This book is not an account of slavery in the ancient world. Rather, it provides a sophisticated argument for how ancient slavery should be analysed by historians. Taking aim at what he views as the prevalent static and essentialising narratives, V. instead argues for a series of overlapping conceptual frameworks that together provide a picture of slavery as a dynamic set of processes that take different forms in different times and places.

There are major pay-offs to this approach, as V. shows through examples drawn from a stunningly broad array of societies from Bronze Age Mesopotamia to the modern Atlantic world. For example, the book convincingly demonstrates the sheer diversity of forms that slavery has taken throughout history, and complicates simplistic narratives of evolution from slavery to serfdom. Yet some will find the book tough going as it wades into theories drawn from various fields such as cognitive science and anthropology to develop abstract typologies. Overall, however, the book succeeds in breaking down old conceptions and forcing us to view ancient slavery in a new light.

This review will highlight the principal new insights that challenge conventional understandings. Full disclosure, however, first requires that this reviewer acknowledge that she has published a book on slavery in ancient Greece that appeared in the same year as V.'s book (Slaves and Slavery in Ancient Greece [2021]). In many ways, the reviewer's book aligns with V.'s approach. Yet it also perhaps can be viewed as reflecting a static conception of slavery in ancient Greece, and one that relies too heavily on the Athenian example – two critiques that V. levels at standard accounts.

V.'s major contribution is to provide a conceptual scheme that allows historians to analyse slavery from various different points of view. While acknowledging that the definition of slavery as a form of property captures one aspect of slavery through time and space, V. adds two further conceptual categories that provide alternative modes of analysis. For example, the ‘prototypical’ conception of slavery refers to the ways in which societies imagine slaves (for example, as lacking the physical and moral qualities associated with the free). In addition, the ‘radial’ conception of slavery refers to modalities of slavery such as slavery as a system of domination and hierarchy.

Alongside this tripartite conceptual scheme, V. layers several more typologies, including dialectical relationships (master–slave; free–slave; slave–slave) as well as slaving strategies (extraction of labour; revenue extraction; prestige creation; gratification or sensory pleasure; expertise, trust and authority). While the reader can get lost in the multiplicity of conceptual schemes (and it is not always clear how one scheme relates to another), ultimately the pay-off is that slavery is viewed from multiple perspectives and appears as a complex phenomenon that is deeply interrelated with other features of society.

How does this perspective challenge orthodox views? In parallel with the discussion in N. Lenski and C. Cameron's recent volume (What is a Slave Society? The Practice of Slavery in Global Perspective [2018]), V. critiques and dispenses with M.I. Finley's famous distinction between ‘societies with slaves’ and ‘slave societies’. Whereas Finley limited the latter category to five historical societies (of which classical Athens and Rome were two), V. argues that there were many more societies in which slaves played a central role and that Finley's arbitrary and imprecise categories have severely limited our understanding of the diversity of slavery in world history. V. suggests that forms of dependent labour in the ancient world that have been excluded from the category of slavery, as defined by the Athenian example, should be recognised as forms of slavery.

Spartan helotry, therefore, should not be viewed as a type of serfdom, but as a form of slavery determined by the circumstances of Sparta. Similarly, the woikeis of Crete display a particular distribution of privileges (e.g. the right to marry and own property), which are unusual when compared to Athens, but do not disqualify them from being classified as slaves. V.'s broader conception of slavery, moreover, directly challenges linear narratives of a transition from slavery to serfdom in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. V. points out that dependent labourers living in families and cultivating land with minimal supervision were present already in the early imperial period, and suggests that they represent a particular form of slavery that existed alongside the widely recognised plantation or latifundist system of slavery.

V.'s next major contribution is to show that slaves actively shaped the conditions of their lives and were not simply passive victims of slavery. Drawing on a new conceptualisation of identity as consisting of three elements, V. demonstrates that an enslaved person's identity was not fully determined by societal classifications of slaves as property, but also by their self-understanding and sense of belonging to wider groups in society. By highlighting the ways in which enslaved persons understood themselves (as family members, for example, or as practising a certain type of craft) as well as their connections to free and enslaved individuals in wider societal networks such as cultic associations, V. succeeds in recovering the enslaved individual's experience in ways that are not determined solely by their identity as property.

One terminological point that is worth remarking upon is V.'s argument for replacing the term ‘slave’, which reflects the property-based definition of slavery, with the phrase ‘enslaved person’. This change of terminology allows for a perspective in which individuals are acknowledged as persons with identities of their own that go beyond the fact of their enslavement, and it is one that this reviewer has begun to adopt in her own work.

V.'s final contribution is the broadest in scope. He argues that his new conceptualisation of slavery as a diverse and multifaceted phenomenon means that it is entwined with the events of standard narratives of Greek and Roman history in ways that have yet to be acknowledged. Moving forward, accounts of social, political, economic and cultural achievements of ancient societies must better incorporate the role and impact of enslaved persons. As an example, V. suggests that ancient historians must rewrite accounts of the Peloponnesian War in ways that acknowledge the impact of slavery, from the fact of fugitive slaves as a casus belli to the role of enslaved individuals as soldiers and rowers, to the social and economic impact of the enslavement and sale of captives of war. Art historians and archaeologists, moreover, must explore the role of enslaved individuals in the production of Greek pottery and sculpture. More broadly still, historians of Rome need to do justice to the role of enslaved individuals from Greece in the shaping of Roman culture. This directive pertains not just to well-known enslaved and freed persons at Rome such as Livius Andronicus and Terence, but also to numerous lesser known and even anonymous figures who played a role in the cultural and technological transfer from Greece to Rome (and – one might add – also from the ancient Middle East to both Greece and Rome).

While this book is rather heavy on conceptual frameworks and theory, as already indicated, nevertheless it is persuasive overall in its arguments. It should not only change the debate in studies of ancient slavery but also in the broader field of ancient history.