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The Single Body of the City: Public Slaves and the Question of the Greek State *

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 April 2017

Paulin Ismard
Paulin Ismard*
Affiliation:
Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, UMR 8210 ANHIMA
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Abstracts

Public slavery was an institution common to most Greek cities during the Classical and Hellenistic periods. Whether they worked on the city’s major construction sites, performed minor duties in its civic administration or filled the ranks of its police force (the famous Scythian archers of classical Athens), public slaves may be said to have constituted the first public servants known to Greek cities. Studying them from this perspective can shed new light on the long-running debate about the degree to which the polis functioned as a state. Direct democracy, in the Classical Athenian sense, implied that all political prerogatives be held by the citizens themselves, and not by any kind of state apparatus. The decision to delegate administrative tasks to slaves can thus be understood as a “resistance” (as defined by the French anthropologist Pierre Clastres) on the part of the civic society to the development of this apparatus.

Type
Redefining the City
Information
Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales - English Edition , Volume 69 , Issue 3 , September 2014 , pp. 503 - 532
Copyright
Copyright © Les Éditions de l’EHESS 2014

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Footnotes

*

This article presents part of my work on public slaves in Greek cities during the Classical and Hellenistic periods. The resulting book has recently been published: Paulin Ismard, La démocratie contre les experts. Les esclaves publics en Grèce ancienne (Paris: Éd. du Seuil, 2015). My thanks go to Vincent Azoulay for his invaluable comments. Unless otherwise indicated, the translations of Greek texts cited are from the Loeb Classical Library published by Harvard University Press.

References

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2. On the contradictory intellectual and political climate of this “return to the state,” see Guery, Alain, “L’historien, la crise et l’État,” Annales HSS 52, no. 2 (1997): 233-56 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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8. Ibid., 88-89.

9. Berent, Moshe, “Anthropology and the Classics: War, Violence, and the Stateless Polis,” The Classical Quarterly 50, no. 1 (2000): 257-89 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Berent, , “In Search of the Greek State: Rejoinder to M. H. Hansen,” Polis: The Journal of the Society for Greek Political Thought 21, nos. 1/2 (2004): 107-46 Google Scholar.

10. Ismard, Paulin, La cité des réseaux. Athènes et ses associations, VIe-Ier siècles av. J.-C. (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2010)Google Scholar. This volume is a continuation of the work of de Polignac, François and Pantel, Pauline Schmitt, particularly: de Polignac, “Repenser la ‘cité’? Rituels et société en Grèce archaïque,” in Studies in the Ancient Greek Polis, ed. Hansen, Mogens. H. and Raaflaub, Kurt (Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 1995), 7-19 Google Scholar; Pantel, Schmitt, La cité au banquet. Histoire des repas publics dans les cités grecques (Rome: École française de Rome, 1992)Google Scholar.

11. See the following works: Fröhlich, Pierre, Les cités grecques et le contrôle des magistrats (IVe-Ier s. av. J.-C.) (Geneva: Droz, 2004)Google Scholar; Rubinstein, Lene, “Individual and Collective Liabilities of Boards of Officials in the Late Classical and Early Hellenistic Period,” in Symposion 2011. Vorträge zur griechischen und hellenistischen Rechtsgeschichte, ed. Legras, Bernard and Thür, Gerhard (Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2013), 329-54Google Scholar.

12. See Weber, Max’s well-known definition in Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretative Sociology (New York: Bedminster Press, 1968), 54 Google Scholar: “A compulsory political organisation with continuous operations ... will be called a ‘state’ insofar as its administrative staff successfully upholds the claims to the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force in the enforcement of its order.” Berent’s reflections are undermined by a questionable reading of Weber. Weber insists not on the effective monopoly, but rather on the legitimate—and therefore legal—monopoly (Monopollegitimen ) on the use of violence, since the modern state is characterized as one in which “the use of force is regarded as legitimate only so far as it is either permitted by the state or prescribed by it.” (Ibid., 56). Such was the case in the Greek city, where the coercive power held by the civic community was ultimately greater than that exercised de facto by any other civic subdivision.

13. I am borrowing the term from Thomas, Yan, “L’institution civile de la cité,” Le Débat 74, no. 2 (1993): 23-44 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In this respect, while Anderson, Greg claims a “categorical kinship” between the modern state and the Greek city, he does not examine the status of the polis in law: Greg Anderson, “The Personality of the Greek State,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 129 (2009): 1-22 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Whether or not the dēmos is a metaphor for the polis as a whole says nothing about it as a legal subject. As Thomas has shown, it is also critical that the city’s institutions are not confused by imagining them as different “members” likely to have final recourse to a state conceived as a single entity that subsumes them.

