alternatehistory.com
Slavery
We first must be candid about what is to be reconciled. On the one hand the Hellenes, or those of Hellas originale and Anatolia, were a nation under occupation from an imperial power. Autonomy had been stripped from a multitude of tribes and cities that had known only sovereignty. The authority of the Persian King was not a matter of lip service, it was exercised by a fully equipped satrap, under whom served governors, under whom served numerous officials and men under arms. Persian garrisons in robust fortifications occupied many strong points across Hellas, not simply to defend the Imperial frontier from exterior aggressors but to control key avenues of communication and commerce between the regions of Hellas itself, and to discourage behaviour displeasing to the interests of the Persian Empire. Those few regions who initially retained a notional independence were, nonetheless, yoked to Persian interests and had no possible recourse to taking positions in foreign affairs and defense contrary to the interests of the Great King. Nor was the stripping of indigenous authority solely confined to matters of foreign policy; even from the start Persian interference could be expected in matters of communal governance, from the procedures of Athenian lawcourts to the powers of the Boiotian federation to the form of the Argive constitution. This was, if it had ever been, no longer a matter of the symbolic gifts of earth and water, but a nation in its entirety made servant to another.
Laying matters out thus we cannot but conclude that for the Hellenes to attempt rebellion against the Persians was not only inevitable, not only understandable, but perhaps even justifiable. But then we come to the other hand.
On the other hand, the genesis of the Great Revolt of Hellas was neither the return of Xerxes to his domains over the Sea, nor a moment of military weakness on the part of the local forces of Persia, nor even through an inciting incident of mistreatment. The proximate cause of this tumult was, in fact, through the behaviour of fellow Hellenes, the newly independent Kingdom of the Messenians. The Messenians had experienced something unknown to almost any people in history, they had been a nation-in-slavery to the Lakedaimonians. Theirs was a collective memory of brutality and bondage, and so strong was their sense of justice that they would not suffer slaves upon their soil for almost any reason upon their resurrection as a nation. It was an astonishingly radical act in a time when enslavement through war or even debt was an unquestioned aspect of life in Hellas. So it was that many other Hellenes were roused to fury, and no small amount of fear, through imaginings of slave insurrections or even the mass flight of slaves to Messenia and potential freedom. Regardless of any other questions of talent, temperament, or nobility, we must state that the satrap, Mardonios, refused to countenance the sanction of Messenia for this act, nor forcing the Messenians to rescind the decision. And thus the Great Revolt began.
Justifiable though rebellion was against an imperial occupier we cannot ignore that the specific motivation of this revolt of Hellenes was the preservation of a slaving society, driven by the fear of the numerous aristocratic clans and well-off of society that their entire order of life would be swept away, dependent as it was on unfree labour.
This makes evaluating whether or not the Great Revolt constitutes a just war, a just insurrection, considerably more difficult than in many other instances of imperial occupation. If one is too tempted to credit the Persians as any sort of anti-slaving force in antiquity we must also remember that slavery existed as an institution throughout the demesne of the Great King, from Marqandar to Sardes. It has in many annals and histories, ancient and recent, been reported that the Persians disapproved of slavery or, at best, reluctantly tolerated it, we can be assured that this is an outrageous falsehood. Even a smattering of the classics will permit us to read the documents of sale dating to the First Iranian era in which Persian notaries, officials, and aristocrats buy and sell slaves between one another and between themselves and locals. This was not an imperial state that disapproved of slavery, either among their subjects or among those men who constituted the imperial governerial class. Yet this does not erase the fact that a great part of the Hellenes were motivated to war, in the face of tall odds, primarily to defend the integrity of slavery as an institution, and that the Persian Empire was capable of defending a people who detested slavery and would gladly have abolished it as an institution in totality.
Further complicating matters is the course of events during the Great Revolt itself. For on the one hand, we are familiar with infamous atrocities committed against the Hellenes across this, mostly infamously with the destruction of the city of Amphissa, and that these incidents are atrocities is unquestionable. Even those who have on the whole excluded or omitted the excesses of the Persian Empire have been forced to confront these deeds, where they are concerned with Hellenes at all. Unlike such apologists we cannot excuse this as momentary passion or accident or poor judgement on the part of Mardonios. We can confidently say through many prior examples, including in Hellas, that the Persian kings did not disapprove of such things in principle whatsoever, the objection of Xerxes was such an important decision being taken without his authorisation.
