Slave Revolts in Antiquity

by Urbainczyk, Theresa;

  22.

  Herodotus, Histories, 6.137.

  23.

  “Italiae cultures primi Aborigines fuere, quorum rex Saturnus tantae justitiae fuisse dicitur, ut neque servierit quisquam sub illo neque quicquam privatae rei habuerit, sed omnia communia et indivisa omnibus fuerint, veluti unum cunctis patrimonium esset” (Justin, Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus, 43.1.3).

  24.

  Diodorus, 2.55–60. At first there appears to be only one island but later he says the people worship the sun after whom they name the islands and themselves, so that this utopia is referred to as the Isles of the Sun (ibid., 2.59.7).

  25.

  Digest, 1.5, emphasis added.

  26.

  Peter Garnsey, Ideas of Slavery from Aristotle to Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 243.

  27.

  Ibid., 84.

  6. Sympathy for the slaves: Diodorus Siculus

  1.

  For the reappraisal see Kenneth Sacks, Diodorus Siculus and the First Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990). For a typical view, see the entry in the second edition of the Oxford Classical Dictionary, which ends: “Despite his universal conception of history and his aim of writing for the Graeco-Roman world, his work is undistinguished, with confusion arising from the different traditions and chronologies, a compilation only as valuable as its authorities, but thus valuable to us” (A. H. McDonald, “Diodorus Siculus” in Oxford Classical Dictionary, 2nd edn, N. G. L. Hammond and H. H. Scullard [eds] [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970], 347). The more appreciative entry in the third edition is by Kenneth Sacks.

  2.

  Diodorus, 1.1.1–1.5.3. For a useful introduction to Diodorus see P. J. Stylianou, A Historical Commentary on Diodorus Siculus, Book 15 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 1–139.

  3.

  Diodorus, 1.1.3.

  4.

  Stylianou, A Historical Commentary on Diodorus Siculus, 3–6.

  5.

  For a discussion of the proemia see Sacks, Diodorus Siculus and the First Century, 9–22.

  6.

  Diodorus, 1.1.3.

  7.

  Ibid., 1.4.

  8.

  Sacks, Diodorus Siculus and the First Century, esp. ch. 5, 117–59. Sacks quotes Diodorus’ comment on Rome’s conquest of Greece:

  The Greeks, after witnessing in person the butchery and beheading of their kinsmen and friends, the capture and looting of their cities, the abusive enslavement of whole populations, after, in a word, losing both their liberty and the right to speak freely exchanged the height of prosperity for the most extreme misery. (Diodorus, 32.26.2)

  He describes it as one of the strongest indictments of Roman warfare and imperial rule found in ancient literature (Sacks, Diodorus Siculus and the First Century, 138–9).

  9.

  καὶ γὰρ τω̑ν Σικελιωτ̑ν οἱ πολλοὺς πλούτους κεκτημένοι διημιλλω̑ντο πρὸς τὰς τω̑ν’Ιταλιωτω̑ν ὑπερηφανίας τε καὶ πλεονεξίας καὶ κακουργίας (Diodorus 34/35.2.27). At the start of Diodorus Siculus, Farrington quotes a passage from Diodorus that sums up Diodorus’ sentiments quite succinctly: ἁλίσκονται δ’, οί̂μαι, τω̑ν ἡμ́ερων ἀνδρω̑ν αἱ ψυχαὶ μάλιστά πως ἐλέω̣ διὰ τὴν κοινὴν τη̑ς φύσεως ὁμοπάθειαν [The souls of gentle men are, I suppose, most open to pity owing to the fellowship of all nature in suffering] (13.24).

  10.

  Sacks, Diodorus Siculus and the First Century, 151–4. Hermann Strasburger, “Poseidonios on Problems of the Roman Empire”, Journal of Roman Studies 55 (1965), 40–53, takes the Diodoran passages to be from Posidonius but nevertheless his conclusion is that Posidonius saw the Roman Empire as bringing peace and stability.

  11.

  Sacks, Diodorus Siculus and the First Century, 151–2; see also ibid., 51–2, on Diodorus stressing the relationship between rulers and subjects.

  12.

  Diodorus, 1.1.4.

  13.

  Ibid., 37.2.1. Describing the cause of the Marsic War, Diodorus writes: αἰτίαν δὲ πρώτην γενέσθαι του̑ πολέμου τὸ μεταπεσει̑ν τοὺς ’Ρωμαίους ἀπὸ τη̑ς εὐτάκτου καὶ λιτη̑ς ἀγωγη̑ς καὶ ἐγκρατου̑ς δι’ἡ̂ς ἐπὶ τοσου̑τον ηὐξήθησαν, εἰν ὀλέθριον ζη̑λον τρυφη̑ς και ἀκολασίς [The primary cause of the war was that the Romans abandoned the disciplined, frugal, and stern manner of life that had brought them to such greatness, and fell into the pernicious pursuit of luxury and licence] (ibid., 37.2.1).