14. Faraguna, Michele, “A proposito degli archivi nel mondo greco: terra e registrazioni fondiarie,” Chiron. Mitteilungen der Kommission für Alte Geschichte und Epigraphik des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 30 (2000): 65-115 Google Scholar; Faraguna, , “Scrittura e amministrazione nelle città greche: gli archivi pubblici,” Quaderni urbinati di cultura classica 80, no. 2 (2005): 61-86 Google Scholar; Pébarthe, Christophe, Cité, démocratie et écriture. Histoire de l’alphabétisation d’Athènes à l’époque classique (Paris: De Boccard, 2006)Google Scholar; Pébarthe, , “Les archives de la cité de raison. Démocratie athénienne et pratiques documentaires à l’époque classique,” in Archives and Archival Documents in Ancient Societies: Legal Documents in Ancient Societies IV, ed. Faraguna, Michele (Trieste: Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2013), 107-25Google Scholar.

15. Guéry, “L’historien, la crise,” 250.

16. Fröhlich, , “L’inventaire du monde des cités,” 670. This crucial difference led Moses Finley to describe the city as a non-bureaucratic state in Politics in the Ancient World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 8 Google Scholar.

17. Plato, The Statesman 290b-c.

18. On the question of the dēmosioi’s legal status, see Ismard, La démocratie contre ¡es experts, 95-130.

19. The work of Oscar Jacob, which offers the only synthetic study on the dēmosioi, remains an invaluable reference for its erudition: see acob, Oscar, Les esclaves publics à Athènes (Liège: H. Vaillant-Carmanne, 1928)Google Scholar. In spite of its many qualities, the study nevertheless has two shortcomings. The first is minor: it goes without saying that since 1928 the literature on the subject has been greatly renewed thanks to both the discovery of new inscriptions and rereadings of well-known literary and epigraphic sources. The second and more conclusive flaw can be attributed to the overall approach adopted by Jacob, who focused his remarks exclusively on Athens during the Classical period, even to the point of ignoring Hellenistic Delos under Athenian control. Above all, he made little effort to shed light on the strange system that might explain why the Athenians came to entrust these tasks to slaves. On public slaves during the imperial period, see Weiss, Alexander, Sklave der Stadt. Untersuchungen zur öffentlichen Sklaverei in den Städten of römischen Reiches (Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 2004)Google Scholar.

20. For the work of Africanists, see: Meillassoux, Claude, ed., L’esclavage en Afrique précoloniale (Paris: F. Maspero, 1975)Google Scholar; Kopytoff, Igor and Miers, Suzanne, eds., Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Willis, John R., ed., Slaves and Slavery in Muslim Africa (London: F. Cass, 1985 Google Scholar); Miura, Tora and Philips, John E., eds., Slave Elites in the Middle East and Africa: A Comparative Study (London: Kegan Paul International, 2000)Google Scholar; Beswick, Stephanie and Spaulding, Jay, eds., African Systems of Slavery (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2010)Google Scholar; and Lovejoy, Paul E., Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983 Google Scholar; repr. 2011). For that of specialists in Southeast Asia, see: Reid, Anthony, ed., Slavery, Bondage, and Dependency in Southeast Asia (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1983)Google Scholar; Condominas, Georges, ed., Formes extrêmes de dépendance. Contributions à l’étude de l’esclavage en Asie du Sud-Est (Paris: Éd. de l’EHESS, 1998)Google Scholar; and Chatterjee, Indrani and Eaton, Richard M., eds., Slavery and South Asian History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006)Google Scholar. For a general view, see: Patterson, Orlando, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Meillassoux, Claude, The Anthropology of Slavery: The Womb of Iron and Gold, trans. Dasnois, Alide (London: The Athlone Press, 1986 Google Scholar; repr. 1991); and Testart, Alain, L’esclave, la dette et le pouvoir. Études de sociologie comparative (Paris: Éd. Errance, 2001)Google Scholar. Finally, two important contributions to the study of public or royal slavery should be mentioned: Stilwell, Sean A., Paradoxes of Power: The Kano ‘Mamluks’ and Male Royal Slavery in the Sokoto Caliphate, 1804-1903 (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2004)Google Scholar; Oualdi, M’hamed, Esclaves et maîtres. Les Mamelouks des beys de Tunis du XVIIe siècle aux années 1880 (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21. For a perspective beginning with “funerary retainers,” see Testart, Alain, La servitude volontaire, vol. 1, Les morts d’accompagnement, and vol. 2, L’origine de l’État (Paris: Éd. Errance, 2004)Google Scholar.

