what is is true about slavery in the Greek and Roman world?

In the early period of the Greeks slaves were

mainly women captured when a town was defeated and employed as

domestic servants. Later slavery became widespread and men were

also enslaved. Large number of people could be enslaved when a city

was conquered. This was common practice in antiquity. There was

also enslavement by bandits and pirates. The information about

slavery in Greece is patchy and is mostly about Athens. Athenian

households had slaves and estimates range from one to three or four

slaves per household. There were more slaves than citizens. Even

poor peasants had one slave. Slaves were used on farms, mines,

quarries and in households. The largest section of slaves worked as

craftsmen in workshops. The status of slaves varied, ranging from

having no rights to having some limited rights. The freeing slaves

existed, bit was not widespread.

With the Romans enslavement also occurred

through victory in war. There was no enslavement by pirates of

bandits. Only the rich owned slaves. Most of them were bought by

the owners of very large landed estates who needed large numbers of

slaves to work in their fields. The second largest group were

domestic servants in the household of the rich (where they could

perform as many as 55 different jobs e.g., cook, housemaid, butler,

seamstress, nanny, wet nurse, barber, hairdresser, accountant,

secretary, tutor). Mines were worked by slaves as this kind of work

was considered like a death sentence. There were slaves in grain

mills, bakeries, shoe-making, and fulleries. Many prostitutes were

slaves. Educated slaves worked as tutors for the children of the

rich or as state slaves, who were employed as clerks or in the

archives. The Romans were in the habit of freeing their slaves and

the rates of manumission were high. Manumission was even taxed.

Once freed, the ex-slaves attained Roman citizenship and its

rights, including the right to vote. However, they could not run

for public office or hold priesthoods. Their sons could. Some Roman

emperors introduced legislation which gave protection or granted

more rights to slave. Claudius decreed that a sick slave abandoned

by his master would become free; Nero gave slaves the right to

complain against their masters in a court; Antoninus Pius decreed

that a master who killed a slave without just cause was liable to

be tried for murder.