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THE MAKING OF EUROPE / EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY

From Hutton Webster's, Early European History (1917); edited for this on-line publication, by ELLOPOS

IX. CLASSICAL CIVILIZATION

Em. Macron, Rediscovering the Path to Europe

» Contents of this Chapter

The Classical City   * Education and the Condition of Children   * Marriage and the Position of Women   * The Home and Private Life   * Amusements   * Slavery   * Greek Literature   * Greek Philosophy   * Roman Literature   * Greek Architecture   * Greek Sculpture   * Roman Architecture and Sculpture   * Artistic Athens   * Artistic Rome

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SLAVERY

PLACE OF SLAVERY IN CLASSICAL LIFE

The private life of the Greeks and Romans, as described in the preceding pages, would have been impossible without the existence of a large servile class. Slaves did much of the heavy and disagreeable work in the ancient world, thus allowing the free citizen to engage in more honorable employment or to pass his days in dignified leisure.

SOURCES OF SLAVES

The Greeks seem sometimes to have thought that only barbarians should be degraded to the condition of servitude. Most Greek slaves, as a matter of fact, were purchased from foreign countries. But after the Romans had subdued the Mediterranean world, their captives included not only members of inferior races, but also the cultivated inhabitants of Greece, Egypt, and Asia Minor. We hear of slaves at Rome who served as clerks, secretaries, librarians, actors, and musicians. Their education was often superior to that of the coarse and brutal masters who owned them.

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THE MAKING OF EUROPE / EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY: Table of Contents

url: www.ellopos.net/politics/european-history/default.asp

IN PRINT

Cf. The Ancient Greece * The Ancient Rome
Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) * Western Medieval Europe * Renaissance in Italy