1.

Evaluate the role and significance of slavery in ancient Greece and Roman
economy.
2. Was slavery instrumental in the making of the Ancient Greece and Roman
Economy?
3. How did slavery sustain agrarian economy, trade and urbanizaton in the Graecco-
Roman world?

Introduction
Slavery was an ever-present feature in the Graecco- roman world.
complete mastery (dominium) of one individual over another, was so imbedded in Roman
culture that slaves became almost invisible and there was certainly no feeling of injustice.
It was Greece who formally introduced slavery as a means of production but it was rome that
this mode of production helped in reaching its zenith.

Roman slavery
GREECE

ATHENS AND SPARTA

At the end of the Dark Age Sparta was already using slave labour on a scale that was
unprecedented. The Spartans introduced a peculiar form of slavery called ‘helotry’. Helots were
slaves who were owned collectively by the entire Spartan community. The distribution of helots
was regulated by the state. Helots were not owned individually and were allowed to maintain
family ties.
In other parts of Greece privately owned slaves increasingly became a typical feature of Greek
society and economy.
In Athens, slaves were mostly privately owned. These slaves were regarded as property and
bought and sold in the market as commodities. The prosperity of Athens during the Classical
Period rested on the expansion of slave labour.

IN ECONOMIC DOMAIN
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
etc. However, not all Athenians lived parasitically off slaves, nor did slaves alone produce the
material base of Athenian culture. The ancient Greek economy was overwhelmingly rural.
Slaves were either hired out to contractors who paid their wages (misthos) directly to the
owners (wageearning slaves), or allowed to live on their own, paying themselves regularly to
their owners an agreed sum (apophora) (living apart). 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 slaveowning families. The skilled slave could earn a living much as a free
worker did. Slaves' own body (principal capital asset), was not his or her own. Therefore the
slave had to hand over to the owner part of the slave’s earnings as rent on the body (known
as apophora), The rest of the slave’s income was his own. This residue (kermation) would
have provided an incentive payment for the slave to work without supervision. Most prostitutes
were slaves or extrain and to supervise slaves. Masters made considerable profits by
prostituting their slaves, both female and male.

SLAVERY OF STATE
In Athens, though not everywhere, there were slaves owned by the state. Their principal roles
were to eject disruptive citizens from the Athenian Assembly when ordered by the Presidents,
and to arrest people in the presence on the orders of a magistrate. They also guarded the
prison. The public slave was seen as less corruptible since only state could free him and he was
independent of connection with any citizen.

MANUMISSION
Manumission was apparently common in classical Athens, and was formally affected in a
number of ways. A simple public announcement by the master was sufficient at least until the
second half of the fourth century BC . Thereafter a number of different procedures are attested.
Those who were paid could save a portion of their earnings to buy their own freedom .

IN LITERARY CULTURE
Homer depicts an idealised slavery marked by loyal service on one side and benevolent care on
the other. His conception of slavery is essentially paternalistic. Aristotle justifies slavery in two
ways: he first argues that the system of slavery is necessary and natural. In line with practice
and belief, he treats slaves as property: slaves are ‘animate tools’, ownership of which is
necessary to the household . For Aristotle, slavery was of importance because slaves freed the
citizen for the intellectual and political tasks that constituted the highest end of life. Aristotle
argues that mental in sufficiency makes slavery natural

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 slaveowners and for the
economies of whole cities.