Slavery and economy in the Greek world (original) (raw)
Related papers
“Slavery and the Roman Family”
The Cambridge World History of Slavery, vol. 1. The Ancient Mediterranean World, eds. P. A. Cartledge & K. R. Bradley, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011
2012
he study of ancient slavery is, rightly, of enduring interest. From Wallon to Weber to Marx (Engels, really) to Finley and beyond, ancient slavery has never been neglected, either by ancient historians or by students of comparative slavery. Its study thrives not just because it is a subject where grand theory and tantalizing evidence intertwine; not just because the surviving sources do not allow slaves to speak for themselves, thus posing irresistible challenges to historians; not just because slaves made important economic contributions to their societies. It fascinates, above all, because ancient slavery as a system of human exploitation was a central institution of ancient life that endured for centuries despite the violence, and the instability of violence as a form of control, at its heart; and because, at some point and without voices challenging its existence or necessity, it declined. The recent books here under review are only components of the most recent wave of ancient slavery studies. One is the first of a four-part world history of slavery, The Cambridge World History of Slavery (CWHS), with twenty-two chapters by different authors; two are outstanding scholarly monographs, Harper's
This book is part of a series, in four volumes, that aims to draw a broad picture of the development of slavery from Antiquity to AD 2000. Comprising 22 chapters, written by leading scholars in their field, it is devoted to the societies of the ancient Near East, classical Greece, the Hellenistic world and Rome. Not only literary texts but also epigraphic and archaeological records are taken into account, and each chapter is followed by a bibliographic essay.
2019
My thesis examines the legal status of slaves in the ancient world and provides a deeper understanding into the social position and economic role these individuals had in their respective societies. The analysis delves into the different roles and functions slaves had particularly in ancient Rome and the Near East. This paper centers on the function of a slave to their master as chattel and indenture, otherwise commonly known as debt-slavery. Chattel, known as the traditional form of slavery, is when an enslaved person is the personal property of the owner and treated like a commodity, capable of being exchanged or sold. Indenture is a form of bondage where people pledge themselves to pay off a loan. These constructions are determined and supported largely by the written legal codes of these periods. This includes records, literature, transactions or disputes, which refer to slaves in these ancient societies. Although these codes are often fragmentary and often lack supporting accou...
Slavery and dependent personnel in the Linear B archives of Mainland Greece
2005
This work focuses on the relations of dominance as they are demonstrated in the Linear B archives of Mainland Greece (Pylos, Tiryns, Mycenae, and Thebes) and discusses whether the social status of the "slave" can be ascribed to any social group or individual. The analysis of the Linear B tablets demonstrates that, among the lower-status people, a social group that has been generally treated by scholars as internally undifferentiated, there were differentiations in social status and levels of dependence. A set of conditions that have been recognized as being of central importance to the description of the "slave" status serve as the "unit of measurement", by which the different statuses can be correlated to the slave status. Of great importance for this work is the examination of a group of people designated as do-e-ro(-a), who have traditionally been interpreted as "slaves." This thesis, however, is not limited to these do-e-ro(-a), but takes into consideration the entire dependent and lower-status population in the tablets, distinguishes social groups of different levels of ranking and compares these groups both internally and against the criteria describing "slaves." Finally, a further goal of the discussion concerns the extent to which the different palatial sites on mainland Greece were similarly socially structured. ii iii FOREWORD This thesis would not be possible without to the generous help of a Louise Taft Semple Fellowship from the Department of Classics at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio, and a University Graduate Scholarship from the University of Cincinnati. I would like to extend my profound gratitude to my supervisors, Jack L. Davis, Peter van Minnen, and Lynne Schepartz.
Book Review of R. H. Sternberg, The Ancient Greek Roots of Human Rights
Classical Review, 2021
Where do 'human rights', as a concept and as a legal regime, come from? In the present book S. argues that the Athenians of the classical period 'invented humane values' (p. 2) and that a 'parallel wave' of humane discourse arose in the eighteenth century in Western Europe, in the work of authors directly influenced by Greek texts. Across an introduction, six chapters, three 'explorations' and a conclusion, S. traces the language of compassion and 'humaneness' in classical Athens, comparing those values to similar-looking ideological developments in eighteenth-century Europe. S.'s purpose is couched in interested terms, as an attempt to correct a recent 'phase of polemical disdain for and partial rejection of the Greeks' (p. 7), by showing that, '[f]or all our political correctness or genuine Angst', 'this heritage has borne important fruit' (p. 8). While S. addresses an important subject, the book suffers from numerous errors and insufficient argumentation. The first 'exploration' introduces us to an odd work of the French abbé Jean-Jacques Barthélemy, Travels of Anacharsis the Younger in Greece, which was first published in 1788 and featured in the personal library of Thomas Jefferson. The work purports to be the travelogue of a Scythian in Greece in the fourth century BCE, replete with descriptions based on the author's knowledge of the ancient sources. S. suggests that Barthélemy understood ancient Greek slavery to be relatively 'humane' and that this understanding, conveyed through Anacharsis' description, would have informed Jefferson's picture of Greece. (Jefferson is elsewhere said to have 'treated [his slaves] as kindly as possible', p. 18; compare the official Monticello website, which maintains that 'there is no such thing as a "good" slaveholder'.) S. also wishes to read Barthélemy's work in its historical context, as reflecting the concerns of Enlightenment France. Some thoughts are not Barthélemy's editorialising, however. For example, S. sees 'intriguing ambiguity' in his description of the painter Parrhasius' portrait of the Athenian dêmos, which shows it as 'violent, unjust, gentle, compassionate, vain-glorious, crouching, haughty, and timid' (p. 14, emphasis in S.). But any ambiguity here is due not to Barthélemy but to Pliny the Elder, whose description of Parrhasius' painting Barthélemy has copied word for word (iracundum iniustum. .. clementem misericordem; gloriosum. .. humilem, ferocem fugacemque, NH 35.69). Chapter 1 depicts both classical Greece and eighteenth-century Europe as periods of progressive enlightenment, with Protagoras' rationalism, for example, finding its counterpart in the work of Adam Smith. One reads here very traditional accounts of the Greek move from mythos to logos and of the superiority of 'difficult' Thucydides over Herodotus, 'old-fashioned fun reading' (p. 27). The Greeks are credited with 'the beginnings of city planning' (p. 27), but planned urban space goes back thousands of years earlier, as can be seen in sites like Mohenjo-daro in Pakistan (mid-third millennium BCE). Chapter 2 claims to test the legal scholar Alan Dershowitz's theory that notions of rights develop in reaction to wartime atrocities. S. argues that this happened in classical Greece and in eighteenth-century Europe, but she does not examine other time periods or places. Dershowitz's theory would seem to predict that rights talk would emerge anywhere there was terrible violence. The theory is pertinent here only if fifth-century BCE Greece and eighteenth-century Europe were uniquely bloody. Chapter 3 plausibly THE CLASSICAL REVIEW