Believing the ancients: Quantitative and qualitative dimensions of slavery and the slave trade in later prehistoric Eurasia

Abstract

This paper briefly examines two types of slavery in the first millennium Aegean, Carpatho-Balkan and Pontic regions – branded silver-mine slaves and blinded milk-processing slaves. The first is examined primarily in quantitative terms, to attach economically sensible order-of-magnitude figures to the trade in people. The second is examined qualitatively, to show how indigenous forms of dependence and subordination were caught up in the emergence of Graeco-Roman chattel slavery. In both cases I have taken the rather unusual step of trusting what the classical authors tell us they knew. Finally, a symbolic connection is made between shackles and torcs.