And then, on the other hand, the Messenians were fully convinced that most of Hellas was after their heads, indeed fearing that they would be returned to a state of slavery as punishment for their transgressions. Nor was this an unreasonable assumption given the ideological nature and intensity of the anger directed towards them. The fact that many of the insurgent Hellenes held more anger towards the Messenians than the Persians during the Great Revolt is a further complication to a simple reading of affairs. And neither can it be taken for granted that the Messenians were simply medisers, or imperial toadies, by choosing to side with the Persian king over fellow Hellenes. Even close contemporaries in free Hellenic territories such as Herodotos considered the Messenian alignment with the Persians to be justified, and entirely granted this to be a decision reached in full agency by the Messenians without any coercion from the Persians being necessary. We cannot claim this is the case for numerous other Hellenes who supported the Persians, instead motivated either through the pursuit of ancient grudges, the maintenance of power they had acquired under the Persian yoke, or through Persian coercion. But do we then find ourselves claiming that such people were morally inferior or less justified in their foreign policy than those who actively, knowingly launched a mass revolt in order to maintain the institution of slavery?
What is certain is that we cannot rely on any one of the accounts originale of the conflict to guide us in our quest to evaluate whether or not the Great Revolt was a just war for either party. For these ancients the matter is simple. For those predisposed against the Persians the Revolt was a mistimed, hastily improvised, and poorly executed war for liberation against the Mede, hampered by the base motivations of its genesis and doomed to failure, which the Persians harshly punished. They instead look to the later campaigns of Herodotos as an exemplar of resistance against Xerxes and the Persians, and such the matter is closed to their satisfaction. For those predisposed to support the Persians, this is a defensive war against an entire nation of would-be-Lakedaimonians, all of whom were simply means and opportunity away from subjecting entire peoples to bondage in exactly the same manner as the destroyed Spartans. To such observers this is another indication that Xerxes, and the Persians, valued justice and had no tolerance for anything resembling the unnatural practices of the Spartans, that this was an almost spiritual cause for the Persian Empire. Indeed, to many non-Hellenic observers the Hellenes were considered practically barbarians in this time anyway, thus leading them to characterise this struggle as effectively one would a particularly large raid of Skythians against the lands of Asia.
Such is the depravity of the institution of slavery that those capable of pragmatism may be cast as heroes, and that men whose causes were just could never consider for a moment that their active defense of slavery in any way compromised their goals of liberty or righteousness. Generations of men observing these events afterwards have themselves never questioned the presence of slavery in these societies, its ubiquity, or the rationality of the Hellenic cause even if it proved ultimately futile. We must, as new men, must grapple with these problems unclouded by the touch of that most dreadful institution.
The only ‘safe’ conclusion in this sorry affair is that one can, in full knowledge and good conscience, cast the Messenians as just actors throughout. This body of Hellenes first acted as radical liberators within their own lands without in any way making offensive actions against other Hellenes, without threatening war or seeking to undermine their fellows by deliberate craft, and then when their fellows came for them the Messenians acted solely to defend their lands, their cities, their people, and their freedom, never taking part in any offensive actions against other Hellenes nor, so far as we are aware, in any of the atrocities committed by the Persians against the Hellenes in the putting down of the Revolt. They cannot be characterised as aggressors through the cause of the tumult nor as medisers by standing alongside the Persians through such times.
We must now, however, dive into murkier waters. We must resolve the character of the other parties in the conflict, fearing not to untangle a knot merely because of its complexity. Strand by strand, we will emerge with definite and justified conclusions, and determine ultimately which of the two greater factions held just cause in the Great Revolt of *478 BCE.
