One of the commonplaces of the study of American slavery is that even though most white Americans did not own slaves, they benefited from slavery because it ensured that there was a group of people, namely Black Americans, both slaves and free, who were considered beneath them. Interestingly, it seems to me that American assume that all slave societies function in this way: in George R.R. Martin’s A Dance of Dragons, a slave apologist explains why the abolition of slavery prompts so much hatred:
“Slaves grow our food, clean our streets, teach our young. They guard our walls, row our galleys, fight our battles. And now when they look east, they see this young queen shining from afar, this breaker of chains. The Old Blood cannot suffer that. Poor men hate her too. Even the vilest beggar stands higher than a slave. This dragon queen would rob him of that consolation.”
Again, this is a very American way of thinking about slavery. Does such an explanation work for slavery in ancient Athens? Many scholars would agree, but people like S. Lape and K. Vlassopoulos would disagree. In particular Vlassopoulos argues that slaves would benefit from the legal protections that were given to all free men, since it was hard to distinguish slaves from free men on solely aesthetic grounds. The benefit of this confusion is perhaps easier to consider when we remember that Athens, like the rest of antiquity, did not have a police force. If one was wandering the hills of Attica and was beset on by a haughty aristocrat, one would have to rely on his or her wits or the threat of future legal action (as well as a possible feud).
Lape’s focuses on a different aspect of Athenian democratic ideology. In her analysis of the comedies of Menander, she points out that the result of aristocratic noble raping poor Athenian maidens is a certain leveling of social and economic status. This leveling results because the rape means that the aristocratic man is now at the mercy of the poorer family and he then has a reason to marry a girl who lacks a dowry, since marrying a poor girl is better than facing a lawsuit for a rape.
Lape points to a particular passage in Menander that points out how the mere presence of an aristocratic man in a poor farming community was enough to trigger fear of rape:
Γοργίας: ἔργον δοκεῖς μοι φαῦλον ἐζηλωκέναι,
πείσεν νομίζων ἐξαμαρτεῖν παρθένον
ἐλευθέραν ἤ καιρὸν ἐπιτηρῶν τινα
κατεργάσασαθι πρᾶγμ θανάτων ἄξιον
πολλῶν. Dyskolos, 289-93
But what Lape leaves out is that after Gorgias threatens the aristocratic Sostratos with these comments, Gorgias’ slave Daos cheers him on (301). Is Menander pointing to how poor farmers and slaves could find common ground in wanting to protect themselves against aristocrats?
“Slaves grow our food, clean our streets, teach our young. They guard our walls, row our galleys, fight our battles. And now when they look east, they see this young queen shining from afar, this breaker of chains. The Old Blood cannot suffer that. Poor men hate her too. Even the vilest beggar stands higher than a slave. This dragon queen would rob him of that consolation.”
Again, this is a very American way of thinking about slavery. Does such an explanation work for slavery in ancient Athens? Many scholars would agree, but people like S. Lape and K. Vlassopoulos would disagree. In particular Vlassopoulos argues that slaves would benefit from the legal protections that were given to all free men, since it was hard to distinguish slaves from free men on solely aesthetic grounds. The benefit of this confusion is perhaps easier to consider when we remember that Athens, like the rest of antiquity, did not have a police force. If one was wandering the hills of Attica and was beset on by a haughty aristocrat, one would have to rely on his or her wits or the threat of future legal action (as well as a possible feud).
Lape’s focuses on a different aspect of Athenian democratic ideology. In her analysis of the comedies of Menander, she points out that the result of aristocratic noble raping poor Athenian maidens is a certain leveling of social and economic status. This leveling results because the rape means that the aristocratic man is now at the mercy of the poorer family and he then has a reason to marry a girl who lacks a dowry, since marrying a poor girl is better than facing a lawsuit for a rape.
Lape points to a particular passage in Menander that points out how the mere presence of an aristocratic man in a poor farming community was enough to trigger fear of rape:
Γοργίας: ἔργον δοκεῖς μοι φαῦλον ἐζηλωκέναι,
πείσεν νομίζων ἐξαμαρτεῖν παρθένον
ἐλευθέραν ἤ καιρὸν ἐπιτηρῶν τινα
κατεργάσασαθι πρᾶγμ θανάτων ἄξιον
πολλῶν. Dyskolos, 289-93
But what Lape leaves out is that after Gorgias threatens the aristocratic Sostratos with these comments, Gorgias’ slave Daos cheers him on (301). Is Menander pointing to how poor farmers and slaves could find common ground in wanting to protect themselves against aristocrats?