ANCIENT GREECE AND SLAVES — ZABOROWSKI. GOl 



(lemonian vessel, transported to ^gina, perhaps liis native land, and 

 put on sale as a slave. 



It mattered not who mig-ht demand a free man as a slave; such 

 a one was without defense unless a citizen assumed for him the 

 cost of trial. The prisoners of war made by the Greeks could be 

 freed by exchange or ransom. And it came to pass that mth progress 

 in morals and wealth the custom was established of paying the 

 ransoms rather than to allow citizens, parents, compatriots to fall 

 into slavery. In 406 B. C. the Spartans and their allies, having 

 conquered Methymna, were on the point of selling all the inhabitants; 

 but then* chief refused to reduce Greeks into slavery. A kind of 

 patriotism between races of the same tongue and the same culture 

 existed then. It was, however, only the end of the fifth century. 



Afterwards they ^vished no longer to have slaves when considera- 

 tions of such nature would oblige good treatment. The penal code 

 provided strenuous ordinances as to the service of slaves to their 

 owners. Their only recourse against the cruelty of their masters 

 was flight, and flights of slaves, partly for that reason, were common. 

 Some masters at first treated theii* slaves well, as "cliildren" of 

 then' families; these wore the ones in domestic service. They no 

 longer had names. The killing of one of them was considered as 

 unintentional homicide. They could own notliing, and the money 

 they were permitted to have most often returned to the master, who 

 thus allowed them means for ransom. 



Some family relations were permitted between slaves, but they 

 were not recognized by the law. The master who cohabited with a 

 slave contracted no obligation whatever, the union being ignored by the 

 law. If he had a child by a slave, it was regarded as without a father, 

 coming from the mother only, and was the property of the master, 

 its father in this particular case, the same as any other child born of 

 slaves. But we find that many of these cliildren were incorporated 

 into the family by emancipation and adoption. We have here a 

 very grave condition, for we know that these sexual relations of 

 masters with their slaves was common. Philip of Macedonia gave 

 to Philocrates numerous wives from Olynthus for the sake of 

 debaucheries in the year 346. On account of this present, he was 

 considered as a traitor and was obliged to exile himself. 



V Deprived of every right, a mere thing or beast of burden, subject 

 to the will of the master, the slave could be forced to labor \nthout 

 mercy under the* pretense of the mercantile plea and the need of 

 development of industrialism. The Greeks were skillful in reducing 

 expenditure in behalf of their slaves in extraordinary proportions. 

 Under existing conditions slave labor returned to emplo3^ers such 

 results and profits as they could never secure from free artisans. 



