:: wikimiki.org ::

Alcman

Alcman

Alcman (7th cent. BC) was an Ancient Greek choral lyric poet from Sparta. He is the earliest representative of the Alexandrinian canon of the nine lyric poets (the others being Sappho, Alcaeus, Anacreon, Stesichorus, Ibycus, Pindar and Bacchylides).

Biography

According to the ancient tradition (which was perhaps a construction of Aristotle), Alcman was originally a Lydian of Sardis, who came as a slave to Sparta, where he lived in the family of Agesidas (= Hagesidamus?), by whom he was eventually emancipated because of his good skills. However, the vitae of the ancient authors were most often deduced from biographistic readings of their poetry, and the details are seldom trustworthy. [http://www.lsa.umich.edu/kelsey/galleries/Alkman.gif] (mosaic with a portrait of Alcman, Jordan, 2nd cent. AD; Kelsey Museum)

Transmission

There were six books of Alcman's choral lyric in antiquity (ca. 50-60 hymns), but they were lost at the threshold of the Medieval Age, and Alcman was known only through fragmentary quotations in other Greek authors until the discovery of a papyrus in 1855 in a tomb near the second pyramid at Saqqâra. The fragment, which is now kept at Louvre, contains ca. 100 verses of a so-called partheneion, i.e. a song performed by a chorus of young unmarried women. In the 1960's, many more fragments have been discovered and published in the collection of the Egyptian papyri from Oxyrhynchus. Most of these fragments contain partheneions, but there are also other kinds of hymns among them.

The poetry. Lesbian love

Most od the fragments come from partheneions, i.e. hymns, which were song by choruses of unmarried women (Greek παρθένος 'maiden'). This genre has been described exhaustively by the French scholar Claude Calame (1977). The songs were performed during festivals in connection with the initiation rites of the girls. Alcman has probably composed choral songs for the boys as well, but the Hellenistic philologists seem to have been more interested in the partheneions. In the fragments, the girls often express homoerotic feelings, and the ancient authors tell that the Spartan women were involved in same sex relationships, which may be compared to the well-known pederasty among Greek males. The slightly younger poetress Sappho from Lesbos (after whom Lesbian love was named) describes similar relationships in her monodic poetry. It remains open if the relationship also had a physical side and, if so, what sort. Yet, the very fact that the love was codified by a man, Alcman, and even proclaimed during the festivals of the city, is a clear indication that the romantic feelings of the girls were not tolerated silently, but promoted loudly. The choral lyric of Alcman were meant for the cult. The Spartan historian Sosibius (ca. 200 BC) tells (according to Athenaeus): "The chorus-leaders carry [the Thyreatic crowns] in commemoration of the victory at Thyrea at the festival, when they are also celebrating the Gymnopaedia. There are three choruses, in the front a chorus of boys, and to the left a chorus of men; they dance naked and sing the lieders of Thaletas and Alcman and the paeans of Dionysodotus the Laconian." In other words, the songs of Alcman were performed by new girls and boys at certain occasions until the Hellenistic Age. Each choral song was a kind of drama with certain roles, e.g. the role of the choral leader or the role of the beautiful girl standing in a special relationship with the chorus leader.

Dialect

The transmitted fragments are characterised by the Doric dialect of Sparta (the so-called Laconian dialect). It is seen especially in the orthographic peculiarities of the fragments like α = η, ω = ου, η = ει, σ = θ, σδ = ζ, -οισα = -ουσα (the last two of which are not attested in Laconian itself, though) and the use of the Doric accentuation. On the other hand, the fragments also have many prosodic, morphological and phraseological features in common with the Homeric. The British philologist Denys Page comes to the following conclusion about Alcman's dialect in his influential monograph (1951): "(i) that the dialect of the extant fragments of Alcman is basically and preponderantly the Laconian vernacular; (ii) that there is no sufficient reason for believing that this vernacular in Alcman was contaminated by features from any alien dialect except the Epic; (iii) that features of the epic dialect are observed (a) sporadically throughout the extant fragments, but especially (b) in passages where metre or theme or both are taken from the Epic, and (c) in phrases which are as a whole borrowed or imitated from the Epic..." In his dissertation on the dialect of Alcman (2001), the Danish philologist George Hinge reaches to the opposite conclusion: that Alcman relies basically on the same linguistic system as Homer ("the common poetic language"); however, since the songs were performed by Spartans, they were also transmitted with a Laconian accent and written down with a Laconian orthography in the 3rd cent. BC.

Literature

Denys L. Page: Alcman. The Partheneion. 1951. Ernst Risch: 'Die Sprache Alkmans'. Museum Helveticum 11 (1954) 20-37 (= 'Kleine Schriften' 1981, 314-331). Claude Calame: Les chœurs des jeunes filles en Grèce archaïque. Vol. 1-2. 1977. Engl. transl. (only vol. 1): Choruses of Young Women in Ancient Greece. 1997. Claude Calame: Alcman. Introduction, texte critique, témoignages, traduction et commentaire. 1983. David A. Campbell: Greek Lyric. Vol. 2. Anacreon, Anacreontea. Choral lyric from Olympus to Alcman. 1988. Malcolm Davies: Poetarum melicorum Graecorum fragmenta. Vol. 1. Alcman, Stesichorus, Ibycus. 1991. George Hinge: Die Sprache Alkmans: Textgeschichte und Sprachgeschichte. PhD Dissertation, Århus 2001 (not yet published, = http://alkman.georgehinge.com). Category:Ancient Greek poets

Nine lyric poets

The nine lyric poets were a canon of archaic Greek composers esteemed by the scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria as worthy of critical study. They were Alcman, Sappho, Alcaeus, Anacreon, Stesichorus, Ibycus, Simonides, Pindar and Bacchylides.

Sappho

Sappho (Attic Greek Σαπφώ Sapphô, Aeolic Greek Ψάπφα Psappha) was an Ancient Greek lyric poet from the city of Eressos on the island of Lesbos, which was a cultural centre in the 7th century BC. She was born sometime between 630 BC and 612 BC. The bulk of her poetry is now lost, but her reputation in her time was immense, and she was reputedly considered by Plato as the tenth Muse.

Life

Muse]]Sappho, daughter of Scamander and Cleïs, was married (Attic comedy says to a wealthy merchant, but that is apocryphal) and had a daughter also named Cleïs. She became very famous in her day for her poetry – so much so that the city of Syracuse built a statue to honor her when she visited. Her family was politically active, which caused Sappho to travel a great deal. She was also noted during her life as the headmistress of a sort of Greek finishing school for girls. Most likely the objects of her poetry were her students. Sappho had three brothers, married and had at least one daughter, was exiled to Syracuse for political reasons, returned in 581 BC, and died of old age. She was one of the canonical nine lyric poets of archaic Greece. Older critics sometimes alleged that she led an aesthetic movement away from typical themes of gods, to the themes of individual human experiences and emotions, but it is now considered more likely that her work belongs in a long tradition of Lesbian poetry, and is simply among the first to have been recorded in writing. Some of her love poems were addressed to women. The word lesbian itself is derived from the name of the island of Lesbos from which she came. (Her name is also the origin of its much rarer synonym sapphic). Because of its eroticism and of the difficulties posed by its dialect, her work was not included in the Byzantine school curriculum. The manuscript tradition therefore broke off, but copies of her work have been discovered in Egyptian papyri of an earlier period. eroticism In ancient and medieval times she was famous for (according to legend) throwing herself off a cliff due to unrequited love for a male sailor named Phaon. This legend dates to Ovid and Lucian in Ancient Rome and certainly is not a Christian overlay. The 3rd Century philosopher Maximus of Tyre wrote that Sappho was "small and dark" and that her relationships to her female friends were similar to those of Socrates: :What else was the love of the Lesbian woman except Socrates' art of love? For they seem to me to have practiced love each in their own way, she that of women, he that of men. For they say that both loved many and were captivated by all things beautiful. What Alcibiades and Charmides and Phaedrus were to him, Gyrinna and Atthis and Anactoria were to the Lesbian. A major new literary discovery, the Milan Papyrus, recovered from a dismantled mummy casing and published in 2001, has revealed the high esteem in which the poet Posidippus of Pella, an important composer of epigrams (3rd century BC), held Sappho's 'divine songs'. An English translation of the new epigrams, with notes, is available , as is the original Greek text. An epigram in the Anthologia Palatina ascribed to Plato states: :Some say of nine Muses, how neglected! :Behold, Sappho, from Lesbos, is the tenth Aelianus Claudius wrote in Assorted History (Ποικίλη ιστορία) that Plato called Sappho wise. Horace writes in his Odes that Sappho's lyrics are worthy of sacred admiration. One of Sappho's poems was famously translated by the 1st century BC Roman poet Catullus in his "Ille mi par esse deo videtur" (Catullus 51).

