Slavery is a word heavy with emotional and political overtones - to be owned by another person and treated as a commodity is the ultimate injustice. This book covers topics as diverse as the source of slaves, the nature of the slave trade, and the use of slave-labour in agriculture, mines and quarries, corn and weaving mills, and water-lifting.
Replete now with its own scholarly traditions and controversies, Roman slavery as a field of study is no longer limited to the economic sphere, but is recognized as a fundamental social institution with multiple implications for Roman society and culture. The essays in this collection explore how material culture – namely, art, architecture, and inscriptions – can illustrate Roman attitudes towards the institution of slavery and towards slaves themselves in ways that significantly augment conventional textual accounts. Providing the first interdisciplinary approach to the study of Roman slavery, the volume brings together diverse specialists in history, art history, and archaeology. The contributors engage with questions concerning the slave trade, manumission, slave education, containment and movement, and the use of slaves in the Roman army.
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.
Jean Andreau and Raymond Descat break new ground in this comparative history of slavery in Greece and Rome. Focusing on slaves' economic role in society, their crucial contributions to Greek and Roman culture, and their daily and family lives, the authors examine the different ways in which slavery evolved in the two cultures. Accessible to both scholars and students, this book provides a detailed overview of the ancient evidence and the modern debates surrounding the vast and largely invisible populations of enslaved peoples in the classical world.
Women and Slaves in Classical Culture examines how ancient societies were organized around slave-holding and the subordination of women to reveal how women and slaves interacted with one another in both the cultural representations and the social realities of the Greco-Roman world. The contributors explore a broad range of evidence including: * the mythical constructions of epic and drama * the love poems of Ovid * the Greek medical writers * Augustine's autobiography * a haunting account of an unnamed Roman slave * the archaeological remains of a slave mining camp near Athens. They argue that the distinctions between male and female and servile and free were inextricably connected. This erudite and well-documented book provokes questions about how we can hope to recapture the experience and subjectivity of ancient women and slaves and addresses the ways in which femaleness and servility interacted with other forms of difference, such as class, gender and status. Women and Slaves in Classical Culture offers a stimulating and frequently controversial insight into the complexities of gender and status in the Greco-Roman world.
"Graceo-Roman Slave Markets: Fact or Fiction? critically examines the existence and identification of purpose-built slave markets in the Graeco-Roman world from a cross-cultural perspective. It investigates whether certain ancient monuments were designed specifically for use as slave markets, and whether they required special furnishings and safety features that clearly distinguished them from other commercial buildings and marketplaces of the Graeco-Roman world. Selected early modern and modern parallels are analyzed, followed by a brief discussion of ancient written sources on slave markets. The main focus of the book is a critical re-examination of all eight ancient buildings that have thus far been identified as slave markets. The conclusion includes a short comparison of modern and alleged ancient slave markets and finally answers the question of whether ancient slave markets are an archaeological fact or fiction." --Book Jacket.
