This sharply-focused monograph is a contribution to the recent advances in the scholarship concerning the understanding of slavery in the ancient world which followed Peter Garnsey's publication in 1996 of Ideas of slavery from Aristotle to Augustine, and which include Catherine Hezser's 2005 study of Jewish slavery in antiquity. Ilaria Ramelli's work, like Garnsey's, is predominantly a study of how slavery was variously discussed by pagan, Jewish and Christian writers, though its final chapters consider the previously neglected topic of how in the fourth and fifth centuries certain Christian ascetics, strongly influenced by Origen, renounced the practice of slave-ownership seen as a form of injustice. The narrative arc includes Aristotle and Augustine, but Ramelli is more concerned with a philosophical and ascetic tradition that runs from Plato via Origen to the Cappadocians, and, above all, to Gregory of Nyssa.

After a brief introduction, a hefty first chapter of some seventy-five pages covers the Greek literary and philosophical traditions as well as ancient Judaism. Euripides's portrayals of enslaved noblewomen contrast with Aristotle's defence of natural slavery in the Politics, but most significant for later Christian opponents of slavery will be Plato's drawing on the Pythagorean tradition so that the ‘perfect philosopher is the perfect ascetic, whose perfection consists in justice’ (p. 40). Ramelli also shows how many philosophers took the language of slavery out of its juridical context and applied it to the mind's subjection to disordered passions. Chapter ii considers the New Testament. It includes a review of how early Christians and modern exegetes interpret the Letter to Philemon. Where the former generally did not imagine Paul as owning slaves, some among the latter, such as Ulrike Roth, have suggested that ‘Onesinus was also a slave of Paul, who owned him jointly with Philemon’ (p. 106). Readings vary as to what Paul exhorts Philemon to do. Ramelli favours an interpretation which has Paul urge Philemon to emancipate Onesimus and offers to pay for this, but she stops short of explicitly endorsing this reading (p. 108).

The next five chapters all tackle the writings of the Church Fathers. Chapter iii examines authors or texts up to the early fourth century, including Ignatius, Clement of Alexandria, Bardaisan, the apocryphal Acts and Lactantius, though Origen is largely reserved for later consideration. The apocryphal Acts of Thomas and Acts of Andrew significantly portray converts who not only refuse their spouse's embrace, but also renounce their dependence on slaves (p. 139). In Chapter iv Ramelli examines leading theologians of the late fourth and early fifth century: Augustine, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret, Basil and John Chrysostom. All saw slavery as unnatural and a consequence of the Fall, but differed in what they considered to be the implications. Augustine regarded slavery in part as a just divine punishment to be accepted rather than as a human injustice to be thrown off (p. 153), though Ramelli briefly acknowledges Augustine's concern in Divjak Letter 10* for the plight of the recently enslaved who were being trafficked through Hippo (p. 156). This is perhaps the weakest part of the book, where a more sympathetic account could have been given of what Augustine and his congregation were doing about the slave trade. Chrysostom drew on the philosophical ideal of self-sufficiency to warn Christians off the ownership of many slaves (p. 165), but stopped short of condemning the ownership of slaves outright. Basil similarly held out to his congregation and wider readers the example of Old Testament patriarchs who needed no slaves.

In Chapters v and vi the spotlight is on Gregory of Nyssa. Ramelli sets out his theological critique of slavery as contrary to the design and will of God, who created human beings in his own image with free will. She takes issue with Garnsey's account of Gregory as having ‘[stopped] short of a straightforward instruction to his audience to strip themselves of slaves’, which she ascribes to his studying only what the bishop says in the Fourth Homily on Ecclesiastes, and failing to include an Easter sermon from 379 where Gregory explicitly exhorts the slave-owners in the congregation to manumit their slaves (pp. 173–5). Rachel Moriarty is also faulted for dismissing Gregory's attack on slavery as so many rhetorical commonplaces (p. 188). Ramelli helpfully sets out the link for Gregory between the resurrection and humanity's final return to a pre-lapsarian freedom. Since Gregory believes that the Christian life should anticipate the life of heaven, Christians should now divest themselves of their slaves (p. 186). Where chapter v set out the key ideas, chapter vi relates these to the way of life practised by Gregory's family, in particular by his mother and sister who turned their home on the family estate into a women's monastery in which their former slave-women became sisters and they themselves took some part in the domestic chores (pp. 190–1). Ramelli does not question whether there is any gap between literary presentation of this household and the underlying history. Instead, Gregory's vision is related to the wider social history in which enslavement through debt was the prevalent form of slavery (p. 197), to his related critique of wealth (pp. 194–200) and to Origen's earlier reading of Scripture (pp. 208–10).

Chapter vii looks at the writings and practice of Gregory Nazianzen and then at famous converts to the ascetic life, such as Paulinus of Nola and his wife, and the Younger Melania and her husband. Ramelli substantiates in this way the claim set out in the concluding chapter that for some leading ascetics in the Christian philosophical tradition stemming from Origen asceticism involved not only the expected restraint of appetite but also the renunciation of oppression over fellow human beings through impoverishment or enslavement (p. 251).

This is a good book which will be of value to the non-specialist as well as the specialist historian. It occasionally hints at more happening off-stage – debates about the emancipation of slaves before ordination as presbyters, calls for all Christian slaves to be freed (p. 161), and voices urging slaves to stop work (p. 288), and it refers the reader on through a rich bibliography. Its quarrying of literary texts for history may on occasion seem too sure or simple, but it sets out admirably the theological and philosophical ideas at its heart.