Treatment Of Slaves In Athens Essay

Improved Essays
Treatment of Slaves in Athens was respectfully fair. The first slaves appeared during the Bronze Age. The Bronze Age was one of the first stages of Ancient Greece, it began in 3300 B.C. Slaves were considered properties of their owners, they could be traded or sold, but they couldn’t be killed. Slaves had no political rights, they couldn’t vote or own property. There were many different fields of work for slaves and they were useful in many different places depending on their skill level. Slaves commonly worked in private households. Wealthy people usually had more than one slave. In the household, the Master of the slave could decide whether to be mean or nice to their slave. Freedom of slaves occurred only when the master wanted to free them. Slaves were freed by a declaration of the owner stating it was okay for the slave to become free. Once the slaves were freed, they were classed as freedmen, which had the same rights as foreigners or as the Greeks called them, metics. Sometimes slaves were freed to be put in the army or navy.
Diet in Athens depended on social class, and what area of Greece they lived in.
…show more content…
As time progressed foods got more exotic and there was more variety. To cook the meals, slaves or women would cook outdoors or indoors. The Greeks had specials vents installed in their kitchen for the smoke or steam. The Greeks had many different styles of cooking. Breads and pastries were cooked in a circular oven. They also cooked some food over an open hearth. Greeks had many abilities in cooking such as grilling, frying, roasting, boiling, or stewing their food. Food preservation was a difficult process, contaminated food and food poisoning was a huge problem. They then began to dry their fruits, meats and fishes. They also pickled some foods. As for drinks, wine and water were the only available drinks to the Greeks, most of the Greeks really enjoyed

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Slaves in the 1800s were treated not as people, but as property. They would use them to help cultivate cotton in the plantations. The slaves were given enough food to keep them alive and working and shelter that was nothing beyond a shack next to the plantations. There would be slave trades or auctions out in public. They would trade slaves from plantation to plantation just as you would with cattle.…

    • 455 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    • Wine was an important force behind some of the greatest scientific discoveries of our time and thinkers like Plato used wine as a model for their philosophies. To many Greeks, wine conveyed political power, prestige, and privilege and eventually embodied Greek ideals and became more widely available as time progressed. The Greeks believed that they were more civilized because they drank…

    • 809 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Slaves were also torn apart from their families just so the White Americans could make more money off of them. Sometimes, the slaveholders would sell the slaves just to punish them for doing something…

    • 802 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    World In Six Glasses

    • 796 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Beer was considered to be the drink of the common people in Greece. Wine became the fancier drink that eventually became a status symbol for those who could actually afford to drink wine. 4. It became the main beverage in Ancient Greece. Wine was also used to help kill bacteria.…

    • 796 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    What types of nourishments and beverages the host might serve? In ancient Greek host serve wine. Wine was overwhelmed by the nourishment, and the drinks were joined by snacks such as chestnuts, beans, toasted wheat, or honey cakes. All these snacks are intended to absorb alcohol and extend the drinking spree “Keeping one’s guest supplied with liquor is the first law of hospitality.” (Margaret Way) To not bored the guest they had conversations or the host bring out entertainment such as kottabos (a board game), music, dancers and acrobats.…

    • 960 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In ancient Greece hospitality was very important. A person's social status was based on how kind they were. Hospitality was a prominent force in these times and was a generally accepted rule of law. People practiced good hospitality out of love and fear. Some greeks were kind and loving toward their guests because they truly cared about their fellow man.…

    • 557 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    One of the first reasons on how slaves were dehumanized was that Americans brought their slaves to the United States chained up like animals and against their own will. They would fit multiple slaves in ships with not a lot of room, without giving them an adequate supply of food and water to live off of. According to the book, The Interesting Narrative of The Life of Olaudah Equiano, they were chained so close that they weren’t able to move around. As these slaves were chained up and little room to move they had to use the restroom on themselves and also eat in the same place causing the slaves to receive diseases due to all the toxins in their human droppings. Those that survived during the long ship ride were what the Americans needed.…