  14.

  See N. G. Wilson, Photius: The Bibliotheca (London: Duckworth, 1994), 13–17, for a brief description of the work, and Warren T. Treadgold, The Nature of the Bibliotheca of Photius (Washington, DC: Centre for Byzantine Studies, Dumbarton Oaks, 1980) for a longer one. The full title of the work is Inventory and enumeration of the books that we have read, of which our beloved brother Tarasius requested a general analysis.

  15.

  See Treadgold, The Nature of the Bibliotheca of Photius, 1–15.

  16.

  Mileta, “Quellenkritische Beobachtungen zur Vorgeschichte”, describes how epitomisers worked. They had writers write a preliminary detailed summary and then another editor worked through this and decided which passages to keep or delete. He suggests that the excerptors employed by Constantine used a copy of Photius’ summary, and were consciously trying to do something different with his work, that is, they were using Photius but with their own themes in mind.

  17.

  Ibid. and Mileta, “Verschwoerung oder Eruption”. Wiedemann, Greek and Roman Slavery, 200–207, includes both versions, although this is not the case for the second slave war (see ibid., 208–15; also Shaw, Spartacus and the Slave Wars, 80–94). Shaw also does not always indicate the different versions for the second war (ibid., 115–20).

  18.

  See Moses I. Finley, A History of Sicily: Ancient Sicily to the Arab Conquest (London: Chatto & Windus, 1968), 188–9, for a concise summary of events. In 827 CE a Byzantine general had rebelled and set himself up as emperor, calling in help from the Aghlabid emir. Palermo fell in 831 CE, Enna in 859, Syracuse in 878 and Taormina in 902.

  19.

  Diodorus, 34/35.2.9–10.

  20.

  Ibid., 34/35.2.35.

  21.

  The view that there were dangers in excess was a commonplace in ancient philosophy and was not held only by the Stoics.

  22.

  Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, 12.542.

  23.

  Ibid., 12.541.

  24.

  Ὅτι ὁ αὐτός Δαμόφιλος διὰ τὴν εὐθάδειαν καὶ τὴν ὠμότητα τω̑ν τρόπων οὐκ ἠ̑ν ἠμέρα καθ’ἥν οὐκ ἠ̣κίζετό τινας τω̑ν οἰκετων ἐπ’αἰτίαις οὐ δικαίαις (Diodorus, 34/35.2.37).

  25.

  ἐξ ων̔̑ ἐδείκνυτο τω̑ν δοὑλων οὑχὶ ὠμότης εἰ̑αι φύσεως τὰ γινόμενα εἰς τοὺς ἄλλους, ἀλλὰ τω̑ν προϋπηργμένων εἰς αὐτοὺς ἀδικημάτων ἁνταπόδοσις (ibid., 34/35.2.13).

  26.

  Ibid., 34/35.2.40.

  27.

  ἐρράγη ποτὲ σὺν καιρω̣̑ τὸ μι̑σος [an outbreak of hatred] (ibid., 34/35.2.26).

  28.

  ἐξ οὑ̑ χωρὶς παραγγέλματος πολλαὶ μυριάδες συνέδραμον οἰκετω̑ν ἐπί τὴν τω̑ν δεσποτω̑ν ἀπώλειαν (ibid., 34/35.2.26).

  29.

  Ibid., 34/35.2.33.

  30.

  πάντες δε τὸ κράτιστον τω̑ν ὅπλων τὸν θυ
μὸν ἀνελάμβανον κατὰ τη̑ς ἀπωλείας τω̑ν ὑπερηφάνων κυρίων (ibid., 34/35.2.24b).

  31.

  This description is somehow reminiscent of a passage from the narrative of the ex-slave Frederick Douglass. When he fought back against his “nigger breaker” of a master and refused to be broken, he introduced the episode with the words “You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man” (Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave Written by Himself, B. Quarles [ed.] [Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, [1845] 1988], 97).

  32.

  ὀνειδίζοντες αὐτω̑ν τὴν ὑπερηφανίαν καὶτην ὑπερβολὴν τη̑ς εἰς τὸν ὄλεθρον προαγούσης ὕβρεως (ibid., 34/35.2.46).

  33.

  Ibid., 34/35.2.47.

  34.

  Ibid., 34/35.9.

  35.

