Journal of Hellenic Studies 131 (2011) 115−130 doi:10.1017/S0075426911000085 GREEK SLAVERY: FROM DOMINATION TO PROPERTY AND BACK AGAIN KOSTAS VLASSOPOULOS University of Nottingham* Abstract: Modern historians of Greek slavery seem to agree, despite other differences, on an understanding of slavery as a relationship of property. This understanding of slavery essentially goes back to Aristotle’s theory of natural slavery. An examination of the Greek vocabulary of slavery though shows that the vast majority of Greeks had a very different understanding of slavery as a relationship of domination. This article argues that this alternative Greek under- standing of slavery can account for some serious conundrums in Greek attitudes and thought, and explains the reasons behind Aristotle’s reformulation of slavery as a relationship of property. Finally, it is argued that seeing slavery as a relationship of domination has enormous potential for the modern study of slavery from a dynamic historical perspective. *
[email protected]. I would like to thank Robin Osborne, Spyros Rangos, Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz, Heinz Heinen and Nick Fisher for their very helpful commentaries on a draft of this article. All responsibility for the views expressed here lies, of course, with the author. 1 Finley (1981) 97; see also Garnsey (1996) 1; Andreau and Descat (2006) 18−21. 2 For a rare exception of an additional perspective, see Fisher (1993) 5−6. 3 Arist. Pol. 1253b33. 4 Arist. Oec. 1344a23−26. 5 Arist. Pol. 1254a14−18. Despite the enormous diversity of approaches to Greek slavery, there has been an underlying agreement that has been little explored. Scholars might disagree on whether slaves constituted a class or whether Greek slaves were treated humanely; but there seems to be an uncontested consensus on what they have in mind when they refer to slaves, i.e. on their definition of slavery. A typical definition is that of Moses Finley: ‘By slavery, finally, I mean the status in which a man is, in the eyes of the law and of public opinion and with respect to all parties, a possession, a chattel, of another man’.1 There seems to be a widespread consensus that slavery is primarily a relationship of property.2 It is not difficult to trace the origins of this view of slavery; it originates in the philosophical work of Aristotle, who famously defined the slave (doulos) as ‘a living piece of property (ktêma ti empsychon).3 Of property, the first and most indispensable kind is that which is also best and most amenable to household management (oikonomikôtaton); and this is man (anthrôpos). Our first step therefore must be to procure industrious slaves (doulous).4 These considerations therefore make clear the nature of the slave and his essential quality; one who is a human being (anthrôpos) belonging by nature not to himself but to another is by nature a slave, and a human being belongs to another if, although a human being, he is a piece of property (ktêma), and a piece of property is an instrument for action separate from its owner.5 These passages show the connection in Aristotle’s thought between a conception of slavery as a form of property and his conception of slavery as natural. Modern scholarship has accepted Aristotle’s view of slavery as a form of property, while abandoning his conception that slaves are natural. But perhaps there lies a dangerous illusion in this selective appropriation. Modern https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0075426911000085 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 103.116.29.131, on 10 Jun 2020 at 03:11:11, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at
VLASSOPOULOS scholars have not devoted much thought to the link between slavery as property and the theory of natural slavery. In other words, one could argue that viewing slavery as a form of property already carries with it significant ideological ballast, which is essentially unacknowledged, all the more so because modern scholars consciously reject Aristotle’s theory of natural slavery. I want to argue that the link between the conception of slavery as a form of property and the theory of natural slavery in Aristotle’s thought is indeed significant. It is well known that Aristotle’s theory of natural slavery, while not without precursors or followers, was a minority position within ancient views on slavery.6 In the same way, as I will argue, the conception of slavery as a form of property was a minority view within Greek views of slavery. The vast majority of Greek thinkers conceived slavery in a different mode, and this way of thinking about slavery could be still of important analytical value for modern research. I want to start this exploration by pointing out two conundrums created by the modern orthodox understanding of Greek slavery. The Greeks were a very imaginative people; they could imagine a society with women sharing in power or a society without private property;7 even a society with all work done by automata.8 And yet, by and large, the vast majority of them could not conceive a society without slaves. Almost all Greek utopias are about societies where the existence of slavery is taken for granted.9 While modern societies have not yet created a classless society, put women in power or abolished the need for labour by full automatization, they have indeed found the abolition of slavery as the relatively easiest agenda to realise. The simple fact that Greeks found most impossible what modern societies have realised most successfully has puzzled generations of ancient historians, with various answers being canvassed.10 On the other hand, the Greeks were a careful people; they were able to make the most detailed distinctions between similar