ABSTRACT
The use of iron as a basic metal in the Greek city-states raised the general level of productivity and, as was mentioned earlier, commodity production was stimulated to such a degree that Greek society was the first to become based upon a monetary economy. In fact, the central feature of the whole process of development of the city-states is the growth of commodity production. As the basis of production changed, the social institutions changed accordingly, including the various types of servitude which had become essential to their maintenance. The slave systems of Greek antiquity developed over a long period of time and many problems associated with their genesis and growth still remain to be solved. Their later stages of development, especially in Athens, are better documented than their less mature phases. However, over the past few decades more attention has been directed by scholars to the early stages and their associated problems. As a result, it has at least become clear that the development of slavery was as uneven a process as the historical development of the city-states themselves. In this kind of investigation, the servile system of historical Crete is of major importance. For in Crete the aristocracy continued to maintain a dominant position because the early form of patriarchal slavery, which we can properly define as serfdom (with the peasants tied to the soil and paying tribute to overlords), persisted for centuries after commercial chattel slavery (with the slaves being bought and sold like other commodities), had become the dominating form of servitude in other city-states.
