House of the Faun, Pompeii.
This house is dates from the 2nd century BC and is one of the biggest and grandest homes in Pompeii. Obviously, its owners were extremely wealthy and prominent to afford a home of this size. Co-incidentally, i found this picture on the internet today and it awakened memories of my time visiting it.
i visited it in 2009 and was impressed by its sheer size and magnificence and it was as a result of that visit that i began my efforts at writing stories about slaves and slavery.
As one who has a slave's persona, i was overwhelmed by visions of the large retinue of household slaves that served the owners and after viewing the secret passages used by the slaves to move around the house unseen by their owners, in my imagination, i identified with them. i felt a great sadness on their behalf as i thought about the humiliation and degradation of being a chattel slave owned body and spirit by another.
Throughout history, there have been countless slaves of all races, colour or creeds; no one was immune to being enslaved if the circumstances were right. We know very little about most slaves; they are nameless and by and large they are silent and without a voice to speak for themselves and to tell us of the their pain and suffering. Denied of their humanity, they were reduced to objects or as the Romans described them "talking tools" and confronted by the unimaginable horrors of their daily lives.
i was overcome with a great sadness at man's inhumanity to his fellow man and i wanted to speak on their behalf and write what it is like to be a chattel slave; it that was possible.
i stood on this exact spot alongside the pool and looked at the statue of the Faun which gave the house its name. This statue is a replica of the original which, i believe is in a museum in Naples.
For some reason this statue interested me and i recall wondering if the Roman owner valued it more highly than one of his many slaves. I expect he did!
Inexplicably, i had the idea of writing a short story with this as its theme. On returning home, and for the first time in my life, i attempted to write. i wrote "An Object of Desire" under my nom-de-plume, Jean-Christophe and followed it up with "The Aftermath".
Since then, i have written other slave stories and always i try to write from the perspective of the slave though occasionally i have written from a Master's point of view. But, reflecting my slave mentality, my focus is always with my slave characters.
himar
Picture sourced from the internet. The text is mine.