Dimitris j. kyrtatas introduction
This chapter assesses the location of slavery within the ancient Greek economy or, rather, economies.1 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.
Chattel slavery and serf-like slavery
To the Greeks the distinction between slavery and freedom was very meaningful, underlined not only by custom and convention but also by law.2 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. The slaves of Sparta, commonly called Helots, were prone to rebel; the slaves of Athens were not — the most we hear about Athenian slaves being that, when Athens was under extreme pressure from the Spartans, large numbers of them ran away (Thucydides 7.27), but fell prey ultimately to other masters (Oxyrhynchus Historian 12.4). Such observations led Greek thinkers to investigate further, though not too much further. Helotage, they declared, was a controversial
Austin and Vidal-Naquet 1977; Cartledge 1998a. 2 MacDowell 1978: 79—83.
Institution in a way that slavery of the Athenian type was not (Plato, Laws
According to tradition, the Helots were a Greek population subjected to bondage through conquest of their land by other Greeks (Theopompus in Athenaeus 6.265c; but cf. Antiochus in Strabo 6.3.2). The same was said about the Penestae of Thessaly (Ath. 6.264a), the a(m)phamiotai and mnoitai of Crete,4 as well as of some other Greeks or non-Greeks in various areas. Conquest was seen to lead to a particular type of servitude in which slaves had significant common characteristics, above all enjoying family lives through which they regularly reproduced themselves.5 Also, although they were often liable to harsh treatment, they were recognised as a community with their own traditions and religious affiliations.6 Thus, a late Greek lexicographer felt it best to refer to them as occupying a position ‘between free men and slaves’ (Pollux, Onomasticon 3.78—83).
From a modern point of view, these conquered or subjected people resembled the serfs of the Middle Ages — which does not mean that the Spartan, Thessalian or Cretan social organisation resembled in any meaningful way mediaeval feudalism. Thus to distinguish them from the other common variety of slaves, we may call them serfs or serf-like slaves.7 The main activity of most of them was probably agricultural, under conditions that differed from area to area (and time to time). But it seems reasonable to assume that their employment worked best on relatively large estates.8
In Athens and, probably, most other classical Greek cities, the situation was quite different.9 Individual masters were able to buy their own slaves in whatever quantities they felt desirable or appropriate. So widespread had the custom become by the fourth century that Aristotle (Politics I326ai9) could take it for granted that cities were ‘bound to contain a large number of slaves and resident aliens and foreigners’. (Reference to resident aliens and foreigners makes it clear that Sparta was not included.) According to local traditions, this way of acquiring slaves was a novelty of the archaic age (cf. Timaeus in Ath. 6.264c). It was generally believed that there was a time when free people had to perform all the required tasks, without assistance from slaves (Herodotus 6.137; Pherecrates in Ath. 6.263b). Before the sixth or, possibly, the seventh century, almost all slaves in the Greek world were either natives or captives. As is well illustrated in the Odyssey, bought slaves were an extreme rarity at that time. In the early archaic age, free people were being enslaved either through conquest, as in large parts ofthe Peloponnese and in Thessaly, or through debt, as in pre-Solonian Athens. Following the
3 Cartledge 2001b; see Paul Cartledge’s chapter in this volume. 4 Willetts 1967: 13—17.
5 Cf. Vidal-Naquet 1986: ch. 3.2. 6 Finley 1981:116-32; Cartledge 1987/2000: 170-6; 1988.
SeeT. E. Rihll’s chapter in this volume.
Jameson 1992:136—9.
Ste. Croix 1972:89—93.
Lead of the Chians, it was said (Theopompus in Ath. 6.265b), many Greeks turned at some point to trade as the major source for their slaves.
In classical Athens and other cities with similar social institutions, some people were born into slavery inside the Greek world. In several, perhaps most cities, Greek parents occasionally exposed their unwanted infants, knowing that those who cared to bring them up were allowed to treat them as slaves. Further, the offspring of bought slaves became slaves themselves. However, all these were clearly sources of secondary significance. The proportion of slaves bought from abroad was so large that in the fifth and fourth centuries, outside Sparta, Thessaly, Crete and perhaps a few other areas, being a slave became synonymous with being a ‘barbarian’ from almost all neighbouring countries of the Greek mainland, including Illyria, Thrace, Phrygia, Caria and Syria. The trade that provided many Greeks with their servile workforce was predominantly an international one.
Greek masters were never really concerned with the internal situation of the foreign lands that produced so many slaves or with the very existence of a reliable international trade. That there would ever be a time when slave-traders would not risk their lives to provide them with their valuable commodity seemed to them unthinkable (Aristophanes, Wealth 510—26). Even Aristotle, who made acute observations regarding commerce (Nicomachean Ethics ii33a—b), had nothing to say about what seems now a significant issue: the transformation of human beings into chattel. Nor do we hear much about a moral justification of this transformation. The fact that the majority of slaves were barbarians, i. e. outsiders, seemed sufficient enough justification.10 They were thought to be morally inferiors and were often likened to animals.11 Barbarians, it was claimed, were meant by nature to serve the Greeks.
That Greek slavery ultimately depended upon war and violence seems obvious enough.12 The view that all the property, including the bodies of the victims of war, belonged, justifiably, to the victors was shared by almost all Greeks (cf. Xenophon, Cyropaedia 7.5.73). But war can hardly be considered the real cause of slavery. There is no universal or eternal law by which the victors should keep numbers of the defeated in bonds. After the termination of hostilities, captives may be released, ransomed, kept in prison, tortured or executed. The choice depends on the mentality, the interests and strategic calculations of the victors.
