If one looks across the expanse of history, one cannot help but notice a curious sense of identification between the most exalted and the most degraded; particularly, between emperors and kings, and slaves. Many kings surround themselves with slaves, appoint slave ministers—there have even been, as with the Mamluks in Egypt, actual dynasties of slaves. Kings surround themselves with slaves for the same reason that they surround themselves with eunuchs: because the slaves and criminals have no families or friends, no possibility of other loyalties—or at least, in principle, they shouldn’t. But,
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