Status of Slaves
The Greeks had many degrees of enslavement. There was a multitude of categories, ranging from free citizen to chattel slave, and including Penestae or helots, disenfranchised citizens, freedmen, bastards, and metics. The common ground was the deprivation of civic rights.
Moses Finley proposed a set of criteria for different degrees of enslavement:
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- Right to own property
- Authority over the work of another
- Power of punishment over another
- Legal rights and duties (liability to arrest and/or arbitrary punishment, or to litigate)
- Familial rights and privileges (marriage, inheritance, etc.)
- Possibility of social mobility (manumission or emancipation, access to citizen rights)
- Religious rights and obligations
- Military rights and obligations (military service as servant, heavy or light soldier, or sailor)
Read more about this topic: Slavery In Ancient Greece
Famous quotes containing the words status of, status and/or slaves:
“What is clear is that Christianity directed increased attention to childhood. For the first time in history it seemed important to decide what the moral status of children was. In the midst of this sometimes excessive concern, a new sympathy for children was promoted. Sometimes this meant criticizing adults. . . . So far as parents were put on the defensive in this way, the beginning of the Christian era marks a revolution in the child’s status.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“What is clear is that Christianity directed increased attention to childhood. For the first time in history it seemed important to decide what the moral status of children was. In the midst of this sometimes excessive concern, a new sympathy for children was promoted. Sometimes this meant criticizing adults. . . . So far as parents were put on the defensive in this way, the beginning of the Christian era marks a revolution in the child’s status.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“Who are we? And for what are we going to fight? Are we the titled slaves of George the Third? The military conscripts of Napoleon the Great? Or the frozen peasants of the Russian Czar? No—we are the free born sons of America; the citizens of the only republic now existing in the world; and the only people on earth who possess rights, liberties, and property which they dare call their own.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)