ABSTRACT
Only rarely is there any mention at all of slavery or even of slaves in the world ofthe Byzantines, in recent accounts of Byzantine history.1 Hence the question arises, why is this particular group of the Byzantine population so largely neglected? On the one hand it seems to be due to the fact that to date we do not have a satisfactory, comprehensive monograph on slavery in Byzantium that carefully examines the traces of slavery in the many and varied sources over the whole Byzantine millennium.2 There are, notably, very clear references to the existence of slaves in Byzantium in legal texts, documents especially and records, but also in hagiographic texts.3 On the other hand, slaves are rarely mentioned explicitly, and are in general not easy to distinguish from free servants, in historiographical works, chronicles and other narrative sources. The reason for this is ambiguous terminology.4 Without a more exact or careful interpretation, as we shall see, we cannot make much headway. Moreover, in certain fields the possibilities for research will always remain restricted by the notorious lack of an adequate number of sources. However, some areas can be approached, for example the extent of the employment of slaves in the sphere of the imperial court or in various “state-controlled” production-workshops in urban or rural regions outside Constantinople, and in the private sector of Byzantine society, which has still not been exhaustively examined; and the living conditions of slaves in the Byzantine empire, which may yet receive adequate treatment.5