Works

Catullus (1877).]]We have a single complete poem, Fragment 1, Hymn to Aphrodite, and three more virtually complete, besides many shorter fragments.

Fragment 16

:These — cavalry, others — infantry :others yet, navies, upon the black earth :hold most beautiful. But I, whatever :you desire. :To make this clear to anyone :is most easy. :Helen, surpassing all men :in beauty, forsaking :the best of men :left and sailed away to Troy. :not thinking of her child or her dear parents :led away :[three missing lines] :now I think of Anaktoria, who is far away :I desire to see her lovely gait :the shining sparkle of her face :more than the Lydian chariots, and armoured :foot soldiers.

Tithonus

A virtually complete poem about old age. The line-ends were first published in 1922 from an Oxyrhynchus papyrus, no. 1787. Most of the rest of the poem was published in 2004 from a 3rd century BC papyrus in the Cologne University collection. The latest reconstruction, by M. L. West, appeared in the Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 151 (2005), 1-9, and in the Times Literary Supplement on 21 June 2005 . A full literary translation is available. The Greek text has been reproduced with helpful notes for students of the language, together with two more fragments of Sappho and other examples of Greek lyric poetry.

References in modern literature

Lord Byron wrote the following lines about her in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: :And onward viewed the mount, not yet forgot, :The lover's refuge and the Lesbian's grave. :Dark Sappho! could not verse immortal save :That breast imbued with such immortal fire? Charles Baudelaire writes about Sappho in Les Fleurs du Mal. The Greek poet Odysseas Elytis (20th century AD from Lesbos) admired her in one of his Mikra Epsilon: Such a being, both sensitive and courageous, is not often presented by life. A small-built deep-dark-skinned girl, that did prove to be equally capable of subjugating a rose-flower, interpreting a wave or a nightingale, and saying 'I love you', to fill the globe with emotion. Algernon Swinburne wrote a poem concerning Sappho, Sapphics, and another, Anactoria, concerning her and her lover Anactoria, which makes Sappho into a rather hyperbolic sadomasochist. The Sapphic stanza is a poetic form occasionally imitated by modern writers, including Swinburne's Sapphics. The superheroine Wonder Woman frequently uses the phrase "Suffering Sappho!" as an exclamation.

References

- Poetarum Lesbiorum fragmenta, E. Lobel, D. L. Page (eds.), Oxford, Clarendon Press, (1955).
- Greek Lyric 1: Sappho and Alcaeus, D. A. Campbell (ed.), Cambridge, Mass., (1982): complete Greek text and English translation, including the references to Sappho in ancient authors. The best starting-point for those new to this poetry. # An example from book 2 of the collected edition: # Partial image: # Translations and notes are available: # The Greek text: # # # # #

External links

- [http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/sappho/index.htm "The Poems of Sappho"]
- [http://classicpersuasion.org/pw/sappho/ "The Divine Sappho"]
- [http://www.ancientlibrary.com/wcd/Sappho Wiki Classical Dictionary]
- [http://www.classicspage.com/sappho.htm/ The sound of Sappho?]
- [http://community.middlebury.edu/~harris/Translations/Sappho.html SAPPHO: The World of Lesbian Poetry]
- [http://www.ancientlibrary.com/smith-bio/3040.html Sappho] from Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1867)
- John Ezard, The Guardian, June 24, 2005, [http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,1513491,00.html "After 2,600 years, the world gains a fourth poem by Sappho"]
- Martin West, Times Literary Supplement, 21 June 2005, [http://www.the-tls.co.uk/this_week/story.aspx?story_id=2111206 A new Sappho poem] Sappho Sappho Sappho Sappho Sappho ja:サッポー

Alcaeus

Alcaeus may refer to several ancient Greek figures:
- in mythology, Alcaeus was the son of Perseus and the father of Amphitryon.
- Alcaeus was also a lyric poet of the archaic period.

Stesichorus

Stesichorus was a Greek lyric poet from Sicily who flourished from 640 BC to 555 BC. He was included in the canonical list of nine lyric poets by the scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria Category:Ancient Greek poets Category:Sicilian Greeks

Pindar

Pindar (or Pindarus / Pindaros) (522 BC – 443 BC), considered the greatest of the nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, was born at Cynoscephalae, a village in Thebes. He was the son of Daiphantus and Cleodice. The traditions of his family have left their impression on his poetry, and are not without importance for a correct estimate of his relation to his contemporaries. While his father belonged to the 'aristocracy', his mother is said to have been a member of the 'rightless' class or maybe even a slave. Together with the fact that his relation with a woman from the aristocracy ended abruptly, this would remain a source of inspiration for Pindar. He felt looked down upon. He got his 'revenge' through his poetry. It is even said that the same girl and his father committed suicide after reading his work. But nevertheless, through his father, he truly belonged to the aristocracy, and from a very early age on, he became familiar with all the intimacies of the aristocratic ranks and titles. This is something to keep in mind when studying Pindar's work. The clan of his father, the Aegidae – tracing their line from the hero Aegeus – belonged to the Cadmean element of Thebes, i.e., to the elder nobility whose supposed date went back to the days of the founder Cadmus. Employing himself by writing choral works in praise of notable personages, events and princes, his house in Thebes was spared by Alexander the Great in recognition of the complimentary works composed for king Alexander I of Macedon. Pindar composed choral songs of several types. According to a Late Antique biographer, these works were grouped into seventeen books by scholars at the Library of Alexandria. They were, by genre:
- 1 book of humnoi "hymns"
- 1 book of paianes "paeans"
- 2 books of dithuramboi "dithyrhambs"
- 1 book of prosodia "preludes"
- 3 books of parthenia "songs for maidens"
- 1 book of huporchemata "songs to support dancing"
- 1 book of enkomia "praise-songs"
- 1 book of threnoi "laments"
- 4 books of epinikia "victory odes" Of this vast and varied corpus, only the victory odes survive in complete form. The rest are known to us only by quotations in other ancient authors or papyrus scraps unearthed in Egypt. Pindar's victory odes were composed for aristocratic victors in the four most prominent athletic festivals in early Classical Greece: the Olympian, Pythian, Isthmian and Nemean Games. Rich and allusive in style, they are packed with dense parallels between the athletic victor, his illustrious ancestors, and the myths of gods and heroes underlying the athletic festival. But "Pindar's power does not lie in the pedigrees of ... athletes, ... or the misbehavior of minor deities. It lies in a splendour of phrase and imagery that suggests the gold and purple of a sunset sky." Pindar is to be conceived, then, as standing within the circle of those families for whom the heroic myths were domestic records. He had a personal link with the memories which everywhere were most cherished by Dorians, no less than with those which appealed to men of "Cadmean" or of Achaean stock. And the wide ramifications of the Aegidae throughout Hellas rendered it peculiarly fitting that a member of that illustrious clan should celebrate the glories of many cities in verse which was truly Panhellenic. Pindar is said to have received lessons in aulos-playing from one Scopelinus at Thebes, and afterwards to have studied at Athens under the musicians Apollodorus (or Agathocles) and Lasus of Hermione. Several passages in Pindar's extant odes glance at the long technical development of Greek lyric poetry before his time, and at the various elements of art which the lyricist was required to temper into a harmonious whole. The facts that stand out from these meagre traditions are that Pindar was precocious and laborious. Preparatory labour of a somewhat severe and complex kind was, indeed, indispensable for the Greek lyric poet of that age. Pindar's wife's name was Megacleia, and he had a son named Daiphantus and two daughters, Eumetis and Protomache. He is said to have died at Argos, at the age of seventy-nine, in 443 BC.

Reference

External links

- [http://classics.mit.edu/Browse/browse-Pindar.html Odes of Pindar]
-
- [http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/10717 Extant Odes of Pindar from Gutenberg translated by Ernest Myers]
- [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0101%3Aid%3Di2s1 'Pindar's Life' in: Gildersleeve, Basil. Pindar: The Olympian and Pythian Odes]
- [http://216.71.135.198/HW/pindar.html Example of Pindar's Poems] Category:522 BC births Category:443 BC deaths Category:Ancient Greek poets

