stripes fetters and branding, and who make their slaves unceasingly
miserable; but such masters are the exception, and public opinion
does not praise them. Between the best Athenians and their slaves
there is a genial, friendly relation, and the master will put up
with a good deal of real impertinence, knowing that behind this
forwardness there is an honest zeal for his interests.

Nevertheless the slave system of Athens is not commendable. It
puts a stigma upon the glory of honest manual labor. It instills
domineering, despotic habits into the owners, cringing subservience
into the owned. Even if a slave becomes freed, he does not become
an Athenian citizen; he is only a "metic," a resident foreigner,
and his old master, or some other Athenian, must be his patron and
representative in every kind of legal business. It is a notorious
fact that the MERE STATE of slavery robs the victim of his self-respect
and manhood. Nevertheless nobody dreams of abolishing slavery as
an institution, and the Athenians, comparing themselves with other
communities, pride themselves on the extreme humanity of their
slave system.


43. The "City Slaves" of Athens.--A large number of nominal "slaves"
in Athens differ from any of the creatures we have described. The
community, no less than an individual, can own slaves just as it
can own warships and temples. Athens owns "city slaves" (Demosioi)
of several varieties. The clerks in the treasury office, and the
checking officers at the public assemblies are slaves; so too are
the less reputable public executioners and torturers; in the city
mint there is another corps of slave workers, busy coining "Athena's
owls"--the silver drachmas and four-drachma pieces. But chiefest