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Graeco Roman Slavery

social formations and cultural patterns of the ancient world-1 (University of Delhi)

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Graeco- Roman Slavery

Slavery is a social-economic system under which certain persons —

known as slaves — are deprived of personal freedom. Slaves are held
against their will, are deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, to
receive compensation or to form kinship ties. In its narrowest sense,
chattel slaves refer to people who are treated as the property of another
person.

Emergence of slavery

The general need to mobilize labour power for tasks that are beyond the
capacity of the individual or family, reaches back into pre-history. Such a
need came to be felt whenever society attained a stage of su昀케cient
accumulation of resources in the hands of the king, the temple or the
aristocracy.
Slavery itself had existed in various forms throughout near eastern
antiquity, among other mixed types of servitude, but was never the
predominant type of surplus extraction in these areas. The Sumerian,
Babylonian and Egyptian Empires were not based on a slave mode of
production, and their legal systems lacked any sharply separate
conception of chattel property.
According to Gerda Lerner, a patriarchal society was a precondition for
slavery, and the subjugation of women provided the model for
subjugating fellow human beings.

Emergence of Slave mode of production

“The slave mode of production was the decisive invention of the

graeco-roman world, which provided the ultimate basis both, for
its accomplishments and for its eclipse.”
- Perry Anderson

It was the Greek city-state that 昀椀rst rendered slavery absolute in form
and dominant in extent, which was later to be true of Rome as well.
Slavery emerged as the dominant mode of production in the great
classical epochs of the Antiquity-
Greece in 5th and 4th centuries B.C, and Rome from 2nd century B.C. to 2nd
century A.D.

Historians have insisted on war and conquest as a necessary condition

for the creation of a slave society. But according to M.I. Finley, the view
of roman history is so dazzled by vastness of enslavements of last 2
centuries before Christ, that it is blind to the considerably earlier growth

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of slavery in Rome. The essential role of war and conquest was in

creating the basis for large estates, as well as a ‘reservoir’ of potential
slave labour. Finley says that the demand for slaves preceded the
supply, and gives 3 preconditions for the existence of a su昀케cient
demand:
 Private ownership of land with su昀케cient concentration in few
hands to need extra- familial labour
 Su昀케cient development of commodity production and markets
 Unavailability of internal labour supply.

Attica
Before 600 B.C., the 昀椀rst 2 necessary conditions for slavery were in
existence, Solon then provided the vital 3rd condition - in 594bc, he
abolished debt bondage, creating an acute shortage of labour internally.
Thus having no realistic alternative, the Eupatrids began importing
slaves from outside to work on their estates. Southern Russia, Thrace,
Central Europe, Syria and Italy were the main areas from where slaves
were captured, through warfare, piracy or raids.

Rome
At the beginning of the republic, there was a small patrician landowning
aristocracy which had taken over power after the expulsion of the
Etruscan kings. Roman expansion in central Italy (c.500-300BC) placed
vast tracts of agricultural land in the form of ager publicus in the hands
of the aristocracy. On the other hand the assidui farmers had to bear the
full burden of 昀椀ghting these wars. The con昀氀ict between the 2 parties was
partially resolved by the abolition of nexum (rigid law under which
debtor was enslaved if unable to replay loan) in 326 BC.
As the supply of labour began to shrink, the 3rd precondition was met.
The aristocracy began to import slaves to work on their huge landed
estates, called Latifundia. The subsistence level peasantry was replaced
by the surplus producing slaves.
P.A. Brunt has argued that between 225 and 43 B.C., the free population
remained static, while the no. of slaves went up from 600,000 to 3
million.

Regional Variations
After the conquest of Laconia and Messenia towards the end of the dark
ages, Sparta converted the entire population of these regions into
‘Helots’. Helotage was a primitive form of slavery whereby slaves were
owned by the state and were the collective property of the Spartan
citizens. Their land was taken over and divided into holdings called
‘kleroi’, which were allotted to the citizens. They were allowed to
maintain family ties, consequently they far outnumbered the citizens,
and could be kept in servitude only by mobilizing force on a massive
scale.

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In Thessaly the helots were called penestai.

Features of Slave mode of production

A Mode of Production where surplus extraction takes the form of slavery
i.e. producers are slaves, those taking away bulk of surplus are slave-
owners, will be called a slave mode of production. As stated by Ste.
Croix, it was through slavery that aristocracy acquired most of its
surplus; the roman social formation may be called a Slave social
formation.

Economy
Graeco- roman antiquity had always constituted a universe centered on
the city.
But behind this urban culture and polity lay no urban economy- the
towns were never predominantly communities of traders or craftsmen,
but were urban congeries of land-owners. (Perry Anderson). This was
made possible by the existence of slave labour in the countryside, for it
freed the landowners from their rural background, allowing them to
become urban citizens, while continuing to draw their wealth from the
soil. The slave estate permitted a permanent disjuncture between
residence and revenue.
Engels’, in his work Anti-Duhring writes:
‘Without slavery, no Greek state, no Greek art and science,
without slavery, no Roman Empire. Without Hellenism and
Roman Empire as its base also no Modern Europe.’

Occupation
In classical Greece, slaves were for the 昀椀rst time habitually employed in
crafts, industry and agriculture beyond the household scale and virtually
monopolized large-scale agricultural and commodity production both in
the rural and urban sector. Sometimes, warring factions compelled
slaves to act as informers against their masters- this practice threatened
the very foundation of the salves system by breaching the slave’s total
subjection to their masters.
Slaves also worked as 'independent' craftsmen, shopkeepers and
'businessmen', through what the Romans called Peculium.

