AChAEMENID ANATOLIA AND ThE SLAVE SUPPLY 317
Anatolia to Attica; this allows us to consider the economics of the slave sup-
ply in detail, and our basic findings can be contextualised in terms of a larger
comparative framework.
In what follows we shall examine the slave supply from three vantage points.We begin at the source (or more strictly, a source), by considering the range
of processes that dislodged Anatolians from their native communities and led
to their transport and sale to Greek buyers. In particular, I am interested in
the question of whether this movement of enslaved humanity was primarily
caused by hostile Greeks raiding ‘native’ communities (as some scholars have
claimed), or whether Greeks and non-Greeks more frequently co-operated in
slave trafficking, the ‘dislodging’ being mainly a concern of non-Greek sup-
pliers. Our second vantage point encompasses the prosaic issues of transport
and its related costs, the markets in Attica which existed for the sale of slaves,
as well as the prices which slaves fetched upon arrival in the market and the
effect these prices had on the structure of the Attic slave system. This allows
us to account for (inter alia) the relative cheapness of slaves in Attica – a point
that has been observed by several scholars – as well as the pattern of slave
ownership among the free populace. Our third vantage point draws back from
this narrow focus to consider more broadly the population dynamics of slav-
ery in Attica. It looks comparatively, and takes as its counterpoint the labour
systems found in Sparta and other parts of the Greek world that maintained
large slave populations without engaging to any great extent with foreign
supply. This contrast sharpens our appreciation of the degree to which the
Attic system had gone beyond reliance on the self-sufficient strategy of natural
reproduction pursued elsewhere, and embraced the opportunities presented
by engagement with foreign markets to expand a number of areas of its econ-
omy in which slave labour played a crucial role. Examining the problem from
this vantage point will help us see how the slave trade interlocked with other
aspects of Athens’ economy, feeding some of its principal sectors with labour.
Beyond focusing on Attica, I aim to formulate some general observations on
slave-supply strategies throughout the Greek world.
The Acquisition of Slaves from Achaemenid Anatolia
A brief overview of the slave sources in Achaemenid Anatolia shall serve to
set the scene. It should be emphasized that Persian control of the region was
uneven. Imperial presence was particularly strong in satrapal centres such as
Sardis and Dascylium; indeed, the number of Persians ‘on the ground’ in cer-
tain parts of Anatolia was impressive.^2 In other regions, Persian authority was
less pronounced. One might note Paphlagonia on the Black Sea littoral, whose
king Otys switched his allegiance from the Persian king to Sparta in the early
fourth century (Xen. Hell. 4.1.3; Ages. 3.4), or Cilicia, firmly under the control