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:
-
- 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 and/or slaves:
“As a work of art it has the same status as a long conversation between two not very bright drunks.”
—Clive James (b. 1939)
“Your kind doesn’t just kill men. You murder their spirits, you strangle their last breath of hope and freedom, so that you, the chosen few, can rule your slaves in ease and luxury. You’re a sadist just like the others, Heiser, with no resource but violence and no feeling but fear, the kind you’re feeling now. You’re drowning, Heiser, drowning in the ocean of blood around this barren little island you call the New Order.”
—Curtis Siodmak (1902–1988)