Did Abolitionism Exist in Ancient Greece and Rome?

The prevailing attitude towards slavery throughout the ancient Mediterranean world was essentially that being a slave was horrible and unpleasant, but that that was just the way things were and the way things always would be. As far as we can tell from the surviving sources, the idea that slavery even could be abolished does not seem to have occurred to most people.

There were apparently a few people in ancient Greece and Rome who thought that slavery was immoral, but these people seem to have been extremely rare, since they only appear briefly in the sources. Furthermore, we have absolutely no documentation of the existence of any large-scale, organized movement to abolish slavery in ancient Greece or Rome. Some people did criticize slavery extensively and there were probably people who wished slavery didn’t exist, but no one seems to have ever developed any realistic plans to abolish it.

The Achaemenid Persians

The Achaemenid Empire is often cited as being anti-slavery. This is partially true. The ruling government of the Achaemenid Empire seems to have been, in general, largely opposed to most forms of chattel slavery. This should not, however, be taken to mean that slavery did not exist in the Achaemenid Empire. For one thing, we know that in many cases the Achaemenid Persians left regional governing bodies intact and it is highly probable that any regulations against chattel slavery that might have existed were not evenly enforced.

Furthermore, other forms of slavery persisted under Achaemenid rule. For instance, we have evidence to believe that defeated rebels were sometimes taken as prisoners of war and forced to perform slave labor. The Greek historian Herodotos of Halikarnassos (lived c. 484 – c. 425 BC) mentions captured Lydian, Egyptian, Ionian, and Eretrian rebels being taken by the Persians into slavery on several occasions in his Histories. Herodotos is not always entirely reliable as a historian, but other sources seem to support the idea that, at least in some cases, defeated rebels could be forced into slave labor as punishment.

Additionally, although debt slavery seems to have generally been uncommon, in some cases, in at least some Achaemenid provinces, insolvent debtors could be forced to work as unpaid laborers for their creditors for a certain number of years to pay off their debts. A debtor working as a slave for his creditor, however, could not be sold as a slave to a third party.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a bas-relief from Persepolis depicting Achaemenid soldiers. The Achaemenids seem to have generally opposed most forms of chattel slavery.

The “others” mentioned by Aristotle who thought slavery was “contrary to nature”

Ironically, while slavery was rare in the Achaemenid Empire, which was ruled by an absolute monarch (i.e. the shah-in-shah or “king-of-kings”), slavery was practically ubiquitous throughout all parts of classical Greece. Even democratic city-states such as Athens relied heavily on slave labor.

Indeed, while most poor and lower-middle-class Athenian citizens probably could not afford to own slaves, nearly every Athenian at least aspired to own slaves. Owning slaves was seen as a sign that a person was prosperous and owning more slaves meant that a person was of higher status. Additionally, much of Athens’s wealth during the fifth century BC was reliant on the work of brutally oppressed slaves who were forced to work in unbearable and unsafe conditions in the silver mines at Laurion in the southern Attic Peninsula.

Strangely, though, even though Athens was a direct democracy where the idea of freedom was elevated to highest degree, there seems to have been very little opposition to the institution of slavery and virtually no organized opposition at all, insofar as we can tell from the surviving sources. I think the closest we find to a serious attack on the morality of slavery as an institution from classical Greece probably comes from the unnamed people briefly mentioned in the following passage written by the Greek philosopher Aristotle of Stageira (lived 384 – 322 BC) in his Politics 1.1253b, which has been translated here by H. Rackham:

“For some thinkers hold the function of the master to be a definite science, and moreover think that household management, mastership, statesmanship and monarchy are the same thing, as we said at the beginning of the treatise; others however maintain that for one man to be another man’s master is contrary to nature, because it is only convention that makes the one a slave and the other a freeman and there is no difference between them by nature, and that therefore it is unjust, for it is based on force.”

This is, unfortunately, an extremely brief mention. Aristotle tells us nothing about how common this viewpoint was and he does not list any examples of individuals who held this viewpoint. We have no surviving sources from classical Greece written by any of the people who held this view that Aristotle mentions and Aristotle immediately goes on to argue against this view, arguing that slavery is, in fact, perfectly natural, meaning we only know of these people from the perspective of the opposition.

Furthermore, this is the only classical Greek text I am aware of in which people who thought slavery was categorically immoral are even mentioned. All this evidence seems to strongly indicate that these people who believed slavery was institutionally wrong were a very tiny minority indeed.

