The purpose of this volume, the first in a series of multi-authored works examining the institution of slavery throughout human history, is to survey the history of slavery in the ancient Mediterranean world. It begins with an overview of slavery in the ancient Near East, then quickly moves to its principal concern, the history of slavery in the societies of ancient Greece and Rome. In these societies slaves were regularly used as primary producers in the key economic activities of agriculture, mining and manufacturing. As domestic servants and administrators, they also provided their owners with a multitude of services. In competitive social and political contexts, they were sometimes simultaneously items of conspicuous display.

The scale of ancient slave-owning varied from period to period and from place to place. In certain instances, especially in classical Athens and in Roman Italy of the Late Republic and Principate, it became particularly prominent. But despite fluctuations of scale, slavery as a concept was never altogether absent from ancient Mediterranean life. Ideologically, members of society were divided into two broad categories: those who were free and those who were not. As the Roman jurist Gaius stated, attributing the coercive authority that slave-owners exercised in the second century ad to universal standards: ‘The principal distinction in the law of persons is this, that all human beings are either free men or slaves’ (Institutes 1.9). For Greeks and Romans throughout their history, slavery was a defining and distinctive element of culture.