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
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