Notice that, as far as Aristotle tells us, even the people he is speaking about here do not seem to have had any kind of realistic plans for abolishing slavery; Aristotle merely tells us that these people thought that slavery was “contrary to nature” and “unjust,” which is hardly a compelling argument for abolition.

ABOVE: Roman marble copy of a late fourth-century BC Greek bust of Aristotle by the sculptor Lysippos. Aristotle records that there were some people in ancient Greece who thought slavery was “contrary to nature” and therefore “unjust,” but this is probably the closest thing we find to a serious argument against the morality of slavery in all of ancient Greek literature.

Seneca the Younger on the treatment of slaves

While individuals arguing for the outright abolition of slavery seem to have been extremely rare in classical Greece and Rome, if they existed at all, there were certainly many individuals in those civilizations who argued against the extremely brutal mistreatment of slaves that was all too common in the ancient world. For instance, perhaps most famously, the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger (lived c. 4 BC – 65 AD) writes the following in his Moral Letter to Lucilius 47.1–10, as translated by Richard M. Gummere:

“I am glad to learn, through those who come from you, that you live on friendly terms with your slaves. This befits a sensible and well-educated man like yourself. ‘They are slaves,’ people declare. Nay, rather they are men. ‘Slaves!’ No, comrades. ‘Slaves!’ No, they are unpretentious friends. ‘Slaves!’ No, they are our fellow-slaves, if one reflects that Fortune has equal rights over slaves and free men alike.”

“That is why I smile at those who think it degrading for a man to dine with his slave. But why should they think it degrading? It is only because purse-proud etiquette surrounds a householder at his dinner with a mob of standing slaves. The master eats more than he can hold, and with monstrous greed loads his belly until it is stretched and at length ceases to do the work of a belly; so that he is at greater pains to discharge all the food than he was to stuff it down. All this time the poor slaves may not move their lips, even to speak. The slightest murmur is repressed by the rod; even a chance sound, – a cough, a sneeze, or a hiccup, – is visited with the lash. There is a grievous penalty for the slightest breach of silence. All night long they must stand about, hungry and dumb.”

“The result of it all is that these slaves, who may not talk in their master’s presence, talk about their master. But the slaves of former days, who were permitted to converse not only in their master’s presence, but actually with him, whose mouths were not stitched up tight, were ready to bare their necks for their master, to bring upon their own heads any danger that threatened him; they spoke at the feast, but kept silence during torture. Finally, the saying, in allusion to this same high-handed treatment, becomes current: ‘As many enemies as you have slaves.’ They are not enemies when we acquire them; we make them enemies.”

“I shall pass over other cruel and inhuman conduct towards them; for we maltreat them, not as if they were men, but as if they were beasts of burden. When we recline at a banquet, one slave mops up the disgorged food, another crouches beneath the table and gathers up the left-overs of the tipsy guests. Another carves the priceless game birds; with unerring strokes and skilled hand he cuts choice morsels along the breast or the rump. Hapless fellow, to live only for the purpose of cutting fat capons correctly, – unless, indeed, the other man is still more unhappy than he, who teaches this art for pleasure’s sake, rather than he who learns it because he must. Another, who serves the wine, must dress like a woman and wrestle with his advancing years; he cannot get away from his boyhood; he is dragged back to it; and though he has already acquired a soldier’s figure, he is kept beardless by having his hair smoothed away or plucked out by the roots, and he must remain awake throughout the night, dividing his time between his master’s drunkenness and his lust; in the chamber he must be a man, at the feast a boy.”

“Another, whose duty it is to put a valuation on the guests, must stick to his task, poor fellow, and watch to see whose flattery and whose immodesty, whether of appetite or of language, is to get them an invitation for to-morrow. Think also of the poor purveyors of food, who note their masters’ tastes with delicate skill, who know what special flavours will sharpen their appetite, what will please their eyes, what new combinations will rouse their cloyed stomachs, what food will excite their loathing through sheer satiety, and what will stir them to hunger on that particular day. With slaves like these the master cannot bear to dine; he would think it beneath his dignity to associate with his slave at the same table! Heaven forfend!”

“But how many masters is he creating in these very men! I have seen standing in the line, before the door of Callistus, the former master, of Callistus; I have seen the master himself shut out while others were welcomed, – the master who once fastened the ‘For Sale’ ticket on Callistus and put him in the market along with the good-for-nothing slaves. But he has been paid off by that slave who was shuffled into the first lot of those on whom the crier practises his lungs; the slave, too, in his turn has cut his name from the list and in his turn has adjudged him unfit to enter his house. The master sold Callistus, but how much has Callistus made his master pay for!”

