Toni Alimi, "Slaves of God: Augustine and Other Romans on Religion and Politics" (Princeton UP, 2024)

Oct 28, 2024

Toni Alimi, Assistant Professor at Cornell and author of Slaves of God, explores Augustine’s Roman intellectual roots and his surprising synthesis on slavery. The conversation covers Roman slavery’s realities, how Cicero, Seneca, and Lactantius shaped Augustine, and Augustine’s claim that true freedom is slavery to God. It highlights law, coercion, and the remaking of citizenship in late antiquity.

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INSIGHT

Augustine Frames True Freedom As Slavery To God

Augustine makes slavery the central metaphor for human relation to God, arguing true freedom is voluntary slavery to the true God.
He blends Roman thinkers: borrows Lactantius' universal slavery to God, Seneca's idea that moral character matters, and Cicero's claim chattel slavery can be beneficial.

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Roman Slavery Combined Humanity With Legal Property Status

Roman slaves were simultaneously treated as human, dominated, and property, creating legal and moral contradictions.
Augustine and contemporaries recognized slaves' skills and humanity but accepted their lack of legal rights and vulnerability to violence.

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Augustine's Bricolage Of Roman Views On Slavery

Alimi traces a genealogy: Cicero, Seneca, Lactantius, Augustine each asked if slavery is wrong, whether masters have duties, and what freedom is.
Augustine bricolages: universal slavery to God (Lactantius), moral freedom (Seneca), and a justificatory role for chattel slavery (Cicero as he reads him).

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Alimi's background and project origins

02:50 • 6min

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Book structure and main questions

08:35 • 3min

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Roman slavery: scope and everyday reality

11:12 • 4min

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Philosophical questions slavery raises

14:50 • 1min

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Cicero, Seneca, Lactantius on slavery

15:57 • 5min

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Augustine as bricoleur on slavery

Religion, virtue, and Roman religio

24:10 • 5min

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Everyone as slave of God

29:10 • 5min

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Freedom redefined: slavery as true liberty

34:24 • 3min

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God's mastery and accountability

37:05 • 1min

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Coercion, the whip, and domestic analogies

38:28 • 5min

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Law: Cicero's shield vs Augustine's paternalism

43:43 • 4min

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Citizenship reimagined: citizen-slaves

47:15 • 6min

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Why Rome lacked true justice

52:58 • 6min

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Book's intervention and scholarly aims

58:31 • 5min

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Next project and concluding remarks

Cicero's 'De Re Publica' presents a dialogue on the nature of the state, justice, and constitutional design, arguing for a mixed constitution and civic virtue as foundations of a stable polity. Augustine engages this Ciceronian definition of a republic to critique Rome’s claim to justice, asserting that Rome's practices contradicted its theoretical ideals. The work influenced Roman and later political theory, serving as a benchmark for discussions of republicanism, virtue, and law throughout antiquity and the medieval period.

On Duties (De Officiis) — alternative mention

Cicero

Cicero's 'On Duties' provides guidance on aligning personal conduct with broader civic obligations, arguing that moral duty sometimes requires sacrificing personal gain for justice. Alimi references it to contrast Cicero's valuation of law as protection against tyranny with Augustine's theological paternalism. The text has deeply influenced Western thought on ethics and republican governance.

#113

• Mentioned in 164 episodes

Confessions

Augustine

Written in Latin between AD 397 and 400, 'Confessions' is a blend of autobiography, philosophy, theology, and critical exegesis of the Christian Bible. The first nine books are autobiographical, tracing Augustine's life from his birth to his conversion to Catholicism. He recounts his sinful youth, his involvement with Manicheism and Neoplatonism, and his eventual conversion in a Milanese garden. The last four books focus on philosophical and theological issues, including memory, time, eternity, and the interpretation of the Book of Genesis. The work is structured as a series of prayers to God, reflecting Augustine's journey of redemption and his understanding of God's grace and providence.

#143

• Mentioned in 144 episodes

The Republic

Plato

#8311

• Mentioned in 6 episodes

De Officiis

On Duties, On Obligations, or On Moral Responsibilities

Marcus Tullius Cicero

De Officiis is a treatise by Marcus Tullius Cicero, divided into three books, which explores the concepts of honor, utility, and the conflict between virtue and private gain. It is heavily influenced by Stoic philosophy and provides guidance on how to live a virtuous life. The work discusses the four cardinal virtues—wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance—and their role in achieving moral excellence.

Slaves of God

Augustine and Other Romans on Religion and Politics

Tony Alimi

Tony Alimi's 'Slaves of God' examines Augustine's writings alongside other Roman thinkers to reveal how Christian theology and Roman political thought intertwined to justify and morally frame domination and slavery. The book traces how Augustine synthesized Stoic and Ciceronian ideas with Christian doctrines—such as original sin and divine slavery—to make sense of human bondage and masters' duties. Alimi also investigates the long-term influence of these Augustinian frameworks, including their role in shaping ideologies that supported early modern Atlantic slavery. Throughout, the work highlights the entanglements between Augustine's theology and topics like law, virtue, and citizenship, urging readers to disentangle valuable insights from harmful legacies. It aims to take Augustine seriously while showing why his thought cannot be simply abandoned or minimized given its continued influence.

#15478

• Mentioned in 3 episodes

On the nature of the gods

Cicero

#306

• Mentioned in 88 episodes

City of God

Augustine of Hippo

Written between 413-426 CE, 'The City of God' is a response to pagan claims that the sack of Rome by barbarians was a consequence of the abolition of pagan worship by Christian emperors. Augustine argues that Christianity saved the city from complete destruction and that Rome’s fall was due to internal moral decay. The book divides humanity into two metaphorical cities: the City of God, characterized by devotion to God, and the City of Man, characterized by self-love. It also outlines Augustine’s theological interpretation of human history, from the Creation to the Second Coming of Christ, and critiques paganism and pagan philosophy while presenting the true history of the City of God.

#12816

• Mentioned in 4 episodes

On Duties

Cicero

Cicero's On Duties is a philosophical treatise exploring moral obligations and ethical conduct, covering topics such as justice, honesty, and the proper role of citizens in society.

Augustine believed that slavery is permissible, but to understand why, we must situate him in his late antique Roman intellectual context. Slaves of God: Augustine and Other Romans on Religion and Politics (Princeton UP, 2024) provides a major reassessment of this monumental figure in the Western religious and political tradition, tracing the remarkably close connections between Augustine’s understanding of slavery and his broader thought.

Augustine is most often read through the lens of Greek philosophy and the theology of Christian writers such as Paul and Ambrose, yet his debt to Roman thought is seldom appreciated. Toni Alimi reminds us that the author of Confessions and City of God was also a Roman citizen and argues that some of the thinkers who most significantly shaped his intellectual development were Romans such as Cicero, Seneca, Lactantius, and Varro—Romans who had much to say about slavery and its relationship to civic life. Alimi shows how Augustine, a keen and influential student of these figures, related chattel slavery and slavery to God, and sheds light on Augustinianism’s complicity in Christianity’s long entanglement with slavery.

An illuminating work of scholarship, Slaves of God reveals how slavery was integral to Augustine’s views about law, rule, accountability, and citizenship, and breaks new ground on the topic of slavery in late antique and medieval political thought.

New Books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review

Toni Alimi is Assistant Professor at the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University

Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston

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