22. For instance, the process described for the Sokoto Caliphate (northern Nigeria) during the nineteenth century in Stilwell, Paradoxes of Power, 117-66.

23. Meillassoux, Anthropology of Slavery, 193. However, the case of the Mamluk beys of Tunis studied by M’hamed Oualdi in Esclaves et maîtres shows that the extension of the sovereign’s authority and its privatization in favor of his servants could go hand in hand.

24. In the field of Roman slavery, it is worth consulting Scheidel, Walter, “The Comparative Economics of Slavery in the Greco-Roman World,” in Slave Systems: Ancient and Modern, ed. Lago, Enrico Dal and Katsari, Constantina (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 105-26Google Scholar.

25. Finley, Moses I., Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology (Chatto & Windus: London, 1980), 9 Google Scholar. Finley’s point of view is taken up in Fisher, Nicolas R. E.’s synthetic account in Slavery in Classical Greece (Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1993), 3-4 Google Scholar.

26. Examples from recent historiography include: Kleijwegt, Marc, ed., The Faces of Freedom: The Manumission and Emancipation of Slaves in Old World and New World Slavery (Leiden: Brill, 2006)Google Scholar; Lago, Dal and Katsari, , Slave Systems Google Scholar ; Geary, Dick and Vlassopoulos, Kostas, eds., “Slavery, Citizenship and the State in Classical Antiquity and the Modern Americas,” special issue, European Review of History 16, no. 3 (2009)Google Scholar; Hodkinson, Stephen and Geary, Dick, eds., Slaves and Religions in Graeco-Roman Antiquity and Modern Brazil (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012)Google Scholar; Gonzales, Antonio, ed., Penser l’esclavage. Modèles antiques, pratiques modernes, problématiques contemporaines (Besançon: Presses universitaires de Franche-Comté, 2012)Google Scholar.

27. For a high estimate, see: Descat, Raymond and Andreau, Jean, The Slave in Greece and Rome, trans. Leopold, Marion (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2011), 65-105 Google Scholar; Taylor, Timothy, “Believing the Ancients: Quantitative and Qualitative Dimensions of Slavery and the Slave Trade in Later Prehistoric Eurasia,” World Archaeology 33, no. 1 (2001): 27-43 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a low estimate (between 15 and 35 percent of the population), see Fisher, Slavery, 35-36.

28. Finley, Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology, 66.

29. Orlando Patterson, “Slavery, Gender, and Work in the Pre-Modern World and Early Greece: A Cross-Cultural Analysis,” in Dal Lago and Katsari, Slave Systems, 32-69, here p. 33; and Lovejoy, Transformations, 24 and 120-23.

30. ovejoy, Paul, “Slavery in Africa,” in The Routledge History of Slavery, ed. Heuman, Gad and Burnard, Trevor (London: Routledge, 2011), 43 Google Scholar.

31. Lovejoy, Transformations, 24 and 120-23. See all the cases reviewed on pp. 111-28 and 174-75.

32. Jacob, Les esclaves publics.

33. For example, see Rhodes, Peter J. and Osborne, Robin, Greek Historical Inscriptions 404-323 B. C. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), no. 25, ll. 36-40 Google Scholar: “So that there shall also be in the Piraeus an approver for the ship-owners and the import-traders and all others, the council shall appoint from the public slaves if available or shall buy one.” In the middle of the third century, the Delians bought a slave to serve the palaestra at the city’s gymnasium: Inscriptions de Délos (hereafter ID), edited by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 7 vols. (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1926-1972), 290, l. 113. Aeschines recounted that, at the beginning of the fifth century, Scythian archers had been purchased by the city, while, in the middle of the fourth century, Xenophon could not imagine any means of creating a civic slave workforce other than buying one. See: Aeschines, On the Embassy (2) 173; Andocides, On the Peace with Sparta (3) 7; and Xenophon, Ways and Means 18.

34. Aristotle, Politics 1299a.

35. Rousset, Denis, Le territoire de Delphes et la terre d’Apollon (Paris: École française d’Athènes, 2002)Google Scholar, 31.9 and 31.11-12 (102/101 BCE); Fouilles de Delphes, vol. 3, Épigraphie, fasc. 3, Inscriptions depuis le Trésor des Athéniens jusqu’aux bases de Gélon (hereafter FD III 3), ed. Georges Daux and Antoine Salac, (Paris: De Boccard, 1932-1943), 239.12; or Jean Pouilloux, ed., Choix d’inscriptions grecques (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1960), no. 12.

