Serfdom in Classical Greece

Was classical Greek civilisation based on slavery? Was classical Greece a slave society, or characterised by the slave mode of production? These questions are hardly original neither have they lacked for answers in the scholarly literature. ¹ But they remain more or less hotly controversial for empirical, theoretical and indeed ideological reasons. Empirical, for sheer lack of good contemporary evidence, above all from the side of the enslaved. ² Theoretical, because of unresolved doubts about, for example, the applicability of the ‘mode of production’ concept to any society and the classification of any or all slaves in classical Greece as a ‘class’. ³ Ideological, since although the lingering poison of slavery does not subtly contaminate the modern historiography of ancient Greece as it inevitably does that of New World slavery, there have always been ancient historians who find it hard to stomach the notion of slavery as an integral part, let alone the basis, of a civilisation they like to see as the fountainhead of everything most admirable in the entire western cultural tradition. ⁴