Close To You

One of the foundational texts of my early studies in ancient history – one of these days it might be interesting to think about which of the things I read as an undergraduate had the biggest influence, or that I can actually remember – was Paul Cartledge’s ‘Rebels and Sambos’ piece*, which was on the reading list for an essay on Greek slavery. I remember it being a right pain to get hold of, published as it was in a Festschrift of which there seemed to be only three copies in Cambridge when at least twenty people were trying to write essays about Greek slavery, but my essay supervisor Paul Millett was insistent that I should read this if I read anything. This would have been 1988; article was published 1985, so cutting-edge research at the time. God, I’m old… The key research question of Cartledge’s article – both derived and then partly answered through careful comparisons with later systems of enslavement – was: Why didn’t Greek slaves revolt more often? This remains a good…