Oration 85

But indeed, not long ago I happened to be present at a dispute between certain men about slavery and freedom—not before judges nor in the market-place, but in this fashion, at a house, for a very long time. And there were present, on the side of each of the two men, not a few partisans. For they had been arguing, it seems to me, on other matters before; and one of them, getting the worse in the argument and at a loss, turned to abuse—as is wont to happen often—and reproached the other with not being free.

And the other very gently smiled and said: "And how, my good sir, is it possible to know who is a slave or who is free?" "Yes, by Zeus," said he, "I know, at any rate, that I am free, and all these men, but that you have no share at all in freedom." And some of those present laughed. But the man was not a whit the more ashamed, but, just as gallant cocks are roused and take heart at a blow, so he too was roused and took heart at the abuse, and asked him whence he knew this, both about himself and about the other.

"Because," said he, "I know that my own father was an Athenian, if any man is, but that yours was the slave of so-and-so"—naming the name. And the other said: "What, then, in this respect prevents me from anointing myself at the Cynosarges among the bastards, if indeed I happen to have been born of a free mother—perhaps even a citizen woman—and of the father you say? Or have not many citizen women, through loneliness and want, conceived, some by foreigners, some by slaves, some being ignorant of this, some even knowing it? And none of those so born is a slave—they are only not Athenians."

"But I," said he, "know that your mother too was a fellow-slave of your father." "Well, then," said he, "and do you know your own mother?" "Of course—a citizen woman of citizen stock, who brought a sufficient dowry." "And could you, having sworn, say that you were born of the man she names? For Telemachus did not at all think fit to insist concerning Penelope, the daughter of Icarius, who was held a very chaste woman, that she spoke the truth in declaring Odysseus his father; but you would not only swear about yourself and your mother, it seems, if someone should bid you, but even about any slave-woman whatsoever, by whomever she ever conceived—just like her whom you say is my mother.

For it seems impossible to you that she should have conceived by another free man, or even by her own master. Do not many Athenians consort with their own maidservants, some secretly, some openly? For surely they are not all better than Heracles, who did not even disdain to consort with the slave-woman of Iardanus, from whom were born the kings of Sardis.

And further, it seems, you do not think that Clytemnestra, the daughter of Tyndareus and wife of Agamemnon, not only consorted with Agamemnon her own husband, but, when he was abroad, lay with Aegisthus; and that Aerope, the wife of Atreus, admitted the embrace of Thyestes; and that many other women, both of old and now, the wives of famous and wealthy men, consort with others and sometimes get children by them; but that this maidservant you speak of guarded so very strictly her duty to her own husband that she would not lie with another.

And besides, you affirm, both about yourself and about me, that each of us is the child of the mother reputed and called ours. And yet you could name many Athenians, even of the very well-known, who later were shown to be supposititious, reared from somewhere, the children not only of a father, but even of a mother other than the one they were said to be. And these things you see at every turn shown and spoken by the comic poets and in the tragedies, and yet you none the less insist, both about yourself and about me, as if you well knew how we were born and from whom.

"Do you not know," said he, "that the law grants an indictment for slander against the man who reviles another without being able to prove anything clear about what he says?" And the other: "I know, for my part," said he, "that free women often substitute children, through childlessness, when they cannot themselves conceive—each wishing to hold fast her own husband and household, and at the same time being at no loss whence to nourish the children; but the slave-women, on the contrary, some destroy the child before birth, some afterward, if they can do it secretly—sometimes even with the connivance of the men—that they may not have the trouble of being forced to rear children in addition to their slavery."

"Yes, by Zeus," said he, "except in the case of the son of Oeneus, the bastard child of Pandion; for that man's herdsman at Eleutherae, and the herdsman's wife, not only did not expose the children they themselves had begotten, but even, finding other children on the road, not knowing whose they were, took them up and reared them as their own, and not even later did they ever willingly confess that they were not their own. And you, perhaps, would have reviled Zethus and Amphion too, before they became known, and sworn that they were slaves, the sons of Zeus."

And he, laughing very ironically, said: "You call the tragedians as witnesses." "Whom the Greeks believe," said he; "for those whom they declare heroes, to these they manifestly offer sacrifices as to heroes, and one may see the hero-shrines built to them. And consider likewise, if you please, the Phrygian woman, Priam's slave, who reared Alexander on Ida as her own son, having received him from her husband, who was a herdsman, and bore the rearing not grievously. And Telephus, the son of Auge and Heracles, they say was reared not by a woman, but by a deer. Or does it seem to you that a deer would more likely pity an infant and desire to rear it than a human being, if she chance to be a slave?

