Slavery in antiquity
Slaves were either bought abroad, taken as prisoners in war, or enslaved as a punishment for being in debt or committing a crime.
[3] The final law in the Code of Hammurabi states that if a slave denies his master, then his ear will be cut off.
In the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament), there are many references to slaves, including rules of how they should behave and be treated.
[7] Non-Hebrew slaves and their offspring were the perpetual property of the owner's family,[8] with limited exceptions.
Private ownership of slaves, captured in war and given by the king to their captor, certainly occurred at the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty (1550–1295 BCE).
The study of slavery in Ancient Greece remains a complex subject, in part because of the many different levels of servility, from traditional chattel slave through various forms of serfdom, such as helots, penestai, and several other classes of non-citizens.
[14] Aristotle believed that the practice of any manual or banausic job should disqualify the practitioner from citizenship.
By the late 4th century BCE passages start to appear from other Greeks, especially in Athens, which opposed slavery and suggested that every person living in a city-state had the right to freedom subject to no one, except those laws decided using majoritarianism.
Plutarch mentions that during the Battle of Salamis Athenians did their best to save their "women, children and slaves".
On the other hand, much of the wealth of Athens came from its silver mines at Laurion, where slaves, working in extremely poor conditions, produced the greatest part of the silver (although recent excavations seem to suggest the presence of free workers at Laurion).
[citation needed] During the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, twenty thousand Athenian slaves, including both mine-workers and artisans, escaped to the Spartans when their army camped at Decelea in 413 BC.
Croix gives two reasons: Athens had various categories of slave, such as: In some areas of Greece there existed a class of unfree laborers tied to the land and called penestae in Thessaly and helots in Sparta.
The comedies of Menander show how the Athenians preferred to view a house-slave: as an enterprising and unscrupulous rascal, who must use his wits to profit from his master, rescue him from his troubles, or gain him the girl of his dreams.
These plots were adapted by the Roman playwrights Plautus and Terence, and in the modern era influenced the character Jeeves and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.
Rome differed from Greek city-states in allowing freed slaves to become Roman citizens.
Besides manual labor, slaves performed many domestic services, and might be employed at highly skilled jobs and professions.
Unskilled slaves, or those condemned to slavery as punishment, worked on farms, in mines, and at mills.