36. As was the case in the bequest of Archippe of Kyme, see Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum (hereafter SEG) (Amsterdam: Gieben, 1983)Google Scholar, 33.1039.68-67.

37. SEG 33.117.19-23.

38. One surprising fact stands out concerning the servi publici used in the Roman Republic: no citizen is known to have become a d ēmosios following a criminal conviction. Similarly, prisoners of war do not seem to have been integrated into the corps of public slaves: see Eder, Walter, Servitus publica. Untersuchungen zur Entstehung, Entwicklung und Funktion der öffentlichen Sklaverei in Rom (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1980)Google Scholar.

39. Jacob, Les esclaves publics, 10-11. It should also be noted that, in the city of Pergamum in the second century BCE, there was a difference between the slaves of the city (dēmosioi ) and the slaves of the king of Pergamum (basilikoi ). Only the latter group included former slaves who had been removed from other services at public debtors’ expense. See Dittenberger, Wilhelm, ed., Orientis Graeci inscriptiones selectae (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1903-1905)Google Scholar, 338.20-30.

40. This was the case for Eucles and Telophilus in fourth-century Athens, as attested in Clinton, Kevin, ed., Eleusis, the Inscriptions on Stone: Documents of the Sanctuary of the Two Goddesses and Public Documents of the Deme (hereafter IE) (Athens: Archaeological Society of Athens, 2005)Google Scholar, 1.159.60-61, 1.177.12 and 205. For Demetrius in the third century, see Kirchner, Johannes, ed., Inscriptiones Graecae. Inscriptiones Atticae Euclidis Anno Posteriores (hereafter IG) (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1913-1940)Google Scholar, II2 839.52-53. At the end of the second century, Sopatrus was chosen by the Bouleutai by a show of hands to work with the commission in charge of melting down some of the offerings on the Acropolis: IG II2 840.35.

41. Pseudo-Aristotle, The Athenian Constitution 64.1, 65.1, 65.4, and 69.1; Plutarch, Demosthenes 5.3.

42. SEG 2.710.4-6.

43. Varinlioglu, Ender, “Five Inscriptions from Acmonia,” Revue des études anciennes 108, no. 1 (2006): 355-73 Google Scholar, nos. 4.38-39 and 5.13 (64 CE).

44. IG I3 1390.

45. They appear for the first time in a prytanic decree in 343/342 BCE (Agora, 15.37.4) and then regularly from 303/302 (Agora, 15.62.5.10-18). Beginning in 281/280, they were divided at the same time as the prytanes according to their tribes: Agora, 15.72.1.5; 15.72.2.67, 211; and 15.72.3.83, 266. See Oliver, Graham J., “Honours for a Public Slave at Athens (IG II2 502 + Ag. I 1947; 302/1 B.C.),” in Attika Epigraphika. Meletes pros timèn tou Christian Habicht, ed. Themos, Athanassios and Papazarkadas, Nikolaos (Athens: Ellīnikī´ Epigrafikī´ Etaireía, 2009), 111-24Google Scholar, here p. 123.

46. Pseudo-Aristotle, The Athenian Constitution 47.5 and 48.1. On the public slaves of the archives, see Sickinger, James P., Public Records and Archives in Classical Athens (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 140-57Google Scholar.

47. IG II2 463.28. See also IG II2 1492B.112, in which a slave named Skylax fetches some accounting documents needed by a magistrate in the late fourth century.

48. Sickinger, Public Records, 145 and 158.

49. Demosthenes, On the Embassy (19) 129.

50. IG II2 583.4-7.

51. Die Inschriften von Iasos, ed. Blümel, Wolfgang for the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Bonn: R. Habelt, 1985)Google Scholar, 93.3-4. For the date, see Pierre Fröhlich, “Les groupes du gymnase d’Iasos et les presbyteroi dans les cités à l’époque hellénistique,” in Groupes et associations dans les cités grecques (IIIe av. J.-C.-IIe ap. J.-C.), ed. Pierre Fröhlich and Patrice Hamon (Geneva: Droz, 2013), 59-111.

52. SEG 33.1177.10-15.

53. SEG 33.1177.18-19.

54. IG II2 120.12-13 (and IG II2 1440a.6-7, three years later).

55. IG II2 1492b.111.

56. IG II 839.41-44. Six years later, a slave who was probably the son of Demetrius, Demetrius neoteros, (IG II2 1539.9-10), seems to have played the same role in the shrine.

