The slaves were employed either in domestic service—as household managers, attendants or per sonal escorts—or in work of other kinds, agricultural or urban. In early Attica, and even down to the time of Pericles, the land owners lived in the country. The Peloponnesian War introduced a change ; and after that time the proprietors resided at Athens, and the cultivation was in the hands of slaves. In manufactures and commerce, also, servile gradually displaced free labour. Speculators either directly employed slaves as artisans or com mercial and banking agents, or hired them out, sometimes for work in mines or factories, sometimes for service in private houses, as cooks, flute-players, etc., or for viler uses. There were also public slaves ; of these some belonged to temples, to which they were presented as offerings, amongst them being the courtesans who acted as hieroduli at Corinth and at Eryx in Sicily; others were appropriated to the service of the magistrates or to public works ; there were at Athens 1,200 Scythian archers for the police of the city; slaves served, too, in the fleets, and were employed in the armies—commonly as workmen, and ex ceptionally as soldiers.
The condition of slaves at Athens was not in general a wretched one. Demosthenes (In Mid. p. 53o) says that, if the barbarians from whom the slaves were bought were informed of the mild treatment they received, they would entertain a great esteem for the Athenians. Plautus in more than one place thinks it necessary to explain to the spectators of his plays that slaves at Athens enjoyed such privileges, and even licence, as must be surprising to a Roman audience. The slave was introduced with certain customary rites into his position in the family ; he was in practice, though not by law, permitted to accumulate a private fund of his own ; his marriage was also recognized by custom ; though in general excluded from sacred ceremonies and public sacrifices, slaves were admissible to religious associations of a private kind; there were some popular festivals in which they were allowed to participate; they had even special ones for themselves both at Athens and in other Greek centres. Their remains were deposited in the family tomb of their master, who sometimes erected monu ments in testimony of his affection and regret. They often lived on terms of intimacy either with the head of the house or its younger members; but it is to be feared that too often this in timacy was founded, not on mutual respect, as in the heroic example of Ulysses and Eumaeus, but on insolent self-assertion on the one side and a spirit of unworthy compliance on the other, the latter having its raison d'etre in degrading services rendered by the slave. Aristophanes and Plautus show us how often resort was had to the discipline of the lash even in the case of domestic slaves. Those employed in workshops, whose over seers were themselves most commonly of servile status, had probably a harder lot than domestics ; and the agricultural labour ers were not unfrequently chained, and treated much in the same way as beasts of burden. The displeasure of the master some times dismissed his domestics to the more oppressive labours of the mill or the mine. A refuge from cruel treatment was afforded by the temples and altars of the gods and by the sacred groves. Nor did Athenian law leave the slave without protection. He had, as Demosthenes boasts, an action for outrage like a freeman, and his death at the hand of a stranger was avenged like that of a citizen (Eurip. Hec. 288), whilst, if caused by his master's violence, it had to be atoned for by exile and a religious expiation. Even when the slave had killed his master, the relatives of the house could not themselves inflict punishment ; they were obliged to hand him over to the magistrate to be dealt with by legal process. The slave who had just grounds of complaint against his master could demand to be sold; when he alleged his right to liberty, the law granted him a defender and the sanctuaries offered him an asylum till judgment should be given. Securities were taken against the revolt of slaves by not associating those of the same nationality and language ; they were sometimes fet tered to prevent flight, and, after a first attempt at escape, branded to facilitate their recovery. There were treaties between States
for the extradition of fugitives, and contracts of mutual assurance between individuals against their loss by flight.
The slave could purchase his liberty with his peculium by agreement with his master. He could be liberated by will, or, during his master's life, by proclamation in the theatre, the law courts or other public places, or by having his name in scribed in the public registers, or, in the later age of Greece, by sale or donation to certain temples—an act which did not make the slave a hierodulus but a freeman. Conditions were sometimes attached to emancipation, as of remaining for life or a definite time with the former master, or another person named by him, or of performing some special service ; payments or rights of succession to property might also be reserved. By manumission the Athenian slave became in relation to the State a metic, in relation to his master a client. He was thus in an intermediate condition between slavery and complete freedom. If the freed man violated his duties to his patron he was subject to an action at law, and if the decision were against him, he was again reduced to slavery. He became a full member of the State only, as in the case of foreigners, by a vote in an assembly of 6,000 citizens; and even this vote might he set aside by a graphe paranomon. Slaves who had rendered eminent services to the public, as those who fought at Arginusae and at Chaeronea, were at once admitted to the status of citizens in the class of (so-called) Plataeans. But it would appear that even in their case some civic rights were reserved and accorded only to their children by a female citizen. The number of freedmen at Athens seems never to have been great. (See further GREECE : Ancient History.) Theoretic Views on Slavery.—It is well known that Aris totle held slavery to be necessary and natural, and, under just conditions, beneficial to both parties in the relation—views which were correct enough from the political side, regard being had to the contemporary social state. His practical motto, if he is the author of the Economics attributed to him, is—"no outrage, and no familiarity." There ought, he says, to be held out to the slave the hope of liberty as the reward of his service. Plato con demned the practice, which the theory of Aristotle also by im plication sets aside as inadmissible, of Greeks having Greeks for slaves. In the Laws he accepts the institution as a necessary though embarrassing one, and recommends for the safety of the masters that natives of different countries should be mixed and that they should all be well treated. But, whilst condemning harshness towards them, he encourages the feeling of contempt for them as a class. The later moral schools of Greece scarcely at all concern themselves with the institution. The Epicurean had no scruple about the servitude of those whose labours contributed to his own indulgence and tranquillity. The Stoic regarded the condi tion of freedom or slavery as an external accident, indifferent in the eye of wisdom ; to him it was irrational to see in liberty a ground of pride or in slavery a subject of complaint; from intoler able indignity suicide was an ever-open means of escape. The poets—especially the authors of the New Comedy—strongly in culcate humanity, and insist on the fundamental equality of the slave. The celebrated "homo sum" is a translation from Alexis, and the spirit of it breathes in many passages of the Greek drama. A fragment of Philemon declares, as if in reply to Aristotle, that not nature, but fortune, makes the slave. Euripides, as might be expected from his humanitarian cast of sentiment, and the "premature modernism" which has been remarked in him, rises above the ordinary feelings of his time in regard to the slaves. As Paley says, he loves "to record their fidelity to their masters, their sympathy in the trials of life, their gratitude for kindness and considerate treatment, and their pride in bearing the char acter of honourable men. . . . He allows them to reason, to ad vise, to suggest ; and he even makes them philosophize on the follies and the indiscretions of their superiors" (compare Med. 54; Orest. 869; Hel. 728; Ion. 854; Frag. Melan. 506; Phrix. 823).