“Kindly remember that he whom you call your slave sprang from the same stock, is smiled upon by the same skies, and on equal terms with yourself breathes, lives, and dies. It is just as possible for you to see in him a free-born man as for him to see in you a slave. As a result of the massacres in Marius’s day, many a man of distinguished birth, who was taking the first steps toward senatorial rank by service in the army, was humbled by fortune, one becoming a shepherd, another a caretaker of a country cottage. Despise, then, if you dare, those to whose estate you may at any time descend, even when you are despising them.”

Clearly, Seneca had some degree of concern for the wellbeing of slaves. Notice, though, that Seneca never even considers the notion of abolishing slavery. The very notion that slavery could realistically be abolished never seems to have even crossed his mind. Seneca just accepts the perpetual existence of slavery as an institution without question.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a Roman marble bust of the Stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger

Seneca advocates for slaves to be treated more humanely, but he never advocates that those slaves should be set free. In fact, in section eighteen of the letter, Seneca makes this point very much crystal-clear when he writes (once again in Gummere’s translation):

“Some may maintain that I am now offering the liberty-cap to slaves in general and toppling down lords from their high estate, because I bid slaves respect their masters instead of fearing them. They say: ‘This is what he plainly means: slaves are to pay respect as if they were clients or early-morning callers!’ Anyone who holds this opinion forgets that what is enough for a god cannot be too little for a master. Respect means love, and love and fear cannot be mingled.”

Here Seneca not only rejects abolitionism, but also compares the relationship between a slave and a master to the relationship between a man and a god—a comparison which probably would not have endeared him very much to anyone who might have supported abolition.

An article titled “Seneca’s ‘Lost Cause,’” written by Stephanie McCarter and published on the classics social justice site Eidolon in February 2019, even goes so far as to equate Seneca the Younger with contemporary supporters of the myth of the “Lost Cause” who romanticize slavery as a benevolent, paternalistic institution. I think that the comparison is not entirely unfair, since there are similarities between what Seneca says here and what certain proponents of the “Lost Cause” claim.

Nonetheless, I think that this comparison is deeply anachronistic. Seneca the Younger was writing at a time when slavery was widely accepted as normal and very few people—if, indeed, any at all—were openly advocating its abolition; whereas people today who seek to justify slavery in the American South are doing so in a time when slavery is nearly universally recognized as a moral abomination. To say that Seneca and contemporary “Lost Cause” supporters are the same is to fail to recognize the nearly 2,000-year gap that separates them.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a modern commemorative statue from Córdoba, intended to represent Seneca the Younger

Epiktetos on slavery

Now, you might wonder, “What did people who were actually enslaved think of slavery? Surely they must have wanted to abolish it, right?” This is a difficult question to answer, because we have very, very few surviving writings from people in ancient Greece or Rome who were enslaved. The vast majority of our surviving works on the subject of slavery come from people who were masters of slaves rather than people who were slaves themselves. Nonetheless, we do have some surviving works from mainly former slaves.

In particular, one of the best known former slaves of antiquity was the Greek philosopher Epiktetos of Hierapolis (lived c. 55 – 135 AD), who was born into slavery and spent his youth as a slave to the freedman Epaphroditus. He acquired his freedom sometime around 68 AD and eventually became a renowned Stoic philosopher with many students.

A number of informal oral lectures delivered by Epiktetos were transcribed by his pupil, the historian Arrianos of Nikomedia (lived c. 89 – after c. 146 AD). If Arrianos’s transcripts of his lectures are anything to judge by, though, even Epiktetos did not advocate the abolition of slavery. Instead, he adopted a perspective very much along the lines of the perspective adopted by Seneca that all people are slaves of fortune and that people should treat their slaves humanely.

Epiktetos does provide us with some information about what slaves wanted, though. In a passage towards the first chapter of Book Four of Epiktetos’s Discourses, Arrianos attributes the following words to Epiktetos, as translated by P. E. Mattheson:

“The slave is anxious to be set free at once. Why? Do you think it is because he is anxious to pay the tax on his manumission? No! the reason is he imagines that up till now he is hampered and ill at ease because he has not got his freedom. ‘If I am enfranchised,’ he says, ‘at once all will be well, I heed nobody, I talk to all men as an equal and one of their quality, I go where I will, I come whence I will and where I will.’ Then he is emancipated, and having nothing to eat he straightway looks for some one to flatter and to dine with; then he either has to sell his body to lust and endure the worst, and if he gets a manger to eat at, he has plunged into a slavery much severer than the first; or if perchance he grows rich, being a low-bred fellow he dotes on some paltry girl and gets miserable and bewails himself and longs to be a slave again.”