57. ID 1444.Aa.54 and Ba.20 and 49. That Peritas was a slave is confirmed by ID 1442.B.75. Inventories for the temple of Apollo during the same period mention the presence of d ēmosioi at the shrine: see ID 1450.A.109.

58. On these slaves at the city arsenals (dēmosioi hoi en tois neoriois), see Demosthenes, Against Evergus and Mnesibulus (47) 21, 24, and 26, discussed in Jordan, Borimir, The Athenian Navy in the Classical Period : A Study of Athenian Naval Administration and Military Organization in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries B.C. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975)Google Scholar. Opsigonus appears in IG II2 1631.B.197 and C.381-82.

59. IE 177.1.12. Eucles played the same role a few years earlier: see IE 159.60-61 (from 336/335 or 333/332 BCE).

60. Demosthenes, On the Chersonese (8) 47, confirmed by the Scholiast to Demosthenes, Second Olynthiac (2) 19. On the basis of Demosthenes’s speech (49) 6-8, Jacob believed he could identify a certain Autonomus, who acted alongside the steward Antimachus under the orders of the general Timothy. The hypothesis is attractive, especially since Autonomus did not suffer the same punishment as Antimachus, which seems to suggest a difference in status. Considered neutral, this dēmosios, who bears a surprising name, was found innocent of the wrongdoing committed by the magistrate: see Jacob, Les esclaves publics, 123-24.

61. Demosthenes, Against Androtion (22) 70-71.

62. Demosthenes, Against Androtion (22) 71. It should be further observed that the inscriptions frequently give the personal name of the dēmosios who was active in these accounting tasks. This sort of reference most likely assumed the value of a signature through which the inventory or accounting transaction acquired its legal value.

63. Rhodes and Osborne, Greek Historical Inscriptions, no. 25. It should be noted that Athenians distinguished between counterfeits and imitations made by foreign cities in the same metal, weight, and quality as the Athenian coins. If the “auditor” came across one of these imitations, he had a duty to return it to its owner, who was allowed to use it. However, if the coin appeared to be a counterfeit—a thin layer of silver concealing bronze or lead—or if the level of silver was lower than the Athenian standard, the dēmosios had to shear the coin in half and offer it to the shrine of the Mother of the Gods on the Agora. The position of the dokimastēs was still being mentioned at the end of the fourth century: see IG II2 1492.137-38 (305/304). In an overabundant bibliography, the following works on mentions of the dokimastes slave in law should be singled out: Martin, Thomas R., “Silver Coins and Public Slaves in the Athenian Law of 375/4 B.C,” in Mnemata: Papers in Memory of Nancy M. Waggoner, ed. William E.\Metcalf, (New York: American Numismatic Society, 1991), 21-48 Google Scholar; Christophe Feyel, “À propos de la loi de Nicophon. Remarques sur le sens de δόκι,μος, δοκί,μάζεί,ν, δοκι,μασ´α,” Revue de philologie, de littérature et d’histoire anciennes 57, no. 1 (2003): 37-65.

64. IG II2 1388.B.61-62. The same character appears to be mentioned in a series of inscriptions dating back to the early decades of the fourth century: IG II2 1400.57, 1401.44-45, 1415.19-20, 1424a.311-12, 1428.149, and 1443.207-8.

65. It is quite possible that a very similar role was played by the dēmosioi upon the arrival of wheat in Athens. Indeed, many indications suggest that a public slave was responsible for measuring and evaluating wheat shipments unloaded in Piraeus. In particular, see Dinarchus, frag. 8.2.

66. IG II2 1013.40-41. The dēmosioi were placed under the authorities of the prytanes for Skias, the epimelētēs for the Piraeus market, and the hierophants at Eleusis. If the words of the oikđai tēs Tholou are to be believed, the role continued into the imperial period: see IG II2 1799.25.

67. On the slave mark or sphragis, see Dölger, Franz Joseph, Sphragis: eine altchristliche Taufbezeichnung in ihren Beziehungen zur profanen und religiösen Kultur des Altertums (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1911), 23-31 Google Scholar.

68. Nymphodorus of Syracuse’s account was passed down by Athenaeus, Deipnosophistai 6.265d-266e (FGrHist, 572 F4). See the detailed reading in Forsdyke, Sara, Slaves Tell Tales : And Other Episodes in the Politics of Popular Culture in Ancient Greece (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), especially 78-89 Google Scholar.

