Parental Debt and the Enslavement of Children in Ancient Athens (article)

The notion that punishment for the crimes of the father shall not be passed onto the children is a relatively recent one. The ancient Greeks often thought otherwise, as quasi-religious offenses such as curses or pollution, as well as violations of law, could be satisfied at the expense of the transgressor’s children. In antiquity an unpaid debt was a criminal offense that required punishment. Prior to the archonship of Solon, around 592/1 B.C.E., an Athenian citizen could pledge himself as surety for a debt or sell his children into slavery to pay off that debt. The debt slave did not languish in prison or some other confinement but rather worked off the debt. Although in theory he might hope to one day reclaim his freedom, that possibility would seem tenuous in a society in which coinage was not widespread and the economic value of land or objects difficult to determine. In addition, very young children sold into debt slavery and raised as slaves might not question their status, rather they might be unaware of its origin and accept it unquestioningly. Given the short life expectancy of people in the ancient world, no doubt even shorter for slaves, it is likely that most debt slaves died in bondage.

Plutarch, writing nearly 700 years after the archonship of Solon, states that many Athenians were forced to sell their own children to pay off their debts, since no law forbade it. (Solon 13. 3) Among his many reforms, Solon instituted the seisachtheia, the “Shaking off of Burdens” or cancellation of private and public debts, and forbade loans made on the person of the debtor or his children. (Aristotle Athenaion Politeia 6. 1, 9. 1) He brought back to Athens those sold into slavery, whether legally or not. Some had been abroad so long they no longer spoke their native dialect. He also freed those who remained slaves in Athens. (Solon Fr. 36. 8-15 = Aristotle Athenaion Politeia 12. 4)

It would be erroneous to think that these laws applied to any inhabitants of Athens besides citizens. Resident aliens, freedmen, and visiting foreigners could still sell their children into slavery. This distinction is implicit in Lysias’ oration against Eratosthenes, one of the 30 oligarchs who briefly ran Athens after her defeat in the Peloponnesian War. Athenian children could have been assaulted by the 30, he says, whereas the children of foreigners would have been enslaved for minor debts. (Lysias 12. 98) Athenian comedy makes much of the possibility of foreigners selling their children outright or pledging them for debts, such as the Megarian pig seller who gives his two daughters the choice of being sold into slavery or starving. They opt for slavery. (Aristophanes Acharnenses pp. 734-735) In one play by Menander the plot revolves around a non-citizen who pledges his two children, a boy and a girl, to work off his debt (Heros pp. 20, 36, hypothesis p. 3), while in another a Corinthian woman living in Athens borrows a large sum of money from a hetaira and leaves her daughter as security for the loan. (Terence Heautontimorumenos 600-9, based on a play from Menander) This also became a useful accusation in political invective, as one could discredit one’s enemy by suggesting that his natural mother sold him; hence he could not be of citizen status. (Demosthenes 21. 149)

It would be equally mistaken to assume that similar laws forbidding debt slavery of citizens and their children existed in other Greek poleis (city states). Not only are there no direct attestations, but Diodorus notes that the majority of Greek lawgivers prohibited seizing weapons and plows as security for loans but not the person who used them. (Diodorus Siculus 1. 79. 5) The barbaric Thracians who lived on the fringes of the Greek world and provided the Greeks with many slaves were said to have sold their children, (Herodotos 5. 6. 1), though whether debt or some other reason was the cause is unstated. The comic figure Karion, whose name suggests he was from Caria, was enslaved because of a lack of money to pay off a debt. (Aristophanes Plutus pp. 147-148) The possibility of the enslavement of children for a minor debt is considered likely in Plataea, long an ally of Athens. (Isokrates 14. 48)

Profiting from the enslavement of children, and frequently acting as the middleman in the process, was the slave trader. In a comic encomium

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Aristophanes notes how the slave trader provides a service for the wealthy, so they do not have to do heavy work themselves. (Plutus pp. 510-526) Some slave traders who purchased children specialized in providing certain kinds of slaves. Panionios of Chios obtained good-looking boys, castrated them, and sold them to the Persians, who valued a good eunuch. (Herodotos 8. 106. pp. 1-4) Nikarete, a freedwoman and the wife of a cook, had the ability to recognize future beauty in young girls. She purchased seven, trained them as prostitutes, and lived off their earnings until she sold them off one by one as they passed their “useful prime.” (Demosthenes 59. pp. 18-20) Small wonder some Greek parents considered the death of their children from exposure preferable to their becoming slaves or prostitutes. (Terence Heautontimorumenos pp. 632-643)

Fifth and fourth century B.C.E. allusions to selling children into slavery, whether it be its prohibition by Solon or its continued practice elsewhere in the Greek world, also reflects an unconscious ambivalence of the Athenians towards their children, especially sons. A son was necessary to inherit the property and the family gods, and to revere the ancestors. When an Athenian father reached 60 it was customary for him to give his property over to his surviving sons, to live with one of them and be cared for by him. A widowed mother usually resided with one of her sons. The sale of a male child into slavery, like childlessness or the death of a son, meant that there would be no one left to perpetuate the family, carry on the worship of its gods, venerate the ancestors, and care for the aged parents.

At the same time, these allusions reveal infanticidal urges, to rid oneself of an unwanted child. Exposure, however frequently it might have been practiced, had to be done within the first week of a newborn’s life. After recognition and admission into the family at the Amphidromia the child could no longer be lawfully exposed. Of course neglect, differential nutrition, or “accidental death” were still possible means of ridding oneself of an unwanted child but these took time and perhaps, in the case of the latter, planning. Selling a child into slavery, though illegal for citizen children in Athens, could perhaps be done on the “black market” with the child’s disappearance explained away as death by accident or illness. Or perhaps it remained a fantasy, thoughts in which a parent indulged themselves in their darker moments but which never came to fruition.

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