Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

110 Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks
Slave A: That’s great!
Slave B: What about not minding your own business?
Slave A: That’s terrific!
Slave B: You’re a man after my own heart. What about eavesdropping
when he’s having a private conversation?
Slave A: That’s enough to drive me wild with delight!
Slave B: What about gossiping to your friends about what you
discover? Do you like that?
Slave A: Do I like it? By Zeus, that’s enough to make me wet my
knickers! (lines 746–53)
Publicly Owned Slaves
Some of the most privileged Athenian slaves were those owned
by the state. Known as dêmosioi (“the public ones”), they included
the notaries, the jury clerks, the coin testers, and the executioner—a
few hundred in all. Athens’s force of Skythian archers, who kept the
peace, was also the property of the state. In addition, a large number
of publicly owned slaves toiled as road menders. As building
accounts make clear, slaves sometimes worked on building projects
alongside Athenian citizens.
Those “Living Separately”
Because Athenian citizens refused to satisfy the demand for wage
labor in the second half of the fifth century b.c.e. , the conditions
and opportunities for a limited number of slaves improved dramatically.
Such slaves, who paid a commission to their owners, were
described as “living separately” (chôris oikountes). They included
the managers of shops and factories, bankers, captains of trading
vessels, bailiffs, and artisans. Pasion, who, on earning his freedom,
became one of the wealthiest men in Athens, previously worked as
a banker and was eventually granted Athenian citizenship because
he gave generously to the state at a time of crisis.
Industrial Slaves
The most dangerous and exhausting work performed by Athenian
slaves was in the silver mines of Lavrion in southeast Attica.
Inscriptions reveal that the vast majority of industrial slaves, of
whom there were many thousands, were non-Greeks. Xenophon
(Memoirs of Sokrates 2.5.2) informs us that the price of slaves who
served in this capacity could be as low as 50 drachmas. Conditions