Kostas Vlassopoulos
Biographic Data
| ID | 363727 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kostas Vlassopoulos |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kostas |
| FAMILY NAME | Vlassopoulos |
| SIGNATURE | VLASSOPOULOS K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Crete |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1757-8653 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 48 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 128 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 45 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
What Is Slave Agency?
This article aims to offer a comprehensive framework for the study of slave agency globally, with specific application to antiquity. After examining the diverse forms of slave agency, its historical consequences and the wider field beyond slavery in which enslaved persons exercised agency, I argue that slave agency consists of four entangled axes. The first three axes concern agency as the power to act, intentional action, and consequential actio…
Reassessing the Peloponnesian War
Modern accounts of the great war between the Athenians and the Spartans in the late fifth century BC have simply reanalysed the gripping analysis of military and political events given by Thucydides. But a great deal of other evidence survives from this best-known of all periods of Athenian history. This book exploits that evidence and our rich knowledge of ancient Greek society to reveal the Peloponnesian War as not just an event but an experien…
The Multiple Honours of Enslaved People in Ancient Greek Societies
Towards a history of ancient Mediterranean slave systems
Building on the excellent new framework of a Mediterranean slave system proposed by Joly and Knust, this short response aims to explore three main issues that can further elaborate future application of the framework. The first issue concerns the processes that entangled the epichoric slave systems during the first Mediterranean slavery. The second raises the question whether we need a transitional period during the last two centuries BCE as a li…
John Ma. Polis
Recent Developments in the Historical Research of Ancient Slavery
Greek and Roman Slaveries
This introductory chapter traces the historiography of the study of slavery in antiquity and the dominant approaches that have shaped it. Building on this outline, it presents an alternative processual framework for the study of Greek and Roman slaveries: the diverse modalities of conceptualizing slavery that were employed for the most varied purposes; the various slaving strategies employed by masters and the contexts in which they took place; a…
Slavery in Ancient Greece
Slavery was a defining phenomenon in the history of Greek city-states. This chapter explores the various local slaving systems of ancient Greece and examines their similarities and differences with respect to four factors: the slaving strategies employed by the masters; the geopolitical context of ancient Greek communities; the ways and aims for which the political community intervened in the master–slavery relationship; and the forms of communit…
The Role of Slavery in Athenian Democracy
Classical Athens is strongly associated with two phenomena: democracy, and slavery.The interaction between these two institutions, seemingly at odds when evaluated by modern standards, reveals a complex web of philosophical, social, and economic relationships.The question of whether or not Athenian democracy was predicated on slavery as an institution has been the subject of scholarly debate for centuries, and no strict answer has been reached.Ho…
Enslaved Persons and Their Multiple Identities in Ancient Societies
This lecture explores the multiple identities of enslaved persons in ancient societies. Ancient masters and slaveholding societies often behaved as if the only identity that mattered for enslaved persons was their classification as slaves. While slave classification had profound implications, it was not the only identity that mattered. Employing key conceptual tools from the study of identities, it analyses the diversity of the identities of ensl…
Historiographies
This chapter offers a historiographical overview of the study of ancient slavery from the eighteenth century till the present. The chapter examines in detail the work of Moses Finley, which has set the main parameters of the traditional paradigm. It focuses on the emergence of the dominant paradigm and the three major debates that have shaped it: the modernist, the humanitarian and the class struggle debates. The chapter also follows recent work …
Slaving in Space and Time
This chapter constructs a framework for examining the diversity of slaveholding societies on the one hand, and the processes and forces of historical change on the other. The first section challenges the traditional approach to Greek slavery; the concept of epichoric slaving systems allows us to incorporate diversity and change in the study of local slaving practices. The second section dismantles the traditional distinction between societies wit…
Conclusions
This conclusion summarises the major findings of the book and considers some important avenues of future research. The study of ancient slavery will need to eschew its exclusive focus on Greek and Roman slavery and adopt a wider framework, which will explore the entanglement between slaving and the economic, social, political and cultural processes that linked together the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, temperate Europe, the Near East and North Af…
The Slave View of Slavery
Chapter 7 focuses on how enslaved persons conceived and experienced slavery and their own identities. The first section of the chapter explores the diverse modalities of slavery that co-existed in ancient societies. Slavery could be conceived as an instrumental relationship; an asymmetrical negotiation of power between masters and slaves; a relationship of benefaction and reward; or an extreme form of bad luck. The existence of different modaliti…
What is Slavery?