In the Homeric poems that depict an early archaic age practice, the defeated warriors are generally massacred. Only certain women and children are enslaved, and even these do not become articles of trade but are offered as prizes to the leading victors, Eurycleia and Eumaeus being the
10 Hall 1989: 101.
Ii
Bradley 2000a. 12 Garlan 1987.
Most notable exceptions.159 There was only one kind of war that led directly and inevitably to the commodification of human beings, and that was slave hunts. Slave hunts are not often mentioned in the sources but seem to be implied by Aristotle (Pol. I256b23—6) and can be considered as regular.
The transformation of captives into commodities to be sold through trade to distant lands depended primarily not on military tactics and strategic calculations but on economic and social conditions: first, the existence of a reliable international trade and second, and more importantly, a demand for slaves. A society that is interested in buying large numbers of slaves is a society that can keep them under control and make use of them. Above all, it is a society that finds it desirable or, perhaps, necessary to employ them. It is therefore to the societies that bought slaves that we must turn to in order to grasp the essence of chattel slavery, leaving aside, just as the Greeks did, the nature of the societies that produced slaves (an important but altogether different topic).
The first observation to make is that only societies that had reached a certain degree ofcommercialisation were interested in the commodification of slaves. It is difficult to envisage a large-scale slave trade in a world that did not yet use money, that had not yet established international trade routes and that had no easy access to appropriate markets. The second observation is that societies that turned to international trade as the major source for their working forces were those that lacked sufficient or suitable (i. e. sufficiently cheap and/or submissive) workforces of their own.14
The Greeks did not make a clear connection between the importation of slaves and the unavailability of an indigenous workforce. They did record, however, traditions regarding the abolition of debt-bondage in Athens in the early sixth century. It appears that until then numerous native Athenians were obliged to offer their services in a servile manner to wealthy landowners either because they had fallen into debt or because they were unable to cultivate their own small plots of land in a profitable way. At some point their grievances led to unrest, and a civil war was threatened, but the mediator Solon provided Athenians with acceptable laws and regulations. One of the most important was the prohibition of loans secured on the person of the debtor. All enslaved Athenians were freed, and it was agreed that never again would Athenians be enslaved in their own city.15 Such traditions explain why the wealthy landowners found it necessary to look elsewhere for a cheap and manageable workforce.
The cancellation ofdebts and the abolition ofdebt-bondage are recorded exclusively for Athens. But the conditions that led to Solon’s reforms were not confined to Athens alone. The strength of the poor Athenians lay in their ability to bear arms. Much more than offering a cheap workforce,
Poor Athenians were needed to defend their city. The Greek world was increasingly finding itself in constant warfare: city against neighbouring city, alliance against alliance. One after the other, many Greek communities started to bestow citizenship rights on all those who could provide themselves with arms. The Athenians were probably alone in taking such radical measures as those ascribed to Solon, but other cities prohibited loans secured on weapons and ploughs (Diodorus 1.79). The idea was more or less the same. Free peasants and self-equipped warriors were more important to their cities than serf-like slaves were to the large landowners. At the time of Solon, Athens was already involved in long-distance trade, as was Chios, which it was said paved the way for the acquisition ofbought slaves, for which the Greeks had a vocabulary — either arguronetoi (‘bought with silver’), chrusonetoi (‘bought with gold’), or onetoi (simply ‘bought’), as distinct from those won over by the sword, doryalotoi. There was no exact Greek equivalent to what is called in English chattel slavery or in French esclavage merchandise, but Greek masters called their slaves living tools or articles of property (Arist. Pol. i253b3i—3) or simply somata, bodies.
The contribution of chattel slavery to the economy of Athens and many other cities of the classical Greek world can hardly be overestimated. In classical Greece slaves were employed by all wealthy and even many poor owners of cultivable land; they worked in mines and quarries, industries and shops, brothels and temples, the stock-breeding mountains and the ships that traversed the seas, in private households and the public sector. In an ideal city, it was thought (Pl. Leg. 778a), a citizen should be ‘provided, as far as possible, with a sufficient number of suitable slaves who can help him in what he has to do’. The basic difference between this and the more archaic serf-like slavery is that human beings acquired a twofold nature: they had a use-value as well as an exchange-value, just like other commodities, according to Aristotle’s theoretical position (Pol. i257a) that every article of property has a double value. Chattel slaves not only were introduced into a society through trade but also remained, potentially, articles for trade. They could be sold at their master’s discretion at any expedient time.
Once discovered, this new type of slavery spread throughout the Greek world. Alongside its serf-like population, Crete had already started to introduce chattel slaves in the fifth century. The same holds true for Thessaly. Even classical Sparta did not remain altogether immune from the innovation. The availability of a local workforce and the low degree to which some cities had been commercialised did not allow (or, rather, oblige) them to follow the path of Athens and Chios full-scale. It allowed them, however, and sometimes obliged them, to catch up with the advantages of this new institution, to at least a limited degree and for some special purposes. When classical Sparta, Crete and Thessaly declined, chattel slavery became the norm all over the Greek world, although more traditional forms of exploitation persisted in the regions conquered by Alexander.160 Having been invented under very specific conditions during the archaic period, it was able to spread throughout the Greek and, to a certain degree, nonGreek world because of its advantages over other types of unfree labour.
