Ancient Greek And Roman Slavery

An exciting study of ancient slavery in Greece and Rome

This book provides an introduction to pivotal issues in the study of classical (Greek and Roman) slavery. The span of topics is broad—ranging from everyday resistance to slavery to philosophical justifications of slavery, and from the process of enslavement to the decline of slavery after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The book uses a wide spectrum of types of evidence, and relies on concrete and vivid examples whenever possible.

Introductory chapters provide historical context and a clear and concise discussion of the methodological difficulties of studying ancient slavery. The following chapters are organized around central topics in slave studies: enslavement, economics, politics, culture, sex and family life, manumission and ex-slaves, everyday conflict, revolts, representations, philosophy and law, and decline and legacy. Chapters open with general discussions of important scholarly controversies and the challenges of our ancient evidence, and case studies from the classical Greek, Hellenistic, and Roman periods provide detailed and concrete explorations of the issues.

• Organized by key themes in slave studies with in-depth classical case studies
• Emphasizes Greek/Roman comparisons and contrasts
• Features helpful customized maps
• Topics range from demography to philosophy, from Linear B through the fall of the empire in the west
• Features myriad types of evidence: literary, historical, legal and philosophical texts, the bible, papyri, epitaphs, lead letters, curse tablets, art, manumission inscriptions, and more

Ancient Greek and Roman Slavery provides a general survey of classical slavery and is particularly appropriate for college courses on Greek and Roman slavery, on comparative slave societies, and on ancient social history. It will also be of great interest to history enthusiasts and scholars, especially those interested in slavery in different periods and societies. 

My qualifications for this project include my published and forthcoming work in the field of ancient slavery—see CV. In addition, I hope to incorporate two unpublished research projects: my work on “Slave Culture at Athens,” will be incorporated into the part of Chapter Four on that topic. My project at the NEH Summer Seminar in Rome (directed by Richard Saller and John Bodel) was a statistical and comparative-historical analysis of epitaphic evidence for Roman slave families, whose surprising results I have never had a chance to publish and which I will use in Chapter Five. Although my research has generally been more Greek than Roman, my graduate training and my original dissertation proposal covered both Greek and Roman slavery—which is why Susan Treggiari, the prominent Roman social historian, was my dissertation director and Keith Bradley was on my committee. I have written articles about Roman slavery for the Macmillan Encyclopedia of Greek and Roman Slavery and have recently been invited to contribute articles on "Slavery: Slavery in Greece," “Slavery: Slavery at Rome,” and “Spartacus” for the Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome, a commission that will dovetail well with the preparation of this book. I have taught courses on “Comparative Slave Societies: Greece, Rome, and the South” as well on “Athenian Social History,” which covered slavery. These teaching experiences will inform my composition of a book for such or similar courses.