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The plight of the woman and the plight of the enslaved in ancient Greece was one of a lack of power over others and a lack of autonomy over one’s self. The ideal Athenian woman was not to be seen in public or to interact with men, while the slave “…had no socially recognized existence outside of his master, he be came a social nonperson” (Patterson p.5). In both of these situations, influence over other people was something lost through a lack of right to interaction. Both groups were excluded from political power and say through this. They were both left exploitable. However, they still maintained themselves as strikingly different classes. In Slavery and Social Death: a Comparitive Study, The Trial and Death of Socrates, Against Neaera, and in ancient Greek art in particular, the difference between the similarly socially-restricted classes of women and the enslaved is highlighted. This is shown through the conditions for their exclusion from socio-political life, the disregard for the lives of enslaved peoples, and the specific distribution of labor between the two classes in the household. Resultantly, the enslaved existed as object (a person or thing to which a specified action or feeling is directed (Object).) even moreso than the woman in ancient Greek society.
While both women and the enslaved were excluded from socio-political life, the position of the enslaved was not a natural state of existence that had legal connotations connected to it. The enslaved were reduced from the rights of a human within a nation (citizenship) which left a void of law through which they would be considered. In Against Neaera, the initially enslaved Neaera found herself in such a place of being reduced through having a lack of ties to parents. According to a footnote on page 159, Neaera and the other girls she was raised with “...were presumably girls either knowingly handed over to Nicarete by mothers or intermediaries, or exposed and then brought to her for possible adoption.” This is also one of the things that contributes to the status of the enslaved, as mentioned by Patterson in Slavery and Social Death. The enslaved have no claims to property through parents, and through Neaera’s separation from hers, she also has no possibility of being considered a citizen by birthright. She then existed in a state of legal exception through which she could be forced into sex work as a child. While there were more passive circumstances that created the state of legal exception surrounding slavery, it was primarily violently enforced.
[24] Well then, men of Athens, after this, Simus the Thessalian [37] came to Athens with Neaera to attend the Great Panathenaea. [38] Nicarete accompanied her, and they stayed with Ctesippus, son of Glauconides, of the deme Cydantidae; [39] Neaera joined the large company of men eating and drinking, just as a hetaira does (Bers, p.160-161).
In Against Neaera, Neaera finds herself in Athens, a place she is not familiar with nor is accepted in as both a foreigner and an enslaved person treated as a sexual object. She is human trafficked by Simus the Thessalian, and without the laws that would have protected her in her original home, she is doubly found to be outside of the group of people Athenian law was meant to protect. This is simply a situation that Athenian women, endowed with certain protections, would not find themselves in while in Athens. Neaera could have done nothing about this situation with Thessalian because of the obvious power imbalance between citizen and enslaved. In fact, this is something mentioned in Slavery and Social Death.
…the ultimate cruelty of slavery was that these [social] relations had no legitimacy outside of what the slaveholder permitted. In light of such fatal uncertainties all relations were precarious, provisional, and tenuous; all community verged on the chaos that could rain down at any time from the deus ex machina of the slaveholder’s economic calculations or personal whim… Alienated from all “rights” or claims of birth, he ceased to belong in his own right to any legitimate social order. All slaves experienced, at the very least, a secular excommunication (Patterson, p.ix-x, 5).
While women were restricted in their actions around men and were largely contained within the household, the strictly undefined role of the enslaved outside of the whims of their holder was something that created a restriction in every space they would find themselves in. While both women and slaves were excluded from socio-political life, the state of exception that resulted from slaves being reduced from citizenship in a nation (because many legal protections were created in consideration of the citizen in particular) allowed for the continuation of treatment of the enslaved outside of the law.
As aforementioned, enslaved people were subject to further restriction even within the household. Through this, they were removed further from the possibility of social influence even within the confines of the domestic through the labor they were expected to do. This direct contrast between the power of the woman in the household and the enslaved is illustrated in some works of ancient Greek art.
(Timokrates).
On the piece of pottery, an enslaved person is shown doing more physical manual labor by carrying a child on her shoulders than the woman. The woman towers over the enslaved person and is interacting with the child in what seems to be a tender way. The pottery cruelly exhibits the difference in appreciation of labor by the two classes and the way in which women had more power in the household through their ability to raise their children and thus mold them, while the enslaved were limited to performing manual labor for children. Thus, the enslaved continued to be exploited in the household with no possibility of meaningful connection because of the overemphasized exploitation of their place in the domestic power dynamic.
