laws shows that slaves did escape in large number.
In the South the slave owner had the advantage of the slave already being branded by skin color, but these laws were passed, and repassed, almost on an annual basis, and were largely futile.
" the liklihood of a slave being anonymous in a big city ( Rome, for example)."
Was/is quite high. Note the problems we have with illegal aliens. The same problems faced the society trying to keep its slaves in place. Each employer knows he can get a good worker on the cheap if he doesn't ask any nosy questions about his legal status. Needless to say, a lot of questions are not asked, and the escaped slave/illegal alien sets up shop. When/if discovered, the consequences are not severe. You really want to damage your valuable slave? Much better you just resign yourself to getting a percentage of his pay.
A rather spectatular case of an escaped slave happened during the reign of Claudius, when one of Rome's most famous lawyers was found to be an escaped slave. He had been at liberty for some years and was only discovered by accident when his owner happened to attend a particular legal dispute.
In the American South, slavery was on the decline in all urban areas and owners were moving their slaves to the countryside where chances of escape were not as good.
For game purposes, there are clear advantages to having escape somewhat easy. We certainly want the PCs to be able to escape, and helping others to escape or stay free are themes we want to use. We don't want it, or much of anything else, to be too easy, but it should be more than possible.
"There have been periods of "liberal" slave owning, where slaves could work to attain their freedom. But these should not be taken as the norm."
Legally they were not. Factually they were not just the norm, they were universal.
)
This has got to be a troll - it flies in the face of the commonly held medical, psychological and social statistics, annecdotes, studies and theories. There is no extant, credible evidence to support your claim and as someone with a first hand knowledge of domestic violence and its impact the statement is outright offensive. 