One unintended consequence of the new Persysgi order in Elladiya was a new perennial menace- Elladik slave raids. The Elladik way of life, or more accurately the way of life for those of high station, was entirely reliant on slave labour in this period. The majority of such slaves came from destitute families or through prisoners captured in war. But with incorporation into the Persysgi came an entire halt to conflicts between the different poleis states of Elladiya argida, not to mention the destruction of the Lagedaimonian order whereby one could maintain entire tribes or ethnic groups as a slave class. Nor, indeed, could one hope to rely on debt slavery through the gradual prosperity introduced into Elladiya through peace and the construction of new infrastructure, nor through the efforts of those locals who found debt slavery to be a pestilence on their societies. But for a slaveholding economy things swiftly came to crisis point. Attempts at ‘maintaining’ the supply of slaves, through ‘encouraging’ slaves to form families were frequent, but this was never going to solve the problem. The attrition of slaves in those most desperate of conditions such as the mining industry was always going to outstrip any ability to replace them in this manner, not to mention slaves who found methods to gain their freedom through cunning or persuasion. Nor could the Ellins rely on such slave traders who operated within the Empire they were not part of, as mass slavery was never common within other parts of Asia which generally relied upon other means to generate mass labour. Slaves in most of Asia were a luxury, not a necessity, and were priced accordingly.
There was opportunity here for more unscrupulous slave traders, operating outside of the Empire, to profit from the situation, and so it was that Elladiya’s hunger was in part satiated by those capable of providing larger bounties of unfree men and women. But to many Ellins of this period slaves were both necessity and treasure. The taking of slaves was seen as part of the attraction of war, a great part of the plunder seized from the victim. This was a society that had grown to rely on a constant cockpit of war within its own lands, and those who traditionally stood to gain from such wars, who relied upon them for their power, or who had seen them as their opportunity to improve their station, had itchy palms. Indeed, the potential for profit was if anything magnified now that there was a crisis in the numbers of slaves. Thus it was not enough to rely on middle men to furnish the Ellins with slaves, many Ellins were determined to win them at spear point themselves. This, then, gave birth to the waves of Elladik slave raids that sought every vulnerable place in the Mesogeik not under the protection of the Persysgi King, and at times daring to chance those places under the protection of other strong powers such as Qarat-hadasht. A few infamous incidents even saw slave raids against free Ellins of Eshpery and beyond, adding to the rancour felt in some quarters against the Ellins who had stayed under the Persysgi yoke. The more pragmatic of the Ellins realised the folly of such actions but found it difficult to punish, particularly when such treacherously avaricious slave raiders simply pulled into ports other than that of their metropolis.
These incidents were at first no particular concern of the satrap Hystapse due to their distance from domains under the protection of the Great King. It was not leading to any particular unrest in his areas of responsibility, indeed it was helping to calm some Elladik quarters, so Hystapse had no great cause to be worried. However, this was soon to change. A particularly brazen raid against Lepqi in *468 BE enraged Qarat-hadasht, and later that same year a raid against Apulia captured citizens both of the Apulsgi Messapi and Gallipolis without distinction. Not only did Hystapse find himself dealing with angry emissaries of these three peoples but so did Xerxe, the Qarat-hadasht not only sending ambassadors directly to him but also rousing their fellow countrymen in Qanane to petition on their behalf. What had been none of the Empire’s business was now an embarrassment, and Hystapse could not hope to retain his position without reigning in the avarice of the Empire’s westernmost subjects. This was not to be a repeat of the Great Revolt, however, unlike the previous time that a satrap had intervened in matters of human bondage in Elladiya. Many Ellins already considered these most foolish attempts at predation to be total folly, and had realised the level of international anger now thrown squarely in their direction. Their anger at their erstwhile compatriots was genuine, and popular sentiment was starting to turn against this behaviour. Thus Hystapse’s intervention was almost welcomed in many quarters.
