¹ Good recent surveys of this step are Braidwood, Robert J., The Near East and the Foundations for Civilization (Eugene, Ore.: State Superintendent of Higher Education, 1952)Google Scholar; Childe, V. Gordon, What Happened in History (New York: Penguin, 1946)Google Scholar; Frankfort, Henri, The Birth of Civilization in the Near East (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1951).Google Scholar

² The literature on slavery is vast. To keep citations within a reasonable compass, I shall refer largely for the modern studies, the Greco-Roman evidence, and the general economic development of the ancient world to the recent study by Westermann, W. L., The Slave Systems of Greek, and Roman Antiquity (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1955).Google Scholar Although this work is badly organized, it has a wealth of information and represents the fruits of a life's careful study. Most notable among those who have seen ancient slavery in its proper light was the great German scholar, Meyer, Eduard, “Die Sklaverei im Altertum,” in Kleine Schriften (Halle: Niemeyer, 1910), pp. 171–212.Google Scholar

³ Westermann, Slave Systems, pp. 128, 152–53; Whitehead, A. N., Adventures of Ideas (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1933), pp. 15–31.Google Scholar One must except the southern apologists in the last decades before the Civil War.

⁴ So Benjamin Farrington, George Thomson, V. Gordon Childe, F. W. Walbank, and a considerable number of British socialist historians (specific works will be noted later). Unfortunately I can follow the great interest of Russian historians in the subject of slavery (in Vestnik. Drevnei Istorii) only at second hand. The projected Soviet World History will consider the history of the ancient world largely in terms of “the rise, development, and fall of the slave-holding formation,” though Y. M. Zhukov, in criticizing the outline, noted that the transition to slave systems was not a process occurring everywhere or in the same fashion always; cf. Journal of World History, II (1954), 490.Google Scholar

⁵ Capital (Chicago: Kerr, 1909), I, 367.Google Scholar Note the recognition by Marx of the significant place of the free farmer and artisan, at least down to the fifth century (repeated in ibid., Ill, 937). Marxists often ignore this qualification; and yet if they are truly careful historians, they sometimes give away their essential argument against slavery itself by admitting that ancient exploitation was not confined to the slave class. Cf., e.g., Walbank, F. W., The Decline of the Roman Empire in the West (London: Cobbett, 1946), p. 67Google Scholar: “Built on a foundation of slave labour, or on the exploitation of similar groups, including the peasantry [italics added], the City-State yielded a brilliant minority civilization.”

⁶ Walbank, Decline, p. 23.

⁷ To document this fact one need only take up at random works on ancient history and consult their indexes under Slavery. Two non-Marxian examples are Seeck, Otto, Geschickte dcs Untergangs der antigen Welt (6 vols.; Berlin, 1879), I, 309 ff.Google Scholar; and Mommsen, Theodor, History of Rome (5 vols.; New York, 1895), III, 72, 305–9; V, 341.Google Scholar

⁸ Cf. Jones's, A. H. M. inaugural lecture, Ancient Economic History (London: Lewis, 1948).Google Scholar

⁹ The detailed references may be found in Westermann, Slave Systems, pp. 87–88, 121, 134.

¹⁰ Ibid., p. 13 (with references).

¹¹ Auboyer, Jeannine, in Rome et son empire (Paris: Presses Universitaires, 1954), p. 655.Google Scholar

¹² Olmstead, A. T., History of the Persian Empire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), p. 767Google Scholar; Siegel, Bernard J., “Slavery During the Third Dynasty of Ur,” American Anthropologist, XLIX, (1947)Google Scholar; Mendelsohn, Isaac, Slavery in the Ancient Near East: A Comparative Study of Slavery in Babylonia, Assyria, Syria, and Palestine from the Middle of the Third Millennium to the End of the First Millennium (New York: Oxford University Press, 1949).Google Scholar

¹³ Westermann, Slave Systems, p. 12. Roughly similar evidence can be found in the fourth-century temple accounts of Eleusis (lnscriptiones Graecae, II² 1672).

