The ancient Greeks were the first to use slaves on a large

scale in all sectors of production. All the civilizations which

we have discussed so far (Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Hittite,

Minoan, Phoenician, Mycenaean, Persian) employed slave

labour. In these civilizations, unlike Greece, slave labour

played a limited role in production. Class differentiation,

surpluses, state formation and warfare had created the

conditions for slavery. Gerda Lerner in her study The Creation

of Patriarchy has argued that patriarchal society (a society in

which women are subjugated to men) was an important

precondition for slavery. She has shown the interconnection

between the rise of patriarchal society, and the origins of

slavery. According to her, historically patriarchal society came

before slavery. Humans first introduced permanent inequalities

in their societies by establishing unequal gender relations. The

subjugation of women provided the model for subjugating

fellow human beings. When this model was extended to other

communities to reduce people to bondage the institution of

slavery was born. The initial pool of slaves was formed of

prisoners of war. This source might be supplemented from

within the community by those who were enslaved due to their inability to repay loans (debt bondage).
Wars however brought captives in large numbers. Moreover it was easier to

enslave outsiders since they did not have any bond or status

within the community and could be exploited ruthlessly (see

chapter four, above).We can note that the first slaves were women

After a group was defeated in war, the tendency was to

slaughter the adult males and make the women and children

captives. Only when a society had access to armed force on a

sufficiently large scale did it begin to enslave men. Scholars

have pointed out that the enslavement of a substantial group

of men from a different community was relatively difficult

for two reasons. Firstly, many of these men had some kind

of fighting skills so that any attempt to keep them captive on

a permanent basis would have to be backed by adequate

force. Remember that patriarchal society had already come

into existence and in the unequal division of labour that took

place, all the fighting was done by males. Secondly, women

slaves could be compelled to develop new ties within the

community that had captured them. For instance, they were

forced to bear children (rape was the most widely used

instrument of coercion). While the women, especially if they

had children, might be made to have some artificial bond

with the enslaving group, this was unlikely in the case of

men.

This pattern of development of slavery can be seen in

Greece. In Mycenaean society female slave labour constituted

a part of the workforce in the palaces. For example, the palace

at Pylos had at least 550 women slaves engaged in textile

production. In the Linear B tablets the term used for slaves is

doeri.In the 'dark ages' the phenomenon of slavery was quite

widespread. The Iliad and Odyssey contain numerous references

to women being made captive during wars. Women slaves

figure prominently in the Homeric epics. Women were used

for domestic work and for manufacturing textiles.

The scale on which slave labour was exploited in Archaic

and Classical Greece was fundamentally different from that

of earlier civilizations. Slaves were to be found in every area

of production. They were occupied predominantly in

agriculture. Mining and handicraft production were two other

sectors in which slave labour was important. Some historians

believe that the role of slavery in Greek agriculture has been

exaggerated and that free peasants sustained the agrarian economy

Roman slavery, but it should be noted that the Greeks employed slaves in agriculture much more
extensively than

earlier societies.

In the later 'dark ages' Sparta was already using slave

labour in a manner that was unprecedented. After the conquest of Laconia and Messenia towards the
end of the 'dark ages',

Sparta converted the entire population of these two regions

into slaves. The Spartans introduced a peculiar form of slavery

called'helotry'.)Helots were slaves who were owned by the

state. The Laconians and Messenians became helots, i.e., they

were the collective property of the Spartan citizens. They were

forced to work for the Spartans. The Laconian and Messenian

helots worked in the fields, tended flocks of sheep or goats

and did domestic work. Their land was taken over by Sparta

and divided into holdings called kleroi. The kleroi were allotted

to families of Spartan citizens. These were cultivated with the

conquest

labour of the helots.

Given the aristocratic nature of Spartan society it is unlikely

that there was an equitable distribution of the kleroi.The

aristocracy had much larger holdings. The distribution of

helots was regulated by the state. The state assigned a certain

number of slaves to each family depending upon its

requirements for labour. Naturally the aristocracy got the

largest share. The difference between helotry and other types

of slavery was that these slaves were not owned individually.

