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A new framework for studying slaves and slavery in ancient societies
Informed by the global history of slavery, Kostas Vlassopoulos avoids traditional approaches to slavery as a static institution and instead explores the diverse strategies and various contexts in which it was employed. In doing so he offers a new historicist approach to the study of slave identity and the various networks and communities that slaves created or participated in.
Instead of seeing slaves merely as passive objects of exploitation and domination, his focus is on slave agency and the various ways in which they played an active role in the history of ancient societies. Vlassopoulos examines slavery not only as an economic and social phenomenon, but also in its political, religious and cultural ramifications. A comparative framework emerges as he examines Greek and Roman slaveries alongside other slaving systems in the Near East, the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.
Kostas Vlassopoulos is Associate Professor of Ancient History at the University of Crete.
List of contents
Contents
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
1. Introduction
2. Historiographies
The formation of the dominant paradigm in the study of ancient slavery
The global study of slavery
Recent developments in the study of ancient slavery
3. What is slavery?
An instructive case: early medieval slavery and 'serfdom'
The conceptual systems of slavery
4. Slaving contexts and strategies
Slaving strategies
Slaving contexts
Slave-making
5. Enslaved persons
Identification modes and forms of relationships
Categorisation, self-understanding and groupness
6. Dialectical relationships
The master-slave relationship
The free-slave relationship
The relationships within slave communities
7. The slave view of slavery: slave hopes and the reality of slavery
Modalities of slavery
Exploring slave hopes under slavery
The slave hope for freedom
8. Slaving in space and time
Epichoric systems of slaving
Societies with slaves and slave societies
Accounting for change
The agency of enslaved persons and historical change
9. Conclusions
Bibliography
About the author
Kostas Vlassopoulos is Associate Professor of Ancient History at the University of Crete. He was awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize (2012) for his contribution to the field of Classics. He is the author of
Unthinking the Greek Polis: Ancient Greek History beyond Eurocentrism (2007),
Politics: Antiquity and its Legacy (2010),
Greeks and Barbarians (2013) and co-author of
My Whole Life: Stories from the Everyday Life of Ancient Slaves (2020). He is co-editor of
Slavery, Citizenship and the State (2009),
Communities and Networks in the Ancient Greek World (2015),
Violence and Community: Law, Space and Identity in the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean World (2017) and
The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Slaveries (2016).