69. Bresson, Alain, Recueil des inscriptions de la Pérée rhodienne (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 102.15 (decree from Tymnus regulating the use of a shrine to Zeus and Hera).

70. In particular, see the remarks of Robert, Louis, “Inscriptions d’Aphrodisias” [1966], in Opera Minora Selecta. Épigraphie et antiquités grecques (Amsterdam: A. M. Hakkert, 1989)Google Scholar, 6:46 n. 7.

71. In reality, the dēmosioi were often the only staff permanently tied to the gymnasium. See: Fränkel, Max, ed., Die Inschriften von Pergamon (Berlin: W. Spemann, 1890-1895)Google Scholar, 2.52 (from Pergamum and dating from the first century BCE, according to Fränkel); von Gaertringen, Friedrich Hiller, ed., Die Inschriften von Priene (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1906)Google Scholar, 112.110-12 (Priene, 84 CE). At Delos, they were called palaistrophulax (ID 316.117, 338A.ab.67, and 372A.98-99) or hupēretēs eis palaistran (ID 290.108, 440A.27, and 444A.27).

72. Lysias, Against the Corn Dealers (22) 2; Pseudo-Aristotle, The Athenian Constitution 52.

73. For Theramenes, see Xenophon, Hellenica 2.3.54-55 and Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 14.5.1-4. For Phocion, see Plutarch, Phocion 35.1 and 36.1. Their intervention in the arrest of the Athenian generals returning from Arginusae in 406 should also be mentioned: see Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 13.102. For Paul, see Acts 16:23-36.

74. Plato, Phaedo 59c and Crito 43a. The delegation of such a task to public slaves was common in many cities, for Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia and Pontus, asked the Emperor Trajan whether to respect this custom in the second century CE: see Pliny the Younger, Letters 10.19.1.

75. Aeschines clearly refers him as a dēmosios: see Aeschines, On the Embassy (2) 12, and all the evidence presented by Jacob, Les esclaves publics, 81-82.

76. In 403, the Thirty allegedly constituted a variant of this body, recruiting three hundred slaves carrying whips to control the city: see Pseudo-Aristotle, The Athenian Constitution 35.1. For the exact status of these three hundred mastigophoroi, see Tuci, Paolo A., “Arcieri sciti, esercito e Democrazia nell’Atene del V secolo a.C.,” Aevum 78, no. 1 (2004): 3-18 Google Scholar, here pp. 13-14.

77. The ethnic composition of the group is, however, less clear-cut than it seems. One cannot rule out the possibility of the Thracians or the Getae serving in this body, which the Athenians continued to present as Scythian. On the role of Speusinius, see: Pollux, 8.131-132; Souda and Photius on the topic of Toxotai ; and the Scholiast to Aristophanes, Acharnians 54. See also Tuci, Paolo A., “Gli arcieri sciti nell’Atene del V Secolo a.C.,” in Il cittadino, lo straniero, il barbaro, fra integrazione ed emarginazione nell’Antichità, ed. Gabriela, Maria Bertinelli, Angeli and Donati, Angela (Rome: Bretschneider, 2005), 375-89Google Scholar.

78. See the dense discussion in Jacob, Les esclaves publics, 64-72; the detailed account in Tuci, “Gli arcieri,” 376; and the synthesis in Couvenhes, Jean-Christophe, “L’introduction des archers scythes, esclaves publics, à Athènes: la date et l’agent d’un transfert culturel,” in Transferts culturels et droit dans le monde grec et hellénistique, ed. Legras, Bernard (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2012), 99-119 Google Scholar, here p. 103.

79. Some, like Couvenhes, trace their disappearance to the end of the fifth century: see Couvenhes, “L’introduction des archers scythes,” 116. The date 378/377 has, however, generally been retained because it corresponds to the appearance of the syllogeis tou d ēmou, who subsequently appear to have maintained order in the Assembly. Virginia J. Hunter is much more circumspect—and rightly so, in my opinion: see Hunter, Virginia J., Policing Athens: Social Control in the Attic Lawsuits 420-320 B.C. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 148-49Google Scholar. Referring, around 325, to the rope that protected the meetings of the Council of the Areopagus and the proclamation of the hupēretēs (who requested that all spectators leave the place of public meetings), Demosthenes might in fact be alluding to the Scythian archers: see Demosthenes, Against Aristogeiton I (25) 23.

