Historicising Ancient Slavery

'Treating slavery as a single thing was politically vital to abolitionism, but has become an impediment to scholarly understanding. Vlassopoulos shows how vital it is to stop considering slaves and slavery to be one thing if we are to understand Greek and Roman slavery. His rich and compelling picture of ancient slavery is the first step towards an honest mapping of the dynamics of power and domination across ancient societies that does not hide behind the classifications that they and we have found it politically convenient to adopt. ' Robin Osborne, University of Cambridge 'In clear and accessible prose, Vlassopoulos presents a radical re-thinking of ancient Greek and Roman slavery and the ways these institutions should be understood. Questioning methodologies long taken for granted, he provides a useful set of new tools and approaches that will greatly aid any future work on this topic. ' Deborah Kamen, University of Washington A new framework for studying slaves and slavery in ancient societies Informed by the global history of slavery, Kostas Vlassopoulos avoids traditional approaches to slavery as a static institution and instead explores the diverse strategies and various contexts in which it was employed. In doing so he offers a new historicist approach to the study of slave identity and the various networks and communities that slaves created or participated in. Instead of seeing slaves merely as passive objects of exploitation and domination, his focus is on slave agency and the various ways in which they played an active role in the history of ancient societies. Vlassopoulos examines slavery not only as an economic and social phenomenon, but also in its political, religious and cultural ramifications. A comparative framework emerges as he examines Greek and Roman slaveries alongside other slaving systems in the Near East, the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Kostas Vlassopoulos is Associate Professor of Ancient History at the University of Crete. Cover image: Funerary inscription for the slave Macedo, set up by his fellow slave Thallus. Marble tombstone with a Latin funerary inscription, second century CE, Rome. British Museum, inv. no. 1867,0508. 37. Cover design: [EUP logo] ISBN 978 1 4744 8721 4 Barcode