330 DAVID M. LEWIS
Some Reflections on Autarky and the Slave Supply
As is so often the case, the nature of our evidence has meant that the focus of
this chapter has fallen on Athens and Sparta: the scope of the literary sources
inhibits the construction of the kind of textured and diverse description pos-
sible from evidence such as coins (Chapter 4) or amphoras (Chapter 9) where
other poleis enter the picture prominently. Slavery, as is well known, is archae-
ologically invisible; and this limits the historian’s horizon principally to Athens
in considering this topic.^75 With such constraints in mind, to what extent
should we regard the slave systems of Athens and Sparta as typical, if at all?
Recent work has rightly emphasized the great diversity in socio-economic
and political structures within the 1,000 or so poleis that existed during the
classical period; it would be ill-judged to sort poleis into one or the other camp
based on Athenian or Spartan paradigms. On the other hand, much of the dis-
cussion in this essay has sketched in general principles which should be more
broadly applicable. Were we to arrange Greek slave systems along a spectrum
of commercialization, with high levels of integration with foreign markets at
one pole and effective isolation at the other, Athens and Sparta would likely
be located at these hypothetical extremes. One should bear in mind that any
Greek slave system of reasonable scale will have utilized a mixture of natural
reproduction and external supply, and it is between these extremes – exempli-
fied by Athens and Sparta – that most systems probably lay. However, I suspect
that the majority of poleis, especially on the more commercialized Aegean
coast and islands, would cluster towards the Athenian end of any such spec-
trum, the reason being that ‘self-sufficient’ slave systems such as Sparta’s were
clearly rare. Fourth-century writers viewed them as controversial oddities; very
much not the norm, these were contentious systems chiefly because their lev-
els of linguistic uniformity apparently enhanced their ability and proclivity to
revolt.^76 As for systems whose supply depended to varying degrees on foreign
imports, there is no reason to view Athens’ slave population as normative. The
ethnic texture of slave populations in different regions will have varied given
proximity to suppliers, local economic conditions and modes of exploiting the
landscape, as well as connections to markets seeking slave-produced goods. The
Athenian system sketched in this chapter has to be seen as one part of a much
larger and more complex picture. But despite the limitations of our evidence,
it is clear that in terms of slave supply – as with strategies for acquiring other
commodities – Athens and most other Aegean communities had progressed a
long way from self-sufficiency.^77Appendix: The Overland Transport of Slaves
During antiquity one extremely widespread and long-lived means by which
slaves or captives were transported overland was by coffle.^78 Individuals would