ABSTRACT
The uniform condition ascribed to slaves by Greek and Roman legal codes masks the fact that they performed a wide variety of different economic roles, all of which might equally be performed by dependants of free or citizen status. The kinds of services provided by slaves in Greek and Roman households were similar to those required from dependants in other societies. Xenophon describes how the wealthy landowner Iskhomakhos instructs his young wife in her duties, which include training her slave attendants. Nineteenth-century abolitionists were keen to argue that apart from being immoral, slave labour was less economic than that provided by a free labour market. The danger that the presence of slaves caused to civil society was recognised, not because of the possibility of slave revolts, but because of the threat it posed to the survival of the peasants on whom the Roman elite depended for service in the army.