Slaves in agriculture
The ancient Greek economy was overwhelmingly rural. There is no doubt that the vast majority of the free population earned the greatest part of its income by cultivating the land and by herding. Arable land was at all times the most secure, honourable and, therefore, common type of investment, its ownership being restricted, in most cities, to full citizens alone. How many Athenians were not farmers is not easy to say. Some scholars suggest that their numbers were quite substantial.161 For most other cases we cannot even guess. But numbers, apart from being elusive, may hardly solve the real problems about the Greek economy and its structure.
Both the Greek economy and the Greek way of thinking about the economy have been topics greatly debated since the nineteenth century. While major disagreements regarding the degree to which Greek economy and economic thinking were ‘primitive’ (i. e. structurally and conceptually different from the economy and economic thinking of the modern world) have not been bridged but rather transformed,18 the focus of many scholars has shifted to address the problems from different angles. It is thus increasingly clear that the major difficulty in assessing the Greek economy lies not in its substance but in the way it was presented by our informants.
To most wealthy Greeks, whose perspective is represented in the extant literature, the important issue addressed was not so much the acquisition of wealth as its consumption. Thus, in a detailed treatment of household management, Xenophon’s Oeconomicus, astonishingly little is said about production and too much about an orderly way of living. High status, it is made clear, did not depend on profit maximisation but rather on honour maximisation. This way of presentation, however, does not necessarily imply that production was not organised in a rational and optimal way. It only explains why many Greeks thought it was significant to make clear that they possessed numerous slaves without going into detail about the exact employment of such slaves.
If it were not for circumstantial evidence given by the orators and from asides in poetry and drama, we would hardly know that wealthy and even not so wealthy farmers in classical Athens (and, presumably, elsewhere) depended to a large extent upon slave labour.162 The employment of slaves in the countryside is being increasingly established by archaeological investigations as well, but this evidence is still tentative.163 From a modern point of view, the contribution of slaves and slavery to agricultural activities appears to have been not only minimised by those who made a profit out of it but in a sense concealed.
Greek historians give an even less accurate impression. Herodotus, for example, who has much to say about Sparta, never mentions that the Helots worked on the land.21 However, on the rare occasions that historians find the opportunity to refer to agricultural slavery, when military developments demand it, they always do so as a matter of course. Thus, while mentioning the capture of the Sicilian town Zancle, Herodotus (6.23) reports that the slaves were divided into two large groups: those in the town and those in the open country, most of whom would obviously be employed in agriculture. Thucydides (3.73) refers to rural slaves just once because they played an important role in the civil strife of fifth-century Corcyra.
He conveys the impression that the great majority of the island’s slaves were to be found in the fields (for a slightly later period cf. Xen., Hellenica 6.2.6). Xenophon mentions in passing (Hell. 3.2.26) the capture of many slaves from the fields of Elis. Dionysius of Halicarnassus reported (7.9.2—3) of late sixth-century Italian Cyme that the place for enslaved aristocratic youths after the establishment of a tyranny was in the fields, while Agath-archides (Ath. 6.272d) found the opportunity to refer to numerous slaves owned by the Dardani because, although in time of peace they tilled the land, in time of war they were enrolled in companies with their own masters as captains. These masters, he added, owned a thousand or more slaves each. Given the indifference of historians to matters pertaining to cultivation, it is perhaps best to take Aristophanes as our guide. In a utopian society, farming should be best left to slaves (Women of the Assembly 651; cf. Plut. 26; 1105).
To the Greeks, the meaningful questions to raise regarding agriculture were not who tilled the soil but who owned the land and who was responsible for organising production by making important decisions. Slaves never owned land and only made decisions about it when they became bailiffs in control of other slaves. It is about bailiffs (epitropoi) that we occasionally read in our sources (Xen. Oec. 12.3; [Arist.] Oec. I344a26).
Landowners organised production in their fields as they felt best, choosing the labourers that seemed to them most suitable. A New Comedy reference (Menander, The Bad-Tempered Man 328—31) gives a comprehensive list of the options available: a farmer could farm his land with the aid of either a slave, or a hired man from the neighbourhood, or the assistance of a neighbour, or alone, with no help at all. Interestingly, this last option is taken to mean with the help of family members — in this particular case the family member was the farmer’s daughter. As long as an Athenian citizen fulfilled his public duties, his decisions regarding the way he organised his production attracted the attention of gossips alone.
The proper choice of bailiffs or stewards was a serious topic. The reason is clearly stated by Aristotle, who explained that a bailiff ministered leisure to his lord, so that he, ‘undistracted by care of daily necessities, may not be debarred from any of those actions which befit him’ (Magna Moralia ii98bi4—17). Such bailiffs, whose task was, above all, to supervise the work of common slaves (ergates), could occasionally be freedmen (Demosthenes 27.19) but were more usually slaves themselves. Xenophon’s Socrates thought it was of some interest to inquire whether it was best for big landowners to buy trained bailiffs or to have them trained (Xen. Oec. 12.3). In exactly what way the common slaves were to be employed was mostly the bailiff’s concern.
