Slavery In Ancient Greece

In ancient Greece, most jobs were done by slaves instead of free people. This was because the Greeks had no money to pay workers with (until the Archaic period), and because they had no clocks (to measure how long somebody had worked). But it was also because it is cheaper to force people to work for you than it is to pay them.

Most people who were slaves in Greece had been born free. They were sold into slavery by their parents when they were children, because their parents were too poor to take care of them. Or they were captured by kidnappers or as prisoners of war and sold as slaves. A few slaves were the children of other slaves. Some slaves were Greek and some were Persians or Egyptians or Scythians.

There were a lot of jobs, and so about a third of the people living in ancient Greece were slaves. Slaves were owned by other people, and had to work for their owners. They could not decide to go work for somebody else. If they refused to work, their owner hit them. People who were slaves could not marry or raise children without their owner’s permission. And slaves could be sold at any time.
Some slaves worked for small farms, maybe just one or two slaves working alongside their boss. Other slaves worked on huge farms with hundreds of other slaves, and never saw their owner. Slaves who worked in the fields were almost all men.

Other slaves, both men and women, worked in factories or small shops, making shoes or shields or pottery or leather or weaving cloth. Some slaves cut hair in barbershops, and others worked in the public baths. Some were prostitutes. Slaves who could read and write were often teachers or accountants. Or slaves who had skills might be musicians or dancers. Skilled slaves were often freed when they got too old to work, though we’re not sure whether this was good or bad for them.
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A slave nanny taking the