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I. The Historiographical Issues

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2016

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Extract

The sheer quantity of academic work since the war concerning itself with slavery in the Greek and Roman world reflects the subject’s continuing fascination. It makes it impossible for any single person to be aware of all the particular trends in research around the world at the moment, and it makes it necessary for this survey to be very selective in its references to recent studies of particular aspects of the subject.

Many scholars have considered slavery the key to an understanding of what life in the ancient world was like. Needless to say, they have approached it from the standpoint of their own most fundamental preconceptions and value-judgements; and since these basic ‘ideological’ concerns differ from scholar to scholar, their application to as major a social institution as slavery has made this more controversial a subject than any other in the study of ancient literature and society.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Surveys in the Classics , Volume 19: Slavery , 1987 , pp. 1 - 10
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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References

Notes

The abbreviations GARS stands for Greek and Roman Slavery (Croom Helm, London, 1981), the present writer’s selection of translated excerpts from ancient sources. The book contains a bibliography of works up to 1980, largely in English, on pp. 252-8.

1. The second edition of Brockmeyer, N., Bibliographie zur Antiken Sklaverei (ed. Herrmann, E., Bochum, 1983)Google Scholar lists 5162 books and articles, and is very far from complete. For a good bibliographical survey, see Brockmeyer, N., Antike Sklaverei (Darmstadt, 1979).Google Scholar

2. Davis, D. B., The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Cornell U.P., 1966)Google Scholar and The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution (Cornell U.P., 1975); Craton, H./Walvin, J./Wright, D., Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation (London, 1976)Google Scholar; Walvin, J. (ed.), Slavery and British Society 1776-1846 (Baton Rouge, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bolt, C. & Drescher, S., Anti-Slavery, Religion and Reform: Essays in Memory of Roger Anstey (Folkestone, 1980)Google Scholar. Disraeli, Benjamin described the anti-slavery agitation as a ‘humbug damnable’ (1846: Whibley, C., Lord John Manners and his Friends (Edinburgh, 1925), I, 222)Google Scholar. Cf. Cobbett’s remarks about the hypocrisy of the pro-abolition elite in Rural Rides (1825).

3. Gordon, M. L., ‘The Nationality of Slaves under the Early Roman Empire’, JRS 14 (1924), 111 Google Scholar. The traditional view of slave promiscuity was demolished by Rawson, B., ‘Roman Concubinage’, TAPhA 104 (1974), 279 ff.Google Scholar

4. Pleket, H. W., ‘Technology in the Greco-Roman World: A General Report’, Talanta 5 (1975), 6–47.Google Scholar

5. Amongst the dozens of works written from a Christian perspective, Wallon, H., Histoire de l’esclavage dans l’antiquité, 3 vols (Paris, 1847; 18792 Google Scholar; reprinted Aalen, 1974), and Allard, P., Les esclaves chrétiens (Paris, 1876)Google Scholar, were particularly influential.

6. Patterson, O., Slavery and Social Death (Harvard U.P., 1982).Google Scholar

7. Hopkins, K., Death and Renewal (Cambridge, 1983), ch. ICrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vogt, J., ‘Der Sterbende Sklave: Vorbild menschlicher Vollendung’ in Sklaverei und Humanität. Ergänzungsheft (Wiesbaden, 1983), pp. 6–16.Google Scholar

8. ‘Marxism is not a science of history, it is a theory of contemporary politics and its use of history will always be selective by reason of its political concerns’ (Hirst, P. Q., Marxism and Historical Writing (London, 1985), p. 146 Google Scholar).

9. Heinen, H. (ed.), Die Geschichte des Altertums im Spiegel der sowjetischen Forschung (Darmstadt, 1980)Google Scholar.

The leading Soviet ancient history journal is Vestnik Drevneii Istorii (‘Journal of Ancient History’), which first appeared in 1939. Several major Russian works on ancient slavery have been translated into German under the auspices of the Mainz Academy.

