Ancient Greek Slavery By: Julia Strauss
Jobs All slaves (men or women) could work in small shops, most slaves worked in the fields, some slaves worked in small farms with only one or two slaves alongside their masters. Slaves could also work on huge farms with 200 or more slaves, and sometimes never saw their master. Slaves who could read or write could become teachers or accountants. People who had other assorted skills could become musicians or dancers. There were even state slaves, such as the police force of Athens. Men could be miners, who had the most difficult jobs because they could easily die from lung infections or rocks falling on them. They could be craftsmen, pearl divers, fishermen, work with horses, and there were special slaves called pedagogues who walked boys to school and supervised their homework. Women could work as cooks, maids, nurses, and they could spin, weave and clean. Slaves had may jobs, like we do today, but the difference was that they had no choice of what they wanted to do. But, without the slaves, the Greeks would not have been able to make the discoveries in democracy and the arts that they did.
Treatment of Slaves When most people think about slaves, they think about people who are owned and treated harshly. But in Ancient Greece, some slaves could be treated very well. In Athens, slaves were treated the best. Slaves in Greece could be freed in many ways. Slaves could take out a loan and buy themselves, they could be bought at any time for more than they were sold for, slaves who were craftsmen could live and work separately from their masters, slaves could gain their freedom if they were involved in wage labor, slaves who were in the army could gain freedom from their service, and very skilled slaves could be freed when they were too old to work. Household slaves were even treated like part of the family. However, if a slave refused to work, the owner could hit or starve them. Another unfortunate thing was that a slave or a slave’s children could be sold at any time. Spartan helots (basically slaves) were treated very poorly. Unfortunate slaves with mean owners could be beaten harshly or raped without any rights to do anything about it. A common way city-states could gain slaves were to be captured in a war. The winning side of the war could steal all the slaves. For example, Phillip II sold 20,000 women and children into slavery after an invasion in 339 BCE. A rich household could lease their slaves to other households for extra money. Aristotle believed in a theory called “natural slavery” which is a theory that some people were born to be slaves, whereas others were born to rule slaves. Aristotle also believed that slavery was “a good thing for slaves” because, as he said, without masters, slaves wouldn’t know how to live their lives. He saw slaves as “animate tools” -pieces of property to be used.