Slavery and economy in the Greek world

Abstract

This chapter assesses the location of slavery within the ancient Greek economy or, rather, economies. Its approach will be quite different from the little that the Greeks themselves, although surrounded by slaves, had to say about slavery as an institution. To most it seemed sufficient to know that slavery depended ultimately on war, but even philosophers never really cared to give a clear presentation of the way slavery functioned in the Greek world or of its contribution to production and to their civilisation at large. Since I shall claim that slavery was an important element in Greek material life, some explanation for the failure of Greek authors and thinkers to tackle the problem as I see it will have to be offered. It will, I hope, become clear that this negligence is perhaps more apparent than real, and that by expressing themselves in their own way, the Greeks sufficiently grasped the essence of slavery and the way it worked within their own society. To the Greeks the distinction between slavery and freedom was very meaningful, underlined not only by custom and convention but also by law. But learning from experience rather than contemplation, they felt the need to make a further distinction between two very broad categories of slaves. Although their vocabulary was blurred, they knew that the slaves of Athens were different as a type from the slaves of Sparta. © Cambridge University Press 2011.