Slaves, Warfare, and Ideology in the Greek Historians

Cambridge University Press, 1998. Hardcover. New/New. New hardcover in new dust jacket. 8vo. (6.25 x 9.25 inches) Text is clean and free of marks or underlining. Includes bibliography and index. xiv, 246 pp.
Fast shipping in a secure book box mailer with tracking. This book challenges conventional opinion by
arguing that slaves and Helots played an important part in classical Greek warfare. Although
rival city-states often used these classes in their
own forces or tried to incite their enemies' slaves
to rebellion or desertion, such recruitment was
ideologically awkward: slaves or Helots, despised
and oppressed classes, should have had no part in the military service so closely linked with citizen-
ship, with rule, and even with an individual's
basic worth. Consequently, their participation
has tended to drop out of the historical record.
Focusing on Herodotus, Thucydides, and
Xenophon, this study attempts to demonstrate
the actual role played by slaves and Helots in
warfare, the systematic neglect of the subject by
these historians, and the ideologies motivating
this reticence. Because of the pervasive influence
of both war and slavery, these investigations of an
ostensibly marginal practice illuminate several
central issues in Greek society and culture.