My father, men of the jury, left two factories, both doing a large business. One was
a sword factory, employing thirty two or thirty three slaves, most of them worth
five or six minae each and none less than three minae. From these my father
received a clear income of twelve minae. The other was a sofa factory, employing
twenty slaves, given to my father as security for a debt of forty minae. These
brought him a clear income of twelve minae.
(Demosthenes, Against Aphobus 1, 4)A mina comprised 600 obols; 6 obols make one drachma, considered to be a daily
wage for a skilled worker. Thucydides reports that after the Sicilian disaster, when
the Spartans occupied Attica for a time ‘more than 20,000 slaves, the majority of
whom were skilled workers, deserted’ (Thucydides 7, 27). This figure must have been
a guess, but suggests the number of slaves providing skilled labour was large.
There were clearly large numbers of domestic slaves employed in households
as housekeepers, maids, chaperones and tutors of children of the well-to-do. Outside
the house they functioned as chaperones. There is the suggestive remark in
Aristophanes that to go out without a single attendant was a sign of poverty (Women
in the Assembly, 593). It may also be the case that hoplites were accompanied on
campaigns by a single slave in attendance. In dire emergencies they had more than
a servant’s role, fighting alongside their masters as foot soldiers at Marathon and in
the navy at the battle of Arginusae at the end of the Peloponnesian war.
As to their treatment, they were at the mercy of the character and disposition of
their owner. Legally, they had no rights but were their master’s property to the extent
that they had to take the name he gave them and were accounted among his goods
and chattels. But the following complaint suggests that they could be well integrated
into the community:
The license allowed to slaves and aliens at Athens is extreme and a blow is
forbidden there, nor will a slave make way for you. I shall tell you why this is the
custom of the country. If it were legal for a slave or an alien or a freedman to be
beaten by a freeman, you would often have taken the Athenian for a slave and
struck him; for the commons there do not dress better than the slaves and the
aliens, and their general appearance is in no way superior.
(Old Oligarch [attrib to Xenophon], Athenian Constitution1, 10)At Athens, too, there was a law against ill treatment, though it could not be invoked
by the slave, only by a citizen. On the other hand, their evidence in a court of law was
only valid if given under torture. Slaves could be freed and become resident aliens
(metics) but it is not possible to say how often this happened and whether they were
still obligated to their former masters.
RELIGION AND SOCIAL LIFE 137