Slavery

"Go look, boy," Agathon said, "and bring Socrates in. And you, Aristodemus," he said, "lie down beside Eryximachus."

And he said the boy washed him so he could lie down; and another of the boys came back to report, "Your Socrates has retreated into a neighbor’s porch and stands there, and when I called him, he was unwilling to come in."

 And Aristodemus said that he said, "No, no, leave him alone ..."

"Well, that is what we must do, if it is your opinion," he said Agathon said. "Well now, boys, feast the rest of us. Though you always serve in any case whatever you want to whenever someone is not standing right over you, still now ... serve in such a way that we might praise you."

--Plato, Symposium
 

Legal Status

• No marriage, property, inheritance
• Evidence at trials only under torture
• No expectation of freedom (vs. Rome)

• Farming & trade (with or for owner)
• Personal servants to rich
• Household duties (esp. women)
• Childrearing (nurses, paedagogues)
• Scythian archers ("police")
• Silver mines at Laurion

• Aristotle: theory of natural slavery
• "Intrusive" slavery (e.g. war captives) vs. "extrusive" (e.g. debt slaves)
• Association w/ barbarians, women
• Physical markers: tattooing, branding
• Names and address forms ("boy")

• Metoikos: "one who lives among"
• Mostly foreigners
• Family can never be citizens
• Cannot own land
• No political rights
• Limited legal rights
• Liable for military service, taxes
• Prominent in trade, manufacturing

• From Syracuse in Sicily
• Weapon manufacturer in Piraeus
• Plato’s Republic set at his house
• Father of speechwriter Lysias

Myth and Literature

• Goddesses
• Monsters: Sphinx, Gorgons, Furies Sirens, Scylla, etc.
• Amazons: women warriors
• Tragic heroines: Alcestis, Medea, Clytemnestra, etc.
• Comedy: Lysistrata, Women in the Assembly, Women at the Thesmophoria

• No political rights: can’t vote or hold office
• No legal standing: can’t sue or be sued
• Legal redress, business contracts only via male guardian

"A woman’s glory is to remain unspoken of, for good or ill" -- Pericles (in Thucydides’s History)

Slave & Citizen Women

• Farming & shopkeeping
• Raising children
• Household management (Xenophon, Oikonomikos)
• Spinning and weaving
• Food preparation (but not shopping)
• Fetching water
• Religion (e.g. Dionysiac rites)
• Funeral preparation, mourning

• Usually young (c. 14) to older man
• Uncle-niece marriages common
• Dowry: to be returned on divorce

• Often slaves or metics
• Sometimes educated, e.g. Aspasia

• Ideal of seclusion (not always a reality)