At first glance it seems as ifalmost all free persons living in fourth-century Athens were slave-owners (cf. Lysias 5.5). Only paupers were deemed to be without even just one slave (Lys. 24) — although how many of these paupers there were it is difficult to say. But some wealthy free persons owned hundreds (occasionally many hundreds) of slaves, whereas persons of moderate means owned just a few slaves or even one, in which case it would most probably be a female servant. Personal preferences apart, the distribution of slaves was closely related to the structure of Athenian society.
To see what a wealthy household looked like, we may turn to the case of Ischomachus (Xen. Oec.).164 The degree to which the literary figure corresponded to the historical personality is uncertain,165 but the information about the land he owned and the way he exploited it should be more or less accurate for many wealthy Athenian citizens. If the information provided was fictional or altogether out of proportion, Xenophon’s moralising discussion that is based upon it would have no value.
Ischomachus belonged to the so-called liturgical class, the very few hundred wealthiest Athenian citizens obligated to pay for various public expenses.24 His landed property, although extensive, was not concentrated in one or two localities but, as must have been normal, was fragmented and, probably, scattered. Members of his class possessed land even beyond Attica.25 Since his family consisted of himself and his wife (no children were yet born), the supervision of his agricultural production must have been rather simple. His wife was expected to remain indoors in control of the female slaves. Ischomachus, unlike other members of his class, was careful not to lose contact with the agricultural activities of his household, but day-to-day supervision of his many slaves was left to bailiffs or foremen. One of their most important skills was to be able to rule the common slaves (13.4). We do not know how many foremen were needed to supervise Ischomachus’ property. But the household slaves were divided into groups and closely supervised. There must have been a certain division of labour among them, of which nothing is said.
At the other end of the land-owning spectrum, slaves are occasionally reported to have been employed in agriculture in small households, but generally we are not told whether they had anything to do with rural activities. Thus it is thought that most were domestic servants rather than primary producers.
Euphiletus’ household may be taken as a typical example of how a family with only modest means lived (Lys. 1). Of such households there must have been many, perhaps several thousands, and it is to them that we have to turn to obtain a more comprehensive idea of Athenian agriculture. Euphiletus’ family consisted of a couple, their recently born child and a female slave serving mostly the mistress, while the master was outdoors attending his farm. (Euphiletus seems to have had just one single plot.) Since the family’s life is presented in some detail, it has been generally assumed that Euphiletus was cultivating his plot with no assistance. This, however, is an arbitrary conclusion. The story we are told has nothing to report regarding agricultural activities, apart from the fact that they were Euphiletus’ main preoccupation. To attend to his work, Euphiletus was obliged to spend his day outdoors and often to remain in the fields without returning home for several nights. If, as Lysias implies (42), besides his female servant he possessed an extra slave or two, we would never have been told so explicitly. Such slaves could be lodged in the farm premises throughout the year. They were of no importance to the story as presented by Lysias.
It is conceivable that the Euphiletus family had just the one female slave reported. Even in this case, her classification as a domestic servant is arbitrary and misleading. Distinguishing between servants and producers may not be an intelligent way of categorising slaves in the classical Greek world. Three centuries later, in the altogether different Palestinian countryside, Jesus had no difficulty in envisaging the life of a lonely slave serving a peasant of moderate means (Luke 17:7—8). It could not have been much different earlier. Poor families owning a single slave took advantage of his labour in all possible ways (below). One such male slave, known from a fourth-century comedy, while serving his mistress indoors, rushes out to assist her son who was digging in the field alone (Men. Dys. 206—8). A farmer’s labour was doubled by the use of just one assistant.166
If women and daughters were expected to offer a hand in the agricultural activities (Men. Dys. 333—4; cf. Dem. 57.45), all the more so slaves, both male and female, who served a household. Since it would be absurd to assert that Euphiletus’ female slave was not asked to make ready the things needed in the field of her master while remaining indoors with her mistress, it seems that such slaves should also be considered as contributing to agricultural production. It may, therefore, be for good reasons that Greek authors were reluctant to distinguish between productive and unproductive slaves. In spite of its significance in agricultural production, slavery may have seemed to most owners of arable land a mode of living rather than a mode of production. The exclusive employment of numerous slaves in their fields was probably the privilege of only a few very wealthy landowners.
Slaves in industry, the crafts and war
Slaves make more visible appearances in productive activities other than agriculture. The orators found plenty of opportunities to refer to them in the cases that were tried in the Athenian courts to resolve disputes between businessmen or over inheritances. Additional information is given in numerous inscriptions that record matters of more public interest than agriculture. The building accounts of city temples and other monuments as well as manumission lists are among the most informative. Xenophon is again a precious source. Writing a pamphlet on how the Athenians could reform their economy, he dealt in some detail with the mining business, reviewing the situation and making suggestions for the future. By adding information preserved by later authors, a firm idea can be formed of the significance of slave labour in industry and the various crafts.
Slaves are reported to have been employed in almost all kinds of tasks that required skilled or unskilled labour.167 Athenian manumission lists of the fourth century often give accurate details. It is more important and interesting, however, to observe that in whatever occupation free persons could make a living, slaves were found working either at their side or in their stead.28
Of slaves working in mining and factories, we have some precise numbers. The Athenian general Nicias was known to have owned as many as a thousand slaves who were let out to a mining contractor; another Athenian owned 600 mining slaves (Xen., De vectigalibus 4.14—15). The shield factory of Lysias and his brother may have been manned by as many as 120 slaves (Lys. 12.19). One thousand slaves may seem too many for a single master in classical Athens — although the same number is given by various authorities for other slave-owners of the same period from Phocis, Sybaris and Dardania (Ath. 6.264d, 273c, 272b, 272d). But the 120 slaves, certainly the largest number recorded for a single factory, are not given as a curiosity or an extreme case. In a knife-making factory thirty-two or thirty-three slaves are reported to have been permanently employed, while a factory making couches employed twenty slaves (Dem. 27.9).
