Overview

How did audiences of ancient Greek comedy react to the spectacle of masters and slaves? If they were expected to laugh at a slave threatened with a beating by his master at one moment but laugh with him when they bantered familiarly at the next, what does this tell us about ancient Greek slavery? This volume presents ten essays by leading specialists in ancient Greek literature, culture and history, exploring the changing roles and representations of slaves in comic drama from Aristophanes at the height of the Athenian Empire to the New Comedy of Menander and the Hellenistic World. The contributors focus variously on individual comic dramas or on particular historical periods, analysing a wide range of textual, material-culture and comparative data for the practices of slavery and their representation on the ancient Greek comic stage.

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9780511919985

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'… this volume will be useful for anyone interested in the representation of slaves and slavery as found in our sources for Greek comedy.' Madeleine M. Henry, Phoenix

Compared to slaves in Roman comedy, slaves in Greek comedy have received relatively little attention. This edited volume, which grew out of a conference co-hosted by York University and the University of Toronto in 2008, successfully fills a gap in the scholarship and lays the groundwork for future studies. ...This truly engaging volume ought to be received with enthusiasm by scholars of both Greek comedy and ancient slavery. --BMCR

Author Information

Ben Akrigg is Assistant Professor of Greek History at the University of Toronto. His principal research interest is the economic and social history of classical Greece. Rob Tordoff is Assistant Professor of Humanities at York University, Toronto. His research focuses on Aristophanes, literary theory, social and cultural history and the modern reception of ancient Greek literature.

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