Slavery played a vital economic role in ancient Greece, since it provided most of the manual labor. Much like Greek citizens, the life of a slave could vary from decent to miserable. A decent life could be had if a slave worked in a home, whether town or country, where one might become almost a family member. Sometimes older male slaves accompanied sons to school with the authority to discipline the boys if necessary. And those who worked for the government or a large manufacturer who owned many slaves enjoyed as independent a life as a slave could have.
Slaves generally were foreign war captives or the wives and children of the Greeks’ slain enemies. But sometimes Greeks, such as the Spartans and the Messenians, enslaved fellow Greeks following a raid or battle.
Greek slaves had no legal rights and they sometimes endured abusive owners who beat them or forced them to have sex. Slaves could also be tortured to be forced to testify in legal cases. Slaves were owned by the polis or by individuals. Those belonging to the polis had more status and more freedom, often living independently. They might be put to work, for example, policing the city or cleaning up garbage, or they might be assigned to maintain the temple of the polis’s deity.
Female slaves were often found in households or working for a merchant in the agora. Educated slaves were valuable as tutors for children in upper-class homes. Slaves often worked alongside their owners on small farms in the countryside or at crafts such as pottery, sculpting, and metal working, at which they could be as skilled as their owners. While construction of a temple called the Erechtheum was under way in the late fifth century B. C.E. Athens (see chapter 6), detailed construction records show that much of the intricate woodworking and stone carving that decorated the building was done by slaves. Hoplite soldiers would have had little strength left for fighting if not for the slaves who carried much of their equipment from place to place.
Occasionally slaves managed to improve their status. A few were able to earn money and save enough to buy their freedom. Some older slaves were freed by their masters as a reward for good service. The freed slaves were considered metics, which meant they could not vote and they needed special permission to own land. One rare case of a slave earning citizenship in Athens involved a man named Pasion (fourth century B. C.E.), who was freed and then managed the bank of his former owners.
The most miserable slaves in ancient Greece were either owned by Sparta, which brutalized its helot population, or worked in the mines. Long days in the harsh conditions of the mine made for a short life, but in general Athens did not have the problem of slave rebellions that Sparta did, since it had fewer slaves and Athenians did not treat their slaves as harshly as the Spartans did. Without slaves, Sparta might never have achieved its military strength and Athens may not have had enough silver to outfit its navy, which played such a key role in the city’s rise to an empire.
Ancient civilizations, including that of the Greeks, seldom questioned the ethics of slavery. It was an accepted part of life. In fact, Aristotle argued in Politics that some people are naturally inferior and fit only for slavery. He said the fact that Greek slaves were usually foreigners made them barbarians, therefore inferior, therefore deserving of slavery.
World History