Slave miners normally worked under very harsh conditions.168 Although not all of them spent their working time in the dark and badly ventilated galleries (many were needed to perform skilled and unskilled tasks outside the pits), it was generally acknowledged that their lives were miserable in the extreme. In the Athenian silver mines ofLaurium, many slaves, at times tens of thousands, were constantly overworked. Many (perhaps most) were stigmatised by their owners and kept in chains by contractors. Regarding them as very profitable, Xenophon thought that it would greatly benefit the city to invest its funds in such slaves.169 During the Peloponnesian War, many of the more than 20,000 slaves who managed to escape were probably miners. In the second century, the first great slave rebellion in Sicily sparked a revolt in Laurium. More than a thousand slaves were said to be involved (Diod. 34.2.19). Later in the century the slave miners revolted again. They ‘murdered the superintendents of the mines, seized the hill of Sunium, and for a long time plundered Attica’ (Posidonius in Ath. 6.272e—f). These were among the few serious uprisings of chattel slaves in the Greek mainland throughout antiquity.31 The only other case of a slave rebellion was in third-century Chios (Nymphodorus in Ath. 6.265d—266e), where the concentration of slaves was notorious.32
In all classical Greek cities, the upper section ofthe population consisted almost invariably of big landowners. It was mostly such people who were also engaged in other forms of profit-making. There are no indications of a separate and independent class of wealthy merchants or large industrialists. The only entrepreneurs not simultaneously landowners were some few wealthy Athenian citizens involved in maritime loans,33 and some metics such as Lysias (presumably some non-citizens in other cities as well). Since non-citizens were not permitted to acquire arable land, those who could accumulate a large capital invested it in all other kinds of enterprises — mostly operated by slaves.
How far down the social scale masters were accustomed to employ their slaves in this type of investment is unknown. It is unlikely that people of moderate means, let alone the poor, were able or willing to buy slaves to work in factories or large mining units. Nevertheless, when they were craftsmen themselves, they regularly bought slaves to assist them in their work (Xen., Memorabilia 2.3.3). By employing household slaves as artisans, some Athenians became really rich (Xen. Mem. 2.7.3—4). An Athenian invalid thus complained that he was so poor that he could not even afford to buy an apprentice (Lys. 24.6). Exactly how poor the invalid was is disputed,170 but the assistance he expected from the public fund certainly does not make him a person of means. In the building business, craftsmen were rather commonly assisted by a small number of slaves who worked by their side.
Wherever chattel slavery predominated in the classical Greek world slaves were commonly divided into two very broad categories. In one fell those who lived in the households of their masters and were supervised by them or their bailiffs. In the other were slaves who lived apart from their masters. These slaves could be profitable in two different ways. They were either hired out to contractors who paid their wages (misthos) directly to the owners, in which case they were often known as andrapoda misthophorounta (wage-earning slaves), or allowed to live on their own, paying themselves regularly to their owners an agreed sum (apophora), in which case they were mostly known as choris oikountes (living apart). In mining, most slaves were apparently hired out to contractors (cf. Andocides, On the Mysteries 38). Skilled slaves and slaves trained in a craft often lived on their own, as did shepherds who, understandably, were allowed to move freely with their flocks.35
Wage-earning slaves brought in a steady income. It could not have been high, but it was secure. The contractors were often obliged to take care of them, to clothe and to feed them, and to replace them. Slaves living on their own were often more profitable. To be able to perform their duties properly, they were given great freedom in organising their work and in promoting their businesses. Although evidently not numerous, slave bankers such as the Athenian Pasion could sometimes be very successful.36
Most prostitutes were slaves or ex-slaves. Masters made considerable profits by prostituting their slaves, both female and male, although this was hardly an honourable means of profit-making. The lives of slave prostitutes could not have been easy, but they occasionally had the opportunity to earn extra money and make appropriate connections. Coercion was certainly the easiest and most common method applied, but not necessarily the most efficient. Given a certain degree of freedom, slave prostitutes could attract more clients. When able to free themselves, either by using their savings or with the help of friends and appropriate loans (below), they normally carried on their former profession. Successful prostitutes are known who were able to open their own houses and train their own slaves to succeed them (Dem. 59). Socrates was said to have paid a visit to a thriving woman and to have held a conversation with her on profit-making (Xen. Mem. 3.11). In Athens there may have also been state-owned brothels (Ath. 13).171
Slaves were also extensively employed in warfare. Almost all hoplites needed their assistance to carry their arms and provisions. In a few exceptional cases when cities were in grievous situations, slaves were promised their freedom if they were willing to fight for the safety of their masters. The contribution of some during the battle ofArginusae (406 bc) was even remembered with pride (Ar., Frogs 190—1).172 Although not publicised by Greek historians, slave involvement in military affairs was probably considerable. In Athens many slaves rowed the ships that secured not only the strong position of the city in international affairs but also its democracy.39
A few extremely wealthy slave-owners earned their income by exploiting large numbers of slave craftsmen. To those who could let out their slaves on a daily basis, slavery would have probably seemed a useful mode of bringing in additional income, without affecting the household economy in any considerable way.
