Beginning from Lysias 1 and Xenophon’s Oeconomicus, this chapter looks at how women shaped the institution of slavery on an interpersonal level, using enslaved household members to construct and secure their own positions by establishing and maintaining a hierarchy of labour, sexuality, and dignity. It analyses the cross-generic trope of free women colluding with enslaved women and argues that it ‘refracts’ of a reality of close (though forced) interaction and cooperation in the context of profoundly unequal power relations. Similarly, portrayals of enslaved women in the sepulchral iconography of their enslavers express and reflect a complex interaction between intimacy and hierarchy. Monuments erected for enslaved nurses by their enslavers, however, emphasise inclusion rather than distinction. The chapter argues that free Athenian women’s relationships with women they kept in slavery loomed large on their emotional landscapes and were characterised by an uneasy forced intimacy which was exploited by the enslaving women.