Bacchylides

Bacchylides, Ancient Greek lyric poet, was born at Iulis, in the island of Ceos. His father’s name was probably Meidon; his mother was a sister of Simonides, himself a native of Iulis. Eusebius says that Bacchylides "flourished" in 467 BC. As the term used by him refers to the physical prime, and was commonly placed at about the fortieth year, we may suppose that Bacchylides was born circa 507 BC. Among his Odes the earliest that can be approximately dated to 481 or 479 BC; the latest date is fixed by the recently found fragment of the Olympic register to 452 BC. He would thus have been some forty-nine years younger than his uncle Simonides, and some fifteen years younger than Pindar. Elsewhere Eusebius states that Bacchylides "was of repute" in 431 BC; and George Syncellus, using the same phrase, 428 to 425 BC. This phrase would mean that he was then in the fullness of years and of fame. There is nothing improbable in the supposition that he survived the beginning of the Peloponnesian War. Bacchylides, like Simonides and Pindar, visited the court of Hiero I of Syracuse (478-467). In his fifth Ode (476 BC), the word Efeos (v. II) has been taken to mean that he had already been the guest of the prince; and, as Simonides went to Sicily in or about 477 BC, that is not unlikely. Ode iii. (468 BC) was possibly written at Syracuse, as verses 15 and 16 suggest. He there pays a high compliment to Hiero’s taste in poetry (ver. 3 ff.). A scholium on Pyth. ii. 90 (166) avers that Hiero preferred the Odes of Bacchylides to those of Pindar. The Alexandrian scholars interpreted a number of passages in Pindar as hostile allusions to Bacchylides or Simonides. The scholiasts are right, it would appear that Pindar regarded the younger of the two Cean poets as a jealous rival, who disparaged him to their common patron, and as one whose poetical skill was due to study rather than to genius. It is tolerably certain that the three poets were visitors at hero’s court at about the same time: Pindar and Bacchylides wrote odes of the same kind in his honour; and there was a tradition that he preferred the younger poet. There is thus no intrinsic improbability in the hypothesis that Pindar’s haughty spirit had suffered, or imagined, some mortification. It is noteworthy that, whereas in 476 and 470 both he and Bacchylides celebrated Hiero’s victories, in 468 (the most important occasion of all) Bacchylides alone was commissioned to do so; although in that year Pindar composed an ode (Olymp. vi.) for another Syracusan victor at the same festival. But, whatever may have been the true bearing of Pindar’s occasional innuendoes, it is at any rate pleasant to find that in the extant work of Bacchylides there is not the faintest semblance of hostile allusion to any rival. Plutarch (de Exilio, p. 605 c) names Bacchylides in a list of writers, who after they had been banished from their native cities, were active and successful in literature. It was Peloponnesus that afforded a new home to the exiled poet. The passage gives no clue to date or circumstance; but it implies that Peloponnesus was the region where the poet's genius ripened and where he did the work which established his fame. This points to a residence of considerable length; and it may be noted that some of the poems illustrate their author's intimate knowledge of Peloponnesus. The Alexandrian scholars, who drew up select lists of the best writers in each kind, included Bacchylides in their "canon" of the nine lyric poets, along with Alcman, Sappho, Alcaeus, Stesichorus, Ibycus, Anacreon, Simonides and Pindar. The Alexandrian grammarian Didymus (circa 30 BC) wrote a commentary on the epinikian odes of Bacchylides. Horace, a poet in some respects of kindred genius, was a student of his works, and imitated him (according to Porphyrion) in Odes, i. 15, where Nereus predicts the destruction. of Troy. Quotations from Bacchylides, or references to him, occur in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Strabo, Plutarch, Stobaeus, Athenaeus, Aulus Gellius, Zenobius, Hephaestion, Clement of Alexandria, and various grammarians or scholiasts. Ammianus Marcellinus (xxv. 4) says that the emperor Julian enjoyed reading Bacchylides. It is clear that this poet continued to be popular during at least the first four centuries of our era. No inference adverse to his repute can fairly be drawn from the fact that no mention of him occurs in the extant work of any Attic writer. The first and most general quality of style in Bacchylides is his perfect simplicity and clearness. Where the text is not corrupt, there are few sentences which are not lucid in meaning and simple in structure. This lucidity is partly due, no doubt, to the fact that he seldom attempts imagery of the bolder kind, and never has thoughts of a subtle or complex order. Yet it would be very unjust to regard such clearness as merely a compensatory merit of lyric mediocrity, or to ignore its intimate connection with the man’s native grace of mind, with the artist’s feeling for expression, with the poet’s delicate skill. How many readers, who could enjoy and appreciate Pindar if he were less difficult, are stopped on the threshold by the aspect of his style, and are fain to save their self-esteem by concluding that he is at once turgid and shallow! A pellucid style must always have been a source of wide, though modest, popularity for Bacchylides. If it be true that Hiero preferred him to Pindar, and that he was a favourite with Julian, those instances suggest the charm which he must always have had for cultivated readers to whom affairs did not leave much leisure for study, and who rejoiced in a poet with whom they could live on such easy terms. Another prominent trait in the style of Bacchylides is his love of picturesque detail. This characteristic marks the fragment by which, before the discovery of 1896, he was best known — a passage, from one of his paeans, on the blessings of peace (fr. 13, Bergk, 3, Jebb); and it frequently appears in the Odes, especially in the mythical narratives. Greater poets can make an image flash upon the mind, as Pindar sometimes does, by a magic phrase, or by throwing one or two salient points into strong relief. The method of Bacchylides is usually quieter; he paints cabinet pictures. Observation and elegance do more for him than grasp or piercing insight; yet his work is often of very high excellence in its own kind. His treatment of simile is only a special phase of this general tendency. It is exemplified by the touches with which he elaborates the simile of the eagle in Ode v., and that of the storm-tossed mariners in Ode xii. This full development of simile is Homeric in manner, but not Homeric in motive: Homer’s aim is vividness; Bacchylides is rather intent on. the decorative value of the details themselves. There are occasional flashes of brilliancy in. his imagery, when it is lit up by his keen sense of beauty or splendour in external nature. A radiance, "as of fire," streams from the forms of the Nereids (xvi. 103 if.). An athlete shines out among his fellows Like’ the bright moon of the mid-month night ‘ among the stars (viii. 27 if.). The sudden gleam of hope which comes to the Trojans by the withdrawal of Achilles is like a ray of sunshine "from beneath the edge of a storm-cloud" (xii - 105 if.). The shades of the departed, as seen by Heracles on the banks of the Cocytus, are compared to the countless leaves fluttering in the wind on "the gleaming headlands of Ida" (v. 65 if )--an image not unworthy of Dante or of Milton. Among the minor features of this poet's style the most remarkable is his use of epithets. A god or goddess nearly always receives some ornamental epithet; sometimes, indeed, two or even three. Such a trait is in unison with the epic manner, the straightforward narrative, which we find in some of the larger poems. On the other hand, the copious use of such ornament has the disadvantage that it fometimes gives a tinge of conventionality to his work. This impression is somewhat strengthened by the fact that many of the epithets are long compound words, not found elsewhere and (in some cases at least) probably invented by the poet; words which suggest a deliberate effort to vary the stock repertory. The poems contained in the works of Bacchylides found (see below) in 1896 are of two classes: #Odes of Victory #Dithyrambs. The Ode of Victory was properly a song in praise of a deity. Stesichorus (c. 610 BC) seems to have been the first who composed hymns in honour, not of gods, but of heroes; the next step was to write hymns in celebration of victories by living men. This custom arose in the second half of the 6th century BC, the age in which the games at the four great Greek festivals reached the fulness of their popularity. Simonides (c. 556 BC) was the earliest recorded writer of epinikia. His odes of this class are now represented only by a few very small fragments, some twenty lines in all. Two of these fragments, belonging to the description of a chariot-race, warrant the belief that Simonides, in his epinikia, differed from Pindar in dwelling more on the incidents 01 the particular victory. The same characteristic is found in the epinikia of Bacchylides. His fifth ode, and Pindar’s first Olympian, alike celebrate the victory of the horse Pherenicus; but, while Pindar's reference to the race itself is slight and general (vv. 20-22), Bacchylides describes the running of the winner much more vividly and fully (vv. 37-49). The manuscript contains fourteen epinikia, or thirteen if Blass be right in supposing that Odes vi. and vii., as numbered by Kenyon in the editio princeps, are parts of a single ode (for Lachon of Ceos). Four (or on the view just stated, three) of the odes relate to the Olympian festival; two to the Pythian; three to the Isthmian; three to the Nemean; and one to a Thessalian festival. This comes last. The order in which the manuscript arranges the other epinikia seems to be casual; at least it does not follow (1) the alphabetical sequence of the victors’ names, or of the names of their cities; nor (2) chronological sequence; nor (3) classification by contests; nor (4) classification by festivals’except that the four great festivals precede the Petra-ea. The first ode, celebrating a victory of the Cean Argeios at the Isthmus, may possibly have been placed there for a biographical reason, such as because the poet treated in it the early legends of his native island. A mythical narrative, connected in some way with the victor or his city, usually occupies the central part of the Pindaric ode. It serves to lift the poem into an ideal region, and to invest it with more than a local or temporary significance. The method of Bacchylides in this department of the epinikion is best illustrated by the myth of Croesus in Ode iii., that of Heracles and Meleager in Ode v., and that of the Proetides in Ode x. Pindar's habit is to select certain moments or scenes of a legend, which he depicts with great force and vividness. Bacchylides, on the other hand, has a gentle flow of simple epic narrative; he relies on the interest of the story as a whole, rather than on his power of presenting situations. Another element, always present in the longer odes of victory, is that which may be called the "gnomic." Here, again, there is a contrast between the two poets. Pindar packs his maxims into terse and sometimes obscure epigrams; he utters them in a didactic tone, as of one who can speak with the commanding voice of Delphic wisdom. The moralizing of Bacchylides is rather an utterance of quiet meditation, sometimes recalling the strain of lonian gnomic elegy. The epinikia of Bacchylides are followed in the manuscript by six compositions which the Alexandrians classed under the general name of Dithyrambs. The "dithyramb," first mentioned by Archilochus (c. 670 BC), received a finished and choral form from Anon of Lesbos (c. 600 BC). His dithyrambs, produced at Corinth, belonged to the cult of Dionysus, and the members of his chorus personated satyrs. Originally concerned with the birth of the god, the dithyramb came to deal with all his fortunes: then its scope became still larger; it might celebrate, not Dionysus alone, but any god or hero. Several other classes of composition are represented by those fragments of Bacchylides, preserved in ancient literature. Among these we hear of are: #hymns of pious farewell, speeding some god on his way at the season when he passed from one haunt to another. #fragments on the blessings of peace. #choral odes sung during processions to temples. #lively dance-songs for religious festivals. #five fragments of a class akin to drinking-songs. Under this head come some lively and humorous verses on the power of wine, imitated by Horace (Odes, iii. 21. 13-20). #two elegiacs, represented in the Palatine Anthology. The first is an inscription for an offering commemorative of a victory gained by a chorus with a poem written by Bacchylides. The second is an inscription for a shrine dedicated to Zephyrus. Its authenticity has been questioned, but not disproved. The papyrus containing the odes of Bacchylides was found in Egypt by locals, and reached the British Museum in the autumn of 1896. It was then in about 200 pieces. By the skill and industry of Mr F. G. Kenyon, the editor of the editio princeps (1897), it was reconstructed from these lacerated members. As now arranged, the manuscript consists of three sections. #The first section contains 22 columns of writing. It breaks off after the 8 opening verses of Ode xii. #The second section contains columns 23-29. Of these, column 23 is represented only by the last letters of two words. This section comprises what remains of Odes xiii. and xiv. It breaks off before the end of xiv., which is the last of the epjnjkia. #The third section comprises columns 30-39. It begins with the mutilated opening verses of Ode xv., the first of the dithyrambs, and breaks off after verse ii of the last dithyramb. It is impossible to say how much has been lost between the end of column 29 and the beginning of column 30. Probably, however, Ode xiv., if not the last, was nearly the last of the epinikia. It concerns a festival of a merely local character, the Thessalian Herpaia, and was therefore placed after the thirteen other epinikia, which are connected with the four great festivals. The same lacuna leaves it doubtful whether any collective title was prefixed. After the last column (39) of the MS., a good deal has probably been lost. Bacchylides seems to have written at least three other poems of this class (on Cassandra, Laocoon and Philoctetes); and these would have come, in alphabetical order, after the last of the extant six (Idas). ---- This entry was originally from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. Please update as needed. Category:Ancient Greek poets

