Slavery

Slaves were “un-free” individuals who were the personal property of their owners and could be bought, sold, or set free at will by their owner. Slaves were captured in war or slave raids, or sold to slave traders by kidnappers or sometimes as young children by their own parents, or were born in slavery to slave parents, although the latter possibility was in all likelihood rare. Of the early forms of slavery in the Near East and the Mediterranean world, much is still unknown. Presumably, the number of slaves was relatively low in comparison with later periods of antiquity. That may have been because in small-scale agriculture, slavery did not substantially enhance production, because there was not enough work for them. In crafts and commerce, though, slaves could be employed. However, as long as the level of these activities remained relatively modest in the Greek world, the overall utility of slaves remained limited. Consequently, the possession of slaves in Greece in this period was mainly a status symbol: both male and female slaves worked in the households of the rich as personal servants. Probably, this was true also of Egypt and the Near East, although there the numbers of slaves possessed by a rich man could be much higher, while the Persian kings and their satraps certainly employed great numbers of these un-free persons, a few of whom by their close proximity to the ruler could sometimes wield great influence behind the scenes. In Greece, before the 5th century BC, slavery was not widespread, but the possession of slaves as status symbols must have contributed to the development of a mentality that associated manual labor with slavery and coupled the notion of a free citizen with the ideal of not having to work for one’s livelihood. That mentality naturally was more pronounced in those who possessed slaves, but to some extent these ideas filtered down to the whole of the free population.