Knowledge Bank

Athenian authors of the Classical Period (510—323 BCE) often use beauty to distinguish between the slave and the master. Perhaps the most notorious among these authors is Aristotle (384—322 BCE), who repeatedly argues that certain people— the physically and mentally ugly— are slaves by nature, whereas other people— the physically and mentally beautiful— are masters by nature. By the time of Greece's later Roman Period (146 BCE — 324 CE), a new genre of writing in both Greek and Latin, the novel, offered new depictions of enslavement. All five of the surviving Ancient Greek novels have as protagonists a pair of young and exceptionally beautiful people who, after falling in love with each other, find themselves enslaved. Moreover, the novelists often represent the enslavement of their protagonists in a sympathetic manner. Some modern authors interpret this representation as a shift away from Classical Athenian ideologies of enslavement. In this thesis, I argue that although the novelists initially seem to subvert Athenian ideologies of enslavement, it is often the exceptions which prove the rule, and closer inspection reveals that the novels actually work to reify these ideologies. The novelists do not problematize all slavery, but rather specific cases wherein the wrong type of person— the master by nature— has been enslaved. By articulating a contrast between the beautiful protagonists, for whom enslavement is unpleasant and unusual, and the ugly common slaves whom the protagonists are surrounded by, for whom slavery is intrinsic and even beneficial, the novelists endorse Classical Athenian stereotypes concerning natural masters and natural slaves.