phenomena. And yet, when it comes down to slavery, they seem to have been particularly lazy. The complaints of modern historians are indicative: Philosophers, orators and historians were satisfied with the simplest possible antinomy: free man and slave, eleutheros and doulos. For their purposes they were not interested in a sociology or jurisprudence of servitude, and they could call helots douloi in most contexts, for example, even though they knew perfectly well that helots and Athenian douloi were by no means the same. Even so crude a text as the few lines in Pollux enumerating some local words for a status between slavery and freedom is a rare exception in the available literature.11 The distinction between chattel slavery and other forms of unfree labour has become mandatory for modern historians, since M.I. Finley emphasized it in a number of pioneering papers in the 1950s and 1960s.12 And yet the Greeks were indifferent to such a fundamental distinction; as Pierre Vidal-Naquet observed, it was only in the latter part of the fourth century that some Greeks started to differentiate between the different forms covered by doulos. 13 A few examples will again suffice to illustrate the dominant attitude of Greek sources. ‘There were more servants (oiketai) at Chios than in any one other city except Lacedaemon’.14 Here, Thucydides places the chattel slaves of Chios in the same order as the helots of Sparta, without feeling any need to differentiate between them. Another indicative example comes from the terms of the truce between Athens and Sparta in 423 BC: ‘That during the truce, deserters, neither slave nor free (mête eleutheron mête doulon) shall be received by you, nor by us’.15 The term 116 6 Ste. Croix (1981) 416−25; Garnsey (1996) 35−52. 7 See, for example, Ar. Eccl. 590−709; Dawson (1992); Vidal-Naquet (1986) 205−23. 8 Arist. Pol. 1253b33−39. 9 Finley (1975). 10 For example, Finley (1981) 105. 11 Finley (1981) 140. See also de Ste. Croix (1981) 138−40; Fisher (1993) 6−7; Cartledge (1996). 12 Finley (1981) 116−66; Lotze (1959); Vidal- Naquet (1986) 205−23. 13 Vidal-Naquet (1986) 165. 14 Thuc. 8.40.2. 15 Thuc. 4.118.7. https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0075426911000085 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 103.116.29.131, on 10 Jun 2020 at 03:11:11, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at
GREEK SLAVERY: FROM DOMINATION TO PROPERTY AND BACK AGAIN slave here covers both the fugitive Athenian slaves and the fugitive helots without any need for further elaboration. This is not because ancient Greeks were not aware of the important differ- ences. The terms of the slightly later peace treaty of Nicias are eloquent testimony in this respect. This treaty contains a number of reciprocal obligations for both Athens and Sparta, which are repeated exactly, with only the names changing according to the case. But there is one exception, an obligation that is not reciprocal: ‘Should the slave population (douleia) rise, the Athenians shall help the Lacedaemonians with all their might, according to their power’.16 There is no recip- rocal obligation for the Spartans to help the Athenians in case of a slave revolt, and the reason is obvious: while the revolt of the Spartan helots was something deemed a realistic possibility, a revolt of the Athenian slaves was deemed (and proved to be) completely unimaginable. How are we to explain the two above conundrums? Can it be the case that it is the under- standing of slavery as a form of property that creates them?17 To start with, there is no single Greek word that translates our term slavery: ‘Greek language, and in particular the Greek language of the early and the classical times lacks even a near approximation to the modern word “slave”’.18 What the Greeks had was a variety of terms that looked at slaves from a variety of different perspectives and with different emphases.19 The same enslaved individual could be called doulos, andrapodon, pais, hypêretês, sôma, oiketês, etc, each time with a different emphasis in mind. The most common term is the word doulos; but it is also a crucial term, because out of all the Greek terms for slaves it is the only one that gave rise to an abstract noun (douleia) to describe the general concept of slavery.20 As we shall see, the various Greek terms for slaves owe their existence and survival to different semantic connotations and emphases; if, out of all these terms for slaves, it is only the term doulos that is used to create an abstract noun for slavery, then we have to conclude that it was the semantic connotations of the word doulos that the Greeks saw as the most important features of the general condition of slavery. Thus, the analysis of this term has particular significance for understanding the Greek conception of slavery. To start with, doulos is used in contradistinction to the term eleutheros, free.21 Eleutheros describes a person who is not under the control of somebody else, has sole control over himself and is acting on his own will and not under the compulsion of somebody else;22 on the contrary, a doulos is somebody who is under the control, the power of somebody else and lacks control over himself.23 Let us examine a number of examples which illustrate the meaning of doulos. A city would not be the best on the basis of such a way of life, but the democracy would be best preserved that way. For the people do not want a good government under which they themselves are slaves (douleuein); they want to be free and to rule.24 The Athenians came to this country first to effect the enslavement of Sicily (katadoulôsei), and after that, if successful, of Peloponnese and the rest of Hellas, possessing already the greatest empire yet known, of present or former times, among the Hellenes.25 What do you think will happen to you through kissing a pretty face? Won’t you lose your liberty in a trice and become a slave (doulos), begin spending large sums on harmful pleasures, have no time to give to anything fit for a gentleman, be forced to concern yourself with things that no madman even would care about?26 117 16 Thuc. 5.23. 