The book brings together contributions originally presented in London in 2007 to commemorate the bicentenary of the law abolishing slavery in the British Colonies. The cover reads ‘Studies of ancient slavery have tended to rely on particular types of evidence – inscriptions, legal sources, and historical accounts – whereas literary imaginings of slavery have been relatively under-exploited. Yet these sources illuminate for us the ideologies that allowed slavery to be practised throughout antiquity with virtually no opposition and further to understand how and why slavery was debated and, to some extent, experienced by Greeks and Romans'. The book focuses, therefore, on the image of the slave which literary and iconographic sources wanted to communicate in various social and historical contexts. Apart from A.'s introduction, in which we are given an update of the method of reading slavery inspired by Marxism, expanding the attention to free work and slave work inside the home, most of the contributions (seven of eleven) are dedicated to the Greek world: on the one hand, literature and philosophy, in particular from Homer to Menander, including the Cyclops by Euripides and the Aristotelian theory of natural slavery; on the other hand, the iconographic representation of slaves (vases and statues). The contributions dedicated to the Roman era come from Horace, Propertius and Martial, along with an analysis of slaves' dreams in Artemidorus. I will concentrate on two contributions concerning Homeric texts, in particular the Odyssey, which appear significant for the objective of the conference.

P. Rankine, ‘Odysseus as Slave: the Ritual of Domination and Social Death in Homeric Society’, interprets three moments in the Odyssey where Odysseus' fear of falling into slavery is presented. In the first episode Rankine argues that Odysseus, under constraint, feels in some way enslaved to Calypso. In the second episode, he fears being enslaved to the Phaeacians. In the third, the tale of the adultery by Ares and Aphrodite told by Demodocus, the enchainment of the god of war can be perceived as an allusion to the risks being run while at the court of the Phaeacians. These interpretations can sometimes appear quite contrived. However, it is true that such an interpretation could be applied to other episodes, for example to the threat personified by Circe, much more dangerous than that personified by ‘poor’ Calypso, or the guise of the beggar which Odysseus takes on when he returns to Ithaca, which is the closest he comes to slavery; in fact, all his time in the house when it is occupied by the suitors can be read, from the viewpoint suggested by Rankine, as an attempt to maintain his rights as a guest, and thus to avoid becoming a slave. It appears to me that Rankine underestimates the position of guest which Odysseus lays claim to at the court of Alcinous. Certainly, it concerns a precarious and unstable protection which is ultimately assured him; however, I would not say that of the various risks he could face, the principal one would be being reduced to a slave. The provocations from the young Phaeacians, which he received during the games, would not be imaginable if his status as a free man (and probably of the top rank since Nausicaa is looking at him tenderly) was not recognised by his interlocutors.

Following the now rarely trodden path of highlighting the didactic function of Homeric poetry, in ‘The Paradigms of Execution: Managing Slave Death from Homer to Virginia’ L. Hunnings considers that the treatment of the slave portrayed in the Odyssey helps to reinforce and to maintain the ‘owning-class ideology’ (p. 52). The ideology of the owner class appears quite schematic, inasmuch as it is based on a portrayal of the slave–master relationship out of time and space, whereas we know that Greek slavery presented very different characteristics during its history. The didactic objective, aiming to teach ‘how to manage slaves', shows itself as a defined taxonomy divided into four subjects: ‘1) those dealing with the practicalities of slave existence; 2) those addressing the necessity for servile acclimatization; 3) discussions of methods of rewarding slaves; 4) the use of instrumental violence against slaves' (p. 54). I here focus on one of these four subjects, the punishment of slaves (which is the main topic of the article). Since A. argues that the portrayal of slaves in the Odyssey anticipates the contents of ancient and more recent manuals on slave running, one would expect a comparison with sources from successive epochs in order to check if there were any influence or if later testimonies clearly differ from the Odyssean model. A study of this would, of course, require a further article, if not a whole book. However, it is disappointing that Hunnings is limited to giving a brief reference to the Oeconomicus of Xenophon (p. 57) and to commenting on the citation of Od. 17.323 which we find in Plato, Lg. 6.776e4–777a7 (pp. 66–7). For example, given that didactic effectiveness should be reflected in reality, it would have been useful to look at the Gortyn Code (IC IV 72), where we find some regulated situations which remind us of some Odyssean testimonials (even although the author's attention has been focused on literary sources). I refer, first of all, to the question of who exerts authority over the slaves within the household. It is interesting, for example, to find two testimonials in close proximity on different levels. In Od. 22.423–7 it is Eurycleia who decides which slaves are to be punished (pp. 59–60); Telemachus, in fact, is presented as a youth who is too young to exercise authority over the slaves even though, at the time of Odysseus' return, he is twenty years old and has already finished his demanding journey to find his father. In Od. 22.465–72 it is the same Telemachus who confirms that the unfaithful slave-girls have outraged not only his mother but also himself (while curiously he does not mention the outrage to his father) (p. 64). After a claim such as this, it would be interesting to discover if the slaves belonged to Odysseus or to Penelope, given that among the assets brought by the queen to the bridal house there could or there must have been slaves. When we move on to the discussion of what the crime is which causes the slave-girls to receive a punishment so grave as death, apart from the lack of respect towards the queen and Telemachus (to whom we can add Eurycleia), their principal fault consists in their sexual relations with the suitors. By doing this they violated ‘the right of sexual access to them’ to which Odysseus was entitled (p. 60). The similarity with the Gortyn Code, which I think is useful to refer to again, could, however, lead us to think that the slave-girls also violated the right of Odysseus to give them in marriage to other masters' slaves (one can consider, with regard to this, how the virginity of the slave-girl is underlined in col. II 11–15). It seems a difficulty to me that the poet wanted to highlight the right of Odysseus to have sex with the slave-girls, an act which would inevitably have been offensive towards Penelope. As for the death sentence inflicted on the unfaithful slaves, Hunnings rightly observes that no mention is made of mitigating circumstances, such as that the suitors could have raped or otherwise exploited them, (p. 63 and n. 24). One could add that, in the same col. II of the Gortyn Code, no punishment of a woman is set out, whether free or enslaved, who is the victim of violence or a partner of an adulterer; the same rule seems to apply for Athens and for other Greek cities. One last observation. I am not sure if capital punishment in the courtyard of the palace should be interpreted as ‘recovery of honour’, and as such be a deterrent against rebellious behaviour, or only just a warning against affirmation of intolerable freedom from any slave. As a matter of fact, a free man's honour cannot be damaged by his own slave. Rather, the fact that the slave-girls are punished outside of the home could find reasonable justification in the necessity of avoiding contamination (even though, as we know, the importance in Homer of contamination as a result of death, and still more of homicide, has been discussed).