80. See the Scholiast to Aristophanes, Wasps 1007.

81. FD III 3.233.

82. Fournier, Julien and Prêtre, Clarisse, “Un mécène au service d’une déesse thasienne: décret pour Stilbôn,” Bulletin de correspondance hellénique 130, no. 1 (2006): 487-97 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ll. 9-12.

83. On the ¡ithagāgountēs dēmosioi, see IE 159.49-50 and very likely also l. 62 (336/335 or 333/332). On the epistatēs of the dēmosioi, see IE 177.62 (329/328) and 159.58 (336/335 or 333/332). On the slave in charge of accounting, see IE 177.12 (329/328). On the slaves who weighed tools, see IE 157.26-29 (336).

84. IE 159.44.

85. Rousset, Le territoire de Delphes, 31.9 and 11-12 (102/101 BCE). In Hellenistic and imperial Asia Minor, it is sometimes difficult to establish a functional distinction between the dēmosioi and sacred slaves, who were described as hierodouloi: at the beginning of the imperial period in the shrine of Zeus Labraundos, under the control of Mylasa, public slaves and sacred slaves were paid through the sanctuary’s funds and were both subject to the same punishment should they fail in the mission entrusted to them. See Crampa, Jonas, Labraunda: Swedish Excavations and Researches, vol. 3, The Greek Inscriptions, part 2, 13-133 (Stockholm: Swedish Institute in Athens, 1972)Google Scholar, nos. 56,59, 60.7-8, and 69.

86. In Athenian Delos during the first and second centuries, the dēmosioi played an important role in the management of cults to foreign gods around Mount Kynthos: see ID 2232 (107/106), 2234 (106/105), 2249 (107/106), 2250 (108/107), 2251 (108/107), 2252 (108/107), 2253 (106/105), and 2628a (108/107). At the sanctuary of Zeus Kynthios and Athena Kynthia, the name of the dēmosios who played a similar role is missing: see ID 1892 (97/96).

87. ID 2610.2-3. On this inscription, see Bricault, Laurent, “Les prêtres du Sarapieion C de Délos,” Bulletin de correspondance hellénique 120, no. 2 (1996): 597-616 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

88. Weiss, Sklave der Stadt, 186; more caution is shown by Bricault, “Les prêtres du Sarapieion.” For another, more mysterious case in Rhodes, see IG XII 1.31. It is possible that in this instance the dēmosioi collectively took over the functions of public worship in honor of Zeus Atabyrios.

89. Aristotle, Politics 1299a.

90. Thus, IE 177.4-5 and 159.60.

91. Glotz, Gustave, La cité grecque (Paris: Albin Michel, 1928 Google Scholar; repr. 1953), 304.

92. For an initial approach to the question, see Ismard, Paulin, “Public Slaves, Politics and Expertise in Classical Athens,” Center for Hellenic Studies: Research Bulletin 1, no. 2 (2013): http://wp.chs.harvard.edu/chs-fellows/2013/08/30/public-slavery-politics-and-expertise-in-classical-athens/ Google Scholar. See also Ismard, La démocratie contre les experts, 131-65.

93. Azoulay, Vincent and Ismard, Paulin, “Les lieux du politique dans l’Athènes classique. Entre structures institutionnelles, idéologie civique et pratiques sociales,” in Athènes et le politique. Dans le sillage de Claude Mossé, ed. Pantel, Pauline Schmitt and de Polignac, François (Paris: Albin Michel, 2007), 271-309 Google Scholar.

94. The expression is the result of a reconstitution that leaves little doubt, since it is based on the comparison between two inscriptions of the same decree: lines 53-54 of IG II2 1013 can only be restored in light of SEG 24.147.5, according to Meritt, Benjamin, “Greek Inscriptions,” Hesperia 7, no. 8 (1938): 77-160 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, no. 27.

95. This is, for example, the translation proposed by Austin, Michel M., The Hellenistic World from Alexander to the Roman Conquest: A Selection of Ancient Sources in Translation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981 Google Scholar; repr. 2006), 240.

96. Cicero, Pro Sestio 91.

97. Thomas, Yan, “L’indisponibilité de la liberté en droit romain,” Hypothèses 1 (2006): 379-89 Google Scholar, here p. 387.

