How did Sparta treat slaves?

Spartans, who were outnumbered by the Helots, often treated them brutally and oppressively in an effort to prevent uprisings. Spartans would humiliate the Helots by doing such things as forcing them to get debilitatingly drunk on wine and then make fools of themselves in public.

How did Sparta treat its slaves?

Helots were ritually mistreated and humiliated. Every autumn the Spartans would declare war on the helots so they could be mistreated by a member of the Crypteia without fear of religious repercussion. Uprisings and attempts to improve the lot of the helots did occur, such as the Conspiracy of Cinadon.

How did Athens and Sparta treat their slaves?

Slaves in Athens often worked with free citizens, although they were not paid. They could also live outside their master's home. It was illegal to mistreat slaves in Athens, and they don't seem to have suffered the same kind of public shame that slaves in Sparta endured.

What were Sparta slaves like?

The helots were in a sense state slaves, bound to the soil and assigned to individual Spartans to till their holdings; their masters could neither free them nor sell them, and the helots had a limited right to accumulate property, after paying to their masters a fixed proportion of the produce of the holding.

What did Sparta call their slaves?

They were the helots, the subjugated and conquered people, the slaves of Sparta. Nobody knows exactly what the term “Helot” actually means. Some say it came from the village called Helos that was conquered by the angry Spartans. Others say that it simply means “a slave” or “a serf”.

SPARTAN SLAVES: THE HELOTS

How did Spartans treat helots?

Spartans, who were outnumbered by the Helots, often treated them brutally and oppressively in an effort to prevent uprisings. Spartans would humiliate the Helots by doing such things as forcing them to get debilitatingly drunk on wine and then make fools of themselves in public.

How were slaves treated in ancient Greece?

Slaves in ancient Greece were treated like pieces of property. For Aristotle they were 'a piece of property that breathes'. They enjoyed different degrees of freedom and were treated kindly or cruelly depending on the personality of the owner.

How were girls treated differently in Sparta and in Athens?

Women in Sparta had more rights than women in Athens as well. Spartan women could inherit property while Athenian women had no such rights. Spartan women had the rights to own wealth and property. In Sparta, normally, when a person died, the land would be inherited by the owner's children.

How were slaves treated in ancient Rome?

Under Roman law, enslaved people had no personal rights and were regarded as the property of their masters. They could be bought, sold, and mistreated at will and were unable to own property, enter into a contract, or legally marry. Most of what we know today comes from texts written by masters.

What did female slaves do in Athens?

Many female slaves worked as prostitutes in brothels. They also had to weave or do other tasks for brothel owners. On average, most slaves were expected to complete 250 jobs in one day. If these jobs were not completed by the end of the day, the master often times would whip them.

What did female slaves do in ancient Greece?

Female slaves are known of in occupations such as woolworking, retail trade and wet-nursing. Female slaves worked in craft shops around the agora. Male slaves were involved in the building of the Erechtheon. Prostitutes were mostly slaves working in brothels.

What did slaves do for fun?

During their limited leisure hours, particularly on Sundays and holidays, slaves engaged in singing and dancing. Though slaves used a variety of musical instruments, they also engaged in the practice of "patting juba" or the clapping of hands in a highly complex and rhythmic fashion.

What did female slaves do in ancient Rome?

Women slaves would be used as hairdressers, dressmakers, cooks and servants for rich women. Other slaves worked in small workshops making leather or silver goods or pots and pans. The ancient Roman slaves who had the hardest lives were those who were put to work in the mines.

How did Spartans treat their neighbors?

Spartans conquered their neighbors and forced them to become slaves. They greatly outnumbered the Spartans. A large Greek city-state on Peloponnesus.

Why did Greek slaves not rebel often especially outside Sparta?

Why did Greek slaves not rebel very often, especially outside Sparta? Differing nationalities and origins inhibited organization.

How were slaves in Ancient Egypt treated?

Their legal situation was not clear; they were not a separate and closed social group. They were treated as people and had the right to private property. "There were even cases of slaves marrying Egyptian women!" - the Egyptologist notes. This means that they were not stigmatised or commonly despised.

Did Spartans throw babies off cliffs?

Spartans had to prove their fitness even as infants.

The ancient historian Plutarch claimed these “ill-born” Spartan babies were tossed into a chasm at the foot of Mount Taygetus, but most historians now dismiss this as a myth.

What was the biggest shame that a Spartan soldier could experience in Battle?

What was the biggest shame that a Spartan soldier could experience in battle? To lose his shield.

How did slaves sleep?

Once in the New World, enslaved people were usually still made to sleep in tight quarters, sometimes on the bare floor, and they struggled to snatch any sleep at all while chained together in the coffle.

How did slaves get married?

Slaves often married without the benefit of clergy, and as historian John Blassingame states, "the marriage ceremony in most cases consisted of the slaves simply getting the master's permission and moving into a cabin together." Benjamin and Sarah Manson's marriage, however, had been graced with a formal ceremony.

Were Roman slaves allowed to marry?

Governed by law

At one point in Roman history, freed slaves had been forbidden to marry citizens. This restriction was relaxed by Emperor Augustus who passed a reform in 18 BC called the lex Julia so that, by the first century, freed slaves were only prohibited from marrying senators.

What did slaves drink?

in which slaves obtained alcohol outside of the special occasions on which their masters allowed them to drink it. Some female house slaves were assigned to brew cider, beer, and/or brandy on their plantations.

What did slaves eat?

Weekly food rations -- usually corn meal, lard, some meat, molasses, peas, greens, and flour -- were distributed every Saturday. Vegetable patches or gardens, if permitted by the owner, supplied fresh produce to add to the rations. Morning meals were prepared and consumed at daybreak in the slaves' cabins.

What were slaves not allowed to do?

There were numerous restrictions to enforce social control: slaves could not be away from their owner's premises without permission; they could not assemble unless a white person was present; they could not own firearms; they could not be taught to read or write, nor could they transmit or possess “inflammatory” ...

How were wives treated in ancient Greece?

Women in Ancient Greece were considered second class citizens to men. Before getting married, girls were subject to their father and had to obey his commands. After getting married, wives were subject to their husbands. Women were looked down upon by men and were considered no smarter than children.