Kampaspē, Slavery, and the Uglier Side of Ancient Greece

When writing a novel about a prince and eventual world conqueror, the modern author must wrestle with how to depict those in society upon whose backs such privilege was built.

Enter Kampaspē, Alexandros’s mistress in Rise.

Although an hetaira (the highest class of prostitute in ancient Greece), she’s still a slave. Not only her well-being, but her very LIFE, depends on the good will of her owner. Alexandros is not a cruel master and expresses genuine fondness for her, even initially offering to buy her free, but that doesn’t change the uncertainty of her status. Writing scenes from her point-of-view allows me to show her reality. Ancient Greece got some things right: the invention of critical reasoning, the birth of democracy, and the, at least partial, acceptance of same-sex relationships. But it got a lot of things wrong. Misogyny was rampant and slavery assumed. As an author, I can’t ignore that.

Ancient slavery differed from American colonial in several important ways, not least that skin color had nothing to do with it. Greeks routinely owned other Greeks from different city-states, although as time progressed, a larger and larger number of slaves in Greece were non-Greeks taken in war. Families of moderate means usually owned 1-3 slaves, but even the largest factory operations owned slaves only in the hundreds, not thousands. Most of Greece was not a slave-society, unlike later Rome or the American South. A “slave society” is one whose economy depends on slave labor and would collapse without it. In ancient Greece, such a definition fit only Sparta’s helot system with state slavery, although by the Hellenistic Age, the economic importance of slavery had risen considerably, and by the late Roman Republic into the Imperial era, it ballooned into true “slave state” dimensions.

But even if Greece wasn’t a “slave society,” we can’t let that blind us to the horrors of a slave’s life. They were described as “living tools” and “two-legged livestock.” THINGS, objects, not people. Beatings were common disciplinary measures, and for a slave’s testimony to count in court, interrogation had to be conducted under torture. In artwork, they're routinely shown as "smaller" than their owners, almost like children.

Nobody much questioned this. It was just the “way of the world”—deeply embedded and taken for granted.

In fact, by the Imperial era, wealthy slaves might own slaves To modern minds shaped by Colonial slavery, that seems to be a very strange concept (both wealthy slaves and slaves owning slaves).

Ancient Greece had no abolitionist movement, and philosophy mostly ignored it as a subject of moral discourse. While emancipation was possible in ancient Greece, it was uncommon. When it came, it was typically in old age, in thanks for a lifetime of service, and/or in a master’s will.

In fact, the modern notion of scientific racism owes to Aristotle (Aristoteles), Alexandros’s own teacher, who, building on the medical Hippocratic corpus, articulated the basics: some people are born inferior as a result of climate, ethnicity, or some innate flaw. “For that some should rule and others be ruled is a thing not only necessary, but expedient; from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule...” (Aristotle, Politics).

So Aristotle (and others) thought people—especially non-Greeks—wound up slaves by “physis”: nature. But the more common, and older, notion was that slaves became slaves by bad luck.

Again, the bulk of slaves became so as prisoners of war: why such categories as “skilled slaves” existed. If, at the end of battle, one had rounded up a goldsmith, teacher, blacksmith, or physician among the enemy captives, one didn’t toss them into the fields or mines to do hard labor. They continued to ply their trade, but gave the bulk of their earnings to their new master. One form of “investment” in ancient Greece, in fact, involved purchasing such skilled slaves. They were costly, but their owner could count on a good return on the investment across years, which is why skilled slaves found it difficult to earn freedom. They were their owner’s “Golden Goose.”

Hetairai, such as Kampaspē, were a form of “skilled slave.” These “companions” (what hetaira means, literally) were trained to read, write, recite poetry, play music, keep up with politics, all in addition to any bedroom skills. In Kampaspē’s case, she was trained from a young age, and if she wasn’t an actual prisoner of war, she was sold into slavery as a result of political rivalry.

Her story is a tragedy. All too often in novels about ancient Greece, famous hetairai (such as Thaïs or Phryne) are portrayed as mistresses of their own destinies, choosing the rich men with whom they wish to cavort. The few historical mentions of Kampaspe paint her similarly, as from a prominent family in Larissa—a point I kept, if with a twist. Yet that popular notion is mostly a male fantasy, and such freedoms came only after establishing themselves. The bulk of hetairai, even at this high level, began as slaves, sometimes of older hetairai who acted as madams. As they aged, hetairai might save enough to buy freedom, but their choices after were restricted.

Kampaspē is my answer to the romantization of Greek hetairai in fiction. When Alexander is suddenly unable to protect her (for reasons I can’t reveal without a spoiler), what recourse does Kampaspē have? She must seek a new master/mistress/patron. She ends up okay, but the life of even a skilled slave is lived on the side of a volcano.

There’s no way around the ugly of Greek slavery. Kampaspē is there to remind readers of it, even if she doesn’t suffer as badly as many did. Because it doesn’t matter how well she’s treated. She’s still a slave. And slavery is never justifiable.

 Further Reading: Peter Hunt, Ancient Greek and Roman Slavery, Wiley-Blackwell, 2017.