Indoors slavery
Production in the ancient Greek world was normally performed at the level ofhouseholds as entities. Even big industrial units, the mining business and extensive landholdings, were normally seen as somewhat detached affairs ofhouseholds. When it came to what we call economics, individuals did not count for much. The Athenians of whose activities we are informed were almost invariably heads of families, not individuals in a modern sense. We are practically never told about members ofthe same household pursuing, independently, diverse enterprises (cf. Arist. Pol. 1253b!—4, 33— 4). The modern approach of assessing separately the contribution of each individual goes contrary to the way the ancient Greeks thought of and wrote about their economy.40
Albeit as ‘tools’, household slaves were employed in the same tasks as free labourers, sometimes working side by side with the free members of their slave-owning families — and in at least the poorer houses also sleeping by their side.41 It is highly unlikely that masters ever cared to calculate their exact contribution as distinct from the contribution of free household members. The exact profitability of slaves was known when they were hired out by the day or when they lived apart from their masters and paid in their agreed sums. But even then, there is no evidence that such inputs were calculated in any different way from the other earnings of households. Household members, both free and unfree, were assigned tasks according to the household needs and not according to an abstract division of labour.
While the demand for labour remained more or less stable and constant in most ofthe crafts (unless the craft was related to war equipment and military affairs), it varied greatly in agriculture, both annually and seasonally.42 Greek farmers had various alternatives in cultivating their land, but many of them may have opted for bare fallow, leaving their farm uncultivated for a year or two. When the land was being intensively cultivated, twice a year, during the time of ploughing and sowing and during the time of harvesting, the amount of labour required was far greater than during the rest of the year or during the years that land was not intensively cultivated. Slaves who could be pressed to work longer hours and harder than most free persons were clearly of great value at seasonal peaks. The problem was that no person, especially no slave, should be allowed to remain idle for a year, a month or even a few days. But this was one of the main advantages of chattel slavery. When slaves were not needed in the fields they were expected to offer their services elsewhere.
‘Elsewhere’ could mean both outdoors and indoors. Households with more slaves than needed could always hire them out to households with fewer slaves or none at all to assist neighbours with unfinished work in their fields. They could also hire them out to entrepreneurs to be employed in jobs unaffected by seasonal variations. This commonsense rationality was taken for granted. It did not require special discussion and creeps into our sources only incidentally (cf. Dem. 53.20—1).
A significant proportion of slaves were females. Greek authors convey the idea that, festivals and funerals apart, the place of women was indoors. In the wealthy house of Ischomachus, male slaves work in the fields under the direct supervision of a bailiff and the indirect supervision of their master, but female slaves remain in the house under the direct supervision of a housekeeper and the indirect supervision of their mistress. This idealised picture is greatly exaggerated. In a working day the streets of Athens were probably filled with both men and women,43 and there should be no doubt that women, including freeborn women, assisted in the fields, at least occasionally (Men. Dys. 333—4). It was something for which an apology could be made (Dem. 57.45). But the modern assumption that female slaves had nothing to do with agriculture is erroneous. Homer (Iliad 18.559—60) and Hesiod (Works and Days 405—9), who did not share the scruples of
42 Osborne 1995.
Jameson 1997:103—4.
Classical authors, make this perfectly clear. The poorer women of Athens and, presumably, of other cities also worked for wages or maintained their own businesses outdoors.173
Most women, both free and slaves, spent much of their time indoors. It is generally understood that they were mainly engaged in what could be termed domestic work. They were expected to keep the house in order, to cook, to look after the children and the elderly, to entertain guests. In wealthy families with numerous slaves, the impression is that many slaves (both male and female) were maintained to impress rather than to contribute to the wealth of the household. Since domestic work is often regarded as unproductive, domestic slaves are often thought of as resembling modern servants.
The distinction between productive and unproductive labourers was not conceptualised in Greek thought. In a properly organised household the labour of men and that of women were considered complementary: men were expected to bring in fresh supplies from without, while women were expected to keep safe what lay within.174 More significantly, women were regarded as superior in some productive tasks, men in others ([Arist.] Oec. i344a3—6; Xen. Oec. 7.29—43). Accordingly, labelling slaves as either servants or productive labourers is anachronistic and misleading when applied to the classical Greek world. Indeed, classification of domestic work as unproductive is misconceived even in the modern world.46 For a garrison of about 480 men, 110 women were needed to do the cooking (Thuc. 2.78). To think of these women as unproductive servants betrays a modern prejudice.
Among the tasks most commonly assigned to women, as all Greeks took for granted, were spinning and weaving; these were indoor tasks, in which respectable women of wealthy families, such as the (partly fictionalised) wife of Ischomachus, took pride. Mistresses were expected in their turn to train and to supervise their slaves. Ischomachus thought that his wife, by training their slaves this way, could double their value (Xen. Oec. 7.41). Since the vast amounts of textiles needed in the ancient Greek world were produced indoors, it may be appropriate to view a typical Greek house as, beyond everything else, a workshop.47 We are incidentally informed that the Megarians made a good living out of making cheap working smocks. For their production they bought foreign slaves whom they forced to work the way they wished (Xen. Mem. 2.7.6).
