The Slave Systems of Greek and Roman Antiquity

William Linn Westermann

Jan 1955 · American Philosophical Society

About this ebook

This comprehensive study developed from a synthesis of the history of Greco-Roman enslavement that author W.L. Westermann wrote for the "Pauly-Wissowa-Kroll Real-Encyclopadie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft" (1935). The first four chapters (Ch. I-IV) of this new synthesis cover the history of enslavement practice in the period of the free Greek polities. The four chapters on slave labor and the treatment of slaves as these presented themselves in the eastern Mediterranean area after the conquest of Egypt and southwestern Asia by Alexander of Macedon (Ch. V-VIII) are quite fully recast and rewritten. In them Westermann has tried to approach the problems of slave legislation and employment as displaying, in their own way, in an age conspicuously marked by cosmopolitanism and syncretism, the results of acceptances and rejections in the field of slave-labor economy. The account of slavery in the lands of the western Mediterranean during the period of the rise of the Roman republic will be found in Ch. IX-XII. The discussion of the slave systems of the Roman imperial world of the first thee centuries after Christ appears in Ch. XIII-XIX. The final chapters, XIX-XXIV, dealing with slavery in a world of aggressive and ultimately dominant Christianity are entirely new as contrasted with the brief statement made in the Pauly-Wissowa-Kroll treatment.

Ratings and reviews

I was looking for resources on the role of slavery in the Roman empire, and this book provided admirable detail with references to authors to read etc. Very useful