"Come, then, in the name of the gods, even if I should grant you that these are my parents, whom you say, whence do you know about their slavery? Or did you know their parents too clearly, and are you ready to swear about them as well, of each, that both were born of two slaves, and all those still before them, and from the beginning? For it is plain that, if any one of the family was free, it is no longer possible for those descended from him to be rightly reckoned slaves. But this is not possible, my good sir, as they say, that from the whole of time there should be any race of men in which countless free men have not been born, and no fewer than these those who have been slaves; and, by Zeus, tyrants and kings and prisoners and branded men and hucksters and cobblers and all the rest that there are among men—men who have passed through all occupations, all lives, all fortunes and calamities.

"Or do you not know that for this reason the poets at once trace back the families of the so-called heroes to the gods, so that the further ancestry may no longer be scrutinized? And the most of them they say sprang from Zeus, that their kings and the founders of cities and those who give their names to them may not fall into such things as are reckoned among men reproaches. So that, if the affairs of men are thus, as we and others wiser than we say, freedom by descent would belong to you no more than to any whatsoever of those reputed slaves—unless, indeed, you too will be first to trace back your own ancestors to Zeus or Poseidon or Apollo; nor would slavery belong to me.

"Let us, then," said he, "leave the matter of family and of ancestors, since it seems to you so unstable—for perhaps you will turn out, like Amphion and Zethus and Alexander the son of Priam. But you yourself we all know to be a slave." "What then?" said he. "Do all who serve seem to you slaves, and not many of them free, and unjustly enslaved? Some of whom have already even gone before a court and shown themselves free, while others endure it all their lives, not being able to prove their freedom clearly, or those toward whom their reputed masters are not harsh.

"For come: Eumaeus, the son of Ctesius son of Ormenus, a man wholly free and wealthy—did he not serve in Ithaca with Odysseus and Laertes? And though it was open to him to sail home often, if he wished, he never thought fit to. What again? Did not many of the Athenians taken in Sicily serve in Sicily and in the Peloponnese, being free men; and in many other battles, those who are ever made captives—some for a time, until they find men to ransom them, others all their lives?

"Since even the son of Callias was held to have served a long time in Thrace, after the battle in which the Athenians were defeated about Acanthus; so that later, having escaped and come home, he disputed the inheritance of Callias and caused his kinsmen much trouble—he, I think, lying (for he was not the son, but a groom of Callias, like in face to Callias' youth, who chanced to have died in the battle; and besides he spoke Greek accurately and knew letters)—but countless others have suffered this very thing;

"since even of those who now serve here I do not deny that many are free. For if an Athenian, taken in war, be carried off to the Persians, or, by Zeus, be brought to Thrace or Sicily and sold, we shall say that, being free, he is a slave; but if a man of the Thracians or Persians, born not only of free parents but the son of some prince or king, be brought here from there, we shall not agree that he is free.

"Do you not know the law at Athens," said he, "and among many others too, that it does not allow the man who is by nature a slave to share in the citizenship? But the son of Callias, if indeed he was really saved, having been taken captive then, coming from Thrace, after having been there many years and often scourged—no one would think fit to drive him from the citizenship; so that sometimes even the law denies that those who have unjustly served are slaves.

"And what, in the name of the gods, do you know me doing, or suffering, that you say you know me to be a slave?" "I, for my part, know that you are nourished by your master and follow him and do whatever he commands; and if not, are beaten." "Thus, then," said he, "you declare sons too to be slaves of their fathers. For they follow many of the poor and walk to the gymnasium and to dinner, and are all nourished by their fathers and are often beaten by them, and obey whatever those men command them.

"And yet, on the ground of obeying and receiving blows, you will say that those who learn with the schoolmasters are their slaves, and that the trainers are the masters of their pupils, or those who teach anything else; for they too command them and beat them when they disobey." "Yes, by Zeus," said he; "but it is not open to the trainers nor to the other teachers to bind their pupils, nor to sell them, nor to cast them into a mill; but to masters all these things are permitted."

"Perhaps you do not know that among many peoples, and very well-governed ones, these things you speak of are permitted to fathers in respect of their sons—and indeed, if they wish, even to sell them, and what is harder still than these: for it is allowed them to kill them without trying them nor accusing them at all; but yet none the less they are not slaves of their fathers, but sons. And if I most certainly did serve, and was a slave from the beginning justly, what prevents me," said he, "from being now free, inferior to none, and you, on the contrary, even if you were most surely born of free parents, from being a slave more than anyone?"

"I, for my part," said he, "do not see how, being free, I shall be a slave; but it is not impossible that you became free, your master having released you." "What, my good fellow," said he, "could no one become free unless released by his master?" "Why, how?" said he. "Thus: when the Athenians voted, after the battle at Chaeronea, that the slaves who should join in the war should be free, if the war went on and Philip had not come more quickly to terms with them, many of the slaves at Athens, or nearly all, would have been free, not each released by his master." "Be that so, if the city publicly free you."