Lydia

:This article is about the ancient kingdom in Anatolia. For other uses of this word, see Lydia (disambiguation). Lydia is a historic region of western Anatolia, congruent with Turkey's modern provinces of İzmir and Manisa. Its traditional capital was the city of Sardis (Turkish: Sart). However, at its greatest extent, the Kingdom of Lydia covered all of western Anatolia. It was later the name for a Roman province. Coins were invented in Lydia around 660 BC.

Pre-history

The region of Lydia was probably settled by Indo-European peoples in the late Bronze Age (around the twelfth century BC), during the decay of the Hittite Empire. Herodotus (Histories i. 7) and Homer (Iliad ii. 865; v. 43, 11. 431) both refer to them as Meiones (Μηιονες). However, Herodotus adds that they were named after their first king, Lydos (Λυδος), who was believed to be descended from the divine couple Attis and Cybele. This mythological name gave rise to the Greek ethnic name Lydoi (Λυδοι) and the Hebrew (לודים, cf. Jer. 46.9). Their language, Lydian, is related to Hittite and a member of the Anatolian language family. Lydian became extinct during the first century BC.

Lydia in Greek legend

In Greek mythology, Omphale was a queen or princess of Lydia. It was also during his stay in Lydia that Heracles enslaved the Itones, killed Syleus who forced passersby to hoe his vineyard, and captured the Cercopes. It would be expected that accounts should speak of at least one son born to Heracles by Omphale. Diodorus Siculus (4.31.8) and Ovid in his Heroides (9.54) mention a son named Lamos. But Apollodorus (2.7.8) gives the name of the son of Heracles and Omphale as Agelaus. Pausanias (2.21.3) gives yet another name, mentioning Tyrsenus son of Heracles by "the Lydian woman" by whom Pausanias presumably means Omphale. Herodotus (1.7) refers to a Heraclid dynasty of kings who ruled Lydia yet were perhaps not descended from Omphale. Later chronographers who also ignored Herodotus' statement that Agron was the first to be a king and included Alcaeus, Belus, and Ninus in their List of Kings of Lydia. Strabo (5.2.2) makes Atys father of Lydus and Tyrrhenus to be one of the descendants of Heracles and Omphale. This is likely careless error rather than independent tradition as all other accounts place Atys and Lydus and Tyrrhenus brother of Lydus among the pre-Heraclid kings of Lydia.

Geography

Cercopes Cercopes The boundaries of Lydia varied across the centuries. It was first bounded by Mysia, Caria, Phrygia and Ionia. Later on, the military power of Alyattes and Croesus expanded Lydia into an empire, with its capital at Sardis, which controlled all Asia Minor west of the River Halys, except Lycia. Lydia never again shrank back into its original dimensions. After the Persian conquest the Maeander was regarded as its southern boundary, and under Rome, Lydia comprised the country between Mysia and Caria on the one side and Phrygia and the Aegean on the other. The Lydians were the first people to establish retail shops which were permanent according to Herodotus. [http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Labyrinth/2398/bginfo/geo/anatolia.html] The name of Croesus of Lydia became synonymous with wealth. Lydia was the first country to mint coins (circa 650 BC). Sardis was renowned as a beautiful city. Around 550 BC Croesus paid for the construction of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. Croesus was beaten by Cyrus in 546 BC, and the kingdom became a province of the Persian Empire. Homer speaks only of Maeonians (Iliad ii. 865, V. 43, 11. 431) and describes their capital not as Sardis but as Hyde (Ii. xx. 385); but Hyde may have been the name of the district in which Sardis stood (see Straho xiii. p. 626). When Herodotus (i. 7) tells that the "Meiones" (called Maeones by other writers) were named Lydians after Lydus, the son of Attis, in the mythical epoch which preceded the rise of the Heracleid dynasty, we may be able to identify a kernel of social history in the purely conventional guise of an eponym descended from a god. Straightforward deconstruction reveals a social upheaval, perhaps in the early 1st millennium BC (perhaps even after the age of Homer) in which the cult of Attis, the consort of Cybele, the Great Goddess of Anatolia, was introduced among the Maeones by a new dynasty. Some Maeones still existed in historical times inhabiting the upland interior along the River Hermus, where a town called Maeonia existed, according to Pliny the Elder (Natural History book v:30) and Hierocles.

Language

Lydian language was a Indo-European language, which belongs to the New Anatolian languages, coming from Hittite, but with some changes. The language uses many prefixes and particles. [http://www.allaboutturkey.com/lidya.htm]

Autochotonous Dynasties

Lydia was ruled by three dynasties: the Atyads (1300BC or earlier) - Heraclids (Tylonids) (to 687BC) (According to Herodotus the Heraclids ruled for 22 generations during the period from 1185BC lasting for 505 years). Alyattes was the king of Lydia in 776BC. The last king of this dynasty was Mursylos (Greek) or Candaules (Lydian)
- Candaules Mermnads.
- Gyges (687-652) or (690-657) - Once established on the throne, Gyges devoted himself to consolidating his kingdom and making it a military power. The capital moved from Hyde to Sardis, and name for the area becomes Lydia (previously called Maionia). Barbarian Cimmerians sacked many Lydian cities during this time except for Sardis. Gyges was the son of Dascylus, who, when recalled from banishment in Cappadocia by the Lydian king Mursylos—called Candaules "the Dog-strangler" (a title of the Lydian Hermes) by the Greeks—sent his son back to Lydia instead of himself. Gyges turned to Egypt, sending his faithful Carian troops along with Ionian mercenaries to assist Psammetichus in shaking off the Assyrian yoke. Many Bible scholars believe that Gyges of Lydia was the Biblical figure of Gog, ruler of Magog, who is mentioned in the Book of Ezekiel and the Book of Revelation.
- Ardys II (652-621)
- Sadyattes (621-609) or (624-610) - Herodotus wrote (in Inquiries) that he fought with Cyaxares, the descendant of Deioces, and with the Medes, drove out the Cimmerians from Asia, took Smyrna, which had been founded by colonists from Colophon, and invaded Clazomenae and Miletus. After ruling for twelve years he was assassinated by his former friend Gyges, who succeeded him on the throne of Lydia.
- Alyattes II (609 or 619 -560) - one of the greatest rulers on Lydia. When Cyaxares attacked Lydia, the kings of Cilicia and Babylon intervened and negotiated a peace in 585 BC, whereby the Halys was established as the Medes' frontier with Lydia. Herodotus says that :"On the refusal of Alyattes to give up his suppliants when Cyaxares sent to demand them of him, war broke out between the Lydians and the Medes, and continued for five years, with various success. In the course of it the Medes gained many victories over the Lydians, and the Lydians also gained many victories over the Medes." The Battle of the Eclipse was the final battle in a fifteen-year war between Alyattes II of Lydia and Cyaxares of the Medes. It took place on May 28, 585 BC, and ended abruptly due to a total solar eclipse.
- Croesus (560-546) - the expression "rich as Croesus" came from this king.