Moreover they were allowed to maintain family ties. The

children born to the helots had the same status as their parents.

This meant that Sparta was able to meet its requirements of

slave labour from among the Laconians and Messenians over

a long period of time. On the other hand such a large

population of helots--who still had bonds of community-

could be kept in servitude only by mobilizing force on a massive

scale. The Spartan slaves far outnumbered the Spartan citizens.

The rigorous military training imparted to the citizens of Sparta

kept them in a permanent state of military preparedness. With

this kind of force at their disposal the Spartans could keep the

Laconians and Messenians enslaved for several generations.

Helotry may be regarded as a more primitive form of

slavery which in turn was a reflection of the relative

backwardness of Spartan economy. Trade and handicraft

production remained underdeveloped in this area so that

helotry, which was best suited to a simple agrarian economy,

could survive as the dominant type of slavery in Sparta. It

must be remembered that privately owned slaves brought

from outside presuppose, among other things, an active

trading network, sufficient development of individual

property, and some amount of petty-commodity production.

Helotry was prevalent in other Greek states as well, as for

instance in Thessaly, Crete and Argolis. In Thessaiy the helots

were called

penestai.

Elsewhere, privately owned slaves increasingly became a

typical feature of Greek society and economy. Several terms

were in use to describe such slaves, the most common being

doulos.Privately owned slaves were present since Minoan and

Mycenaean times. There is evidence of slaves being used

extensively for agricultural production on the island of Chios

in c. 600 BC. We know that there was a flourishing slave trade

in the eastern Mediterranean. The Phoenicians were actively

involved in this trade.The Archaic Period saw an expansion in

the number of slaves (doulos), especially at Athens. We have

already noted that by c. 600 bc debt bondage due to

impoverishment of the peasantry had produced a serious crisis

at Athens. The crisis was temporarily resolved when Solon

abolished debt bondage in 594 BC. The problem must have

become very acute around this time because abolition of debt

was a major demand of the Athenian peasantry in

their struggle against the aristocracy. The worst affected were

a section of the peasantry called the hektemoroi.The hektemoroi

were poor peasants who were allowed to cultivate their

holdings on the condition that they would hand over one

sixth of the produce to a class with superior rights in the land

they tilled (Thomson has interpreted the term as

these cultivators could retain only one-sixth of the produce

and had to hand over five-sixths). If they were unable to pay

their share they, along with their families, were enslaved. This

was one of the ways in which the landed aristocracy solved

its problem of labour.

The abolition of debt bondage under Solon had momentous

implications for the subsequent evolution of the Athenian social

structure. After 594 bc it was no longer possible to coerse

someone from within the Athenian community to become a

slave. This created a shortage of labour for the big landowners.

They now began importing slaves in large numbers for

working on their estates. It should be understood that a

shortage of labour does not necessarily or automatically lead

to slavery. The point is that this was the remedy which the

ancient Greeks adopted in their specific historical

circumstances.

M. I. Finley has put forth the view that slavery becomes

widespread in an economy (particularly an agrarian

economy) when two preconditions are present. Firstly, the

internal supply of labour in a given society should be

severely deficient in relation to its demand for labour.

Secondly, on the one hand there should be considerable

concentration of landed property in the hands of a small

group, and on the other hand there should be a number of

small proprietors. This means that, to start with, there has

to be a class of big landowners who require labour to

cultivate their fields. However, if there is a substantial class

of small peasant proprietors it will be hard to find additional

labour as these peasants would not be inclined to work on

the holdings of the rich landlords. Of course there might

be some landless labourers who could be employed on

big estates. Finley notes that in ancient Greece, they hired free labour was involved in

all types of production. Further,

there were many poor peasants (e.g. thetes) whose holdings

were so meagre that they had to seek seasonal employment on the estates to supplement their
income.But the

workforce provided by this labour was insufficient. In Athens, after the reforms of Solon and the
stabilization of peasantry under

Peisistratus, it became more

difficult to procure labour internally,hence the growing

tendency to get slave labour from outside.