Some English Marxist views of the end of the ancient world: Walbank, F. W., The Awful Revolution (London, 1968 2)Google Scholar; Anderson, P., Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism (London, 1975)Google Scholar; Thompson, E. A., ‘Peasant Revolts in Late Roman Gaul and Spain’, Past & Present 1 (1952), 1–23. Google Scholar

10. Mosse, C., The Ancient World at Work (Engl. transl., London, 1969)Google Scholar; Burford, A. M., Craftsmen in Greek and Roman Society (London, 1972)Google Scholar; and ch. IV p. 30 below.

11. Plato’s failure to distinguish serfs from slaves: Laws 776b–778a ( = GARS 80, p. 83). Tacitus on the Germans: Germania 24.3–25.3 (= GARS 20). For helots as ‘slaves’ in the Marxist sense, cf. Cartledge, P., Sparta and Lakonia (London, 1979), ch. 10CrossRefGoogle Scholar, considerably qualified in Cartledge, P., ‘Rebels and Sambos in Classical Greece’, CRUX (Exeter, 1985), 40-16Google Scholar.

12. Solon’s seisachtheia: Murray, O., Early Greece (Glasgow, 1980), ch. 11Google Scholar.

13. Bailey, A. M. & Llobera, F. R., The Asiatic Mode of Production (London, 1981)Google Scholar. The concept of an Ancient Mode of Production plays an important role in Garlan, Y., Les Esclaves en Grèce antique (Paris, 1982)Google Scholar, an excellent survey from a neo-Marxist point of view; an English translation is in preparation.

14. Westermann, W. L., The Slave Systems of Greek and Roman Antiquity (Philadelphia, 1955)Google Scholar, an expansion of his article on ‘Sklaverei’ for RE Suppl. VI (Stuttgart, 1935), 894-1068.

15. Two straightforward introductions to Weber’s ideas are: Macrae, D. G., Weber (London, 1974)Google Scholar and Parkin, F., Max Weber (Chichester, 1982)Google Scholar.

16. Löwith, K., Max Weber and Karl Marx (London, 1982)Google Scholar. For Polanyi, cf. esp. Polanyi, K., Primitive, Archaic and Modern Economies (ed. Dalton, G., Boston, 1971)Google Scholar.

17. Finley, M. I., The Ancient Economy (London, 1973)Google Scholar; this approach had much earlier been applied to the Mycenean and Homeric worlds, cf.Finley, M. I., Economy and Society in Ancient Greece (ed. Shaw, B. D. and Saller, R. P., London, 1981)Google Scholar. The ‘Editors’ Introduction’ discusses Finley’s intellectual development and contribution to ancient history.

18. Cf. the conference at Rome in 1981 devoted to Finley’s Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology (London, 1980; French, German, and Italian translations), and published as OPUS: International Journal for Social and Economic History of Antiquity 1 (1982), fase. 1., p. 3 & 81.

19. Besançon 1970-73; other colloques sur l’esclavage whose papers have been published include those at Nieborów, Poland, 1975; Brixen/Bressanone, 1976; and one on Antike Abhängigkeitsformen at Jena, 1981.

20. Kreissig, H., ‘Zur Sklaverei im Altertum. Eine Zwischenbilanz der Internationalen Colloques sur l’esclavage’, Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte 1978 (3), 126 f.Google Scholar

21. Some of Vogt’s essays have been translated into English as Ancient Slavery and the Ideal of Man (Oxford/Harvard U.P., 1974).

22. The chapter on ‘Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology’ in Finley’s book of that title contains a systematic critique of Vogt’s approach: in Finley’s terms, ‘antiquarian’ rather than genuine ‘analytic’ history.

23. John, E., ‘Antiker und sozialistischer Humanismus’, Klio 57 (1975), 15–21 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (title of a scientific colloquium of the Central Institute for Ancient History and Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences of the German Democratic Republic, 28-30 October 1971).