The solutions to the problem were not, and could not be instantaneous. In effect the entire economy of Elladiya would have to be transformed to something more resembling that of Asia, whereby the greater part of labour was generated through paid or rationed free men rather than through slaves, transforming slaves into a luxury rather than a necessity. To attempt to do so in one fell swoop was beyond anyone’s skill, the gap was far too great. Xerxe, however, was not going to be satisfied by Hystapse simply throwing his hand up in the air and saying that the necessary changes would happen on their own, eventually, however many misadventures later. Hystapse worked with many poleis to find ways to encourage this transformation more rapidly, but also had to work to persuade many others that this change was inevitable in the first place. The end result was patchwork. Some cities took stricter measures to reign in would-be-freebooters, though the most circumspect of slave raiders could always find a friendly port in Elladiya from which to divest his cargo. Many poleis passed sumptuary laws to actively restrict the possession of slaves to those of higher status, though Persysgi treasure was necessary to achieve this as those owners now forced to give up their slaves were generally given compensation, and many poleis could not afford to provide this entirely through their own treasury. This was not without benefit to Hystapse however, who found himself at liberty to settle and house a considerable number of freedmen with ample reason for gratitude towards himself and the Persysgi state, not to mention a large number of poleis with some amount of monetary debt. Indeed, many of the upper classes of these same poleis were now even more divorced from the lives of the common citizens through their possession of slaves, and the sensation of jealous eyes only made such elites more dependent on the satrap’s patronage and support.
The end result was not a slave-free Elladiya, as more wishful thinkers would like to imagine. They simply became less visible and less central to the working economy of Ellins whilst remaining very much part of daily life, as it was in the rest of Asia. But this was still an immense change in the nature of the dreadful institution in Elladiya, improvised and halfhearted and patchwork though these measures and their implementation were. Indeed, the most radical change did not come through instantaneous action at the hands of lawgivers and Hystapse, but through the gradual changes as Elladiya’s economy adjusted and adapted over decades. Landowners effectively bought up the land and labour of poorer farmers, creating grand decentralised estates. These estates and others in need of mass labour increasingly relied upon wage workers drawn from the poor and desperate. Though in legal terms their situation remained one of total bondage many personal slaves to these rich landowners, and the wealthy in general, would come to have almost higher social status than the newer wage workers. Temples and their extended holdings/dependents also came to hold a far greater economic significance than previously, though not anywhere close to the same level of temples in Babylon or much of the rest of Asia, not in this period at least. Those seeking their fortunes in Elladiya, or those poleis looking to generate prosperity, could not rely on slavery or the slave trade to provide it in the same way as previously, which actually encouraged commercial activity with the rest of the Persysgi Empire, among other means of seeking their fortune.
Those who could not or would not tolerate this state of affairs always had the option of departing for the free Elladik lands further west, where no such things had come to pass. Indeed, for this fresh wave of emigration westwards the lands of Eshpery were the land of luxury, where even a moderately well off man could live his days comfortably provided for by slaves with almost no cares in the world. Though slavery resembled its form in Elladiya argida this vision of paradise was not, in fact, the reality of life in these places. For one thing, the supply of slaves as needed was not remotely threatened so the same desperate urge to acquire them as though one would never have access again wasn’t present in these societies. For another, debt-slavery had been ended in most of the Italiot poleis, so the only way to really acquire slaves was through war, and things were a little different on that score. Unlike Korinthos or somewhere else in the homeland the poleis of Eshpery had to live and deal with the other peoples of that peninsula. Even by the *460s conquests were being attempted of previously non-Elladik lands of the peninsula but this was often against large coalitions of Eshpersgi peoples and not fought as casual cross-border skirmishes in the hunt for slaves. The majority of such would-be-buccaneers did ultimately find service in these conquests, being mostly seen as useful idiots. Those immigrants who saw the Mesogeik Sea as a playground would almost always, sooner or later, meet their demise, though those who did not had a tendency to cause significant trouble later down the line.
We must unite to burn down the New Sparta!
Rise up in arms Varvarines, for the Theartin King means to make us a slave-nation, the Heilotes of the current age!
Already the Alfine nation has been made a plantation of Theartins and Vrojhmons!
We must meet these barbarians as the warriors of the gods, we must remind them what happens to those who seek glory and wealth through human bondage!
Take up arms for our liberty and the liberty of our children!
