Who Were the Sea Peoples?

"It was the genius of Cicero to discern the forces of disintegration as well as the necessity of protecting the truth through language symbols, through a 'word' that incarnates the truth of divine presence in reality. In the pursuit of this problem, Cicero developed the older Latin term religio into the symbol that comprehends protectively both the truth of existence and its expression through cultic observance and doctrine... "The awareness that religion is not an analytical concept of anything but a topical response to certain problems in the Roman subsection of an ecumenic-imperial society is practically lost... As a matter of fact, the Stoics could not turn to religion because religions did not yet exist..." -- Eric Voegelin, The Ecumenic Age , pp. 92-93

A little while ago, I asked , "Would Aristotle have thought other-directed wage workers to be slaves?" Well, I still am not sure of the answer to that; but now I am sure that Cicero so thought them: "Vulgar are the means of livelihood of all hired workmen whom we pay for mere manual labour, not for artistic skill ; for in their case the very wages they receive is a pledge of their slavery." --  De Officiis The key thing here is not what contractual basis the works takes place under -- whether I own you or I pay you -- it is whether you work (almost) entirely under my direction, or you have active control over some non-minor part of your labor. The artistically skilled craftsman accepts wages, but is not a slave because he directs -- indeed, must direct, in that his employer does not have his skill -- a large part of his own labor. The slave is not a slave because he is owned (although he may be), but because he does not own his own time . I think this i...