Greek and Roman Slaveries

Introduction

Slavery was a ubiquitous and fundamental phenomenon of Greek and Roman societies. Slaves constituted a substantial proportion of the population of ancient communities. They worked in practically all sectors of ancient economies, as agricultural workers, artisans, traders, servants, performers, managers, and even civil servants. Their exploitation allowed their masters to live as they wished; the domination of slaves shaped the formation of households, relations of gender, constructions of identity, and cultural practices. Slavery was used as a powerful tool to think about hierarchy, power, religion, and the good life. There is hardly any aspect of ancient history, literature, or archaeology that does not involve, in one way or another, slaves and slavery. Consequently, a sourcebook on ancient slavery has immense value for those interested in the study of Classics, ancient history, and classical archaeology.

The volume at hand is not the first slavery sourcebook. There exist two older sourcebooks on ancient slavery; one in English, by Thomas Wiedemann, that covers both Greek and Roman slavery,¹ and one in German, by Werner Eck and Johannes Heinrichs, that focuses on the Roman imperial period.² Both are still valuable works, and we have tried as far as possible to avoid duplicating their contributions and their selection of texts.³ Instead, our sourcebook tries to present different texts and new topics and uses an alternative, interactive format. We have tried to ...