Respectable Athenians were happy to know that they could produce (almost) all they needed for consumption at home but reluctant to admit that what their womenfolk produced indoors ever reached the market. Xenophon (Mem. 2.7) reports the story of an Athenian who was surprised to realise how profitable the work of his female relatives could be. It was certainly strange to have fourteen free women spinning and weaving for the market. But otherwise, when, as was normal, free and slave women worked together, their products could be sold without any comment. We are not told what Euphiletus’ wife was doing at home along with her maidservant. But spinning and weaving were certainly part of her tasks. Slave labour in this enterprise would have more than doubled the household production of textiles. To masters possessing at least one or more domestic servants, slavery would have seemed, beyond all else, a mode of supplementing their household labour in whatever way was felt necessary or sensible.
The exploitation of slaves
As the Greeks saw it, having been bought at a price, slaves were property and could be used like other belongings. As property, they had no property of their own. All they possessed, their labour power and the products of their labour power included, were seen by definition as belonging to their masters. The only issue worth consideration was that a human being was dominated by another human being, not that a labourer was given or not given his due. Consequently, topics that we would tend to examine as pertaining to the economy, the Greeks examined as pertaining to politics or ethics — hence, Aristotle’s observations on slavery were included in his Politics and Ethics. Indeed, Greek intellectuals tended to assimilate almost all kinds of labour to slave labour.175
Accustomed as we are to wage labour, we tend to distinguish the labourer (free or slave) from labour power. It was the labour power of slaves, as we see it, that could be productive and profitable. But we then realise in away the ancient Greeks did not, that not all that slaves produced belonged to their masters. Slaves had been bought or raised at their masters’ expense. If they were ever to become profitable, the original capital invested in them had to be economised first. Also, slaves had to be fed, clothed, housed and nursed. Occasionally, to be able to perform their duties properly, they were allowed to live much above subsistence level, especially those living apart. This means that part of what slaves produced either went to their reproduction or to their maintenance.
Greek masters certainly knew that buying and sustaining slaves cost money, but they do not seem to have realised that this money, in a sense, ‘belonged’ to their slaves. By stressing the legal and political categories of domination and ownership, ancient authors overlooked the economic category of exploitation. But exploited slaves were.176 It was by putting them to work that their masters were able to make profits, and far greater profits than those from wage-earning labourers.
Owing to their subordinate condition (their domination, as the Greeks would have it), slaves were exempt from the (mostly military) obligations of the free, especially of free citizens, and thus in a sense physically more secure. They were disciplined and could be asked to work for longer hours and harder than free members of families and wage labourers. More importantly, as was generally determined by custom and law, it was appropriate for most slaves to live much nearer to mere subsistence than almost any free person performing the same tasks. A common slave asked to perform unskilled labour was normally expected to live at the minimum subsistence level, while a very poor free person, especially if of citizenship status, was justified in asking for subsidies and assistance. A slave banker, to take another example, was expected to live in a less luxurious way than an equally successful free banker. The Greek economy was a slave economy, because a significant proportion of its labour power was exploited to a degree that free labour power could never be within its social, political and military systems.
The prevalence of chattel slavery over a great part of the classical Greek world had significant repercussions both for individual slave-owners and for the economies of whole cities. Having been raised outside the community which was to profit from their labour, imported slaves cost less to a community than slaves or serfs produced within that community. It does not matter much whether the Greeks had themselves enslaved the prisoners they imported or whether they had bought them from foreigners who had fought against each other. Nor is it important to determine the exact proportion of imported slaves — although it is clear that most chattel slaves were not of Greek origin.50 Even if a relatively small proportion of slaves were former captives (in all likelihood the proportion was large), they would have made the overall exploitation of slave labour profitable. The superior profitability of chattel slavery helps explain its rapid expansion in the Greek world after its introduction in the archaic age.
Chattel slaves were also profitable to their masters in one further important respect. Masters were entitled by custom and law to manumit their slaves at their discretion, and did so, occasionally, out of generosity at their deathbeds or through their wills. They could not do this with their serf-like slaves, at least not the Helots. Manumissions, however, were often commercial transactions. According to such arrangements, slaves were given their freedom by paying their masters an agreed sum. The slave was thus able to end his enslavement and begin his life as a free person, while the master would be able to buy a new and, presumably, younger slave to replace the old. It was understandably skilled slaves, especially those living on their own, that were mostly able to amass the required sums, although other slaves could also be assisted by contributions (Dem. 59.29—32). Agricultural slaves and slave miners are almost absent in the manumission records because they seldom had the opportunity to save money or to make the necessary connections.
The Greeks, as far as we can tell, understood slavery almost exclusively as a form of domination. Trying to explain it as a form of exploitation as well helps us grasp its difference from the wage-labour to which moderns are mostly accustomed and hence to think of slavery as a mode of production functioning alongside and in combination with various other modes of production, exploiting the labour of free family members and of wage-earners.
The structure of classical Greek slave economies and societies
Although of great significance to the overall economy of the classical Greek cities, slavery does not seem to have affected any particular sector more than others. There was no special task in which masters felt that the employment of slaves could lead to significantly more efficient or productive results. Miners, prostitutes and domestic servants were overwhelmingly slaves. But this was due to the often unhealthy and humiliating conditions under which they were expected to work. There are no signs that any special goods were ever produced or any special tasks performed because slave labour was available. Contrary to later developments in the Roman world and in some modern slave societies, commercial goods reaching local or foreign markets in classical Greece were not offered more cheaply because slave labour was used to produce them. Slave-owners never felt that they could take advantage of the low cost of production to throw out of business competitors who depended on their own labour and that of their families.