Investment In Slaves
Since the market price of slaves was low, many wealthy men bought
slaves as investments and subsequently leased them out to contractors.
E.g. Xenophon writes that a General Nicias leased out 1000 slaves to
work in the silver mines at Laurium, receiving an obol a day. In a similar

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fashion, slaves were leased out to trading ships, glass centers and
agricultural farms in rush seasons.

Productivity of slave labour

Did slavery pay? Why were the peasants evicted from their land and
replaced by slaves?
Some assert that the Romans enslaved the conquered tribes and forced
them to work on their estates, yet this does not explain the fact that the
Romans captured lands occupied by 50 million, but only had 2 million
slaves.
One reason that slaves were preferred over peasants, despite their
needing supervision, was that they could not be called away for military
service. They were at their master’s constant beck and call, could be
made to work for long hours, were a movable commodity in a world of
transport bottlenecks, could be trained in a number of skills, and kept
down costs where hired labourers were at work.

Manumission
It was the rare practice of freeing the slave after exacting a market price
as the cost of liberty. He was transformed from an object to a subject of
rights, the most complete metamorphosis one can imagine.
The humanitarian motives for this practice have been criticized. The
prospect of buying freedom kept the slave under the master's 昀椀rm
control and hard at work, thus acting as a reinforcement, and not a
solvent to the system of slavery. Also, the price paid by the freed slave
enabled the master to buy a younger replacement.
Humanity, thus complimented vested interest.
There was in Athens, a district called ‘Colonos Mithios’ – a kind of labour
market where freed Metican slaves could be hired.
It is important to note that the Graeco- Roman slaves had no
distinguishing marks, unlike their American counterparts, thus both as
fugitives and freed men could blend into the general population.

Slavery & Technology

The Slave Mode of Production tended to paralyze productivity in both

agriculture and productivity, in the classical epoch. There were of
course, certain technological improvements- more pro昀椀table oil & wine
cultures, rotary mills for grain improving quality of bread, advancement
in glass-blowing and 昀椀eld drainage, to name some. Yet, no major cluster

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of inventions ever occurred to propel the Ancient Economy away from

overall technological stagnation.
Once labour became associated with loss of liberty, there was no free
social rationale for invention. Aristotle said that,
“The state will not make a manual worker a citizen, for the bulk
of foreign labour today is slave or foreign.”
Agricultural slaves had little incentive to perform their tasks
competently, once surveillance was relaxed. The sti昀氀ing e昀昀ects of
slavery on technology contaminated even hired and independent labour
with the stigma of debasement.

Perpetuation of Slavey

A Greek text, 'Oeconomica' , allots 3 things to a slave :

 Food
 Work
 Punishment

The Roman state had adequate military power at its disposal to prevent
the escape of slaves, but in the long run it was not cost e昀昀ective to
perpetuate slavery through the constant use of force.
If a slave is a property with a soul, a non- person and yet a biological
being, institutional procedures are to be expected that will divest him of
any kind of dignity.
Corporal punishment was one such mechanism. A second was that
slaves were allowed to give evidence only under torture. The third was
their unrestricted availability for sexual exploitation. The fourth was in
the hugely popular gladiatorial events, where slaves were publicly
slaughtered for the sake of entertainment.
It is impossible to deny or justify the slave's answerability with his body.
The slaves were brainwashed to such an extent that they no longer were
conscious of the fact that they were human beings. It was ensured that
the slaves employed on a particular estate were not from the same
area, often did not even speak the same language. They were e昀昀ectively
deprived of their identity.
In retrospect, the horrid inhumanity of the slave system is clearly visible,
but in Antiquity, the values indoctrinated for generations in the free men
deprived them of any sympathy for the slaves.

Psychological Roots
It is di昀케cult to understand the psychology of the slaves, simply because
the prevailing literature represents the hopes of the slave owning class,
not the slaves themselves.

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We know of Petronius, a wealthy freedman who recalls without shame

his days as a slave, and then repeats his master’s cruelty towards his
own slaves. The slaves wanted individual freedom, and most were not
concerned with the abolition of the system.
According the Finley, the slave somehow resigned himself to his
condition, whether passively or sullenly, else the whole system could not
have survived. Religion, for instance, was a major force in this
accommodation.

Slave Revolts
Mutual hostility between masters and slaves culminated in 3 major
‘Slave Wars’ in Sicily and Italy between 137 - 70 B.C. The third slave
revolt (73-71B.C) was led by Spartacus- a brilliant military leader who
organized an army of 90,000 supporters consisting of slaves belonging
to Celtic and Germanic tribes.
All 3 rebellions were eventually crushed; all that was possible was an
exchange of masters.

Conclusion

On one hand slavery represented the most radical rural degradation of

labour imaginable- the conversion of men themselves into inert means
of production by their deprivation of every social right and their legal
assimilation into beasts of burden. On the other hand, it was the most
drastic urban commercialization of labour conceivable- reduction of
labourer to a standard object of sale and purchase.
The growth of concepts of freedom and democracy, manifested in the
institution of the polis, was inseparable from the advent of slavery,
based on the sickest kind of deprivation of human liberty .

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