Μηδίζω! THE WORLD OF ACHAEMENID HELLAS
CHAPTER 8: KAKIA or ZURA
On the Constitution of a Just War by Kitas Kampanikos *1659 CE
The Great Revolt Chapter 1
CHAPTER 8: KAKIA or ZURA
On the Constitution of a Just War by Kitas Kampanikos *1659 CE
The Great Revolt Chapter 1
We first must be candid about what is to be reconciled. On the one hand the Hellenes, or those of Hellas originale and Anatolia, were a nation under occupation from an imperial power. Autonomy had been stripped from a multitude of tribes and cities that had known only sovereignty. The authority of the Persian King was not a matter of lip service, it was exercised by a fully equipped satrap, under whom served governors, under whom served numerous officials and men under arms. Persian garrisons in robust fortifications occupied many strong points across Hellas, not simply to defend the Imperial frontier from exterior aggressors but to control key avenues of communication and commerce between the regions of Hellas itself, and to discourage behaviour displeasing to the interests of the Persian Empire. Those few regions who initially retained a notional independence were, nonetheless, yoked to Persian interests and had no possible recourse to taking positions in foreign affairs and defense contrary to the interests of the Great King. Nor was the stripping of indigenous authority solely confined to matters of foreign policy; even from the start Persian interference could be expected in matters of communal governance, from the procedures of Athenian lawcourts to the powers of the Boiotian federation to the form of the Argive constitution. This was, if it had ever been, no longer a matter of the symbolic gifts of earth and water, but a nation in its entirety made servant to another.
Laying matters out thus we cannot but conclude that for the Hellenes to attempt rebellion against the Persians was not only inevitable, not only understandable, but perhaps even justifiable. But then we come to the other hand.
On the other hand, the genesis of the Great Revolt of Hellas was neither the return of Xerxes to his domains over the Sea, nor a moment of military weakness on the part of the local forces of Persia, nor even through an inciting incident of mistreatment. The proximate cause of this tumult was, in fact, through the behaviour of fellow Hellenes, the newly independent Kingdom of the Messenians. The Messenians had experienced something unknown to almost any people in history, they had been a nation-in-slavery to the Lakedaimonians. Theirs was a collective memory of brutality and bondage, and so strong was their sense of justice that they would not suffer slaves upon their soil for almost any reason upon their resurrection as a nation. It was an astonishingly radical act in a time when enslavement through war or even debt was an unquestioned aspect of life in Hellas. So it was that many other Hellenes were roused to fury, and no small amount of fear, through imaginings of slave insurrections or even the mass flight of slaves to Messenia and potential freedom. Regardless of any other questions of talent, temperament, or nobility, we must state that the satrap, Mardonios, refused to countenance the sanction of Messenia for this act, nor forcing the Messenians to rescind the decision. And thus the Great Revolt began.
Justifiable though rebellion was against an imperial occupier we cannot ignore that the specific motivation of this revolt of Hellenes was the preservation of a slaving society, driven by the fear of the numerous aristocratic clans and well-off of society that their entire order of life would be swept away, dependent as it was on unfree labour.
This makes evaluating whether or not the Great Revolt constitutes a just war, a just insurrection, considerably more difficult than in many other instances of imperial occupation. If one is too tempted to credit the Persians as any sort of anti-slaving force in antiquity we must also remember that slavery existed as an institution throughout the demesne of the Great King, from Marqandar to Sardes. It has in many annals and histories, ancient and recent, been reported that the Persians disapproved of slavery or, at best, reluctantly tolerated it, we can be assured that this is an outrageous falsehood. Even a smattering of the classics will permit us to read the documents of sale dating to the First Iranian era in which Persian notaries, officials, and aristocrats buy and sell slaves between one another and between themselves and locals. This was not an imperial state that disapproved of slavery, either among their subjects or among those men who constituted the imperial governerial class. Yet this does not erase the fact that a great part of the Hellenes were motivated to war, in the face of tall odds, primarily to defend the integrity of slavery as an institution, and that the Persian Empire was capable of defending a people who detested slavery and would gladly have abolished it as an institution in totality.
Further complicating matters is the course of events during the Great Revolt itself. For on the one hand, we are familiar with infamous atrocities committed against the Hellenes across this, mostly infamously with the destruction of the city of Amphissa, and that these incidents are atrocities is unquestionable. Even those who have on the whole excluded or omitted the excesses of the Persian Empire have been forced to confront these deeds, where they are concerned with Hellenes at all. Unlike such apologists we cannot excuse this as momentary passion or accident or poor judgement on the part of Mardonios. We can confidently say through many prior examples, including in Hellas, that the Persian kings did not disapprove of such things in principle whatsoever, the objection of Xerxes was such an important decision being taken without his authorisation.
