Attic Orators, Seeing Slavery in Athenian Lawcourt Speeches

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We study Athenian lawcourt speeches (Greek) that exemplify the way slaves are present in them. Slaves may have approximated at least a third of the population of Athens; their lack of legal status, however, meant they had no right to sue others or to defend themselves—not even, if murdered, to find a post-mortem justice for their deaths. They are visible in disputes and often enmeshed in the very process of trials—as informers against masters who could win awards for so doing or more likely as witnesses who were subjected to torture for their testimony. At other times they are the objects of legal disputes from their ‘workplace’: as bankers sued for appropriating vast sums of money, as managers of shops that change ownership, as prostitutes under contract who are fought over by citizen men.