From Class to Conference: Slavery in Greek Antiquity and its Afterlife
Organizer: Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos (Saint Joseph’s University)
The panel is inspired by a capstone undergraduate seminar offered by the Department of History at Saint Joseph’s University in the Spring semester of 2024. The panel presents research conducted by three students (papers #1-3), as well as a paper (#4) by the faculty member who led the seminar. The first three abstracts draw on a large variety of Greek genres (from epic poetry and oratory to history and biography) that span nearly a millennium (from the early Archaic period to the reign of Marcus Aurelius). The first two papers place renewed emphasis upon the institution of slavery in two different periods of Greek history: Bronze Age and Macedonian antiquity. The third paper examines the reception of the Greek practice in Roman times, focusing on the fusion of the two antiquities in surviving sources. The fourth presentation explores the afterlife of ancient Greek slavery in modern popular culture. What unifies the four papers is a common attempt to analyze the case studies within the sociohistorical context of their production and to cast new light on key aspects of the institution in order to argue, in line with Lewis (2018), that Greek slavery is not a monolithic construct that remains invariant across time and space, but rather a complex mosaic of beliefs, ideas, and perspectives.
Paper #1
Enslavement and the Preservation of Elite Social Values and Heroic Status in Homer
Speaker: Holden Smith (Saint Joseph’s University) Mentor: Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos
The paper examines the depiction of enslaved men and women in the Homeric epics. Specifically, I will compare and contrast the portrayal of Briseis (Iliad, Books 1 and 19) and Eumaeus (Odyssey, Book 15). Although they are involved in two different contexts, the battlefield and household, they are respectively enslaved through two of the most common methods for sustaining the institution in Greek antiquity: war and piracy. What they also have in common is that they are granted poetic voice and narrate their own story of enslavement. My paper reads these lines closely. I argue that the two characters perform a double poetic function: on the one hand, they serve to normalize theexperience of enslavement and present it as something natural and acceptable – despite all the pain they claim to have experienced – a view with which Homer’s elite audience would agree. On the other hand, although they are socially inferior, they are central to the plot and preservation of the heroic status and leading position of Achilles and Odysseus. My paper builds on Rankine (2011) and Wrenhaven (2012) among other scholars.
Paper #2
From War Captives to Freedom Seekers: Ancient Macedonian Attitudes to Enslavement
Speaker: Ian Belthoff (Saint Joseph’s University) Mentor: Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos
Studies of ancient Greek slavery during the classical period draw, almost exclusively, from Athens
and Sparta. Recently, scholars, e.g., Hunt (2017) and Forsdyke (2021), have started to pay more attention to ancient Macedonia. My paper builds on this body of scholarship and analyzes some of the surviving literary evidence on the institution of slavery during the fourth century BCE, when the Macedonian kingdom was at the peak of its glory, although my main primary source (Plutarch’s Life of Alexander) comes from a later period. I begin with Demosthenes (Philippic 3.9.31) who, in an attempt to discredit Macedonian supremacy, argues that “it was never yet possible to buy a decent slave” from that region. This is an attack intended to demean Philip who is cast as a “plague” in the Hellenic word, as someone who is not even good as a slave. I go on to discuss that, like other Greeks and nations in the ancient Mediterranean, the Macedonians used warfare as the basic means of procuring slaves. In particular, I will examine how Phillip and Alexander are depicted as treating two types of slaves, war captives and runaways, and how this depiction intersects with ancient views about power, leadership, and ethics. I will also discuss Plutarch’s metaphorical use of doulos to describe the enslavement of Alexander the Great to his passions and his lack of a fundamental quality of freeborn men: self-control.