Persian and hellenistic empires

- 546BC the Achaemenid King of Kings Cyrus the Great captured Sardis and Lydia became a [[satrapy]], part of the Persian Empire.
- It remained a satrapy after Persia's conquest by the Macedonian king Alexander the Great, going -after his death caused the empire to fall apart- to the major Asian diadoch dynasty, the Seleucids, till this was unable to maintain its territory in Asia Minor, Lydia falling to the Attalid dynasty of Pergamum. Its last king avoided the spoils and ravage of a Roman conquest war by leaving the realm by testament to the Roman Empire.

Roman province of Asia/ Lydia

When the Romans entered its capital Sardis in 133 BC, Lydia, as the other western parts of the Attalid legacy, became part of Asia [Minor], a very rich Roman province, worthy to keep a governor of the high rank of proconsul. As the whole west of Asia Minor had jewish colonies very early, it is not surprising that Christianity was present soon there (Acts of the Apostles 16:14 mentions a business woman called Lydia who came from Thyatira from the province of Lydia) and spread generally in the 3rd century AD, centered on the nearby exarchate of Ephesus. Under the tetrarchy reform of Emperor Diocletian in 296AD, Lydia was the name of a separate Roman province (much smaller then the original satrapy) around Sardes. Together with the provinces of Caria, Hellespontus, Lycia, Pamphylia, Phrygia prima & secunda, Pisidia and the Insulae (Ionian islands), it formed the diocese (under a vicarius) of Asiana, which was part of the praetorian prefecture of Oriens, together with the dioceses Pontiana (most of the rest of Asia Minor), Oriens proper (mainly Syria), Aegyptus and Thraciae (on the Balkans, roughly Bulgaria).

Byzantine and later period

Under the Byzantine emperor Haraclius (610-641), it became part of Anatolikon, one of the original themata, later of Thrakesion. While the caliphate and next the Seljuk Turks (sultanate of Ikonion) conquered most of Anatolia for islam, Lydia was part of the Byzantine rest empire, during the Catholic crusader's occupation of Constantinople still part of the Byzantine orthodox 'Greek Empire' at Nicaea, finally falling prey to new beyliks, which would all be absorbed by the Ottoman state in 1390, which made it part of its vilayet (province) of Aydin, ending up as westernmost part of the modern republic of Turkey.

Slavery

in 1834, London.]] Slavery is a condition in which one person, known as a slave, is under the control of another. Slavery almost always occurs for the purpose of securing the labour or sexual availability of the slave. A specific form, known as chattel slavery, is defined by the absolute legal ownership of a person or persons, including the legal right to buy and sell them.

Definitions

The 1926 Slavery Convention described slavery as "...the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised..." Therefore, a slave is someone who cannot leave an owner or employer without explicit permission, and who will be returned if they escape. Therefore a system of slavery — as opposed to the isolated instances found in any society — requires official, legal recognition of ownership, or widespread tacit arrangements with local authorities, by masters who have some influence because of their social and/or economic status. In the strictest sense of the word, "slaves" are people who are not only owned, but are also not paid, and who have no rights. The word comes from the Latin term sclavus, which is thought to have originally referred to slavs, people from Eastern Europe, including parts of the Byzantine empire. However, the current usage of the word serfdom is not usually synonymous with slavery, because serfs are considered to have had some rights. The International Labour Organization (ILO) defines slavery as a form of forced labour. It defines "forced labour" to be "all work or service which is extracted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily", albeit with certain exceptions: military service, convicts, emergencies and minor community services. [http://www.ilo.org/dyn/declaris/DECLARATIONWEB.DOWNLOAD_BLOB?Var_DocumentID=5059]. The ILO asserts that child labour amounts to forced labour in which the child's work is exacted from the family as a whole. In some historical contexts, compulsory labour to repay debts by adults has been regarded as slavery, depending upon the rights held by such individuals. Mandatory military service in liberal democracies is a controversial subject: one view is that conscripts are not "slaves", as they have substantial legal rights, and any government which took it upon itself to implement conscription, outside a time of extreme national emergency, would eventually face a backlash at an election. Another view interprets acceptance of conscription as a sign of chauvinist, ultra-nationalist and/or fascist ideologies, justified by philosophies such as the Hegelian notion of nations having rights which supersede those of individuals. In United States legal usage, the term involuntary servitude means a condition of labouring for another without one's willful consent. It does not necessarily mean the complete lack of freedom found in chattel slavery. Many left wing thinkers have discussed the idea of "wage slavery", although it is generally accepted that payment of a wage signifies "free labour", with the quite different disadvantages experienced by such workers. Ordinary citizens in totalitarian states are not generally considered slaves, as the only real point of comparison is restrictions on movement.

Unfree labour

Most people subject to the above conditions are covered by the generic term unfree labour, which includes all forms of slavery and similar labour systems. Unfree labour is now the preferred term of many scholars, because of the wide variety of ambiguities that may be attached to words like "slavery". One reason is that references to disparate, heterogenous types of labour have been translated into the English as "slavery". The British historian Sir Moses Finley, one of the most distinguished scholars of ancient slavery, suggested that "slavery" was imprecise and that chattel slavery, in which the slave has no legal rights and could be bought and sold, was sufficiently different from other forms of unfree labour, and a greater violation of human rights, to be labeled distinctively.

Contemporary status of slavery

Slavery is in almost all countries today considered illegal, a criminal activity outlawed by UN conventions. In some states, such as Niger, Myanmar and Sudan, the institution of slavery does still exist, as do child prostitution and sweatshop labour rings in many East Asian, African and Eastern European regions. [http://borgenproject.org/ The Borgen Project] has challenged U.S. leaders for doing business with countries that allow slavery. In sweatshop labour cases, unfree labourers are often told that they are working off a debt, but have no access to an accounting for that debt, and no right to take any higher-paying or less supervised employment. These people may be considered slaves if they are under the impression that challenging these conditions, or leaving in protest of them, would lead to serious bodily harm. Since the mid 1990s, with the opening up of the former Soviet Union, the end of the wars in the former Yugoslavia and the opening up of East and Southeast Asia, there has been an increase in the trafficking in human beings, the movement of people into forced labour. A significant part of that includes sexual exploitation and forced prostitution, with, according to US State Department figures, at least 500,000 women and children forced into prostitution globally and "an estimated 600,000 to 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders annually." [http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Human-Trafficking.html?hp] Some labour conditions for imported "domestic" workers approach conditions of slavery in developed countries by means of legal loopholes, such as Canada's “Live-in Caregiver Program. [http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1099087810560]. Numerous abuses are reported to the authorities which frequently turn a blind eye. In all countries, people in many occupations are contracted for a period of years, but they are usually paid on a regular basis, are rarely contracted based on a debt, and are rarely sold into that status by their parents or others. In any case, an attempt by an employer to enforce such a contract through violence or threats thereof would be dealt with by the police. In the early 1990s evidence of illegal "forced labour and debt bondage" amounting to slavery was unearthed in the Amazon region. The Brazilian government has since taken measures against such activities, although concerns continue to be expressed that more stringent steps may be required. In 1995, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso announced a new series of measures to force compliance with the anti-slavery statutes. In September of 2002, a report to the Ministério de Trabalho (Ministry of Labour), stated that between 1995 and 2001 approximately 3,500 slave labourers had been freed, and that it was estimated that 2,500 people remained in such conditions at that time (O Globo, 2002). In the late 1990s evidence emerged of large scale child slavery in West Africa to work cocoa plantations , see Chocolate and slavery.

Annual Trafficking in Persons report

The United States fifth annual Trafficking in Persons report says the 14 nations that are not doing enough to stop international human trafficking are (new to the list) Bolivia, Cambodia, Jamaica, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Togo, United Arab Emirates and (continuing to be on the list) Myanmar, Cuba, Ecuador, North Korea, Sudan and Venezuela.

How do people become slaves?

