334 DAVID M. LEWIS
26 Scheidel 2005 with the corrections of Tordoff 2011: 31, n. 176. For the Babylonian slave
system, see Dandamaev 1984. For slave prices, see Jursa 2010: 741–5 and the comments
of Dandamaev 1984 : 246–8. Crawford 2010 argues that slave prices remained stagnant
throughout antiquity; against this view, see Harper 2010 , who argues for fluctuations due to
differences in demand and supply, which is surely correct (cf. Introduction to this volume).
Even if Crawford’s arguments are accepted, it does not follow that slaves in Athens were not
cheap from a comparative-historical perspective.
27 For Chios, Ephesus, Clazomenae and Abydus as slave markets, see Aristophanes fr. 556 K-A.
28 See appendix to this chapter for iconographic evidence for the use of coffles.
29 This was the normal distance a coffle could travel in the U.S. South (Johnson 1999 : 50),
which I take as a rough figure applicable to other times and places.
30 That is, the 400 km mentioned by De Vries 1997 : 447.
31 See Beachey 1976 : 190 for the condition of slaves who had walked over 1,000 miles and
faced a further 250-mile journey to the Indian Ocean.
32 The slaves could themselves act as porters for other commodities. This is a practice well
attested in the West African slave trade; in the fictional journey of Aesop from Phrygia to
Ephesus (Life of Aesop 2) the slaves carry provisions for the journey.
33 On the rates of harbor taxes in the Aegean, see Vélissaropoulos 1980 : 205–31. For the effect
of taxes on merchants’ profit margins, see Gabrielsen 2007.
34 Braund 2011 : 115 is surely correct in inferring that the original purchase price for such slaves
in their country of origin must have been low.
35 Cf. Trümper 2009 : 16, note 70. For the fluctuation of prices across all commodities due to
supply and demand (and not just grain, as the minimalists would have it), see the Introduction
to this volume. For the sailing season, see Casson 1971 : 270–3.
36 For journey lengths, see Eltis 2000 : 124.
37 Pace Bradley 1987 : 61, note 25, one cannot posit similar conditions to the ‘middle passage’ for
the ancient Mediterranean – and particularly not for the shorter Aegean routes. Mortality
levels on the middle passage are discussed in Klein et al. 2001. For transport costs in the
Atlantic slave trade, see Eltis 2000 : 114–36.
38 For low transport costs see also Gavriljuk 2003 : 79–80.
39 Outside Attica, the evidence is sparse. However, that which we possess suggests a com-
parable pattern of slave imports across the Aegean world. From fifth century Chios, we
have two inscriptions listing slaves who, from their nomenclature, seem to be for the most
part Anatolians (Robert 1938 ). Bresson 1997 : 124 discusses the evidence from Hellenistic
Rhodes and argues for onomastic similarity (or continuity) on the Attic model. Bresson’s
dossier includes a number of Anatolians, but also slaves from Egypt, Thrace, Armenia and
the Black Sea. The evidence from the Delphic manumissions shows a comparable range of
non-Greek ethnic groups in mainland Greece (Velkov 1967 : 78).
40 Jones 2008. Harp. (s.v.) explains the term as an old-fashioned version of sômatemporos, and
mentions that it appears in an (now lost) oration of Isaeus. More evidence exists for the
Roman world (Bodel 2005 ).
41 Braund 2011 : 122.
42 New Orleans: Johnson 1999 : 54; Salé: Milton 2004 : 68–70. Cf. Trümper 2009 : 2–19, whose
cross-cultural overview of slave markets concludes (p. 15) ‘purpose-built slave markets were
overall rare; instead, slaves seem to have been mostly traded in convenient existing and mul-
tifunctional locations.’
43 For the statement in the new Hyperides Against Timandros that slave dealers normally
tried to sell slave families en bloc, see Jones 2008 with the comments of Harper 2011 : 261.
However, such statements are unlikely to be entirely rhetorical bluff: see Schmitz 2011.
44 ἐν ταῖς νουμηνίαις οἱ δοῦλοι ἐπωλοῦντο καὶ οἱ στρατηγοὶ ἐχειροτοῦντο.
45 In fact we find slaves named Νομήνιος in IG I³ 1032 at lines 254, 350 and 389. Cf. Lambertz
1907 : 65 (‘Der Sklave kann nach dem Tage des Monats heiβen, an dem er geboren oder
gekauft wurde’). For kykloi and auctions see Moretti, Fincker and Chankowski 2012.