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The Slave Population of Athens

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

A. W. Gomme
A. W. Gomme
Affiliation:
University of Glasgow
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Extract

It is as yet too soon to state what corrections or additions should be made to the various figures I gave in my Population of Athens as a result of new evidence since that book was published (1933), although some individual discoveries have been made and Sterling Dow has published his invaluable Prytaneis (Hesperia, Suppl. I, 1937); for the excavations in the Athenian agora are not finished–though it looks as though the hopes I expressed for the discovery of a large number of inscriptions that would throw new light on the problem will be disappointed. But two objections have been made to my treatment of the number of slaves in Athens, by Mr. Hammond in Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc, 1935, p. 1, and by Prof. George Thomson in his edition of The Oresteia, I 70, n. 1 and II 357-9, both of whom maintain that Ktesikles' figure of 400,000 must be accepted; and though the question has again been discussed, convincingly enough to my mind, by Prof. Westerraann in Athenian Studies (Harv. Stud, Suppl. Vol. I, 1940, 451-70), it is worth dealing with certain aspects afresh, especially in answer to Thomson, for some important principles are involved. Not that anything I can say will convince him; for he hopes that ‘the whole subject will be re-examined by someone who is prepared to take the ancient evidence seriously and is free from the suspicion of seeking to minimise the extent of an evil which casts a sinister shadow over the glory that was Greece.’ But I will do my best.

Type
Notes
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 66 , November 1946 , pp. 127 - 129
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1946

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References

1 Diod. xx. 84, 2–3 (305 B.C.): figures for citizens and paroikoi given; slaves promised freedom, but no figures mentioned.

2 Diod. xviii. 70. 1 (318 B.C.): 15,000 in all fit for some sort of service—citizens, foreigners and slaves; a modest enough figure.

3 In fact 400,000 is not strictly consistent with the 150,000 of Hypereides even if women and children are included in the former; for if the total of slaves was of this order of magnitude, there were almost certainly far more men (employed in industry) than women slaves, and nothing like 100,000 child slaves. My own guess (admittedly only a guess) would be: if there were 150,000 men slaves in 338, there will have been less than 100,000 in Demetrios's time, and not more than 50,000 women and 50,000 children.

4 Diod. xxxiv. 2. 19 says over 1000 revolted in Attica; Athenaios, vi. 272 E–F, speaks of many myriads serving in the mines, though he gives no figures for those who revolted. This is from the same passage as that in which he speaks of individual Romans owning 10,000 and 20,000 slaves and more (see below).

5 Thomson speaks of a large slave-market at Chios, and refers to Hdt. viii. 105 and Thuc. viii. 40. 2. What the latter says is that there were more resident slaves in Chios than in any other state but Sparta; most of them, as at Sparta, will have worked on the land. Hdt. viii. 105 is nothing to the point.

6 See Brett-James, , The Growth of Stuart London (1935 495–515Google Scholar. I first noticed Howell's figures in Macaulay (History, ed. 1860, I 281–2Google Scholar). See an article by Jones, and Judges, in Econ. Hist. Rev. VI (1935–1936) 45–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar (to which my colleague Mr. Buyers drew my attention) for a scientific discussion of one aspect of the problem. I am not, of course, here concerned with errors of 10, 20 or even 50 per cent.

7 So I calculate from the figures given by Clark, Colin, National Income and Outlay (London, 1937) 104–6Google Scholar.

8 In London alone, excluding a skeleton staff at Woburn and in Devonshire: Thomson, Gladys, The Russells in Bloomsbury, cc. xii and xiii. (summary, pp. 238–41)Google Scholar.

9 See his interesting comparisons with the slave-plantations in the Southern States, p. 460.

10 Incidentally, Thomson thinks that the χειροτέχναι skilled workers, who formed the majority of the 20,000, must have come most of them from the mines. Perhaps; but if so, he should not base any argument upon Diodoros' horrific descriptions (iii. 12, v. 38) of the conditions endured by the miners of Egypt and Spain, which, in his Aeschylus and Athens, 160–2, he accepts at their face value and applies equally to Attica; for Diodoros expressly says that in Egypt their work was entirely unskilled.