評論
打印
The slaves did all the cooking and baking and candlestick making of the entire city. They were the tailors and the carpenters and the jewelers and the school-teachers and the bookkeepers and they tended the store and looked after the factory while the master went to the public meeting to discuss questions of war and peace or visited the theatre to see the latest play of ?schylus or hear a discussion of the revolutionary ideas of Euripides, who had dared to express certain doubts upon the omnipotence of the great god Zeus.
奴隸們把整個城市的烹任、烤面包、制作蠟燭等工作全部承包下來。他們是理發師、木匠、珠寶制作工、小學教師和圖書管理員。他們負責看商店、照管工廠。主人們則要么出席公共會議，討論是戰是和的重大問題；要么前往劇院，觀賞埃斯庫羅斯的最新悲劇；要么聆聽對于歐里庇得斯的革命性觀念的激烈討論，因為這位劇作家竟敢對大神宙斯的威嚴表示懷疑。
Indeed, ancient Athens resembled a modem club. All the freeborn citizens were hereditary members and all the slaves were hereditary servants, and waited upon the needs of their masters, and it was very pleasant to be a member of the organisation.
事實上，古代的雅典酷似一個現代俱樂部。所有的自由 民都是世襲的會員，而所有的奴隸則是世襲的仆人，隨時準備聽候主人的吩咐。當然，能成為這個組織的會員倒是件很愉快的事情。
But when we talk about slaves. we do not mean the sort of people about whom you have read in the pages of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." It is true that the position of those slaves who tilled the fields was a very unpleasant one, but the average freeman who had come down in the world and who had been obliged to hire himself out as a farm hand led just as miserable a life. In the cities, furthermore, many of the slaves were more prosperous than the poorer classes of the freemen.
不過當我們談到"奴隸"一詞時，我并非說他們就是你在《湯姆叔叔的小屋》里讀到過的那種人。當然，每天替人耕田種地的日子確實不舒服，可那些家道中落的自由 民們也不得不受人雇傭，在富人的農莊作幫工，他們的生活其實跟奴隸一樣悲慘。而且在城市里，許多奴隸甚至比下層自由 民更富有。
