How did Greeks justify slavery?

Answer 1

Very few authors of antiquity call slavery into question. To Homer and the pre-classical authors, slavery was an inevitable consequence of war. Heraclitus states that "War is the father of all, the king of all ... he turns some into slaves and sets others free".[147]

During the classical period, the main justification for slavery was economic.[148] From a moral point of view, the idea of "natural" slavery emerged at the same time; thus, as Aeschylus states in The Persians, the Greeks "[o]f no man are they called the slaves or vassals",[149] while the Persians, as Euripides states in Helen, "are all slaves, except one" - the Great King.[150] Hippocrates theorizes about this latent idea at the end of the 5th century BC. According to him, the temperate climate of Anatolia produced a placid and submissive people.[151] This explanation is reprised by Plato,[152] then Aristotle in Politics,[153] where he develops the concept of "natural slavery": "for he that can foresee with his mind is naturally ruler and naturally master, and he that can do these things with his body is subject and naturally a slave."[154] As opposed to an animal, a slave can comprehend reason but "…has not got the deliberative part at all."[155]

In parallel, the concept that all men, whether Greek or barbarian, belonged to the same race was being developed by the Sophists[156] and thus that certain men were slaves although they had the soul of a freeman and vice versa.[157] Aristotle himself recognized this possibility and argued that slavery could not be imposed unless the master was better than the slave, in keeping with his theory of "natural" slavery.[158] The Sophists concluded that true servitude was not a matter of status but a matter of spirit; thus, as Menander stated, "be free in the mind, although you are slave: and thus you will no longer be a slave".[159] This idea, repeated by the Stoics and the Epicurians, was not so much an opposition to slavery as a trivialisation of it.[160]

The Greeks could not comprehend an absence of slaves. Slaves exist even in the "Cloudcuckooland" of Aristophanes' The Birds as well as in the ideal cities of Plato's Laws or Republic.[161] The utopian cities of Phaleas of Chalcedon and Hippodamus of Miletus are based on the equal distribution of property, but public slaves are used respectively as craftsmen[162] and land workers.[163] The "reversed cities" placed women in power or even saw the end of private property, as in Lysistrata or Assemblywomen, but could not picture slaves in charge of masters. The only societies without slaves were those of the Golden Age, where all needs were met. In this type of society, as explained by Plato,[164] one reaped generously without sowing. In Telekleides' Amphictyons[165] barley loaves fight with wheat loaves for the honour of being eaten by men. Moreover, objects move themselves-dough kneads itself, and the jug pours itself. Society without slaves is thus relegated to a different time and space. In a "normal" society, one needs slaves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Greece#Historical_views