Slaves in Ancient Greece and Rome

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Slaves in Ancient Greece and Rome
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We have sparse evidence what it was actually
like to be a slave or servant in the ancient
world, we have no surviving slave
autobiographies from the ancient world. We
have a hard time imagining what is actually
like living as a servant trapped in servitude.
Recently the Atlantic Magazine published an
article, “My Family’s Slave,” which told the
story of a Filipino servant, and relates some
of the human dilemmas involved, and I think
would help us understand how domestic
slavery worked in the ancient world.

Today we will learn and reflect on slavery in the ancient world.
Slaves were the employees of the ancient world, scholars
estimate that perhaps a third of the population of ancient Athens
were slaves, and for ancient Rome, scholars think that well over
half of the population at the height of the Roman empire were
slaves.

You may ask, how can we benefit when we ponder the history of slavery in the
ancient world?
Slavery was such an integral part of these ancient cultures that we cannot truly
understand their history unless we appreciate the role slavery played in their
cultures.
We are tempted to view slavery as something that went away with the Civil War, that
with regards to slavery the modern world is so morally superior to the ancient world
since we cannot buy and sell slaves like we buy and sell cattle. But is someone who
earns starvation wages truly free, are they truly not slaves?

At the end of our talk, we will discuss the sources
used for this video, and my blogs that also cover this
topic. Please, we welcome interesting questions in
the comments, sometimes these will generate short
videos of their own. Let us learn and reflect
together!

To find the source of any direct
quotes in this blog, please type
in the phrase to the search box
in my blog to see the
referenced footnote.

How should we define slavery? If someone is more like a serf who cannot be
bought and sold as if they were talking livestock, does that mean they are not
slaves? Many serfs lived lives of complete destitution and were nearly as
impoverished as slaves were, would it be fair to say that serfs were not slaves?
What about workers who today earn a minimum wage that does not come close to
being a living wage, would it be fair to say they are not slaves?
Slavery in the ancient world was not based solely on race like in the Confederate
South. When a city was defeated the women and children were often enslaved,
the men were often slaughtered, though sometimes they were enslaved to work in
the mines.
In this video we will examine slaves in ancient Greece and Rome, in a companion
video we will examine slavery in the Bible and ancient Judah and Israel.

People were also enslaved when they were captured by pirates, which
happened to the Cynic Philosopher Diogenes of Sinope who was sold to
Xenaides of Corinth where he helped raised his sons, teaching them Cynic
philosophy, and became part of the family. Also, in the Odyssey the father
of Odysseus, Laertes, purchased the loyal swineherd Eumaeus, who
helped Odysseus battle the suitors, from pirates. And before he was
emperor, Julius Caesar was captured by pirates, though he was ransomed
rather than enslaved. Famously, Caesar told the pirates he was more
important than they imagined and that they should ask for more ransom,
and that he would return and crucify them after he was ransomed. These
foolish pirates thought Caesar was joking.
Also, if you could not pay your bills, you could be sold or sell yourself into
slavery. One example of this is Hosea’s wife in the Old Testament.

Though the customs and laws regarding slavery varied from culture to culture, all
slave societies shared some general characteristics, mainly that slaves were at best
treated as second class citizens, but were usually not seen as quite human, slaves
were often treated like they were talking livestock.
Here we have the categories of slaves roughly in the order of the severity of their
mistreatment. Although there were kind masters in both ancient and modern
times, far more masters were cruel rather than kind to their slaves, most master
were uncaring and neglectful of their slaves’ well-being.

Slave Market in Ancient Rome,
Jean-Léon Gérôme, painted 1884
These were the general categories of slaves in all slave
societies, both ancient and modern :
• Household servants, and small farm slaves. This was
often a milder form of slavery, sometimes servants were
treated like a part of the family.
• Concubines, both consenting and unwilling, often
captured in war.
• Least numerous: Independent city slaves who were
tradesmen. Often, they were allowed to retain some of
proceeds from their trade and buy their freedom. This
type of slave was less common in the Deep South, more
common in ancient Greece and Rome.
• Slaves who worked for the city or state, or in factories.
• Most numerous: Field hands for large plantations,
worked under overseer’s whip. Since the slaveowner
had minimal contact with these slaves, their lives could
be quite harsh. McGuckin mentions that many POWs
were enslaved to work the large ancient Roman
plantations.
• Often a death sentence: Slaves who worked in mines.