The fact that various types of slavery were well established

in Greece since the Minoan-Mycenaean age made it easier to go in

for this form of unfree labour. Slavery had been

institutionalized (the machinery of the state was used to

enforce this status) and by the Archaic Period there was a set

of legal provisions pertaining to slaves. Slaves were clearly

recognized as property. The growth of democracy made the

contrast between free and unfree status much sharper. Here

it is necessary to add that the prior existence of an organized

slave trade enabled the big landowners to get regular supplies

of slaves throughout the Archaic and Classical era. The

demand for slave labour multiplied manifold after the Persian

wars when the aristocracy acquired land in different parts of

the Athenian empire.

Warfare, piracy, and raids conducted in areas where

primitive tribal communities lived, nurtured the lucrative trade

in slaves.At the beginning of the Archaic Period most of the

slaves had been Greeks, in the Classical Period the majority

were non-Greeks. Our information about the places of origin

of these slaves is scanty, but it seems that southern Russia, the

area around the Black Sea, Thrace, central Europe, Syria and Italy were the main areas from where
slaves were captured. The prosperity of Athens during the Classical Period rested on the expansion of
slave labour. Historians have offered figures for Athenis

slaves during the fifth century BC ranging from 60, 000 to 110,000. It has been estimated that of these
nearly 20, 000 to 30,000 worked in the silver mines of Laurium, located at the Southern tip of Attica &
was the richest Source of silver in classical Greece. The silver produced by these mines with the labour

ot a huge slave workforce was a major factor in establishing

the economic supremacy of Athens in the Aegean. Besides

agriculture and mining, slaves dominated handicraft

production. Slaves were also made to do routine administrative

tasks. The Athenian state owned some slaves for this purpose

Slaves were enmployed as policemen and prisons wardens.

Lastly, they did various kinds of domestic and menial work

Brunt has drawn attention to the fact that on the eve of

the Second Punic War the total population of Italy (including

Cisalpine Gaul) was about 5 million. According to the estimates

worked out by him for the year 225 BC, 4.4 million of these

were free inhabitants (at this time there were 100, 000 assidui),

while 600, 000 were slaves. By the end of the republic the total population rose to 7 million.

This was due to a phenomenal increase in the number of slaves;when the free population remained
static or was declining. The number of slaves had gone up from 600,000 to 3 million.

.The reorganization of the empire by Augustus led to the extension of agriculture in Spain & Gaul. The
latifundia worked by slave

labour became the basic of the economy of the western provinces.Piratical raids remained vital for

augmenting the supply of slaves.This was particularly so after

the establishment of Pax Romana. Between the reigns of

Augustus and Trajan there were few large-scale military campaigns. Pirates and military adventurers
made regular

rays into the relatively backward areas on the periphery of the empire to obtain slaves. In the the late
Republic, the empire was flooded with cheap slave labour. These slaves were put to work on the
latifundia of Italy, Spain, Gaul & the province of Africa. The huge surplus derived from agrarian
production based on slave labour made the aristocracy fabulously rich. As in the case of the Greek
states, Roman law recognized

slaves as a form of property, The commonly used term for a

slave was servus. Roman law evolved a much more

comprehensive understanding of the concept of private

property and this concept applied to slaves as well. The

authority of the master over the slave was absolute. Slaves

were commodities to be bought and sold in the market in the

same way as cattle. The complete legal deprivation which slaves

suffered denied them any sort of place in society. The slaves

were mere objects, with no rights whatsoever. The utter

degradation of the slaves through the apparatus of the state

, especially through law and legal institutions, was crucial to

cope with the presence of such an extraordinarily large slave

population within Roman society.

Slaves might have been property but they were a peculiar form of property. They were, after all, human
beings as well. As human beings they could think, communicate, develop ties with other human beings,
and make efforts to improve their status.

The Roman state had adequate force at its disposal to ensure that slaves did not ensure to free
themselves. In the long run, however, it was not very practical or cost-effective

to perpetuate slavery through the constant use of force. The values which Roman society as a whole
imbibed, through law and in various other ways, served to divest slaves of any kind