Abstract

This recent harvest of books on ancient slavery shows that, thirty years after Moses Finley's Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology, the central themes of that seminal study remain lively topics in classical studies. The nature of slavery and the long-term dynamics of ancient slave systems are still vigorously contested. Above all, these newer works reflect an abiding and shared sense of epistemological limits: even as our understanding of ancient slavery grows, the extent of our ignorance and the decisive role of our starting assumptions come into clearer focus.