Historically, slaves were often those humans of a different ethnicity, nationality, religion, sex or race than the dominant or aspirationally dominant group; typically taken prisoner as a result of warfare, capture meant death or slavery if no one paid ransom. Societies characterized by poverty, population pressures, and cultural and technological lag are frequently exporters of slaves to more developed nations. Today most slaves are rural people forced to move to cities, or those purchased in rural areas and sold into slavery in cities. These moves take place due to loss of subsistence agriculture, thefts of land, and population increases. Some researchers have recently suggested that ancient Greco-Roman slavery may have been related to the practice of infanticide. Unwanted infants were exposed to nature to die; these were then often rescued by slavetraders, who raised them as slaves. In many cultures, persons convicted of serious crimes could be sold into slavery. The proceeds from this sale were often used to compensate the victims.

History

Europe and the Mediterranean

The ancient Mediterranean civilizations

See also: Slavery in the ancient Mediterranean; Slavery in Abrahamic religions. Slavery in the ancient Mediterranean cultures and the Islamic Caliphate was a mixture of debt-slavery, marriage, slavery as a punishment for crime, and the enslavement of prisoners of war.

Medieval Europe

For Christian views on slavery see Religion and slavery. During the medieval period, slaves were traded openly in many cities, including Marseille, Dublin and Prague, and many were sold to buyers in the Middle East

Early Modern Europe

In the 17th century, slavery was used as punishment by conquering English Parliament armies against native Catholics in Ireland. Between the years 1649 and 1653, during the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland by the New Model Army under the command of Oliver Cromwell, thousands of Irish Catholics were forced into slavery. Cromwell had a deep religious dislike of the Catholic religion, and many Irish Catholics who had participated in Confederate Ireland had all their land confiscated and were transported to the West Indies as slaves. This helped lead to the formation of the island nation Monserrat, known as "the emerald aisle of the carribean" Item 20 of The Grand Remonstrance[http://www.constitution.org/eng/conpur043.htm], a list of grievances committed by King Charles I and presented to him in 1641, contains the following: "20. And although all this was taken upon pretence of guarding the seas, yet a new unheard-of tax of ship-money was devised, and upon the same pretence, by both which there was charged upon the subject near £700,000 some years, and yet the merchants have been left so naked to the violence of the Turkish pirates, that many great ships of value and thousands of His Majesty's subjects have been taken by them, and do still remain in miserable slavery." Slavery existed in Eastern Europe during the period (particularly in Russia and Poland). Only in 1768 was a law passed in Poland that discontinued the nobility's control of the right to life or death of serfs.

Modern Europe

Main articles: Holocaust; Nazi concentration camps. Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazi regime created many Arbeitslager (labour camps) in Germany and Eastern Europe. Prisoners in Nazi labour camps were worked to death on short rations and in bad conditions, or killed if they became unable to work. Hundreds of thousands of people, possibly millions, died as a direct result of forced labour under the Nazis.

Slavery in the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East

For Muslim views on slavery see Religion and slavery. The Arab world traded in slaves like many other cultures of the time. The Moors starting in the 8th century raided mediterranean coastal areas and would carry away sometimes whole villages to the Moorish slave markets on the Barbary Coast. The slave trade from East Africa to Arabia was dominated by Arab and African traders in the coastal cities of Zanzibar, Dar Es Salaam and Mombasa. Many Slavic males from the Balkans, and Turkic and Circassian males from the Caucasus Mountains and the eastern Black Sea regions were taken away from their homes and families and enlisted into special soldier classes of the army of the Ottoman Empire. These soldier classes were named Janissaries in the Balkans and Asia Minor, and Mamelukes in Egypt. The Janissaries eventually became a decisive factor in the intrigues of the Constantinople court of the Ottoman sultans, while the Mamelukes were mainly responsible for the expulsion of the Crusaders from Palestine.

Slavery in Africa

Slavery in North Africa

Slaves were being imported from Europe to North Africa in the 15th and 16th centuries. Slave-taking persisted into the 19th century when Barbary pirates would capture ships and enslave the crew. In all, about 1.5 million Europeans were transported to the Barbary Coast. It was a period when Europe was preoccupied by sectarian wars and European navies were depleted. The trade was run by the Moors and the expeditions were often captained by Europeans with North African crews. In the early 19th century, European powers started to take action to free Christian slaves. The first major action was the bombardment of Algiers in 1816.

Slavery in Sub-Saharan Africa

See also the articles Atlantic slave trade and triangular trade. Slavery was common and widespread in Africa long before the 19th century, perpetrated on Africans by Arabs or other Africans, usually but not always of a competing tribe. "Slavery was endemic in Africa, part of the structure of everyday life," Fernand Braudel has noted. "Slavery came in different guises in different societies: there were court slaves, slaves incorporated into princely armies, domestic and household slaves, slaves working on the land, in industry, as couriers and intermediaries, even as traders" (Braudel 1984 p 435). Two aggressive slave-trading civiliified it out of all recognition, and during the 16th century Europe began to outpace Islam in the export traffic. The Dutch imported slaves from Asia into their colony in South Africa. The United Kingdom, which held vast colonial territories on the continent (including South Africa), made the practice of slavery illegal in these regions. Ironically, the end of the slave trade and the decline of slavery was imposed upon Africa by its European conquerors. This action is what today may be called an instance of cultural imperialism. The nature of the slave societies differed greatly across the continent. There were large plantations worked by slaves in Egypt, the Sudan, and Zanzibar, but this was not a typical use of slaves in Africa as a whole. In some slave societies, slaves were protected and incorporated into the slave-owning family. In others, slaves were brutally abused, and even used for human sacrifices. Despite the vast numbers of slaves exported from Africa, it is thought that the majority of African slaves remained in Africa, continuing as slaves in the regions where they were first captured. Prior to the 16th century, the bulk of slaves exported from Africa were shipped from East Africa to the Arabian peninsula. Zanzibar became a leading port on this trade. Arab slave traders differed from European traders in that they would often capture slaves themselves, sometimes penetrating deep into the continent. They also differed in that their market greatly preferred the purchase of female slaves over male slaves. The Middle Passage, the crossing of the Atlantic to the Americas, endured by slaves laid out in rows in the holds of ships, was only one element of the well-known triangular trade engaged in by Portuguese, Dutch, French and British. Ships having landed slaves in Caribbean ports would take on sugar, indigo, raw cotton, and later coffee, and make for Liverpool, Nantes, Lisbon or Amsterdam. Ships leaving European ports for West Africa would carry printed cotton textiles, some originally from India, copper utensils and bangles, pewter plates and pots, iron bars more valued than gold, hats, trinkets, gunpowder and firearms and alcohol. Tropical shipworms were eliminated in the cold Atlantic waters, and at each unloading, a profit was made. The transatlantic slave trade peaked in the late 18th century, when the largest number of slaves were captured for bounty by their own people in West Africa and shipped by European traders to the colonies of the New World. As a result of the Spanish War of Succession, the United Kingdom obtained the monopoly (asiento de negros) of transporting captive Africans to Spanish America. It is estimated that over the centuries, twelve to twenty million people were shipped as slaves from Africa by European traders, of whom some 15 percent died during the terrible voyage, many during the arduous journey through the Middle Passage. The great majority were shipped to the Americas, but also went to Europe and the south of Africa. Some historians conclude that the total loss in persons removed, those who died on the arduous march to coastal slave marts and those killed in slave raids, far exceeded the 65-75 million inhabitants remaining in Sub-Saharan Africa at the trade's end. Others believe that slavers had a vested interest in capturing rather than killing, and in keeping their captives alive; and that this coupled with the disproportionate removal of males and the introduction of new crops from the Americas (cassava, maize) would have limited general population decline to particular regions of western Africa around 1760-1810, and in Mozambique and neighbouring areas half a century later. There has also been speculation that within Africa, females were most often captured as brides, with their male protectors being a "bycatch" who would have been killed if there had not been an export market for them.

Modern Africa

Slavery persists in Africa more than in all other continents. Slavery in Mauritania was legally abolished by laws passed in 1905, 1961, and 1981, but several human rights organizations are reporting that the practice continues there. The trading of children has been reported in modern Nigeria and Benin. In parts of Ghana, a family may be punished for an offense by having to turn over a virgin female to serve as a sex slave within the offended family. In this instance, the woman does not gain the title of "wife". In the Sudan slavery continues as part of an ongoing civil war. Evidence emerged in the late 1990s of systematic slavery in cacao plantations in west Africa, see the chocolate and slavery article.

Slavery in the Americas

Slavery among indigenous people of America

In Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica the most common forms of slavery were those of prisoners-of-war and debtors. People unable to pay back a debt could be sentenced to work as a slave to the person owed until the debt was worked off. Slavery was not usually hereditary; children of slaves were born free. In Tahuantinsuyu, or the Inca Empire, workers were subject to a mita in lieu of taxes which they paid by working for the government. Each ayllu, or extended family, would decide which family member to send to do the work.