    • 675 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    They were auctioned off to colonists and made to perform manual labor without any source of pay. Slavery was legal in the 13 colonies, but it became more prominent in the southern colonies. The slaves would worked in fields of huge plantations. They usually had only one or two enslaved workers, or none at all. Some people called for the abolition of slavery.…

    • 736 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Slavery in the Southern settlements benefited the economy and provided the cheapest and most expedient way to meet the demand for labor in agriculture more significantly than the New England colonies. During the mid-seventeen century, the percentage of slavery in the South was a very minor need to sustain economic life. The next century, “Slavery would more; and more come to provide the great source of agriculture labor that white immigration, free or indentured, could no longer till, bringing with it decisive changes for every aspect of American history, all rooted in the need to sustain and accelerate the growing currents of commercial life” (Heilbroner 43). As a result of the reduced emigration, servants had disappeared from most Chesapeake homes.…

    • 624 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Among the economic reasons for slavery in America, there was also a very undemocratic aristocrat class that was composed of the wealthiest that controlled the politics and legislature of the South. The biggest controversial act was the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act which required slaves to be required to their owners. There was a previous Fugitive Slave Act, but it only dealt with slaves who had escaped or left to a free state without their master’s consent. Early codes such as the Barbados Code, denied basic rights to slaves and empowered the masters. Outlined are a series of laws that protect the master from any liability, even if he murdered his slave;“it is further enacted and ordained that if any Negro or other slave under punishment by his…

    • 827 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Even though the free white laborers worked for a full day, they got to control their own work time and what they did with it since they were working for themselves. The slaves were under control and they did not have the freedom to do whatever they wanted with their work time. However these slaves had formed communities that were essential to the success of the economy. Slaves that worked on a large plantation had some freedom within their slave cabin or also known as the “quarters”. This is where the slaves would talk about their owners by calling him names and basically talking bad about him behind his back (“Pre Civil War”).…

    • 1629 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Early Slave Laws Essay

    • 444 Words
    • 2 Pages

    But as slavery went on, the slave owners tried to eliminate their fears of losing slaves by ever-harsher laws restricting their mobility, chiefly by curfews and passes. Also, in the slave states, patrols, often referred to as “slave patrols,” watched the roads for slaves who did not have passes permitting them to leave their master’s property. To cover greater territory and range outside of local counties, slave owners hired “Negro hunters” or “slave catchers,” who operated on their own as entrepreneurs looking to collect rewards for returning fugitives. Sometimes “slave hunters” acted as agents of slave owners trying to return fugitives who had managed to escape from the local area. Many of these slave hunters had packs of dogs trained to trace, tree, and attack black fugitives.…

    • 444 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The Growth of Slavery in Southern Colonies Beginning in the 1680s, planters in the southern colonies began to shift from servants to slaves. Economic, geographic, and social factors encouraged the growth of slavery as an important part of the economy of the southern colonies between the years of 1607 and 1775. Colonial employers had a major problem on their hands, the scarcity and high cost of labor, thus, leading some to turn to enslaved Africans from the West Indies as a solution. This change was unusual as servants were cheap, available, and familiar.…

    • 1130 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    It is often said that during the Classical Period, Athens was one of the most sophisticated societies. James Davidson's Courtesans & Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens, explores Athens’s passion for food, drinking, and sex and the reasons behind their sophistication. I tend to discuss James Davidson ability to provide ample examples and abstract language in order to give the reader a detailed description of classical Athenian culture. Indeed, James Davidson does a great job of describing the Athenian culture and the many connotations associated with the culture, but what really separates this book from others is the author's ability to include opposing arguments and even going so far as to pick a side. Nevertheless, the author…

    • 1010 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Food in Ancient Greece consisted of grains. Wheat, barley, fruit, vegetables, breads, and cake. They grew olives, grapes, figs, wheat, and kept goats, for milk and cheese. They ate lots of bread, beans and…

    • 1358 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays