CHAPTER VII
THE SLAVES
FOR some time past it has been acknowledged that slavery was
not such an important element in Greek economic life as was
formerly believed. There were many free workmen who
frequently had to work much harder than many a slave
Nevertheless, social life both in town and country was incon-
ceivable without slaves, and the idea of an age without them
was merely one of the favourite fairy-tale motives of comedy
Women might be pictured in a primitive early age as forced
to grind their own corn, or a man as making the furniture and
the crockery on the dinner table move and work by themselves.1
A misanthropic hermit, of course, like Timon3 had neither wife
nor slaves.2 The thought of a life without slaves was so pre-
posterous that even the ideal communist society had to include
them, at any rate as agricultural workers,3 The gods themselves
had servants who were slaves. Polemos, for instance, was ac-
companied by Kydolmos, War was the master. Uproar his
slave 4
Slavery was recognized as a normal and natural institution.
It is significant that several words for the slave could be
used without distinction. Both male and female slave were an
'unfree body7, andra-poda, 'human-footed stock', corresponding
to the tetraj>od&) the 'four-footed stock'.5 The fellow belonging
to the household, the boy or the little boy, the servant and
attendant — they all had different names which meant the
same thing;6 only occasionally was the specific function of a
slave stressed by the use of one of these words.7
Slaves then were found everywhere, even in places where
1 Plierekr 10 -Krates 14. 3 Phryn 18 ' E 651.
4 P.255 Cf also the slave-girls of Helios in Euripides' Phaethm (H v
Amim, Supplementum EunptJeum, 6pf —fog* 773)
5 Pherelr 8 D, 16 D
6 800AO$, OlKETHS, TTOlS, TTCXlSlOV, UlTT]pETrjS, 5lOKQVO$, OCKoAouOoS
7 It would be probably a mistake to assume an intentional distinction in Isokr
XIX, 251", when the speaker says that he together with a ircds took care of the
other man who had no longer any OIK£TTJS