• Household servants, and small farm hand slaves. This was often a milder form
of slavery, sometimes servants were treated like a part of the family.
In both ancient and modern times domestic slaves were considered the most
fortunate of slaves, rarely were they worked to death. In ancient Greece, domestic
slaves or servant could truly be a member of the family, or what the Greeks called
the oikos. When a Greek family acquired a new slave, there would be a religious
rite inducting the slave as a formal member of their Oikos. In both Greece and
Rome, slaves helped raise the children, they were often wet nurses, sometimes
teachers, or they accompanied the boys to the city square or agora in Greece
where teachers often held class. In Rome, Greek slaves were the most highly
prized slaves, many were skilled artisans and teachers.

Quite close personal bonds would form between the child and their wet-nurse,
when Odysseus returned home disguised as a beggar it was his wet-nurse slave
who first recognized him.
Slaves also did many other chores, since women in ancient Greece rarely left the
house the slaves did the daily shopping for food at the market, they helped with
the cooking and gardening, and the female slaves helped with the spinning.

CW Eckersberg, Return of Odysseus, painted 1812

Since slaves were considered property they had no rights, although
often household slaves or more independent slaves were permitted to
have a family. There are few if any mentions in Greek or Roman history
where a slave family was split up and young children resold, as was
common the Upper South in the period before the Civil War.
Masters could beat or abuse their slaves, or even kill them, and there
was nothing the slaves could do to prevent this. Professor Garland tells
the sad story of a pretty girl slave who was regularly beaten by her
mistress, because she suspected that her husband was forcing his way
upon her.
Slaves had limited, if any, access to the judicial system, primitive as it
was, in ancient Greece and Rome, since they were an inferior class. For
example, the Athenian courts only admitted testimony from slaves when
it was compelled through torture.

Slave Market in Ancient Rome,
Jean-Léon Gérôme, painted 1884
These were the general categories of slaves in all slave
societies, both ancient and modern :
• Household servants, and small farm hand slaves. This
was often a milder form of slavery, sometimes servants
were treated like a part of the family.
• Concubines, both consenting and unwilling, often
captured in war.
• Least numerous: Independent city slaves who were
tradesmen. Often, they were allowed to retain some of
proceeds from their trade and buy their freedom. This
type of slave was less common in the Deep South, more
common in ancient Greece and Rome.
• Most numerous: Field hands for large plantations,
worked under overseer’s whip. Since the slaveowner
had minimal contact with these slaves, their lives could
be quite harsh. McGuckin mentions that many POWs
were enslaved to work the large ancient Roman
plantations.
• Often a death sentence: Slaves who worked in mines.

• Concubines, both consenting and unwilling, often captured in war.
Quite often, slaves were sold naked, so the buyer could examine the property and
know exactly what he was purchasing.
In every slave society, ancient and modern, the women were often forced to be
concubines, and in the brutal slave society of the Deep South were forced to breed
like horses and cattle, as Frederick Douglass describes in his slave autobiography.
Our thumbnail pictures Queen Andromache of Troy, who her husband Hector
worried would be enslaved as concubine if the Greeks burned Troy, which was her
eventual fate as we heard in our lecture on the Iliad. The Iliad itself was the story of
warriors arguing over concubines captures during the war.
We also have a blog comparing the captured concubine slave girls to the passages in
the Torah prescribing the proper treatment of concubines captured during war. The
Torah dictates that these concubines should be treated as legitimate wives, a far
higher status that concubines enjoyed anywhere in the ancient world.

