Notes
1 1 Wiedemann 1981.
2 2 Eck and Heinrichs 1993.
3 3 For other important collections of sources on ancient slavery, see Scholl 1990; CRRS.
4 4 For the voluminous scholarship on ancient slavery, see the search engine at http://sklaven.adwmainz.de/index.php?id=1584.
5 5 Lewis 2018; Vlassopoulos 2021a.
1 What Is Slavery?
What is slavery? Modern scholarship has largely focused on two definitions: slaves were human property,6 and slavery is a form of social death: the violent domination of dishonored outsiders without acknowledged kinship links (natal alienation).7 There is no shortage of ancient sources that support these two definitions (1.1, 1.11–2, 1.14). On this basis, scholars have constructed a stereotype of slaves as outsiders acquired through trade or war (1.2) who lived and worked under the direct control of their masters.
We aim to assess the advantages and limits of these approaches by examining servile groups like the Spartan helots and the Cretan woikeis, who were native inhabitants with their own families, working the land and surrendering a part of the harvest to their masters. Were such groups really slaves, or should they be interpreted as persons in an intermediate state “between slavery and freedom,” as serfs or dependent peasants (1.3)? Or should we rather see them as slaves with peculiar characteristics, as a result of the peculiar histories of the societies in which they lived (1.4–9)? If so, slavery was not a uniform institution across ancient societies but a complex and contradictory phenomenon affected by a variety of economic, political, social, and cultural processes.8 Social death was undoubtedly a constant threat that slaves faced and a harsh reality for many of them, but how should we account for cases in which masters (1.18) or states (1.15) honored their slaves? How should we interpret sources in which slaves present themselves as honorable persons (1.17) or honor their fellow-slaves (1.16)? Natal alienation was undoubtedly part of the slave condition, but how should we account for the evident significance of slave families for how slaves acted (1.13)?
If property and social death emphasize the power of masters over slaves, we also need to take into account the role of slave agency. Should we see slavery as a relationship unilaterally defined by the masters or rather as an asymmetrical negotiation of power involving, masters, slaves, and other groups and agents?9 In this respect, we explore a variety of issues: the negotiations that were inherent in the master–slave relationship (1.19, 1.21–2), the slaves’ quest for emotional fulfillment and support and its impact on how slavery operated as an institution (1.20, 1.25), the significance of the intervention of the state and other third parties in relations between masters and slaves (1.23–4), and the conjunctures that slaves could take advantage of to enhance their conditions (1.26).
Finally, we move beyond property and social death to examine other ways (modalities) of conceptualizing slavery that existed in ancient societies, even in the text of the same author: as domination, an instrumental relationship, an asymmetrical relation of benefaction and reward, and so on (1.27). Although some sources can describe enslaved persons as natural slaves (1.28), it was also possible to conceive of slavery as an extreme form of bad luck, from which it was legitimate to seek to escape (1.30). These diverse modalities were partly complementary and partly contradictory;10 we shall explore their consequences for how slavery operated in the various ancient societies.
PROPERTY AND DOMINATION: “CHATTEL SLAVES” AND OTHERS
1.1 Aristotle, Politics, 1253b23–1254a17:11 Greek Philosophical Treatise (Fourth Century BCE)
Literature: Garnsey 1996: 107–27; Millett 2007; Vlassopoulos 2011a.
Because property is part of the household, so the art of acquiring property is part of household management – for both living and living well are impossible without the necessaries. Now, as a specific art would have to have its own proper tools, if its work is to be accomplished, so is the case with the person practicing household management. Tools can be inanimate or animate. For example, for the helmsman, the helm is an inanimate tool, while the look-out man an animate one (for when an art is concerned, an assistant is a kind of tool). Accordingly, a possession is a tool for maintaining life; property is a multitude of tools; a slave is a kind of animate possession; and every assistant is like a tool before tools. For if every tool could accomplish its own task when ordered or by sensing in advance what it should do […], then master-builders would not need assistants, nor would masters need slaves.
“Possessions” are spoken of in the same way as “parts.” A part is not merely a part of another entity but also is wholly of that other entity. The same is true of a possession. This is why a master is just the master of his slave, not “his slave’s” without qualification, but a slave is not merely the slave of his master but also wholly his. It is clear from these considerations then what the nature and the essential quality of a slave are. For anyone who, while being human, is by nature not of himself but of another, is by nature a slave; now, a human being is of another when, while being human, he happens to be a possession.
Property, tool, nature: how does Aristotle use these concepts to characterize slavery?
What does he mean when he claims that the master is just the master of the slave, but the slave belongs to the master completely?
Under what conditions does Aristotle think that slavery would be superfluous?
1.2 Digest, 1.5.3–4: Collection of Latin Juristic Texts (Sixth Century CE)
The Digest is a collection of excerpts from the works of republican and early imperial Roman jurists made during the reign of the emperor Justinian in the sixth century ce.
Literature: Lambertini 1984; Cavallini 1994; Garnsey 1996: 23–34; Welwei 2000; Lenski 2016.
Gaius, Institutes, Book 1: Certainly, the most important division in the law of persons is the following: all men are either free or slave.
Florentinus, Institutes, Book 9: Freedom is one’s natural ability to do what one pleases unless this is prevented by force or by law. Slavery is an institution of the law of nations12 whereby a person is subjected against nature to the ownership (dominium) of another. Slaves (servi) are thus named because commanders tend to sell captives, and thus to preserve them, rather than kill them. They are, indeed, said to be mancipia because they are captured from the enemy by force (manus).
What is freedom according to these passages?
What is the cause of slavery?
What conception of slavery underlies these passages? How does it relate to the view expressed in 1.1?
1.3 Pollux, Onomastikon, 3.83: Greek Thesaurus (Second Century CE)
Literature: Lotze 1959; van Wees 2003; Paradiso 2007; Lewis 2018: 143–6.
Between free men and slaves are the helots of the Lacedaemonians, the penestai of the Thessalians, the klarôtai (i.e. “those belonging to the allotted land”) and mnôitai of the