This chapter examines the concept of slavery. The first part of the chapter uses early medieval slavery as an illuminating test-case: the complexity and diversity of early medieval slavery makes it possible to challenge some implicit assumptions that have long dominated the study of ancient slavery; it also allows us to test the conceptual coherence of various key concepts in the study of slavery. The second part of the chapter builds on these in…
Enslaved Persons
Chapter 5 aims to construct a new framework for approaching the complex phenomenon of slave identity. The first part of the chapter distinguishes between categorical and relational modes of slave identification and examines their implications. The second part of the chapter examines three key aspects of slave identities: the categorisation of people as slaves; the various self-understandings of the slaves; and the forms of slave groupness. This c…
Dialectical Relationships
Chapter 6 examines three dialectical relationships: between masters and slaves; between free persons and slaves; and within slave communities. The master-slave dialectic formed a spectrum with two extremes: on the one hand, it could lead to the cruel tyranny of masters exercised over slaves without any control; on the other hand, rich and powerful masters could offer their slaves significantly better opportunities than those existing for most of …
Slaving Strategies and Contexts
This chapter employs an instrumental approach to examine the various reasons why masters employed slavery and the contexts in which they did so. The concept of slaving strategies highlights the fact that slavery could be used for very diverse and often contradictory purposes and explores the entanglements between them. The chapter analyses slaving strategies for labour, revenue, prestige, gratification, expertise, trust and authority. The second …
Subaltern community formation in antiquity
The aim of this chapter is to raise some major methodological issues about the study of subaltern groups in antiquity and to offer a framework that could be utilised for future work. The main thrust of the argument is that we must not take for granted the existence of distinct and distinctive subaltern communities in antiquity. If we want to do history from below properly and accord subaltern agency its rightful place, we need to explore carefull…
Slaving Strategies and Contexts
Historicising Ancient Slavery
A new framework for studying slaves and slavery in ancient societies Offers a new theoretical framework for the study of ancient slavery Employs a global historical perspective Focuses on the agency of ancient slaves Explores the link between slavery and historical change in antiquity Examines the multiple contradictions within slave systems Examines slavery from an economic, social, political and cultural perspective Informed by the global histo…
Historicising Ancient Slavery
This book offers a new approach to the study of ancient slavery. Informed by the global history of slavery, it eschews traditional approaches to slavery as a static institution. It explores instead the diverse strategies and the various contexts in which slavery was employed. It offers a new historicist approach to the study of slave identity and the various networks and communities that slaves created or participated in. Instead of seeing slaves…
The End of Enslavement, ‘Greek style’
This chapter examines the processes through which slaves in ancient Greek communities exited slavery, as well as their status and condition as freed people. It examines the nature of the existing evidence for manumission and freed people and its implications for studying the topic; it explores the forms of manumission and the processes through which slaves managed to gain their freedom; finally, it discusses the meanings that freedom had for free…
Marxism and Ancient History
In this chapter, Vlassopoulos explores how Marxist historiographies can be turned to productive use by contemporary historians. He argues that Marxist approaches bring four major elements that are particularly relevant for ancient history: history from below, a focus on large-scale historical change, a holistic approach to history, and metanarratives. Marxism was one of the major currents that brought history from below into ancient history, thro…
On Human Bondage
Communities and Networks in the Ancient Greek World
This book examines the diversity of networks and communities in the classical and early Hellenistic Greek world with particular emphasis on those that took shape within and around Athens. In doing so, it highlights not only the processes that created, modified, and dissolved these communities, but also shines a light on the interactions through which individuals with different statuses, identities, levels of wealth, and connectivity participated …
Free Spaces
Most modern works on Greek history accept a categorical distinction between different identities and statuses in classical Athens: there was a deep chasm between the male citizens' club and those excluded: foreigners, slaves and women; and the identity of male citizen, slave, foreigner and woman was clear, well defined, easy to establish, immutable and unchallenged. 1 Admittedly, this is not simply a modern construction: there are innumerable ref…
Beyond and Below the Polis
This article looks at the ways we can use networks in the study of the history of Greece. At the level below the polis, networks take the form of associations (koinoniai) that bring together people of various statuses and backgrounds. Studying these koinoniai allows us to move beyond structuralist approaches into the study of real social interactions. When looking at the level below the polis, we have to adopt a world-system perspective, and stud…
Slavery, freedom and citizenship in classical Athens
While there was a categorical and simple division between slave and free in Athenian law, in social practice the situation was different. It is often impossible to tell whether an individual was free or slave; even more, there are many examples of citizens accused of being slaves. The explanation of this bifurcation between law and reality should be sought in the social content of Athenian citizenship. In Athens the privileges of citizenship exte…
