Recovers the voices, experiences and agency of enslaved people in ancient Greece.

This is an authoritative and clearly written account of the main issues involved in the study of Greek slavery from Homeric times to the fourth century BC. It provides valuable insights into the fundamental place of slavery in the economies and social life of classical Greece, and includes penetrating analyses of the widely-held ancient ideological justifications of slavery. A wide range of topics is covered, including the development of slavery from Homer to the classical period, the peculiar form of community slaves (the helots) found in Sparta, economic functions and the treatment of slaves in Athens, and the evidence for slaves' resistance. Throughout the author shows how political and economic systems, ideas of national identity, work and gender, and indeed the fundamental nature of Greek civilisation itself, were all profoundly affected by the fact that many of the Greek city-states were slave societies. With 12 illustrations.

Genesis -- Servants of the city -- Strange slaves -- The democratic order of knowledge -- The mysteries of the Greek state

Interrogates the traditional binary 'slave societies'/'societies with slaves' as a paradigm for understanding the global practice of slaveholding.

Although the importance of slavery to Greek society has long been recognised, most studies have primarily drawn upon representations of slaves as sources of evidence for the historical institution, while there has been little consideration of what the representations can tell us about how the Greeks perceived slaves and why. Although historical reality clearly played a part in the way slaves were represented, Reconstructing the Slave stresses that this was not the primary purpose of these images, which reveal more about how slave-owners perceived or wanted to perceive slaves than the reality of slavery. Through an examination of lexical, visual and literary representations of slaves, the book considers how the image of the slave was used to justify, reinforce and naturalize slavery in ancient Greece.

Greek comedy offers a unique insight into the reality of life as a slave, giving this disenfranchised group a 'voice'.