“’What ailed me in those days? Another gave me clothes and shoes, another fed me and tended me in sickness, and the service I did him was a small matter. Now, how wretched and miserable I am, with many masters instead of one! Still, if I can get rings on my fingers I shall live happily and prosperously enough.’”

“And so first, to get them, he puts up with what he deserves, and having got them repeats the process. Next he says, ‘If I go on a campaign I am quit of all my troubles.’ He turns soldier and endures the lot of a criminal, but all the same he begs for a second campaign and a third.”

“Lastly, when he gets the crown to his career and is made a senator, once more he becomes a slave again as he goes to the senate; then he enjoys the noblest and the sleekest slavery of all.”

Judging from this passage attributed by Arrianos to Epiktetos and from other sources, it seems that most slaves in ancient Greece and Rome yearned for their own personal freedom but did not generally yearn for the wholesale abolition of slavery itself.

ABOVE: Imaginative portrayal of the Greek philosopher Epiktetos from the frontispiece to a book printed at Oxford in 1715. Epiktetos was born into slavery.

Christian critics of slavery in late antiquity

Criticism of slavery as an institution seems to have arisen to greater prominence with the rise of Christianity in late antiquity. While most Christians accepted slavery as the pagan Greeks and Romans had before them, some Christians came to view slavery as fundamentally incompatible with the Christian teaching that all human beings are made in the image of God. They thought: If all human beings are made in the image of God, then how is it we are allowed to own other humans? Isn’t that like owning God?

Early Christian views on slavery were fairly diverse. The eastern Church Father Ioannes Chrysostomos (lived c. 349 – 407 AD) writes in his Homily 22 on Ephesians, as translated by Gross Alexander:

“But should any one ask, whence is slavery, and why it has found entrance into human life, (and many I know are both glad to ask such questions, and desirous to be informed of them,) I will tell you. Slavery is the fruit of covetous, of degradation, of savagery; since Noah, we know, had no servant, nor had Abel, nor Seth, no, nor they who came after them.”

Thus, Chrysostomos interpreted slavery as the product of sin. He did not, however, argue for the abolition of slavery and instead adopted an attitude reminiscent of that of Seneca and Epiktetos: that masters should love their slaves and treat them humanely and that slaves should obey their masters and love them in return.

The western Church Father Augustine of Hippo (lived 354 – 430 AD), a theologian from North Africa, probably of Berber descent, held a similar sentiment. Augustine believed that slavery was contrary to God’s will, but that it was the inevitable consequence of Original Sin. Augustine writes in his book The City of God 19.15, as translated by Marcus Dods:

“He [i.e. God] did not intend that His rational creature, who was made in His image, should have dominion over anything but the irrational creation, — not man over man, but man over the beasts. And hence the righteous men in primitive times were made shepherds of cattle rather than kings of men, God intending thus to teach us what the relative position of the creatures is, and what the desert of sin; for it is with justice, we believe, that the condition of slavery is the result of sin. And this is why we do not find the word slave in any part of Scripture until righteous Noah branded the sin of his son with this name. It is a name, therefore, introduced by sin and not by nature. The origin of the Latin word for slave is supposed to be found in the circumstance that those who by the law of war were liable to be killed were sometimes preserved by their victors, and were hence called servants. And these circumstances could never have arisen save through sin. For even when we wage a just war, our adversaries must be sinning; and every victory, even though gained by wicked men, is a result of the first judgment of God, who humbles the vanquished either for the sake of removing or of punishing their sins. Witness that man of God, Daniel, who, when he was in captivity, confessed to God his own sins and the sins of his people, and declares with pious grief that these were the cause of the captivity. The prime cause, then, of slavery is sin, which brings man under the dominion of his fellow — that which does not happen save by the judgment of God, with whom is no unrighteousness, and who knows how to award fit punishments to every variety of offense.”

