Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

The People 109
On becoming a member of an Athenian household, a slave underwent
an initiation ceremony similar to that which a bride underwent
on first entering her new home by having dried figs and nuts
showered over him or her. This was intended to place the slave
under the protection of Hestia, the goddess of the hearth. The
poems of Homer suggest that close ties sometimes arose between
master and slave. When, for instance, Odysseus reveals himself to
his faithful slaves Eumaios and Philoitios on his return to Ithaca
after 20 years, they throw their arms around him and kiss him (The
Odyssey 21.222–25). Depictions of mistress and maid figure prominently
on Athenian grave monuments, testimony to the fact that
the two spent much time together in the gynaikôn or women’s quarters.
In Classical Athens, slaves were occasionally buried in family
plots beside their masters and mistresses. Slaves also occasionally
received medical attention. Xenophon, in the Memoirs of Sokrates,
implies that it not uncommon to summon a physician when a
household slave fell sick (2.10.2), and some of the case studies in
the Hippocratic work entitled Epidemics involve slaves.
Overall the treatment of slaves must have varied greatly from one
household to the next, depending in large part on the temperament
of the owner. A less complimentary term than oikêtês was andrapodon,
which means “a thing with the feet of a man”—as dehumanizing
a definition as could be devised. Although Athenian slaves
were protected by law against violent abuse, in practice it was virtually
impossible for them to lodge a complaint against their masters,
because they could not represent themselves in court. Starvation
and flogging were likely regular punishments for bad behavior. A
runaway slave was branded with a hot iron upon capture. If a slave
was required to be a witness in a lawsuit, his or her testimony was
accepted only under torture. There are no actual descriptions of
slaves being tortured, however, so we do not know what methods
were applied.
Although we lack a single account written by a slave telling us
what he or she felt about his or her condition, Aristophanes’ Frogs
provides some insight into the kind of gossip that slave owners
imagined their slaves engaging in when out of earshot and, though
humorous, it reveals the latent paranoia that probably characterized
the attitude of many slave owners:
Slave A: I’m absolutely thrilled when I can curse my master
behind his back.
Slave B: What about grumbling as you’re going outside after
being beaten?