Literary Evidence

Abstract

Information about slaveries in Greek and Roman antiquity appears in almost all genres of non-fiction: histories, biographies, political and philosophical treatises, speeches, letters, agricultural manuals, and works on estate management. The amount of surviving evidence, however, is comparatively small and unrepresentative, produced by slave owners with typically little interest in slaves for their own sake. There are no surviving non-fiction literary accounts by slaves. Even when slavery is discussed, it is often only ancillary to other issues. The evidence therefore leaves serious gaps in our knowledge. Ancient accounts also often fail to mention slaves who were almost certainly present, or mention them only in passing. One compensation is that non-fiction works do shed light on how writers view slaves in contexts in which they are not trying to prove anything, in contrast to accounts in which slavery and slaves form the direct focus, accounts probably subject to more distortion.