¹⁴ So Glotz, Gustave, Ancient Greece at Work. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1926), p. 200Google Scholar, suggests that a modest Athenian household may have had three to twelve slaves. Observe, however, that the houses of even well-to-do Greeks of the era (in so far as examples survive) had room “for no more than three slaves-household servants.” Dow, Sterling, review in American Historical Review, XLIV (1939), 581Google Scholar; cf. Westermann, W. L., “Slavery and the Elements of Freedom in Ancient Greece,” Quarterly Bulletin of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America (Jan. 1943), pp. 1–16.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Gomme, A. W., The Population of Athens in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries (Oxford: Blackwell, 1933), pp. 20–24, 47Google Scholar, and Sargent, Rachel L., The Size of the Slave Population at Athens (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1924)Google Scholar, give higher percentages than Westermann, W. L., “Athenaeus and the Slaves of Athens,” Athenian Studies Presented to W. S. Ferguson (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1940), pp. 451–70.Google Scholar Cf. also Ehrenberg, Victor, The People of Aristophanes (rev. ed.; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1951), pp. 165–91Google Scholar; Rostovtzeff, M. I., The Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World (3 vols.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1941), I, 97.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Westermann, Slave Systems, pp. 1, 8–9; but cf. the doubts of Ehrenberg, People, p. 167, n. 4.

¹⁷ So Thomson, George, Studies in Ancient Greek. Society (London: Wishart, 1955), II, 271Google Scholar; Childe, What Happened in History, p. 201; even Ehrenberg, People, p. 167. Virtually the only support for such a view is the presence of slaves in Attic comedy plots in all types of families; strict construction of this evidence is about as sensible as the use of Hollywood sets as typical of the average American's home possessions. Xenophon has a telling remark (Memorabilia 2.3.3): “Those who can do so buy slaves so that they may have fellow workers.” Cf. Sargent, Size, pp. 57–59.

¹⁸ Thomson, Studies, II, p. 204.

¹⁹ Meyer, Kleine Schriften, p. 186. With the account of Genesis, cf. the emphasis on work in Hesiod, Works and Days: “Between us and Goodness the gods have placed the sweat of our brows” (l. 289).

²⁰ Sec Curwen, E. Cecil, Plough and Pasture (London: Cobbett, 1946).Google Scholar

²¹ Odyssey 11.489–91, a useful testimony to the insignificance of slavery (and perhaps even to the more secure position of the household slave) in Homer's day. On the significance of the fact that these farmers were primarily grain raisers, see below, p. 28.

²² So the subject peasants of Crete are at times called slaves, but Willetts, R. F., Aristocratic Society in Ancient Crete (London: Routledge & Paul, 1955), pp. 35, 46–51Google Scholar, has recently demonstrated their serf character.

²³ Cf. the calculations as to whether slavery was profitable by Michell, H., The Economics of Ancient Greece (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1940), pp. 162–5Google Scholar; although I have little confidence in some of his basic postulates, it is interesting that he concludes the profit was likely to be very thin.

²⁴ Westermann, Slave Systems, pp. 3–5 (with references).

²⁵ Meyer, Kleine Schriften, pp. 194–7; Willetts, Aristocratic Society, p. 54. Michell, Economics, pp. 131–2, notes that the slave laborers at Eleusis seem to have worked more continuously than did the free men.

²⁶ Caldcrini, A., La manomissionc e la condizione dei liberti in Grecia (Milan: Hoepli, 1908)Google Scholar; Duff, A. M., Freedmen in the Early Roman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1928)Google Scholar; Westermann, Slave Systems (Index, s.v. Manumission).

²⁷ Westermann, Slave Systems, p. 62. As he suggests (pp. 59–60, 70), the Italian pattern of large sales of war captives and employment of slaves in agriculture probably has its roots in the third or even late fourth century. Frank, Tenney, Economic Survey of Ancient Rome (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1933), I, 187–8Google Scholar, calculates that 250,000 prisoners were taken by Roman armies 200–150 B.C.

²⁸ Tibiletti, G., “Lo sviluppo del latifondo in Italia dall'epoca graccana al principio dell'Impero,” Relazioni del X. congresso internazionale di scienze storiche (Florence: Sansoni, 1955), III, 235–92Google Scholar, considers the development primarily from the political point of view. See, in general, Westermann, Slave Systems, pp. 60–9; and the very full surveys by Yeo, Cedric A., “The Development of the Roman Plantation and Marketing of Farm Products,” Finanzarchiv, N.F., XIII (1952), 321–42Google Scholar; and “Economics of Roman and American Slavery,” ibid., pp. 445–85. Yeo notes, pp. 461 ff., the interconnection of large-scale slavery and large-scale production of specialized crops (olives and grapes in ancient Italy, sugar and rice especially in modern rimes).