And then, on the other hand, the Messenians were fully convinced that most of Hellas was after their heads, indeed fearing that they would be returned to a state of slavery as punishment for their transgressions. Nor was this an unreasonable assumption given the ideological nature and intensity of the anger directed towards them. The fact that many of the insurgent Hellenes held more anger towards the Messenians than the Persians during the Great Revolt is a further complication to a simple reading of affairs. And neither can it be taken for granted that the Messenians were simply medisers, or imperial toadies, by choosing to side with the Persian king over fellow Hellenes. Even close contemporaries in free Hellenic territories such as Herodotos considered the Messenian alignment with the Persians to be justified, and entirely granted this to be a decision reached in full agency by the Messenians without any coercion from the Persians being necessary. We cannot claim this is the case for numerous other Hellenes who supported the Persians, instead motivated either through the pursuit of ancient grudges, the maintenance of power they had acquired under the Persian yoke, or through Persian coercion. But do we then find ourselves claiming that such people were morally inferior or less justified in their foreign policy than those who actively, knowingly launched a mass revolt in order to maintain the institution of slavery?
What is certain is that we cannot rely on any one of the accounts originale of the conflict to guide us in our quest to evaluate whether or not the Great Revolt was a just war for either party. For these ancients the matter is simple. For those predisposed against the Persians the Revolt was a mistimed, hastily improvised, and poorly executed war for liberation against the Mede, hampered by the base motivations of its genesis and doomed to failure, which the Persians harshly punished. They instead look to the later campaigns of Herodotos as an exemplar of resistance against Xerxes and the Persians, and such the matter is closed to their satisfaction. For those predisposed to support the Persians, this is a defensive war against an entire nation of would-be-Lakedaimonians, all of whom were simply means and opportunity away from subjecting entire peoples to bondage in exactly the same manner as the destroyed Spartans. To such observers this is another indication that Xerxes, and the Persians, valued justice and had no tolerance for anything resembling the unnatural practices of the Spartans, that this was an almost spiritual cause for the Persian Empire. Indeed, to many non-Hellenic observers the Hellenes were considered practically barbarians in this time anyway, thus leading them to characterise this struggle as effectively one would a particularly large raid of Skythians against the lands of Asia.
Such is the depravity of the institution of slavery that those capable of pragmatism may be cast as heroes, and that men whose causes were just could never consider for a moment that their active defense of slavery in any way compromised their goals of liberty or righteousness. Generations of men observing these events afterwards have themselves never questioned the presence of slavery in these societies, its ubiquity, or the rationality of the Hellenic cause even if it proved ultimately futile. We must, as new men, must grapple with these problems unclouded by the touch of that most dreadful institution.
The only ‘safe’ conclusion in this sorry affair is that one can, in full knowledge and good conscience, cast the Messenians as just actors throughout. This body of Hellenes first acted as radical liberators within their own lands without in any way making offensive actions against other Hellenes, without threatening war or seeking to undermine their fellows by deliberate craft, and then when their fellows came for them the Messenians acted solely to defend their lands, their cities, their people, and their freedom, never taking part in any offensive actions against other Hellenes nor, so far as we are aware, in any of the atrocities committed by the Persians against the Hellenes in the putting down of the Revolt. They cannot be characterised as aggressors through the cause of the tumult nor as medisers by standing alongside the Persians through such times.
We must now, however, dive into murkier waters. We must resolve the character of the other parties in the conflict, fearing not to untangle a knot merely because of its complexity. Strand by strand, we will emerge with definite and justified conclusions, and determine ultimately which of the two greater factions held just cause in the Great Revolt of *478 BCE.
