Resistance among chattel slaves in the classical Greek world

Abstract

INTRODUCTION The study of slave resistance raises particular problems of method. Our reconstructions are largely dependent on the ‘footprint’ left by resistance in the record produced by slave-owners. The size of that footprint may not accurately reflect the importance of the original phenomenon. Slave-owners can exaggerate the scale of potential resistance through paranoia or downplay it to reassure themselves. Or they may have little interest in recording it at all. Different authors, even different texts, can have different intentions. Interpreting the scattered traces and disentangling dream, nightmare and reality are far from straightforward. The (sparse) evidence often allows more than one interpretation. One of the aims of this chapter is to reveal the ambiguities that can sometimes be lost in more general discussions. SLAVE REBELLION AND THE PROBLEM WITH NARRATIVE SOURCES Little evidence of slave rebellion survives from the classical Greek world. The encyclopaedist Athenaeus of Naucratis in Egypt, writing around ad 200, discusses (265d–266e) a band of runaways led by Drimacus on the island of Chios. The date could range from the seventh to the third centuries bc . Drimacus made a truce with the local slave-owners limiting the scale of future raiding and flight. Eventually, however, the Chians turned on him. He persuaded his (male) lover to deliver his head to the slave-owners and claim the reward offered (and freedom). The Sicilian city of Syracuse experienced a slave revolt during a siege between 415 bc and 413 bc .

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