DEFINITIONS OF SLAVERY
Aristotle, Politics 1.2.7 (Wiedemann Sourcebook no. 2)
‘It will be clear from these facts what the nature and functions of a slave are:
(i) A human being who by nature does not belong to himself but to another person – such a one is by nature a slave. (ii) A human being belongs to another when he is a piece of property as well as a human being. (iii) A piece of property is a tool, which is used to assist some activity and which has a separate existence of its own.
Digest 1.5.4, from Florentinus’ Institutes (Wiedemann Sourcebook no. 1)
‘Freedom (libertas) is the natural ability to do whatever anyone pleases, unless one is prevented from doing it either by force or by law.
Slavery is an institution of the common law of peoples (ius gentium) by which a person is put into the ownership (dominium) of somebody else, contrary to the natural order.
Slaves (servi) are so called because commanders generally sell the people they capture and thereby save (servare) them instead of killing them.
The word for property in slaves (mancipia) is derived from the fact that they are captured from the enemy by force of arms (manu capiantur).’
Varro, De Re Rustica 1.17.1 (= Wiedemann Sourcebook no. 148)
‘now I turn to the means by which land is tilled. Some divide these into two parts: men, and those aids to men without which they cannot cultivate; others into three: the class of instruments which is articulate, inarticulate, and mute; the articulate comprising the slaves, the inarticulate comprising the cattle, and the mute comprising the vehicles’.
[Note comments of Skydsgaard in Garnsey 1980 p. 68]
Dio Chrysostom, Oration 15.24
‘When anyone gets possession of a human being, in the strict meaning of the term, just as he might any item of his goods or cattle, so as to have the right to use him as he pleases, that man is correctly called and in fact is the slave of the man into whose possession he has come’
Slavery is ‘the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised’
United Nations Supplementary
Convention
Serfdom is ‘the tenure of land whereby the tenant is by law, custom or agreement bound to live and labour on land belonging to another person and render some determinate services to such other person, whether for reward or not, and is not free to change his status’.
Debt bondage is ‘the status of condition arising from a pledge by a debtor of his personal services or those of a third person under his control as a security for a debt, where the value reasonably assessed of those services rendered is not applied towards the liquidation of the debt, or the length and nature of those services are not respectively limited and defined’
‘slavery is the permanent violent domination of natally alienated and generally dishonoured persons’