The History of the Mesogeik Sea by Slawaris mav Slawarig (*1723 CE)
The Slave Raids of the Ellins
The Slave Raids of the Ellins
One unintended consequence of the new Persysgi order in Elladiya was a new perennial menace- Elladik slave raids. The Elladik way of life, or more accurately the way of life for those of high station, was entirely reliant on slave labour in this period. The majority of such slaves came from destitute families or through prisoners captured in war. But with incorporation into the Persysgi came an entire halt to conflicts between the different poleis states of Elladiya argida, not to mention the destruction of the Lagedaimonian order whereby one could maintain entire tribes or ethnic groups as a slave class. Nor, indeed, could one hope to rely on debt slavery through the gradual prosperity introduced into Elladiya through peace and the construction of new infrastructure, nor through the efforts of those locals who found debt slavery to be a pestilence on their societies. But for a slaveholding economy things swiftly came to crisis point. Attempts at ‘maintaining’ the supply of slaves, through ‘encouraging’ slaves to form families were frequent, but this was never going to solve the problem. The attrition of slaves in those most desperate of conditions such as the mining industry was always going to outstrip any ability to replace them in this manner, not to mention slaves who found methods to gain their freedom through cunning or persuasion. Nor could the Ellins rely on such slave traders who operated within the Empire they were not part of, as mass slavery was never common within other parts of Asia which generally relied upon other means to generate mass labour. Slaves in most of Asia were a luxury, not a necessity, and were priced accordingly.
There was opportunity here for more unscrupulous slave traders, operating outside of the Empire, to profit from the situation, and so it was that Elladiya’s hunger was in part satiated by those capable of providing larger bounties of unfree men and women. But to many Ellins of this period slaves were both necessity and treasure. The taking of slaves was seen as part of the attraction of war, a great part of the plunder seized from the victim. This was a society that had grown to rely on a constant cockpit of war within its own lands, and those who traditionally stood to gain from such wars, who relied upon them for their power, or who had seen them as their opportunity to improve their station, had itchy palms. Indeed, the potential for profit was if anything magnified now that there was a crisis in the numbers of slaves. Thus it was not enough to rely on middle men to furnish the Ellins with slaves, many Ellins were determined to win them at spear point themselves. This, then, gave birth to the waves of Elladik slave raids that sought every vulnerable place in the Mesogeik not under the protection of the Persysgi King, and at times daring to chance those places under the protection of other strong powers such as Qarat-hadasht. A few infamous incidents even saw slave raids against free Ellins of Eshpery and beyond, adding to the rancour felt in some quarters against the Ellins who had stayed under the Persysgi yoke. The more pragmatic of the Ellins realised the folly of such actions but found it difficult to punish, particularly when such treacherously avaricious slave raiders simply pulled into ports other than that of their metropolis.
These incidents were at first no particular concern of the satrap Hystapse due to their distance from domains under the protection of the Great King. It was not leading to any particular unrest in his areas of responsibility, indeed it was helping to calm some Elladik quarters, so Hystapse had no great cause to be worried. However, this was soon to change. A particularly brazen raid against Lepqi in *468 BE enraged Qarat-hadasht, and later that same year a raid against Apulia captured citizens both of the Apulsgi Messapi and Gallipolis without distinction. Not only did Hystapse find himself dealing with angry emissaries of these three peoples but so did Xerxe, the Qarat-hadasht not only sending ambassadors directly to him but also rousing their fellow countrymen in Qanane to petition on their behalf. What had been none of the Empire’s business was now an embarrassment, and Hystapse could not hope to retain his position without reigning in the avarice of the Empire’s westernmost subjects. This was not to be a repeat of the Great Revolt, however, unlike the previous time that a satrap had intervened in matters of human bondage in Elladiya. Many Ellins already considered these most foolish attempts at predation to be total folly, and had realised the level of international anger now thrown squarely in their direction. Their anger at their erstwhile compatriots was genuine, and popular sentiment was starting to turn against this behaviour. Thus Hystapse’s intervention was almost welcomed in many quarters.
