The Ghost of Slavery: A Closer Examination of Freed People in Classical Athens

Abstract

Manumission is often assumed to be the absolute end point of enslavement, since the formerly enslaved are now “free” and therefore no longer subject to their enslavers. However, manumission in Classical Athens was not a clear-cut end to enslavement, and the “freedom” offered to manumitted slaves was incomplete, gradual, and perhaps not really freedom at all. Reading between the lines of courtroom speeches, wills, and manumission inscriptions, it is possible to glean a greater understanding of the obstacles freed people faced in both obtaining and maintaining their freedom within the confines of a slave society. Freed people in Athens often remained forcibly connected to their enslavers through post-manumission obligations and they continued to be treated as servile by Athenian law and society. Thus, slavery continued to “haunt” freed people long after manumission, a disruptive and violent poltergeist that tried to drag them back into a servile past while they struggled to exorcise it and assert their freedom.