Slavery in Brazil

During the colonial epoch, slavery was a mainstay of the Brazilian economy, especially in mining and sugar cane production. The Clapham Sect, a group of Victorian Evangelical politicians, campaigned during most of the 19th century for the United Kingdom to use its influence and power to stop the traffic of slaves to Brazil. Besides moral qualms, the low cost of slave-produced Brazilian sugar meant that British colonies in the West Indies were unable to match the market prices of Brazilian sugar, and each Briton was consuming 16 pounds (7 kg) of sugar a year by the 19th century. This combination led to intensive pressure from the British government for Brazil to end this practice, which it did by steps over several decades. Slavery was legally ended May 13 by the Lei Áurea ("Golden Law") of 1888. Brazil obtained 37% of all African slaves traded, and more than 3 million slaves were sent to this one country. The Portuguese were the first to initiate the slave trade, and the last to end the slave trade. Starting around 1550, the Portuguese began to trade African slaves to work the sugar plantations once the native Tupi deteriorated. The African slaves were useful for the sugar plantations in many ways. First, African slaves had immunities to European diseases. The white workers were less able to fend off deadly diseases of the Caribbean, such as malaria. Second, the benefits of the slaves far exceeded the costs. After 2-3 years, slaves worked off their worth, and plantation owners began to make profits from them. Plantation owners made lucrative profits even though there was approximately a 10% death rate per year, mainly due to harsh working conditions. The very harsh manual labour of the sugar cane fields saw slaves use hoes to dig large trenches. The slaves planted sugar cane in the trenches and then used their bare hands to spread manure. The average life span of a slave was eight years. In the mid to late 19th century, many Amerindians were enslaved to work on rubber plantations. See Içá for more information.

Slavery in the British and French Caribbean

Slavery was commonly used in the parts of the Caribbean controlled by France or the British Empire. The Lesser Antilles islands of Barbados, Antigua, Martinique and Guadeloupe, which were the first important slave societies of the Caribbean, began the widespread use of African slaves by the end of the 17th century, as their economies converted from tobacco to sugar production. The slaves were treated terribly, often beaten and raped. They had such miserable lives that death was considered a welcome release. By the middle of the 18th century, British Jamaica and French Saint-Domingue had become the largest slave societies of the region, rivaling Brazil as a destination for enslaved Africans. Due to overwork, the death rates for Caribbean slaves were higher than birth rates. The conditions led to increasing numbers of slave revolts, campaigns against slavery in Europe, and the abolition of slavery in the European empires.

Status of African slaves compared to Caribbean slaves

African slaves and Caribbean slaves both received little respect from their masters, who looked at them as objects for work and trade. Slavery and slave trading was widespread in both the Caribbean islands and in Africa. Many of the slaves were unable to reproduce because the stress of the work caused still births in women and sterility in men. Caribbean slavery granted the masters complete freedom over the control of their slaves. Caribbean sugar plantations resembled factories in a modern capitalist society. In contrast, African slavery was less harsh than slavery on Caribbean sugar estates. African kinship groups sought to assimilate new slaves into their circle. Many slave villages worked under their own management and paid tribute for their services. The family lifestyle of slavery in many parts of Africa had a closer bond as smaller groups usually had face-to-face relationships.

Slavery in North America

Main article: Slavery in Colonial America, Slavery in Canada, History of slavery in the United States, Atlantic slave trade The first imported Africans were brought as indentured servants, not slaves. They were required, as white indentured servants were, to serve seven years. Many were brought to the British North American colonies, specifically Jamestown, Virginia in 1619. However, the slave trade did not immediately expand in North America. Slavery under European rule began with importation of European indentured labourers, was followed by the enslavement of indigenous peoples in the Caribbean, and eventually was primarily replaced with Africans imported through a large slave trade. The shift from indentured servants to African slaves was prompted by a growing lower class of former servants who had worked through the terms of their indentures and thus became competitors of their former masters. These newly freed servants were rarely able to support themselves comfortably, and the tobacco industry was increasingly dominated by large planters. This caused domestic unrest culminating in Bacon's Rebellion. It is unclear whether the first Africans in North America were chattel slaves or other kinds of unfree labourers, such as indentured servants. In any case, chattel slavery gradually became the norm. Bacon's Rebellion Several slave rebellions took place during the 17th and 18th centuries. Through the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 (also known as the Freedom Ordinance) under the Continental Congress, slavery was prohibited in the Midwest. In the East, though, slavery was not abolished until later. The importation of slaves into the United States was banned on January 1, 1808; but not the internal slave trade, or involvement in the international slave trade externally. Aggregation of northern free states gave rise to one contiguous geographic area, north of the Ohio River and the old Mason-Dixon line. This separation of a free North and an enslaved South launched a massive political, cultural and economic struggle. Refugees from slavery fled the South across the Ohio River to the North via the Underground Railroad, and their presence agitated Northerners. Midwestern state governments asserted States Rights arguments to refuse Federal jurisidiction over fugitives. The Dred Scott decision of 1857 asserted that slavery's presence in the Midwest was nominally lawful (when owners crossed into free states) and this turned Northern public opinion even further against slavery. After the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, armed conflict broke out in Kansas Territory, where the question of whether it would be admitted to the Union as a slave state or a free state had been left to the inhabitants. The radical abolitionist John Brown was active in the mayhem and killing in "Bleeding Kansas." Anti-slavery legislators took office under the banner of the Republican Party. In the election of 1860, the Republicans swept Abraham Lincoln into the Presidency. Lincoln however, did not appear on the ballots in most southern states and his election split the nation along sectional lines. After decades of controlling the Federal Government, the Southern states seceded from the U.S. (the Union) to form the Confederate States of America. Northern leaders like Lincoln viewed the prospect of a new slave nation, with control over the Mississippi River and the West, as unacceptable. This led to the outbreak of the Civil War. The Civil War spelled the end for chattel slavery in America. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 was a reluctant gesture that proclaimed freedom for slaves within the Confederacy, although not those in strategically important border states which had remained in the Union, as Lincoln stated it 'If I could win the war having freed half of the slaves, I'd have freed half.'. Specifically exempted were slave states Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware, as well as parts of Virginia and Louisiana then under Federal occupation. However, the proclamation made the abolition of slavery an official war goal and it was implemented as the Union captured territory from the Confederacy. Slaves in many parts of the south were freed by Union armies or when they simply left their former owners. Many joined the Union Army as workers or troops, and many more fled to Northern cities. Legally, slaves within the United States remained enslaved until the final ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution on December 6, 1865 (with final recognition of the amendment on December 18), eight months after the cessation of hostilities. Slavery remained legal in Delaware and Kentucky until that time (Missouri and Maryland had officially abolished slavery during the war years). Only in Kentucky did a significant slave population remain by that time. Freed slaves in the United States were treated as second class citizens, for decades after their emancipation many slaves living in the South sharecropped and made so little that they might as well have been slaves. Only after the civil rights movement of the 1950's and 60's did blacks obtain legal status as full citizens (see segregation). Although very strict laws exist in the United States against racial discrimination, to a point of absurdity according to some, a very clear social divide exists between blacks and whites in the United States today. Some allege that slavery is being reintroduced to the United States under the guise of Imputed Income and Child Support. By this, states award custody of a child to one of two parents, while the other parent is then compelled to pay for the raising of the child without being given any say in raising the child. Child-support orders can be based on 'imputed income' and as such the orders can exceed 100 percent of a person's income. The law seems to be applied particluarly harshly to the African American community, the working poor and the seasonally employed.
Slavery in Asia