Paper #3
Drimakos vs. Eunus: A Comparative Analysis of the Slave Rebellions on Chios and Sicily
Speaker: Kyle Nienaber (Saint Joseph’s University) Mentor: Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos
Apart from the ancient Greek performative genres (epic, tragedy, and comedy) where male slaves have a proper name and play a role (e.g., paper#1 above), the only other time they are eponymous and granted some personality is in texts concerned with the leaders of slave rebellions. Such texts are important because they tell us how these enslaved men who were expected to be ruled managed to recruit followers and rule over them. They are no longer submissive, but dominant and threaten the interests of their masters. My paper will focus on Drimakos who led the revolt of slaves on the island of Chios. My primary source will be the version narrated by Athenaeus in Deipnosophistae (Book 6). Langerwerf (2009) compares and contrasts Drimakos’ story to Aristomenes’, leader of the revolt of Helots in Messenia. My paper proposes a different model of comparison: the story of Eunus, leader of the slave revolt in Sicily, which is narrated by Diodorus Siculus (Books 34 and 35) and Florus (2.7.1-8). Building on Forsdyke (2012), I will demonstrate how the two accounts of the Roman rebellion are similar to Athenaeus’ narrative when it comes to the goals attributed to Drimakos, his image as a leader, and his legacy after he is defeated and social order is restored.
Paper #4
Expurgating Slavery in Post-WWII Celluloid Greece: The Case of Alexander the Great
Speaker: Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos (Saint Joseph’s University)
The paper uses the biopic Alexander the Great (1956) as a case study for deciphering Hollywood’s representational methods regarding slavery in Greek antiquity. It argues that whereas the institution is suppressed, almost excised at the visual level, at the level of discourse it is politicized, intimately connected with ideologies of power, and depicted as a suitable, if not fair, treatment for those who seek to undermine Macedonia’s imperial project. The paper suggests two different reasons for the film’s re-inscription of slavery as a “benign” institution that sought to correct violators and impose order: first, the stereotypical representation of enslaved humans as content with and accepting their condition in Hollywood releases from the silent and early sound era (Davis 2000), from The Birth of the Nation to Gone with the Wind – a view also perpetuated in Cecile B. DeMille’s Roman epics.
Second, the global reception of Greece in the aftermath of WWII and the Civil War (Rapatzikou 2007). The image of a small country that fights for its freedom against the tyrannical rule (first of the Germans and then of the Communists) mandates the exclusion of slavery from the big screen in order for the movie to cater to the contemporary viewers’ nostalgy for the lofty, grand classical past that slavery with all its horrors could stain. Furthermore, by expurgating enslavement the film presents American ticket buyers with an escapist fantasy that does not include the evils and shames of their own past. To point out differences between the lexical (screenplay) and the visual (released film), the paper will draw on the archives of United Artists, the studio that produced Alexander the Great (accessed through the Wisconsin Historical Society).
References
Davis, N. Z. 2000. Slaves on Screen: Film and Historical Vision. Cambridge.
Forsdyke, S. 2012. Slaves Tell Tales: and Other Episodes in the Politics of Popular Culture of
Ancient Greece. Princeton.
Forsdyke, S. 2021. Slaves and Slavery in Ancient Greece. Cambridge.
Hunt, P. 2017. Ancient Greek and Roman Slavery. Hoboken, NJ.
Langerwerf, L. (2009) “Aristomenes and Drimakos: The Messenian Revolt in Pausanias’
Periegesis in Comparative Perspective.” In S. Hodkinson (ed.), Sparta: Comparative
Approaches. Swansea. 331-360.
Lewis, D. 2018. Greek Slave Systems in their Early Mediterranean Context, c. 800-146 BC. Oxford.
Rankine, P. 2011. “Odysseus as Slave: The Ritual of Domination and Social Death in Homeric
Society.” In R. Alston, E. Hall, and L. Proffitt (eds.), Reading Ancient Slavery. London. 34-50.
Rapatzikou, T. (ed.) 2007. Anglo-American Perceptions of Hellenism. Newcastle.
Wrenhaven, K. 2012. Reconstructing the Slave: The Image of the Slave in Ancient Greece.
London.