  Ibid., 5.3.5–6, 14.63, 14.70–71.

  7. The secret of the success of the Spartan helots

  1.

  Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, 6.265c.

  2.

  Pollux, Onomasticon, 3.83. See, however, “It was generally conceded that the bondage of the half-free Helots of Lacedaimonia was more onerous than full enslavement at Athens or about Delphi” (Westermann, “Between Slavery and Freedom”, 217–18).

  3.

  Jean Ducat, Les Hilotes, Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, supplement 20 (Athens: École Française d’Athènes, 1990), 44–51.

  4.

  See Weiler, Die Beendigung des Sklavenstatus, 15–54, on the terms used and the relatively late emergence of the term from which the English “slave” derives (ibid., 15–16). For Greek words, see, for example, the astonishingly complicated discussion by Marie-Madeleine Mactoux, “Pour une approche nouvelle du champ lexical de l’esclavage chez les orateurs attiques”, in Actes du colloque sur l’esclavage, Nieborów 2–6 XII 1975 (conference proceedings), I. Bieżuńska-Małowist and J. Kolendo (eds), 75–124 (Warsaw: History Institute, University of Warsaw, 1979). For a more straightforward article about Latin words, see Luigi Capogrossi Colognesi, “La denominazione degli schiavi e dei padroni nel latino del terzo e del secondo secolo a.C.”, in Actes du colloque sur l’esclavage, Bieżuńska-Małowist and Kolendo (eds), 171–206.

  5.

  See Glenn R. Morrow, Plato’s Law of Slavery and its Relation to Greek Law (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1939), 25–46.

  6.

  οὕτω καὶ τὸ κτη̑μα ὀργανον πρὸς ζωήν ἐστι, καὶ ἡ κτη̑σις πλη̑θος ὀργάνων ἐστι, καὶ ὁ δου̑λος κτη̑μά τι έ̇μψυχον (Aristotle, Politics, 1.2.4–5).

  7.

  Ibid.

  8.

  See Cambiano, “Aristotle and the Anonymous Opponents”, for a discussion on Aristotle’s views on slavery. See also W. W. Fortenbaugh, “Aristotle on Slaves and Women”, in Articles on Aristotle, 2: Ethics and Politics, J. Barnes, M. Schofield and R. Sorabji (eds), 135–9 (London: Duckworth, 1977) and Smith, “Aristotle’s Theory of Natural Slavery”

  9.

  The solution of Nino Luraghi, “Helotic Slavery Reconsidered”, in Sparta: Beyond the Mirage, A. Powell and S. Hodkinson (eds), 227–48 (Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2002) does not result in a radically different situation. Even under his scenario, where the helots were not the native peoples of the land who had been enslaved but rather Spartans who had fallen into debt, the result is nevertheless a feeling of unity among the enslaved, which normally does not obtain in the ancient Greek world, and against which thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle had warned. See also Kurt A. Raaflaub, “Freedom for the Messenians? A Note on the Impact of Slavery and Helotage on the Greek Concept of Freedom”, in Helots and their Masters in Laconia and Messenia: Histories, Ideologies, Structures, N. Luraghi and S. E. Alcock (eds), 169–90 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003) on freedom for the Messenians.

  10.

  This treaty is reproduced in Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 5.23.2.

  11.

  Strabo uses the term δου̑λοι to describe the situation of the helots (8.5.4).

  12.

  Detlef Lotze, Metaxy eleutheron kai doulon: Studien zur Rechtsstellung unfreier Landbevolkerungen in Griechenland (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1959) (reprinted New York: Arno Press, 1979) discusses the status of helots and other similar peoples. In his conclusion (ibid., 79) he describes the situation of helotry as a form of collective slavery.

  13.

  Even if the suggestion of Luraghi, “Helotic Slavery Reconsidered”, that in fact originally they had been poorer members of the Spartan citizen body were the case, this does not alter the picture hugely for my purposes here.

  14.