India
Unfree labour has existed in India for millennia, in different forms. The most common forms have been kinds of bonded labour. During the epoch of the Islamic empires in India and the Mughals, debt bondage reached its peak, and it was common for money lenders to make slaves of peasants and others who failed to repay debts. Under these practices, more than one generation could be forced into unfree labour; for example, a son could be sold into bonded labour for life to pay off the debt, along with interest. Much of India was ruled by the so-called Slave Dynasty from 1206-1290: Qutb-ud-din Aybak, a slave of Muhammad Ghori rose to power following his master's death. For almost a century his descendants ruled presiding over the introduction of Tankas and building of Qutub Minar.
Japan
Slavery in Japan was, for most of its history, indigenous, since the export and import of slaves was restricted by Japan being a group of islands. The export of a slave from Japan is recorded in 3rd century Chinese history, although the system involved is unclear. These slaves were called Seikō (生口) (lit. "living mouth"). In the 8th century, a slave was called Nuhi (奴婢) and series of laws on slavery was issued. In an area of present-day Ibaraki prefecture, out of a population of 190,000, around 2,000 were slaves; the proportion is believed to have been even higher in western Japan. By the time of the Sengoku period (1467-1615), the attitude that slavery was anachronistic had become widespread. In a meeting with Catholic priests, Oda Nobunaga was presented with a black slave, the first recorded encounter between a Japanese and an African. In 1588, Toyotomi Hideyoshi ordered all slave trading to be abolished. This was continued by his successors. As the Empire of Japan annexed Asian countries, from the late 19th century onwards, archaic institutions including slavery were abolished in those countries. However, during the Pacific War of 1937-45, the Japanese military used hundreds of thousands of civilians and prisoners of war as forced labour, on projects such as the Burma Railway. (For further details, see Japanese war crimes.)
Korea
Indigenous slaves existed in Korea. It is widely known that the last names "Chun", "Bang", "Ji", and "Chuk" are recognizable as last names having once been given to slaves.
Abolitionist movements
Slavery's origins are prehistoric. So, too, are movements to free large or distinct groups of slaves. Moses led Israelite slaves from ancient Egypt in the Biblical Book of Exodus - possibly the first detailed account of a movement to free slaves. Though modern archeology throws doubt on the claims of such a mass exodus. However, abolitionism should be distinguished from efforts to help a particular group of slaves, or to restrict one practice, such as the slave trade. In 1772, a legal case concerning James Somerset made it illegal to remove a slave from England against his will. A similar case, that of Joseph Knight, took place in Scotland five years later and ruled slavery to be contrary to the law of Scotland. Following the work of campaigners in the United Kingdom, the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act was passed by Parliament on March 25, 1807. The act imposed a fine of £100 for every slave found aboard a British ship. The intention was to entirely outlaw the slave trade within the whole British Empire. The Slavery Abolition Act, passed on August 23, 1833, outlawed slavery itself in the British colonies. On August 1, 1834 all slaves in the British Empire were emancipated, but still indentured to their former owners in an apprenticeship system which was finally abolished in 1838. 1838 France never authorized slavery on its mainland, but authorized it in some of its overseas possessions. On February 4, 1794, Abbé Grégoire and the Convention abolished slavery. Slaves in Haiti revolted when their masters did not accept the new rules from the metropolis. Slavery was re-established in 1802 by Napoleon, but failed to take hold because of the Haitian Slave Revolt in 1803 which gained the slaves their independence. Haiti became the first Black republic in 1803. Sierra Leone was established as a country for former slaves of the British Empire in Africa. Liberia served an analogous purpose for American slaves. The goal of the abolitionists was repatriation of the slaves to Africa. Also some trade unions did not want the cheap labour of former slaves around. Nevertheless, most former slaves stayed in America. Slaves in the United States who escaped ownership would often make their way north to Canada via the "Underground Railroad". Famously active abolitionists of the U.S. include Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, Frederick Douglass and John Brown. Slavery was abolished in the United States in 1865. The 1926 Slavery Convention, an initiative of the League of Nations, was a turning point in banning global slavery. Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948 by the UN General Assembly, explicity banned slavery. The United Nations 1956 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery was convened to outlaw and ban slavery worldwide, including child slavery. In December 1966, the UN General Assembly adopted the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which was developed from the Universal Declaraction of Human Rights. Article 8 of this international treaty bans slavery. The treaty came into force in March 1976 after it had been ratified by 35 nations. As of November 2003, 104 nations had ratified the treaty.
Apologies
In June 1997, Tony Hall, a Democratic representative for Dayton, Ohio proposed a national apology by the U.S. government for slavery. This was at a time when the Catholic Church in France apologised for its silence and begged "forgiveness for Catholic inaction as regime sent Jews to their deaths in '40s". At the 2001 World Conference Against Racism, at Durban, South Africa, the US representatives walked out, on the instructions of Colin Powell. A South African Government spokesperson claimed that "the general perception among all delegates is that the US does not want to confront the real issues of slavery and all its manifestations." However, the US delegates argued that they left over a resolution that equated Zionism with racism. At the same time the British, Spanish, Dutch and Portuguese delegations blocked an EU apology for slavery. The issue of an apology is linked to reparations for slavery and is still being pursued across the world. E.g. The Jamaican Reparations Movement approved its declaration and action Plan.
Reparations
As noted above, there have been movements to achieve reparations for those held in involuntary servitude, or sometimes their descendants. There is a growing modern movement to donate funds achieved in reparations efforts not to the descendants of those held as slaves in prior generations, but instead to donate them to those freed from slavery in this generation, in other countries and circumstances. In general, reparation for being held in slavery is handled as a civil law matter in almost every country. This is often decried as a serious problem, since slaves are exactly those people who have no access to the legal process. Systems of fines and reparations paid from fines collected by authorities, rather than in civil courts, have been proposed to alleviate this in some nations. In the United States, the reparations movement often cites the 40 acres and a mule decree. Recent effort have also targeted businesses that profited from the slave trade and issuing insurance on slaves. In Africa, the 2nd World Reparations and Repatriation Truth Commission was convened in Ghana in 2000. Its deliberations concluded with a Petition being served in the International Court at the Hague for US$777 trillion against the United States, Canada, and European Union members for "unlawful removal and destruction of Petitioners' mineral and human resources from the African continent" between 1503 up to the end of the colonialism era in the late 1950s and 1960s. This was the first time a price had been put on African Reparations. [http://web.archive.org/web/
- /http://www.people.virginia.edu/~eej2b/Soc410/barton.html]
Economics of slavery
According to the Anti-Slavery Society, "Although there is no longer any state which recognizes any claim by a person to a right of property over another, there are an estimated 2.7 million people throughout the world, mainly children, in conditions of slavery."[http://www.anti-slaverysociety.addr.com/slavery.htm] It further notes that slavery, particularly child slavery, was on the rise in 2003. It points out that there are countless others in other forms of servitude (such as pawnage, bonded labor and servile concubinage, which are not slavery in the narrow legal sense. According to a broader definition used by Kevin Bales of Free the Slaves, another advocacy group linked with Anti-Slavery International, there are 27 million people in slavery today, spread all over the world. This is, also according to that group:
- The largest number of people that has ever been in slavery at any point in world history.
- The smallest percentage of the total human population that has ever been enslaved at once.
- Reducing the price of slaves to as low as US$40 in Mali for young adult male labourers, to a high of US$1000 or so in Thailand for HIV-free young females suitable for use in brothels (where they invariably contract HIV). This represents the price paid to the person, or parents.
- This represents the lowest price that there has ever been for a slave in raw labour terms—while the price of a comparable male slave in 1850 America would have been about US$1000 in the currency of the time, that represents US$38,000 in today's dollars, thus slaves, at least of that category, now cost only one one-thousandth (0.1%) of their price 150 years ago. As a result, the economics of slavery is stark: the yield of profit per year for those buying and controlling a slave is over 800% on average, as opposed to the 5% per year that would have been the expected payback for buying a slave in colonial times. This combines with the high potential to lose a slave (have them stolen, escape, or freed by unfriendly authorities) to yield what are called disposable people—those who can be exploited intensely for a short time and then discarded, such as the prostitutes thrown out on city streets to die once they contract HIV, or those forced to work in mines.
Potential for total abolition
Those 27 million people produce a gross economic product of US $1.4 billion. This is also a smaller percentage of the world economy than slavery has produced at any prior point in human history. That, plus the universal criminal status of slavery, the lack of moral arguments for it in modern discourse, and the many conventions and agreements to abolish it worldwide, make it likely that it can be eliminated in this generation, according to Free The Slaves. There are no nations whose economies would be substantially affected by the true abolition of slavery. A first step towards this objective is the Cocoa Protocol, by which the entire cocoa industry worldwide has accepted full moral and legal responsibility for the entire comprehensive outcome of their production processes. Negotiations for this protocol were initiated for cotton, sugar and other commodity items in the 19th century—taking about 140 years to complete. Thus it seems that this is also a turning point in history, where all commodity markets can slowly lever licensing and other requirements to ensure that slavery is eliminated from production, one industry at a time, as a sectoral simultaneous policy that does not cause disadvantages for any one market player.
Famous slaves and former slaves
From the list of famous slaves:
- Saint Patrick, abducted from Britain, enslaved in Ireland, escaped to Britain, returned to Ireland as a missionary
- John Brown (fugitive slave), escaped and wrote of conditions in Deep South
- Frederick Douglass, abolitionist
- Enrique, the slave of Ferdinand Magellan, who became the first man to go around the globe.
- Malinche, famous translator during the Spanish conquest of Mexico
- Onesimus, owned by Philemon mentioned in the Bible
- Aesop, Greek author, famous for his fables
- Spartacus, led the Servile Revolt
- Toussaint L'Ouverture, led the independence of Haiti slave revolt after being freed.
- Harriet Tubman, nicknamed Moses because of her efforts in helping other slaves escape through the Underground Railway.
- Nat Turner, escaped and led revolt in Southampton County, Virginia
- Zumbi, in colonial Brazil, escaped and joined the Quilombo dos Palmares — the largest ever settlement of escaped slaves in Brazil &#