The solutions to the problem were not, and could not be instantaneous. In effect the entire economy of Elladiya would have to be transformed to something more resembling that of Asia, whereby the greater part of labour was generated through paid or rationed free men rather than through slaves, transforming slaves into a luxury rather than a necessity. To attempt to do so in one fell swoop was beyond anyone’s skill, the gap was far too great. Xerxe, however, was not going to be satisfied by Hystapse simply throwing his hand up in the air and saying that the necessary changes would happen on their own, eventually, however many misadventures later. Hystapse worked with many poleis to find ways to encourage this transformation more rapidly, but also had to work to persuade many others that this change was inevitable in the first place. The end result was patchwork. Some cities took stricter measures to reign in would-be-freebooters, though the most circumspect of slave raiders could always find a friendly port in Elladiya from which to divest his cargo. Many poleis passed sumptuary laws to actively restrict the possession of slaves to those of higher status, though Persysgi treasure was necessary to achieve this as those owners now forced to give up their slaves were generally given compensation, and many poleis could not afford to provide this entirely through their own treasury. This was not without benefit to Hystapse however, who found himself at liberty to settle and house a considerable number of freedmen with ample reason for gratitude towards himself and the Persysgi state, not to mention a large number of poleis with some amount of monetary debt. Indeed, many of the upper classes of these same poleis were now even more divorced from the lives of the common citizens through their possession of slaves, and the sensation of jealous eyes only made such elites more dependent on the satrap’s patronage and support.
The end result was not a slave-free Elladiya, as more wishful thinkers would like to imagine. They simply became less visible and less central to the working economy of Ellins whilst remaining very much part of daily life, as it was in the rest of Asia. But this was still an immense change in the nature of the dreadful institution in Elladiya, improvised and halfhearted and patchwork though these measures and their implementation were. Indeed, the most radical change did not come through instantaneous action at the hands of lawgivers and Hystapse, but through the gradual changes as Elladiya’s economy adjusted and adapted over decades. Landowners effectively bought up the land and labour of poorer farmers, creating grand decentralised estates. These estates and others in need of mass labour increasingly relied upon wage workers drawn from the poor and desperate. Though in legal terms their situation remained one of total bondage many personal slaves to these rich landowners, and the wealthy in general, would come to have almost higher social status than the newer wage workers. Temples and their extended holdings/dependents also came to hold a far greater economic significance than previously, though not anywhere close to the same level of temples in Babylon or much of the rest of Asia, not in this period at least. Those seeking their fortunes in Elladiya, or those poleis looking to generate prosperity, could not rely on slavery or the slave trade to provide it in the same way as previously, which actually encouraged commercial activity with the rest of the Persysgi Empire, among other means of seeking their fortune.
Those who could not or would not tolerate this state of affairs always had the option of departing for the free Elladik lands further west, where no such things had come to pass. Indeed, for this fresh wave of emigration westwards the lands of Eshpery were the land of luxury, where even a moderately well off man could live his days comfortably provided for by slaves with almost no cares in the world. Though slavery resembled its form in Elladiya argida this vision of paradise was not, in fact, the reality of life in these places. For one thing, the supply of slaves as needed was not remotely threatened so the same desperate urge to acquire them as though one would never have access again wasn’t present in these societies. For another, debt-slavery had been ended in most of the Italiot poleis, so the only way to really acquire slaves was through war, and things were a little different on that score. Unlike Korinthos or somewhere else in the homeland the poleis of Eshpery had to live and deal with the other peoples of that peninsula. Even by the *460s conquests were being attempted of previously non-Elladik lands of the peninsula but this was often against large coalitions of Eshpersgi peoples and not fought as casual cross-border skirmishes in the hunt for slaves. The majority of such would-be-buccaneers did ultimately find service in these conquests, being mostly seen as useful idiots. Those immigrants who saw the Mesogeik Sea as a playground would almost always, sooner or later, meet their demise, though those who did not had a tendency to cause significant trouble later down the line.
Burn Down the New Sparta Pamphlet, author unknown c.1568
We must unite to burn down the New Sparta!
Rise up in arms Varvarines, for the Theartin King means to make us a slave-nation, the Heilotes of the current age!
Already the Alfine nation has been made a plantation of Theartins and Vrojhmons!
We must meet these barbarians as the warriors of the gods, we must remind them what happens to those who seek glory and wealth through human bondage!
Take up arms for our liberty and the liberty of our children!
- Daeres
- Word Count: 3.5k