They were human beings, essentially biologically identical to us, and felt compassion - a universal human emotion and an evolutionary advantage and necessity.
What basis is there for the idea that they were sociopaths? Plenty of ancient literature is concerned with these things. Plenty of modern literature overlooks it - play most computer games, for example.
One of the most striking things about ancient Greek and Roman literature is how dehumanising it is about slaves, especially when slaves were regarded en masse, as a class, and not as individual human beings. In those societies, slaves could and were regularly beaten, raped, or killed with impunity. Compassion is indeed a perennial human emotion, and it must have existed because some slaves were set free (though even here this could have been due to a master’s fondness for a slave that arose out of e.g. sexual exploitation of the latter). Yet at the same time, mass killings of slaves in ancient literature – and this is something depicted on a number of occasions – do not feature the same poignancy as modern Western readers would expect.
> In those societies, slaves could and were regularly beaten, raped, or killed with impunity
What is the basis for that? I read it as the imagination of the contemporary reactionary movement - the idea that a sort of sociopathology is a normal human condition, and compassion about others and a belief in their rights is a fake contrivance (of liberalism). But the evidence points strongly the other way. Still, there is plenty I don't know about the ancient Greek and Roman literature.
See, for example, Kyle Harper’s Slavery in the Late Roman World, AD 275–425, Cambridge University Press, 2011. In spite of the title, it contains much detail on Roman slavery in previous eras, and is one of the most accessible (to an educated readership) presentations of the phenomenon.
Thank you! A commenter who actually knows a bit of what they are saying! I will take a look at it.
From my knowledge of other such situations, enslaved people have many fewer rights, customary and legal, but not none. Humans will still be sickened by seeing other humans do bad things; there are limits. Also, they want the enslaved people to be pacified and cooperative, not murderous and angry.
"they" : we're talking about the literature that's survived. Where killing all the men and selling the women & children into slavery after capturing a city was standard practice.
Please cite some of the "Plenty of ancient literature is concerned with these things."
The word "sociopath" gives you away. Nearly every ancient hero could be thus described.