When hired out by the day, slaves normally cost their employers as much as free labourers. The public accounts of the construction of the frieze and columns of the Erechtheum are revealing on this matter.177 Employers of hired slaves did not hope to do their work at the lowest cost. Accordingly, there are no indications of noteworthy competition between slaves and free persons.178
Slaves living apart from their masters and paying in regularly an agreed sum were employed in various ways. We are told more about skilled and
Competent slaves, but they were not necessarily numerous. In any case slaves living apart from their masters and organising their work themselves behaved, from an economic point of view, like free persons. There is no evidence that they offered their services any more cheaply because they were slaves. On the contrary, since they had to pay their masters a certain agreed sum, they would obviously try to make as much out of their skills as possible. Investors in banks run by slaves could not have hoped for a more profitable outcome.
Numerous slaves worked in the fields, the workshops or the houses of their masters. The use of such slaves was obviously profitable. Masters spent much less on the maintenance of their slaves than they would have had to pay as wages to free labourers. But in this sector too, they never seem to have offered their products at lower prices because they had been able to produce at a cheaper rate, and again there was no notable competition between slave-run estates and estates cultivated by free peasants.53 This attitude also explains why so many masters employed their slaves in what we would tend to regard as unproductive activities. The distinction between productive and unproductive servile labour had no appeal to masters caring only to know that using slaves meant spending less.
Thus, although individual owners made profits, sometimes very substantial profits, from owning slaves, and although societies that introduced slaves from outside took advantage oftheir strong position in international trade as well as of their ability to exploit the spoils of war and piracy, the Greek economies were not made structurally any different by the presence of numerous slaves. How masters benefited from slave-ownership while the Greek slave economies were not made significantly more competitive is a topic worth closer examination.54
Almost anyone who was not very poor could invest money in buying slaves. It has been calculated that unskilled slaves in classical Athens cost about a year’s keep.55 Slaves were not only introduced in Greek societies as commodities but also circulated as commodities. Their main advantages were their flexibility and mobility. Greeks who wanted to make a quick profit, such as some Athenian metics or some citizens who possessed more capital than they could use to buy new land, tended to invest their wealth in slaves. Land was limited in all Greek cities; slaves were not. If all went well investors secured high returns. The more slaves they owned the greater their earnings.
If, however, almost anyone could buy a slave or two, only the wealthy could buy ten, and only the very wealthy a hundred or a thousand slaves. The distribution of chattel slaves in Greek societies was very uneven, and this contributed greatly to deepening class divisions within the free
Cartledge 1993b: 163. 54 Kyrtatas 2005.
55
Jones 1956: 191.
Population. Chattel slavery sharpened the social structure of Greek cities. It made the lives of many free persons of moderate means easier and more comfortable, while allowing the wealthy to become rapidly much more wealthy. Possessing slaves made leisured lives possible and secured the position of slave-owners in the social structure. In this sense, by securing the dominance of the dominant classes, slavery can be seen as the principal if not exclusive mode of production in the classical Greek world.179 The Greeks seem to have realised this well. If an egalitarian society was ever to be established, the land and the slaves should be equally distributed (Ar. Eccl. 591—3). The rest would follow easily. If a comprehensive treatment of slavery and the economy has not survived in the extant sources, it is because slavery may not have seemed to Greeks so much a factor of their economy. Almost all aspects of life depended upon its existence.
Bibliographic essay
Wallon (1847/1988) is sometimes regarded as beginning modern research on slavery in antiquity; it is notably preoccupied with moral issues and has relatively little to say about the employment of slaves or their significance to ancient Greek economies. Although showing that slaves were to be found everywhere, Wallon was mostly interested in stressing the demoralising effect of their use on the free population. Westermann (1955) is more comprehensive and accurate in the use of sources. His treatment is also less antiquarian than Wallon’s, but the work lacks a theoretical framework. Vogt (1975c) is concerned with human relations between slaves and masters, the slave wars and humanitarian aspects of the institution of slavery, but also offers a useful assessment of modern scholarship. Jones (1956) and (1957) are pioneering studies on slavery and the Greek economy (and especially the significance of slavery to Athenian democracy). The estimates given of Athenian slave numbers are too low, and the contribution of slavery to the structure of the Greek economy is underestimated, but Jones correctly saw the great significance of slavery to wealthy and well-to-do citizens. Lauffer (1979) is the standard work on the mines of Laurium.
Finley (1981, containing articles from 1959 onwards) and (1980) are landmark studies, placing theoretical issues at the forefront of research, especially the issue of the location of slavery in Greek society and in the Greek economy. Their influence has been immense. Garlan (1988), for example, still the most satisfactory full-scale treatment of Greek slavery, clearly shows the effects of Finley’s work; and Jameson (1990), (1992), (1994), (1997), arguing especially from archaeological evidence, shows how substantial the contribution of slaves was in Greek agriculture (but the matter is still open to debate). Ste. Croix (1981), an openly Marxian study, takes issue with Finley in almost every respect and is especially important on the theory of exploitation. The influence of both Finley and Ste. Croix can be seen in the work of Cartledge (summarised in Chapter 4, this volume), the leading contemporary historian of Sparta, especially in his views of‘class struggle’.
World History
