ABSTRACT
When one thinks of the Greco-Roman world, one probably thinks of Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar. It was also, however, the world of Spartacus, perhaps the most famous slave in history, and tens of millions of its other inhabitants were also slaves. There is robust disagreement as to how to reconstruct their lives. This might seem surprising. Greek and Roman slavery have been studied for over 150 years and comparatively little new evidence has been discovered in that time. Historians have an inbuilt ability to disagree with one another, but one might still have expected increasing consensus. The continuing debate is, however, largely the product of three factors that lend the study of ancient slavery its distinctiveness and help it to make a very individual contribution to the general study of slaves.