What Do We Really Know about Athenian Society
Traditional accounts of Athenian society tend to take their sources at face value, as direct reflections of Athenian reality. They present a model of free citizens working as independent producers, while the elite derived its surplus income from the exploitation of slaves. This model underestimates the systematic omissions of the sources, their consistent and distorting focus, and the implications of these biases. By mapping the field of vision o…
The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Slaveries
This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title w…
Does Slavery Have a History
In the last decade the landscape of slavery studies has changed radically. Novel developments raise major new challenges for the global study of slavery. This article is an attempt to take stock of these significant developments for rethinking the history of slavery from a global viewpoint. I will be arguing that we need to set aside the essentialist understanding of slavery and the ahistorical typology of slave societies and societies with slave…
Que savons-nous vraiment de la société athénienne
Les récits traditionnels sur la société athénienne interrogent peu les sources, considérées comme le reflet fidèle de la réalité athénienne. Ils présentent le modèle de citoyens travaillant sans contrainte en tant que producteurs indépendants tandis qu'une élite accumule les richesses en exploitant des esclaves. Ce modèle sous-estime aussi bien les effets grossissants que les omissions systématiques des sources, ainsi que leurs implications. Cet …
Historicising Ancient Slavery
This book offers a new approach to the study of ancient slavery. Informed by the global history of slavery, it eschews traditional approaches to slavery as a static institution. It explores instead the diverse strategies and the various contexts in which slavery was employed. It offers a new historicist approach to the study of slave identity and the various networks and communities that slaves created or participated in. Instead of seeing slaves…
Ethnicity and Greek History
The study of ethnicity has become particularly popular over the last twenty years. This article explores certain unexamined assumptions concerning ancient ethnicity and points out certain important blind spots of modern research, focusing in particular on Jonathan Hall's contributions to the debate. Greek historians have devoted little time to thinking about the groups to which the concept of ethnicity is applicable: by exploring together the sim…
Towards a history of ancient Mediterranean slave systems
Building on the excellent new framework of a Mediterranean slave system proposed by Joly and Knust, this short response aims to explore three main issues that can further elaborate future application of the framework. The first issue concerns the processes that entangled the epichoric slave systems during the first Mediterranean slavery. The second raises the question whether we need a transitional period during the last two centuries BCE as a li…
The Role of Slavery in Athenian Democracy
Classical Athens is strongly associated with two phenomena: democracy, and slavery.The interaction between these two institutions, seemingly at odds when evaluated by modern standards, reveals a complex web of philosophical, social, and economic relationships.The question of whether or not Athenian democracy was predicated on slavery as an institution has been the subject of scholarly debate for centuries, and no strict answer has been reached.Ho…
Unthinking the Greek Polis
Unthinking the Greek Polis
This 2007 study explores how modern scholars came to write Greek history from a Eurocentric perspective and challenges orthodox readings of Greek history as part of the history of the West. Since the Greeks lacked a national state or a unified society, economy or culture, the polis has helped to create a homogenising national narrative. This book re-examines old polarities such as those between the Greek poleis and Eastern monarchies, or between …
Free Spaces
Most modern works on Greek history accept a categorical distinction between different identities and statuses in classical Athens: there was a deep chasm between the male citizens' club and those excluded: foreigners, slaves and women; and the identity of male citizen, slave, foreigner and woman was clear, well defined, easy to establish, immutable and unchallenged. 1 Admittedly, this is not simply a modern construction: there are innumerable ref…
Beyond and Below the Polis
This article looks at the ways we can use networks in the study of the history of Greece. At the level below the polis, networks take the form of associations (koinoniai) that bring together people of various statuses and backgrounds. Studying these koinoniai allows us to move beyond structuralist approaches into the study of real social interactions. When looking at the level below the polis, we have to adopt a world-system perspective, and stud…
Slavery, freedom and citizenship in classical Athens
While there was a categorical and simple division between slave and free in Athenian law, in social practice the situation was different. It is often impossible to tell whether an individual was free or slave; even more, there are many examples of citizens accused of being slaves. The explanation of this bifurcation between law and reality should be sought in the social content of Athenian citizenship. In Athens the privileges of citizenship exte…
Imperial Encounters
Politics
Ancient Greece is famous as the civilization which ‘gave’ the world democracy. Democracy has in modern times become the rallying cry of liberation from supposed totalitarianism and dictatorship. And the desire by the western powers, especially America, to foment (or impose) democracy across the globe is one of the most powerful driving motors in present-day geopolitics: not least in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thus, a lively and well informed treatment…
Beyond and Below the Polis