  “Serf” is a term accepted by Stephen Hodkinson, “Spartiates, Helots and the Direction of the Agrarian Economy: Towards an Understanding of Helotage in Comparative Perspective”, in Helots and their Masters, Luraghi and Alcock (eds), 248–85; see ibid., 249 n.2 for further reading. M. I. Finley, The Ancient Economy, updated 2nd edn (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press [1973] 1999), 184–5, objects to the use of the term “serfdom” as involving much more than being tied to the soil, and injecting notions properly belonging to feudal Europe into the discussion. However see the riposte in Ste Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World, 137–40. The evidence in Luraghi, “Helotic Slavery Reconsidered”, seems compelling, and his close analysis of the sources shows far more similarity to regular slavery than is usually presented by modern scholars when considering helots. See Michael L. Bush, “Introduction”, in Serfdom and Slavery: Studies in Legal Bondage, M. L. Bush (ed.), 1–17 (Harlow: Longman, 1996) and Stanley L. Engerman, “Slavery, Serfdom and Other Forms of Coerced Labour: Similarities and Differences”, also in Serfdom and Slavery, M. L. Bush (ed.), 18–41, for clear discussions on the differences between slavery and serfdom (and the problems of defining the terms). The helots do not fit neatly into their definitions of serfs. One crucial difference between slaves and serfs is that serfs do not belong completely to their masters but there is a force above them, either a prince or the state. With Sparta’s political system, one can see how the term “serf” then became attached to the helots. And yet the differences between medieval serfdom and the situation in Sparta are also marked. For example: “slaves were essentially objects of force. This meant that, when engaged in large-scale production, slavery was highly dependent upon a superstructure of physical control” (Bush, “Introduction”, 3). As we have seen, this superstructure of control was more evident in Sparta than elsewhere. An illustration of the complications of the case of the helots is provided by Hodkinson, Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta (London: Duckworth, 2000), who wishes to show that helots were privately owned rather than public property. He quotes Aristotle, Politics, 2.2.5 (1263a30), which says that the Spartans used each other’s slaves practically as their own, without commenting on the fact that Aristotle uses the word δο̑υλος, which rather undermines Hodkinson’s own argument that the helots were not technically slaves (Hodkinson, Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta, 114–15).

  15.

  See Isocrates, Panathenaicus, 181, quoted later in this chapter.

  16.

  οἱ δὲ Λακεδαιμόνιοι πάντας του̑ς δούλους εἵλωτας καλου̑σιν (Herodiani Technici Reliquiae, vol. 1, A. Lentz [ed.], Grammatici Graeci, 3.1 [Hildesheim: Georg Olms, [1867] 1965]], vol. 1, p. 244, lines 18–22).

  17.

  ὥστε τoὺς λέγοντας ἐν Λακεδαίμονι καὶ τὸν ἐλεύθερον μάλιστα ἐλεύθερον εί̂ναι καὶ τον δου̑λον μάλιστα δου̑λον οὐ φαύλως τεθεωρήκεναι τὴν διαφοράν (Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus, 28.5).

  18.

  ὡς μάλιστα δου̑λοί τε �
�ν Λακεδαίμονι καὶ ἐλεύθεροι … οὕτω σύμπαντες οἱ Σπαρτια̑ται τὴν ἐλευθερίαν ἀφή̣ρηντο συζω̑ντες ἐχθει τω̣̑ παρὰ τω̑ν οἰκετω̑ν (Libanius, About Slavery, 25.63). Note that Libanius refers to slaves.

  19.

  Plutarch, Life of Cleomenes, 9.

  20.

  τιμω̑σι δὲ τὸν φόβον οὐχ ὥσπερ οὑς ἀποτρέπονται δαίμονας ἡγούμενοι βλαβερόν ἀλλὰ τὴν πολιτείαν μάλιστα συνέχεσθαι φοβω̣ νομίζοντες (ibid., 9.1–2). It perhaps should be noted that they also had temples to Death and Laughter as well as to Fear, although Plutarch does not give a theory as to why. See Ephraim David: “To sum up, laughter was used at Sparta as an important instrument for the consolidation of the social hierarchy, the promotion of harmony among the homoioi and the cultivation of the norms and values comprising their social code” (“Laughter in Spartan Society”, in Classical Sparta: Techniques Behind her Success, A. Powell [ed.], 1–25 [London: Routledge, 1989], 17). On Spartan religion see also Robert Parker, “Spartan Religion”, in Classical Sparta, A. Powell (ed.), 142–72.

  21.

  Plutarch, Comparison of Lycurgus and Numa, 1.5.

  22.

  οὐδ’αὐ̂ ἀνδραπόδων κτήσει τν τω̑ε ά̇λλων καὶ τω̑ν εἱλωτικω̑ν, οὐδὲ μὴν ἵππων (Plato, Alcibiades, 1.122d).

  23.

  Pausanias, Guide to Greece, 3.20.6. Another suggestion for the origin of the term is that it is from the passive of the verb “to take”, αἱρέω. The situation of the helots was so well known that there was a verb in Greek, εἱλωτεύω, meaning to serve as a helot. See the discussion in Ste Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World, 149, and, more recently, Paul Cartledge, “Raising Hell? The Helot Mirage – A Personal Re-view”, in Helots and their Masters, Luraghi and Alcock (eds), 12–30.