Slavery Almanac | Slavery in Ancient Greece and Rome

• Slavery in Greece (c. 1200-330 B.C.E.)
• Fact Focus
• Liberty and Slavery in Athens
• Slavery in Rome (509 B.C.E.-476)
• Spartacus and the War of the Gladiators

Slavery in Greece (c. 1200-330 B.C.E.)

What little is known about slavery in early Greek history comes to us from Greek literature. The stories contained in the Iliad (pronounced ILL-ee-ad) and the Odyssey ODD-iss-ee), written by the Greek poet Homer, depict a world of domestic life, farming, adventure at sea, and warfare and conquest abroad. Homer lived in the ninth century B.C.E. (900-800 B.C.E.) but wrote about the...