"What then? Do I not seem to you able to free myself?" "If, that is, you should pay down silver to your master from somewhere." "I do not mean in that way, but in the way in which Cyrus freed not only himself but all the Persians, so great a multitude, neither paying down silver to anyone nor released by his master. Or do you not know that Cyrus was a lamp-maker of Astyages, and that, when he so resolved and it seemed good to him, he became at once free and king of all Asia?"

"Well; but how do you say that I should become a slave?" "Because countless men, being free, sell themselves, so as to serve by contract—sometimes on no moderate terms, but on all the harshest." Hitherto those present had attended to the discourse as spoken rather in jest than in earnest; but afterward they grew contentious, and it seemed strange that there should be no token to name by which one might distinguish the slave from the free man beyond dispute, but that it should be easy to dispute and contradict about everything.

Leaving off, then, to consider about that man and his slavery, they considered who might be a slave. And it seemed to them that whomever a man possesses with full title, as he does any other of his goods or cattle, so that he may use him as he wishes, this man is rightly said to be, and is, the slave of his possessor. Again, then, the man who argued about slavery disputed what the full title of possession might be.

For of a house and a plot of land and a horse and an ox, many of those who had possessed them a long time had been shown to hold them unjustly, some even having received them from their fathers; so likewise a man too might be unjustly possessed. For of those who acquire slaves, just as all other things, some receive them from others, either by gift or inheritance or purchase, while some from the beginning have those born in their own household, whom they call house-bred. And a third manner of acquisition is when a man, having taken a captive in war or having seized booty, holds him in this way, having enslaved him—which, I think, is the eldest of all. For the first men who became slaves were not likely to have sprung from slaves at the start, but, overcome by piracy or in war, were thus forced to serve their captors.

This, then, the most ancient manner, from which all the rest depend, is exceedingly weak and has nothing firm; for whenever those men are able to escape again, nothing prevents their being free, as having served unjustly; so that they never were slaves before either. And sometimes they have not only themselves escaped slavery, but even enslaved their masters. And here at once, as they say, when the potsherd has fallen the other way, everything becomes the opposite of what it was before. One of those present, then, said that those men themselves perhaps would not be called slaves, but to those born of them, the second and the third generation, the name would now properly belong. "And how?

"For if being captured makes a man serve, this would belong more to the very men captured than to those born of them; but if it is being born of slaves, plainly, being born of free men—of the captured—those after them would not be slaves. And indeed we see those Messenians, after how many years they recovered not only their freedom but also their own land.

"For when the Lacedaemonians were defeated at Leuctra by the Thebans, the Thebans, having marched into the Peloponnese with their allies, compelled the Lacedaemonians to give back the Messenian land, and all who were born of those who formerly served among the Lacedaemonians, those called Helots, they settled again in Messene. And no one says that the Thebans did these things unjustly, but rightly and most nobly. So that if this manner of possession is not just, from which all the rest have their beginning, it is likely that there is no other either, and that no one in truth is truly called a slave.

"But perhaps the slave was not so called from the beginning—the one for whose body a man has paid down silver, or whoever is born of those called slaves, as the many suppose—but much rather the man who is illiberal and slavish. For of the so-called slaves we shall agree, doubtless, that many are freemanlike, and of the free, very many slavish. It is as with the noble and the well-born. For these names men of old gave to those well born for virtue, troubling not at all from whom they sprang; but later those descended from the anciently rich and famous were by some

"called well-born. And of this the clearest sign is this: in the case of cocks and horses and dogs the name has continued, just as in the case of men it held of old. For the man who has beheld a horse high-spirited and proud and good for running, not inquiring whether its sire chanced to be from Arcadia or from Media or a Thessalian, says the horse is well-bred, judging from the horse itself. And likewise the man experienced in dogs, if he see a dog swift and eager and keen on the scent, asks not at all whether it is of Carian stock or Laconian or from somewhere else, but says the dog is noble; and this same thing in the case of the cock and the other animals.

"It is plain, then, that it would be so in the case of men too. So that whoever is well born for virtue, this man it is fitting to call noble, even if no one knows his parents or his ancestors. But surely it is not possible for a man to be noble and yet not well-born, nor, being well-born, not to be free; so that it is wholly necessary that the ignoble too be a slave. For indeed, if the use of the words 'freedom' and 'slavery' were to be applied to horses and cocks and dogs, we should not call some noble and others free, nor some slaves and others ignoble.

"Likewise, then, in the case of men too it is not reasonable to call some noble and well-born, others free, but the same men so; nor some ignoble and lowly, others slaves. And thus the argument shows that it is not the philosophers who transfer the names, but the mass of senseless men, through their inexperience.