98. The following are cases taken from very different contexts: Kumar, Sunil, “Service, Status, and Military Slavery in the Delhi Sultanate: Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries,” in Chatterjee, and Eaton, , Slavery and South Asian History, 83-114 Google Scholar; Mounier, Pierre, “La dynamique des interrelations politiques: le cas du sultanat de Zinder (Niger),” Cahiers d’études africaines 154, 39, no. 2 (1999): 367-86 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ejiogu, Emmanuel Chinenyengozi, “State Building in the Niger Basin in the Common Era and Beyond, 1000-Mid 1800s: The Case of Yorubaland,” Journal of Asian and African Studies 46, no. 6 (2011): 593-614 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tardits, Claude, “Le royaume bamoum,” in Princes et serviteurs du royaume. Cinq études de monarchies africaines, ed. Tardits, Claude (Paris: Société d’ethnographie, 1987), 107-35Google Scholar, here pp. 131-34; Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan, “Captifs ruraux et esclaves impériaux du Songhay,” in Meillassoux, L’esclavage en Afrique précoloniale, 99-134; and Sato Kentaro, “Slave Elites and the Saqa¯liba in al-Andalus in the Umayyad Period,” in Miura and Philips, Slave Elites in the Middle East and Africa, 25-40. For a quite different approach, which does not view the institution of royal slaves as radically breaking with categories of lineage, see Terray, Emmanuel, Une histoire du royaume Abron du Gyaman. Des origines à la conquête coloniale (Paris: Karthala, 1995)Google Scholar.

99. Paradoxically, this power could even be passed down through the union between the sovereign’s slaves and princesses of “royal” lineage, as was the case in the sixteenth-century Ottoman court. While these imperial sons-in-law were chosen, as an act of gratitude and a mark of honor, from amongst the sultan’s kul slaves and to the detriment of the original princely sons-in-law, such a union did not grant them “a real place in the ranks of the royal family.” See Dumas, Juliette, “Les perles de nacre du sultanat. Les princesses ottomanes (mi XVe-mi XVIIIe siècle)” (PhD diss., EHESS, 2013), 121 Google Scholar.

100. Claudia de Oliveira Gomes has suggested viewing opposition to the tyrannical model in the Classical city in terms of resistance, using the work of Clastres as a starting point: see de Oliveira Gomes, Claudia, La cité tyrannique. Histoire politique de la Grèce archaïque (Rennes: PUR, 2007)Google Scholar. I myself doubt that it is possible to speak of the growth of the state apparatus in tyrannical cities (see my review in Annales HSS 64, no. 5 (2009): 1167-69), but Oliveira Gomes’s perspective, which does not address the issue of public slavery, does touch on something indisputable about the Classical city when she refers to the existence of “the statist ideology of a stateless society” (p. 148).

101. Clastres, Pierre, Society Against the State: Essays in Political Anthropology, trans. Hurley, Robert (New York: Zone Books, 1989)Google Scholar. The term “Copernican revolution” refers to the first chapter of the work, “Copernicus and the Savages.”

102. Clastres, Pierre, Recherches d’anthropologie politique (Paris: Le Seuil, 1980),204-6Google Scholar.

103. Clastres, Society Against the State, 212. He goes on to add: “Primitive society, then, is a society from which nothing escapes, which lets nothing get outside itself, for all the exits are blocked.”

104. Clastres, Society Against the State, 218; Clastres, Recherches, 105 and 175-77.

105. Ibid., 186; Clastres, Society Against the State, 216-18.

106. Clastres, Recherches, 148.

107. Loraux, Nicole, “Notes sur l’un, le deux et le multiple,” in L’esprit des lois sauvages. Pierre Clastres ou une nouvelle anthropologie politique, ed. Abensour, Miguel (Paris: Le Seuil, 1987), 155-71Google Scholar, here p. 157.

108. Loraux, Nicole, The Divided City: On Memory and Forgetting in Ancient Athens, trans. Pache, Corrine with Fort, Jeff (New York: Zone Books 2002)Google Scholar.

109. Loraux, “Notes sur l’un,” 164.

110. Ibid., 162.

111. Aristotle, Politics 1277b.

112. Aristotle, Politics 1295b.

113. According to Castoriadis: “There can be, there has been, and we hope that there will again be societies without a State, namely, without a hierarchically organized bureaucratic apparatus separate from society and dominating it .... A society without such a State is possible, conceivable, and desirable. But a society without explicit institutions of power is an absurdity into which both Marx and anarchism lapsed.” Castoriadis, , “Democracy as Procedure and Democracy as Regime,” trans. Curtis, David Ames, Constellations 4, no. 1 (1997): 1-18 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 1.

114. Clastres, Recherches, 109.

115. Vidal-Naquet, Pierre, The Black Hunter: Forms of Thought and Forms of Society in the Greek World, trans. Szegedy-Maszak, Andrew (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 9 Google Scholar.