While the name of this introductory volume may suggest otherwise, Deborah Kamen’s Greek Slavery does not have the aim of being an introduction to slavery in the Greek world. Instead, it seeks to introduce the reader to trends in the study of the subject. Kamen succeeds admirably in that goal, but in doing so cannot help but provide a useful introduction to the subject itself as well: in a brief 118 pages, readers are introduced to both the study of slavery in the ancient (primarily, though not exclusively) Greek world and the diversity of the subject itself, including much of its evidence base.

The first chapter gives a birds-eye view of the historiography of Greek slavery of the past 25 years going back to Finley and covers the most prominent monographs on Greek (and Roman) slavery. It also touches on two of the most prominent debates in the study of ancient slavery. The first is the definitional question of whether Patterson’s redefining of slavery as “the permanent, violent domination of natally alienated and generally dishonoured people” – in opposition to the more conventional definition of enslaved people as property – was helpful.1 The second is whether the debate regarding Finley’s distinction of ‘slave societies’ – societies whose economic system was defined by their reliance on slavery – and ‘slave owning societies’ – those societies that engaged in slavery, but whose economies were not completely reliant on the institution – is useful.2 This section provides a helpful synopsis of the overarching questions that have occupied scholars so far and that will also keep reappearing throughout the book.

Chapter two, titled Epichoric Slave Systems, breaks down the diversity of different systems of slavery that, while overlapping in some key features, showed notable diversity in the Greek world. The selection provides an overview of slavery in the Mycenaean and Homeric worlds, archaic and classical Athens, Sparta, and Crete. This chapter is not and could not have been an extensive survey, but does provide a useful guide into the differences and similarities of these select Greek slaveries. The chapter may have benefitted from a more explicit mention of the lacunae in our evidence, though this omission aligns with its focus on scholarly discourse rather than evidence itself. As it stands, theses gaps are implied in the selection of the systems mentioned.

The third chapter is dedicated to the economics of slavery. It deals with the supply of enslaved people, different estimates of total numbers of the enslaved population, the roles of enslaved people in the ancient economy, and examines the extent to which enslaved labour played a role in different parts of that economy. One very minor qualm is that this chapter would have benefitted from a restructuring that linked the more closely related questions of the numbers of enslaved people and the prevalence of slave labour. This structural shift would likely have made the chapter more cohesive.

Chapter four deals with the treatment of enslaved people. It examines the different forms of violence they faced, focussing both on individual and institutionalised contexts. It also highlights the limited protections available to them in some contexts, though these may, as is mentioned in the chapter, often have been more hypothetical than real.

In chapter five, Kamen illustrates the gendered nature of slavery. Few scholars nowadays would disagree with the statement that slavery was an inherently gendered institution. Yet much scholarship fails to take this dimension into account appropriately and implicitly imagines the default enslaved person as male. We would do well to remember that the gender of enslaved people influenced their experience of the institution. Starting with enslavement, continuing with the gendered division of labour and the sexual exploitation of the enslaved, and even their potential for manumission, a fact that has notably been addressed by Kamen themselves, different Greek slaveries are as much split along lines of gender as they are in terms of epichoric differences.3

Chapter six focusses on agency, resistance, and revolt, topics that especially have recently come into scholarly focus. As is clear from the chapter, scholarly work in this field is challenging due to the nature of the evidence, most of which is not written from the perspective of the enslaved people themselves. Nevertheless, scholars have found ways to, directly and indirectly, access ways enslaved people used to resist their oppression. Through no fault of its author, this chapter is an unenviable position. Since this field, especially the question of agency in the ERC project SLaVEgents, is one of active research, the state of scholarship will doubtlessly change significantly in the coming years. To Kamen’s credit, this chapter gives a very helpful overview over the studies done to this date.

Chapter seven deals with Manumission, focussing both on the process of how the transition from enslaved to free occurred, how that transition was often not straightforward and linked to conditions of paramone (lit. to remain nearby), and the social implications of their new status for the freed. The question of how to deal with the ideological problem behind manumission – how was the same person ostensibly imagined as somehow less than human, or at least less than free, one day and not the next – is an especially fascinating one, and one that scholarship so far does not seem to have answered satisfactorily, at least not in the present reviewer’s opinion. The chapter provides an excellent introduction to these issues.

Chapter eight treats representations of slavery in literature, art, and metaphor. It also includes a somewhat incongruous section on legacies of Greek slavery dealing with what could be broadly described as reception. This last part feels disconnected from the previous and is interesting enough in its own right that one cannot help but wonder if the question may have been better served in its own separate (though admittedly shorter) chapter. Aside from this minor point of structure, chapter eight makes for a very rewarding read.

This is an impressive introduction to the subject. Its goal of synthesizing the research strands on one of the central topics of ancient Greek history is nothing short of herculean. The book goes further towards achieving this goal than any other English publication has yet and in doing so fills a niche in the intellectual landscape of the field. It will undoubtedly be required reading for anyone seeking to study slavery in the ancient world.

Notes:
1 Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death. A Comparative Study, Cambridge 1982, p. 13.
2 M. I. Finley, Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology, New York 1980; for a helpful, recent discussion, see Kostas Vlassopoulos, ‘Finley’s Slavery’, in: M. I. Finley / Daniel Jew / Robin Osborne / Michael Scott (eds.), Cambridge 2016, pp. 76–99.
3 On the gendered nature of manumission, see Deborah Kamen, Sale for the Purpose of Freedom. Slave Prostitutes and Manumission, in: Ancient Greece, The Classical Journal 109(3) (2014), pp. 281–307.