Lastly, the lives and wellbeing of enslaved people being disregarded by the state is a first differentiation between women and the enslaved. The enslaved continue to be considered outside of the law, which was the condition for their enslavement in the first place. Because of this, as shown in The Trial and Death of Socrates, the death of a slave was not an affair that would be dealt with legally, much less focused on in a larger legal battle.
He killed one of our household slaves in drunken anger, so my father bound him hand and foot and threw him in a ditch, then sent a man here to inquire from the priest what should be done. “During that time he gave [d] no thought or care to the bound man, as being a killer, and it was no matter if he died, which he did. Hunger and cold and his bonds caused his death before the messenger came back from the seer. Both my father and my other relatives are angry that I am prosecuting my father for murder on behalf of a murderer when he hadn’t even killed him…(Plato, p.16).
As the focus of the legal battle is placed on Eumenides’ father’s actions in killing a citizen worker, the fact that the worker killed one of Eumenides’ slaves becomes overshadowed. The life of the slave was not even morally considered. The extent of a legal state of exception that allowed for the total objectification of the enslaved by law also created the social basis for a similar situation. Women were treated with much more humanity through the law than simply being the subject of routine and blind violence to the point of death. The extension of this into social life can be seen in the cutthroat reasoning which Apollodorus uses when he decided to go about pursuing the punishment of Neaera for posing as a citizen.
Everybody was coming to me in private and urging me to try to get back at him for what he had done to us. They were scolding me, saying I was no man if I didn’t get justice for people who were so close to me —my sister, and brother-in-law, and nieces, and my own wife; and I was no man at all if I didn’t bring before you in court the woman who was openly defiling the gods, insulting the city, and scorning your laws, and show you that she is guilty (Bers, p.157).
It is important to mention that at the time of this quotation in the text, Neaera has been freed from slavery but is still not a citizen of Athens. At the same time, Apollodorus insists on her status as ex-slave as something that taints her throughout the resulting text, seeing the sex work that she was forced into in the past as openly defiling the gods and insulting the city. Apollodorus is trying to leverage this social taboo towards someone for having existed in a state of exception and powerlessness to be able to disenfranchise Stephanus, the man who she is staying with, for revenge against Stephanus for having tried to sue him in the past. While Neaera would have to be “...returned to slavery and lost all her property” as punishment, Stephanus would simply be “…fined one thousand drachmas, a large but not crushing sum” (Bers, p.152). Neaera being returned to enslavement was something that was seen as trivial compared to revenge against Stephanus. Returning people who were previously enslaved to that legal state of exception again was a reinforcement of the system of slavery through violence that allowed for the enslaved to continue to be treated in any way without any consideration of their life and wellbeing.
As a result, the marked differences between the classes of women and the enslaved in ancient Greek society (while both socially restricted) are the conditions for their exclusion from socio-political life, the disregard for the lives of enslaved peoples, and the specific distribution of labor between the two classes in the household. In Slavery and Social Death: a Comparitive Study, The Trial and Death of Socrates, Against Neaera, and in ancient Greek art we can see this manifesting together through the enslaved existing as objects through their socio-politically exceptional state in a way that women did not. With ancient Greek forms of government having provided a structural inspiration for modern democracies across the world and with patterns of exploitation for labor across history, it is good to be well aware of the functions of Greek law (and the functions of withholding its protections from certain populations). We should be on the lookout for similar instances in our contemporary world so that no one has to suffer similar abuses to that of the ancient Greek woman, and especially that of the enslaved.
Bibliography
Bers, V. 2003. Demosthenes, Speeches 50-59, Apollodorus, “Against Neaera,” 151-194.
“Object Definition & Meaning.” Dictionary.com, Dictionary.com, https://www.dictionary.com/browse/object.
Patterson, Orlando. “Preface”, “The Constituent Elements of Slavery.” Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2018, vii-xi, pp. 1–14.
Plato. The Trial and Death of Socrates. Trans. G. M. A. Grube, rev. John M. Cooper. 3rd ed. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000.
Timokrates Painter [Attic painter, active 470-460 BCE]. “White-Ground Lekythos.” Bridgeman Images, Bridgeman Images, 2022, https://www.bridgemanimages.com/en-US/noartistknown/white-ground-lekythos-depicting-woman-and-maid-carrying-child-on-her-shoulders-by-timokrates-painter/nomedium/asset/2835882. Accessed 29 Sept. 2022.
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