Kostas Vlassopoulos is Associate Professor of Ancient History at the University of Crete. He was awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize (2012) for his contribution to the field of Classics. He is the author of Unthinking the Greek Polis: Ancient Greek History beyond Eurocentrism (2007), Politics: Antiquity and its Legacy (2010), Greeks and Barbarians (2013) and co-author of My Whole Life: Stories from the Everyday Life of Ancient Slaves (2020). He is co-editor of Slavery, Citizenship and the State (2009), Communities and Networks in the Ancient Greek World (2015), Violence and Community: Law, Space and Identity in the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean World (2017) and The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Slaveries (2016).
Contents
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
1. Introduction
2. Historiographies
The formation of the dominant paradigm in the study of ancient slavery
The global study of slavery
Recent developments in the study of ancient slavery
3. What is slavery?
An instructive case: early medieval slavery and 'serfdom'
The conceptual systems of slavery
4. Slaving contexts and strategies
Slaving strategies
Slaving contexts
Slave-making
5. Enslaved persons
Identification modes and forms of relationships
Categorisation, self-understanding and groupness
6. Dialectical relationships
The master-slave relationship
The free-slave relationship
The relationships within slave communities
7. The slave view of slavery: slave hopes and the reality of slavery
Modalities of slavery
Exploring slave hopes under slavery
The slave hope for freedom
8. Slaving in space and time
Epichoric systems of slaving
Societies with slaves and slave societies
Accounting for change
The agency of enslaved persons and historical change
9. Conclusions
Bibliography
