Slavery in ancient Greece was considered not only necessary but natural; neither the Stoics nor the Early Christians questioned the practice. However, some isolated debate began to appear, notably in Socratic dialogues, as early as the 4th century BC. Although slaves as dependent groups existed, such as the Penestae of Thessaly, the Spartan Helots or even the Klarotes of Crete, these were more like Medieval serfs. Other parts of Greece practiced chattel slavery, where the individual is deprived of liberty and forced to submit to an owner who may buy, sell, or lease him or her as one might any chattel good. The study of slavery in Ancient Greece poses a number of significant methodological problems. Documentation is disjointed and very fragmented, focusing on the city of Athens. No treatise is specifically devoted to the subject. Judicial pleadings of the 4th century BC were interested in slavery only as a source of revenue. Comedy and tragedy represented stereotypes. Iconography made no substantial differentiation between slave and craftsman. Even the terminology is often vague.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Greece

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1814: War of the Sixth Coalition: Blücher's Prussian forces defeated Napoleon's troops at the Battle of Laon near Laon, France. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Laon)

1831: King Louis-Philippe of France created the French Foreign Legion as a unit of foreign volunteers because foreigners were forbidden to serve in the French Army after the 1830 July Revolution. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Foreign_Legion)

1861: Toucouleur forces led by El Hadj Umar Tall seized Ségou and conquered the Bamana Empire in present-day Mali. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamana_Empire)

1906: More than a thousand coal miners were killed in the Courrières mine disaster in Northern France, Europe's worst mining accident. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courri%C3%A8res_mine_disaster)

1952: Forbidden by law to seek re-election, former President Fulgencio Batista staged a coup d'état to resume control in Cuba. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulgencio_Batista)

2000: The NASDAQ stock market index peaked at 5048.62, the high point of the dot-com boom. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble)

_____________________ Wiktionary's Word of the day:

hunker: To crouch or squat close to the ground. (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hunker)

_____________________ Wikiquote of the day:

We are tired of having a "sphere" doled out to us, and of being told that anything outside that sphere is "unwomanly". We want to be natural just for a change … we must be ourselves at all risks. -- Kate Sheppard (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kate_Sheppard)