The study of Greek history in the last few decades has been dominated by the concept of the polis. It shows that the concept of network can allow to move beyond the orthodox model of writing Greek history. The concept of network enables to explore two levels apart from the polis; the level of social, economic, political, and cultural interaction the polis, and the level beyond. Networks are processes that connect people and places in order to mov…
Greeks and Barbarians
This book is an ambitious synthesis of the social, economic, political and cultural interactions between Greeks and non-Greeks in the Mediterranean world during the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods. Instead of traditional and static distinctions between Greeks and Others, Professor Vlassopoulos explores the diversity of interactions between Greeks and non-Greeks in four parallel but interconnected worlds: the world of networks, the worl…
Pierre Briant. Alexandre des Lumières
Journal Article Pierre Briant. Alexandre des Lumières: Fragments d'histoire européenne. Get access Pierre Briant. Alexandre des Lumières: Fragments d'histoire européenne. (NRF Essais.) Paris: Gallimard, 2012. Pp. 739. €29.00. Kostas Vlassopoulos Kostas Vlassopoulos University of Nottingham [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 119,…
Religion in Communities
Plotting Strategies, Networks, and Communities in Classical Athens
This chapter examines the neglected topic of slave names as a source of social history demonstrating that they do more than simply illustrate the distinction between free and slave. Even though the Athenians had the onomastic means to demarcate slaves as people outside the civic community, and no doubt employed these means, this chapter shows that more than half of the recorded Athenian slaves bore names that did not differentiate them from Athen…
Introduction
This chapter argues that the study of ancient Greek history needs to move away from the ‘citizen club’ polis model to emphasize the diversity of communities within the ancient Greek world, the networks of relationships formed within and between them, and the processes that created, modified, and dissolved them. After reviewing the impact of structuralist and formalist models of the polis, Taylor and Vlassopoulos examine how two distinct conceptua…
Ethnicity and Greek History
The study of ethnicity has become particularly popular over the last twenty years. This article explores certain unexamined assumptions concerning ancient ethnicity and points out certain important blind spots of modern research, focusing in particular on Jonathan Hall's contributions to the debate. Greek historians have devoted little time to thinking about the groups to which the concept of ethnicity is applicable: by exploring together the sim…
Communities and Networks in the Ancient Greek World
This book examines the diversity of networks and communities in the classical and early Hellenistic Greek world with particular emphasis on those that took shape within and around Athens. In doing so, it highlights not only the processes that created, modified, and dissolved these communities, but also shines a light on the interactions through which individuals with different statuses, identities, levels of wealth, and connectivity participated …
La dÃ(c)mocratie contre les experts
426 PHOENIX Xenophon (Anab. 7.1.27). Both round numbers are taken from speeches in works of history. In view of the number of estimates, ancient and modern, that underlie Pritchard’s calculations, the exactness of his answers is illusory. Whilst it would have been tedious to emphasize repeatedly how difficult it is to calculate costs precisely or to include every possible item of expenditure, he often gives the impression of knowing what was spen…
Xenophon on Persia
The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Slaveries
This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title w…
Does Slavery Have a History
In the last decade the landscape of slavery studies has changed radically. Novel developments raise major new challenges for the global study of slavery. This article is an attempt to take stock of these significant developments for rethinking the history of slavery from a global viewpoint. I will be arguing that we need to set aside the essentialist understanding of slavery and the ahistorical typology of slave societies and societies with slave…
What Do We Really Know about Athenian Society
Traditional accounts of Athenian society tend to take their sources at face value, as direct reflections of Athenian reality. They present a model of free citizens working as independent producers, while the elite derived its surplus income from the exploitation of slaves. This model underestimates the systematic omissions of the sources, their consistent and distorting focus, and the implications of these biases. By mapping the field of vision o…
Que savons-nous vraiment de la société athénienne
Les récits traditionnels sur la société athénienne interrogent peu les sources, considérées comme le reflet fidèle de la réalité athénienne. Ils présentent le modèle de citoyens travaillant sans contrainte en tant que producteurs indépendants tandis qu'une élite accumule les richesses en exploitant des esclaves. Ce modèle sous-estime aussi bien les effets grossissants que les omissions systématiques des sources, ainsi que leurs implications. Cet …
Violence and Community
Ancient Democracy in the Plural
Marxism and Ancient History
In this chapter, Vlassopoulos explores how Marxist historiographies can be turned to productive use by contemporary historians. He argues that Marxist approaches bring four major elements that are particularly relevant for ancient history: history from below, a focus on large-scale historical change, a holistic approach to history, and metanarratives. Marxism was one of the major currents that brought history from below into ancient history, thro…
On Human Bondage
History (32 works) · Sociology (25 works) · Classical Antiquity Studies (23 works) · Political science (21 works) · Colonialism, slavery, and trade (19 works) · Law (19 works) · Art (18 works) · Politics (16 works) · Philosophy (14 works) · Anthropology (12 works)