136 THE GREEKS
non-Greek from such places as Thrace and Illyria, though he was a metic and not
himself a Greek citizen (IG 1^3 421). In Athens slavery had developed early; Solon in
the early sixth century had freed debt slaves and outlawed the practice, freeing the
poorest class of citizens from economic slavery. Trading and piracy brought slaves
to Athens, some of whom were employed by the state, such as the so-called Scythian
Archers who served as a rudimentary police force; other more unsavoury tasks such
as removing bodies of those who die in the street and road sweeping were carried
out by public slaves. However, the vast majority were owned privately having been
bought on the market as chattel slaves. Little is known about the way these markets
operated but it seems that slave traders had an evil reputation. Numbers increased
with the acquisition of empire in the period of democracy, and as a result of their own
reproduction, but estimates of the total vary widely and there is much debate about
the extent of the Athenian dependency upon slave labour, particularly on the farms
of Attica, where much of the population lived. In a discussion of the household at the
opening of his Politics, Aristotle remarks ‘Hence masters whose position is such they
are not obliged to toil keep a steward and devote themselves to philosophy or politics’
(1255b). This is clearly about the well-to-do and does not imply that Aristotle believed
that the larger political life of Athens depended upon the leisure time afforded to
citizens by the use of slaves. Larger establishments such as the estate described by
Xenophon in his Oeconomicusemployed slaves, sometimes in significant numbers,
but there is no reliable information about widespread use of agricultural slave labour
in the smaller units that constituted the majority holdings.
There is little doubt that slaves played an important role in the Athenian
economy when employed by the rich in particular areas such as mining and quarrying.
It is an old story, trite enough to those of us who have cared to attend to it, how
once on a time Nicias, the son of Niceratus, owned a thousand men in the silver
mines, whom he let out to Sosias, a Thracian, on the following terms. Sosias was to
pay him a net obol a day, without charge or deduction, for every slave of the
thousand, and be responsible for keeping up the number perpetually at that figure.
(Xenophon, Revenues4.14)Many were involved in building and public works where they might work alongside
freemen for the same wages. From an inscription recording building arrangements
for the Erechtheum, the temple of Athena and Erechtheus (the deity’s adopted son
and an early king of Athens), of 86 of the workman whose status can be identified, 24
are citizens, 42 are metics and 20 are slaves, working with the same wage for the
same job (IG 1^3 476). Others were employed as artisans either directly for their master
or working for themselves and paying their master a daily sum. The evidence of the
orator Demosthenes suggests their role in the business life of the city.