²⁹ Thus Koestler, Arthur, The Gladiators (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1939)Google Scholar; Fast, Howard, Spartacus (New York, 1952).Google Scholar

³⁰ Rostovtzeff, M. I., Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1926)Google Scholar, has sketched this development in his first chapter; cf. also the concluding chapters of his Hellenistic World. Westermann, Slave Systems, pp. 64, 73–4.

³¹ A striking collection of epigraphical evidence on slaves in the gilds was found at Minturnae. Johnson, Jotham, Excavations at Minturnae, II. 1 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1933).Google Scholar Cf. Westermann, W. L., “Industrial Slavery in Roman Italy,” Journal of Economic History, II (1942), 149–63.Google Scholar

³² Buckland, W. W., The Roman Law of Slavery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1908).Google Scholar

³³ Westermann, Slave Systems, pp. 59, 62–3, 88–9.

³⁴ Cato, De agricultura 1.3, 4, 5.4, 144.4; Varro, De re rustica, 1.16.4. The grandfather of the Emperor Vespasian was a contractor for such free workers (Suetonius, Vespasian 1.4).

³⁵ Yeo, Finanzarchiv, N.F. XIII, 469–70.

³⁶ Westermann, Slave Systems, pp. 91–3.

³⁷ Ibid., pp. 116–17, 149–62, devotes special attention to exploding the idea that Christianity extinguished slavery.

³⁸ A common assumption by both Marxist and non-Marxist historians; cf. Childe, What Happened in History, p. 218; Walbank, Decline, p. 24; Schlaifer, Robert, “Greek Theories of Slavery from Homer to Aristotle,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, XLVII (1936) 165–204CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Westermann, Slave Systems, pp. 15, 27.

³⁹ Their life expectancy, partly as a result, was of the same pattern as that of modern India. Cf. the studies by Angel, J. L., e.g., “The Length of Life in Ancient Greece,” Journal of Gerontology, II (1947), 18–24Google Scholar, who calculates a life expectancy in Greece of about 21 years. Boak, A. E. R., Manpower Shortage and the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1955), p. 10Google Scholar, gives a life expectancy for the Roman Empire of about 25 years. The effect of this life pattern upon ancient attitudes toward life and the problems of human relations must have been far more powerful than is commonly noted.

⁴⁰ So Rostovtzeff, Roman Empire, ch. v, n. 26.

⁴¹ Farrington, Benjamin, in Greek. Science (2 vols.; London: Penguin, 1949)Google Scholar, Science and Politics in the Ancient World (London: Allen & Unwin, 1939)Google Scholar, and elsewhere, has repeatedly made this attempt; so also F. W. Walbank, Decline, and many others, e.g., Salvioli, Giuseppe, capitalismo antico (Bari: Laterza, 1929)Google Scholar; Lilley, S., Men, Machines and History (London: Cobbett, 1948).Google Scholar

⁴² The last point is stressed by Ciccotti, Ettore, Il tramonto delict schiavitù nel mondo antico (Turin, 1899), pp. 129Google Scholar, 285 [the second edition is not available to me]. With regard to the equally common opinion that slave labor kept the wages of free men down to the subsistence level, some validity may be granted to the theory; but one must remember also the capital investment of the slaveowner as well as the low level of ancient productivity in general. Frank, Economic Survey, I, 188–9, puts the keep of a slave in Rome (second century B.C.) at 78 denarii a year and interest plus amortization at 50 denarii. At Delos (loc. cit.) “the allowance for a slave's keep was considered about ⅓ the wage of a laborer.”

⁴³ On the dangers of applying this concept to the ancient world, cf. my remarks in “The Myth of the Minoan Thalassocracy,” Historia, III (1955), 282–91.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Aristotle, Politics 1.4, 1253b.

⁴⁵ Digest 1.5.4.1; cf. Buckland, Roman Law of Slavery, pp. 1–6.

⁴⁶ A detailed analysis of the positions of philosophers and law codes can be found in Westermann, Slave Systems (Index, s.v. Legislation; Slaves, treatment of); cf. also the sober survey of the dramatic evidence by Vogt, Joseph, “Sklaverei und Humanität im klassischen Griechentum,” Abhandlungen der geistes- und sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse (Mainz: Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, 1953), pp. 161–83.Google Scholar In Mesopotamia, as in the Greco-Roman world, slaves could engage in a good deal of business on their own and could even themselves own slaves. Contenau, Georges, Everyday Life in Babylon and Assyria (London: Arnold, 1954), pp. 19–25.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ I have discussed the aristocratic bias of Roman history in Civilization and the Caesars (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1954), pp. 203 ff., 262 ff.Google Scholar