ABOVE: Sixth-century AD fresco from Rome, probably intended to depict Augustine of Hippo

Gregorios of Nyssa

While many early Christians engaged in displays of hand-wringing over the injustice of slavery only to affirm its inevitability, the Christian Church Father Gregorios of Nyssa (lived c. 335 – c. 395 AD), an older contemporary of both Ioannes Chrysostomos and Augustine of Hippo, took a significantly stronger anti-slavery stance than most. For instance, in his Fourth Homily on Ecclesiastes 336.6–337.13, Gregorios of Nyssa delivers a lengthy condemnation of slavery in response to the line “I got me slaves and slave-girls” from the Book of Ecclesiastes. Here is the passage, as translated by Stuart G. Hall, and Rachel Moriarty:

“For what price, tell me? What did you find in existence worth as much as this human nature? What price did you put on rationality? How many obols did you reckon the equivalent of the likeness of God? How many staters did you get for selling the being shaped by God? God said, Let us make man in our own image and likeness (Gen 1,26). If he is in the likeness of God, and rules the whole earth, and has been granted authority over everything on earth from God, who is his buyer, tell me? who is his seller? To God alone belongs this power; or rather, not even to God himself. For his gracious gifts, it says, are irrevocable (Rom 11,29). God would not therefore reduce the human race to slavery, since he himself, when we had been enslaved to sin, spontaneously recalled us to freedom. But if God does not enslave what is free, who is he that sets his own power above God’s?”

“How too shall the ruler of the whole earth and all earthly things be put up for sale? For the property of the person sold is bound to be sold with him, too. So how much do we think the whole earth is worth? And how much all the things on the earth (Gen 1,26)? If they are priceless, what price is the one above them worth, tell me? Though you were to say the whole world, even so you have not found the price he is worth (Mat 16,26; Mk 8,36). He who knew the nature of mankind rightly said that the whole world was not worth giving in exchange for a human soul. Whenever a human being is for sale, therefore, nothing less than the owner of the earth is led into the sale-room. Presumably, then, the property belonging to him is up for auction too. That means the earth, the islands, the sea, and all that is in them. What will the buyer pay, and what will the vendor accept, considering how much property is entailed in the deal?”

“But has the scrap of paper, and the written contract, and the counting out of obols deceived you into thinking yourself the master of the image of God? What folly! If the contract were lost, if the writing were eaten away by worms, if a drop of water should somehow seep in and obliterate it, what guarantee have you of their slavery? what have you to sustain your title as owner? I see no superiority over the subordinate accruing to you from the title other than the mere title. What does this power contribute to you as a person? not longevity, nor beauty, nor good health, nor superiority in virtue. Your origin is from the same ancestors, your life is of the same kind, sufferings of soul and body prevail alike over you who own him and over the one who is subject to your ownership – pains and pleasures, merriment and distress, sorrows and delights, rages and terrors, sickness and death. Is there any difference in these things between the slave and his owner? Do they not draw in the same air as they breathe? Do they not see the sun in the same way? Do they not alike sustain their being by consuming food? Is not the arrangement of their guts the same? Are not the two one dust after death? Is there not one judgment for them? a common Kingdom, and a common Gehenna?”

Even Gregorios of Nyssa, though, never advocated the total abolition of slavery; that idea seems to have been too inconceivable even for him. Nonetheless, he does portray slave ownership as immoral and at several points in his extant writings seems to urge slave owners to manumit their slaves. He was not as radical as we might have liked him to be, but he was still more radical than Seneca or Epiktetos.

ABOVE: Eleventh-century mosaic intended to represent the Christian Church Father Gregorios of Nyssa, who repeatedly condemned slavery in his homilies

Conclusion

Abolitionism as we think of it today does not seem to have existed in the ancient Mediterranean world. There were apparently a few people who believed slavery was immoral, but, as far as we know, no one ever developed any kind of realistic plans to abolish it. Even to the most ardent critics of slavery in antiquity, the idea of abolishing it seems to have just been absurd and unthinkable. After all, slavery was basically ubiquitous; it was thoroughly embedded in the culture. Even the slaves themselves seem to have mostly longed only for personal freedom and not for the abolition of the entire institution of slavery altogether.

Criticism of slavery seems to have become more prominent following the rise of Christianity in late antiquity, but, even in late antiquity, this criticism does not seem to have ever developed into anything resembling a full-scale abolition movement. This reveals, I think, just how utterly radical the notion of abolishing slavery truly was when it finally came about. It was an extremely wild, far-out idea that no one had previously even seriously considered.

The fact that slavery is now illegal in every single country on Earth shows us how far we have come, but also reveals how far we have left to go. If something that was seemingly unimaginable to people in the Mediterranean world only around 2,000 years ago has now come to pass, what evils are there in our world today that we all take for granted that might be abolished 2,000 years from now?