Andromache in Captivity by Frederic Leighton (c. 1886)

• Least numerous: Independent city slaves who were tradesmen. Often, they
were allowed to retain some of proceeds from their trade and buy their
freedom. This type of slave was less common in the Deep South, more common
in ancient Greece and Rome.
Probably the most fortunate class of slaves were those who lived apart, often with
their wives and children. These slaves were the most valuable slaves, they
performed all the work that the Athenian and Roman citizens thought was beneath
them, these slaves were blacksmiths, craftsmen, artisan, tanners, managers of
shops and factories, and even captains of trading ships. They paid their owner a
commission on what they earned.
There were also freed men working as skilled workers, some of them were freed
slaves, or foreign workers.

There were also slaves who were owned by city-states, including Athens. These
slaves were the ancient equivalent of the civil service, some were somewhat
independent, especially those who were court or other government officials or
clerks. In Rome, the work crews who worked on the roads, aqueducts, and other
infrastructure were slaves, maybe they also lived in barracks, we are just not sure.

• Most numerous: Field hands for large plantations. Since the slaveowner had
minimal contact with these slaves, their lives could be quite harsh. But if the
master were particularly sadistic in his cruelty, then the household slaves were
worse off than the field slaves.
McGuckin mentions that many POWs were enslaved to work the large ancient
Roman plantations.
The slaves who worked in the plantation farms worked in more brutal conditions
than the household slaves. These mostly male slaves lived in barracks, the Roman
slaves usually slept in leg irons, the ancient sources do not mention how the Greek
plantation slaves were restrained. These slaves were not allowed to marry or have
any sort of family life, they were worked like draft animals. Like the slaves who
worked in the mines and quarries, they likely worked very long hours in often back
breaking work.

Roman mosaic depicting slaves performing agricultural tasks

• Slaves who worked in the mines of the ancient world.
In both ancient and modern times, the slaves who labored under the worst
conditions were the slaves who worked in the mines and quarries. The mines were
often a death sentence, after the Athenian defeat in the Sicilian expedition in the
Peloponnesian War the men were enslaved to work in the mines, none made their
way back to Athens, most probably only lived for a few years.
We also have a passing reference by Thucydides that Nicias rented a thousand or
so slaves to Athens to work in the mines.
In Soviet Russia the worst gulag camp was the Kolyma gold mine in western
Siberia, few sent there survived the cold and damp. In the ancient world the slaves
working stone quarries were slightly better off, at least they did not have to work in
dark shafts with oil lamps, but accidents were frequent in both mines and quarries.

How many slaves were there? Some scholars estimate that in ancient Greece as
many as one in three people were slaves, many were born into slavery. We do
know that slavery was the basis of Athenian democracy, giving owners time to
participate in the many government assemblies and juries, and the Spartan Helot
slaves enabled the Spartans to be full time warriors. But in emergencies slaves
would fight side by side with their masters, Herodotus informs us that a large
portion of the armies fighting the Persians were slaves, who were likely granted
their freedom if they survived the battle.
A higher percentage of Romans were slaves because so many were enslaved in the
wars of conquest by the Roman emperors. Julius Caesar may have enslaved as
many as half a million people during his wars in Gaul, which is France today.

Leonidas at
Thermopylae,
Jacque-Louis David,
1814, Louvre
Helot slaves fought
with the Spartans in
exchange for their
freedom.

Unlike the Greeks, who rarely paid their domestic slaves, it was more common for
Romans domestic slaves to earn a small wage so they could eventually save
enough to purchase their freedom. This policy helped pacify the Roman slaves,
since the Romans had more slaves, they sometimes encountered slave rebellions
like the one led by Spartacus, which lasted several years.
Former slaves in Roman society were not totally free, as former slaves their former
masters were now their patrons, and they owed a few days of labor each year to
their former masters, and if they ran afoul of the law their freedom could be
revoked. This taint of once being enslaved was not inherited, the children of free
slaves were truly free. There were many freed slaves in ancient Rome, some
became quite wealthy.