17 One of the few exceptions to the tendency among modern scholars to identify slavery as a form of property is Westermann (1960) 25−26. 18 Gschnitzer (1976) 4. 19 See also Klees (1975) 29-33. 20 Gschnitzer (1976). 21 Mactoux (1980) 59−62. 22 See, for example, Lys. 2.14. For the reappearance of this concept of freedom as non-dependence in early modern Europe, see Skinner (1997). 23 See the comments of Raaflaub (2004) 128−34. 24 Ps-Xen. Ath. Pol. 1.8. 25 Thuc. 7.66. 26 Xen. Mem. 1.3.11. https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0075426911000085 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 103.116.29.131, on 10 Jun 2020 at 03:11:11, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at
VLASSOPOULOS The three examples above refer to relationships between individuals within a community; to relationships between communities; and to the internal, psychological condition of the individual. What is interesting about them is that they have nothing to do with what modern scholars under- stand as slavery. Property, the chief component of modern definitions of slavery, is completely missing. Instead, what is emphasized is something different: domination, the power of one party over the other. In all three examples slavery is conceived as domination: as domination of the rich over the poor; of one polis over others; of an individual by his passions.27 Modern scholars tend to refer to these uses of the concept of slave as metaphorical.28 But this is in my view totally misconceived, as we shall see. Accordingly, the word doulos can be used in two different, but related ways.29 Doulos, in describing the domination of one party over another, can be used to describe a power relationship between two parties. But it can also be used to describe the social condition of a person who lacks freedom; very common in this respect is the use of the phrase ‘everybody, slave or free’ as an all-encompassing formula.30 Thus, doulos can be used to express a contrast between two different conditions; when used in this manner, doulos is also often contrasted with the terms ‘citizen’ (politês) and ‘master’ (despotês, kyrios), because these two conditions have freedom as their precondition and are by definition denied to a slave.31 Finally, there are cases that might be understood in the sense of belonging, in particular when doulos is used together with a possessive pronoun: ‘And when you were my slave (doulos emos), what did you tell me?’;32 ‘King, we are being unjustly treated by your slave (sou doulou), the son of the shepherd’.33 These might be taken as examples that show clearly that doulos means a piece of property, but it is easy to see that this is a misconception, and that in these examples it is still the case that when somebody is described as a doulos of somebody else, he/she is conceived as part of a relationship of domination and not of a relationship of property. One very revealing example comes from tragedy, in a passage where Helen explains to Menelaus that her following Paris was an act that was forced on her by Aphrodite, the goddess of love: ‘But punish the goddess and show yourself more mighty even than Zeus, who, though he lords it over (kratos echei) the other gods, is her slave (doulos ekeinês)’.34 This example makes it crystal clear in juxtaposing Zeus’ power over the other gods to his slavery to Aphrodite that the meaning of doulos remains that of somebody who is under the power of somebody else and not his / her property. Another example from Euripides is equally revealing: ‘There is no mortal who is free; for he is either slave (doulos) of money or of fortune, or else the people in their thousands or the fear of public prosecution prevents him from following the dictates of his heart’.35 Again in this case, being the slave of money or fortune implies being under their power and lacking control over one’s actions, as the rest of the passage emphasizes. Consequently, even when the term doulos is used to describe a person who belongs to somebody else, the sense of belonging that the speaker has in mind is that of having power over, not of property. The more ambiguous examples cited above, which could be understood in either way, should thus be interpreted in the light of the other attested uses of the word. Seen in this way, there is nothing metaphorical about the use of doulos to describe a member of the Athenian Empire or a lover; in both cases we are dealing with communities or persons who do not have control over themselves, but are under the power of somebody else; property has nothing to do with it. 118 27 Why the Greeks thought of these relationships as relationships of domination, rather than exploitation, is explained by Kyrtatas (2002). 28 See, for example, Hornblower (1991) 150; Fisher (1993) 6−7. 29 See also the comments of Mactoux (1980) 66−75. 30 See, for example, Dem. 21.48; Antiph. 6.19. 31 The opposition between doulos/eleutheros is though different in form from the opposition between doulos/citizen and doulos/master; see Mactoux (1980) 70−73. 32 Eur. Hec. 247. 33 Herod. 1.114. 34 Eur. Tro. 948−50. 35 Eur. Hec. 864−67. See Gschnitzer (1976) 9−10. https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0075426911000085 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 103.116.29.131, on 10 Jun 2020 at 03:11:11, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at
English