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 Athenian citizens. Why was the distinction between slaves and freemen so difficult to observe onomastically? Vlassopoulos suggests that slave names provide evidence of the social strategies employed by both masters and slaves, that they provide an illuminating glimpse of the networks that linked together citizens, slaves, and other freemen and as such they raise interesting questions about the form of communities in which Athenian slaves participated.

Genealogy · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Ancient Near East History · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classics · History

• Slaves as Active Subjects

  Niall McKeown•The Oxford Handbook of Greek and…•2019

  Add to list

• Cittadini di quale classe? Appartenenza censitaria e stigma sociale nell’Atene classica

  Open Access•Lucia Cecchet•Erga-Logoi Rivista di storia…•2026

  Add to list