In the Odyssey, when Odysseus lands in Ithaca, the goddess
Athena disguises him as a beggar, and he first visits his trusted
slave Eumaeus, the swineherd. The father of Eumaeus was a
king of an island near Syria, but he was tricked and sold into
slavery by pirates himself, and was purchased by Laertes, father
of Odysseus, Eumaeus stands with Odysseus and his son while
they slay the suitors holding his wife Penelope hostage.
But was Odysseus so grateful for Eumaeus risking his life to fight
the suitors against overwhelming odds that he offered to free
him from slavery? The Odyssey reveals that this thought never
entered the mind of Odysseus.

Return of Odysseus, EM Synge, 1909
Weimar, Schlossmuseum, Johann August Nahl the Younger,
Telemachus recognizes his father Odysseus in the house of the
swineherd Eumaeus

We have sparse evidence what it was actually like to be a slave or servant in the
ancient world, we have no surviving slave autobiographies from the ancient
world. We have a hard time imagining what is actually like living as a servant
trapped in servitude.
Recently the Atlantic Magazine published an article, “My Family’s Slave,” which
told the story of a Filipino servant, and relates some of the human dilemmas
involved, and I think would help us understand how domestic slavery worked in
the ancient world.
Most Filipino servants are paid a small wage and are often permitted to attend
school and eventually start a life of their own, as the many comments to the article
by other Filipino servants suggest, but the lady in this article was not paid any
wages so she treated worse than most servants.

The author states, “She lived with us for 56 years. She
raised me and my siblings without pay. I was eleven, a
typical American kid, before I realized who she was.”
“Her name was Eudocia Tomas Pulido. We called her Lola.
She was 4 foot 11, with mocha-brown skin and almond
eyes that I can still see looking into mine—my first
memory. She was 18 years old when my grandfather gave
her to my mother as a gift, and when my family moved to
the United States, we brought her with us. No other word
but slave encompassed the life she lived. Her days began
before everyone else woke and ended after we went to
bed. She prepared three meals a day, cleaned the house,
waited on my parents, and took care of my four siblings
and me. My parents never paid her, and they scolded her
constantly. She wasn’t kept in leg irons, but she might as
well have been. So many nights, on my way to the
bathroom, I’d spot her sleeping in a corner, slumped
against a mound of laundry, her fingers clutching a

Not having a room to call her own and sleeping in the hall on the laundry is behavior
I have read about for the Greek slaves in the ancient world.
We will put the link for the article in the description below, you need to read it for
yourself, I cannot do it justice with quotes here and there.
Part of the reason Lola was not given an allowance is in the early years the entire
household was scraping by, the husband was not paid well by the consulate after he
moved to America, eventually he left and the mother had to go to school and earn a
living as a single mother, and Lola had to shoulder more family responsibilities raising
the kids. Lola became more of a confidant to my mother, they would complain and
commiserate over the father who abandoned them, they would joke together, and
when she remarried Lola even stood up to the new husband when he started to
abuse the mother. She was part of the family, but not quite family.

Lola taught herself how to read but her situation robbed her of all self confidence,
but eventually she was given her own room. Finally, when the author’s mother died,
he told her she no longer had to work, but she insisted, and near the end of her life
he traveled with her to the Philippines to visit her living relatives. A very sad story of
what it was like to be a household servant, both part of the family but also apart
from the family, much like the household slaves in the ancient world.

Batad rice terraces in Ifugao, Philippines

SOURCES:
One excellent source is the 48-lecture series from the Great Courses, not the Great
Courses Plus, that includes two lectures on what is was like being a Greek slave and
a Roman slave.
And of course, the Iliad and Odyssey have accounts of slaves, although they are
definitely romanticized.
and the Atlantic Magazine website for My Family’s Slave.

PLEASE click on the link for our blogs on Slavery in the ancient world
below.
And please click on the links for interesting videos that will broaden
your knowledge and improve your soul.

Slaves in Ancient Greece and Rome

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