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Between Slavery and Freedom*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

M. I. Finley
M. I. Finley
Affiliation:
Jesus College, Cambridge
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Extract

I have taken my title from the Onomastikon or Word-Book of an Alexandrian Greek of the second century of our era named Julius Pollux. At the end of a longish section (3.73–83) listing, and sometimes exemplifying, the Greek words which meant “slave” or “enslave”, in certain contexts at least, Pollux noted that there were also men like the helots in Sparta or the penestae in Thessaly who stood “between the free men and the slaves”. It is no use pretending that this work is very penetrating or systematic, at least in the abridged form in which it has come down to us, but the foundation was laid in a much earlier work by a very learned scholar, Aristophanes of Byzantium, who flourished in the first half of the third century B.C. The interest in the brief passage I have cited is that it suggests in so pointed a way that social status could be viewed as a continuum or spectrum; that there were statuses which could only be defined, even if very crudely, as “between slavery and freedom”. Customarily Greek and Roman writers were not concerned with such nuances. To be sure, the Romans had a special word for a freedman, libertus, as distinguished from liber, a free man. When it came to political status, furthermore, distinctions of all kinds were made, necessarily so. But for social status (which I trust I may be permitted, at this stage, to distinguish from political status), and often for purposes of private law, they were satisfied with the simple antinomy, slave or free, even though they could hardly have been unaware of certain gradations.

Type
Slavery
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , April 1964 , pp. 233 - 249
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1964

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References

1 The most important sources are Sophocles, Track. 68–72, 248–54, 274–76 (with scholia); Apollodorus, Bibl. 2.6.2–3; Diodorus 4.31.5–8.

2 Daube, D., Studies in Biblical Law (Cambridge, Eng., 1947), p. 45Google Scholar; cf. the important recent article of Urbach, E.E., “The Laws regarding Slavery… of the Period of the Second Temple, the Mishnah and Talmud”, Annual of Jewish Studies, 1 (London, 1963), pp. 1–54.Google Scholar

3 Quoted in Aristotle, Const, of Athens 12.4.

4 The basic, though brief, study is now Joseph Vogt, Struktur der antiken Sklavenkriege (Akad. d. Wiss. u. d. Lit., Mainz, Abhandlungen, 1957, no. 1). See also Green, Peter, “The First Sicilian Slave War”, Past & Present, 20 (1961), pp. 10–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar, with discussion in no. 22 (1962), pp. 87–92; Moss, Claudeé, “Le rôle des esclaves dans les troubles politiques du monde grec…”, Cahiers d'histoire, 6 (Lyon, 1961), pp. 353–60.Google Scholar

5 See Thompson, E.A., “Peasant Revolts in Late Roman Gaul and Spain”, Past & Present, 2 (1952), pp. 11–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Pulleyblank, E.G., “The Origins and Nature of Chattel Slavery in China”, J. Econ. Soc. Hist. Orient, 1 (1958), pp. 185–220CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 204–205.

7 See, e.g., Stevenson, H.N.C., The Economics of the Central Chin Tribes (Bombay, 1943), pp. 175–80.Google Scholar

8 Scheil, V., “La libéderation juridique d'un fils donné en gage… en 558 av. J.-C”, Rev. d'Assyriologie, 12 (1915), pp. 1–13Google Scholar; cf. Petschow, H., Neubabylonisches Pfandrecht (Abh. Akad. Leipzig, Phil.-hist. Kl., 48, no. 1, 1956), pp. 63–65.Google Scholar

9 On this point see Finley, , “The Servile Statuses of Ancient Greece”, Rev. int. des droits de l'antiq., 3rd ser., 7 (1960), pp. 165–89;Google ScholarLotze, D., Metaxy eleutheron kai doulon. Studien zur Rechtsstellung unfreier Landbevölkerungen in Griechenland… (Berlin, 1959).Google Scholar

10 In addition to Lotze, op. cit., see Pippidi, D.M., “Die Agrarverhältnisse in den griechischen Städten der Dobrudscha in vorrömischer Zeit”, in Griechische Stddte und einheimische Völker des Schwarzmeergebietes (Berlin, 1961), pp. 89–105.Google Scholar

11 See the works cited in n. 9 and Lotze, D., “Zu den woikees von Gortyn”, Klio, 40 (1962), pp. 32–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 The Social & Economic History of the Hellenistic World (3 vols., Oxford, corr, . ed., 1953), I 320.Google Scholar

13 Caesar, Bell civ. 3.4.4.

14 Gaius, lnst. 1.43.

15 Tacitus, Ann. 14.43.4.

16 Diogenes Laertius 6.74.

17 Lysias 24.6.

18 Frankfort, H., ed., Before Philosophy (Penguin, ed., 1949), p. 250.Google Scholar

19 Digest 1.5.4.1.

20 “Agrarverhaltnisse im Altertum”, in his Gesammelte Aufsiitze zur Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte (Tübingen, 1924), pp. 1–288Google Scholar, at pp. 99–107.

21 This is substantially the scheme I first formulated in the article cited in n. 9.