Xenophon's Oeconomicus
Ischomachus' Management of Slaves
Abstract
In the Oeconomicus the management of slaves presents some very interesting aspects: on the one hand widespread practices, like purchase, sale, leasing and manumission of slaves, are completely ignored; on the other we can find some probably innovative practices as the prevailing tendency to a rewarding system based on merit and especially the attribution of command functions to some slaves, the epitropoi. Even more innovative the fact that it is acknowledged that at least some slaves, who hold offices of responsibility (the epitropoi and the housekeeper), are endowed with enkrateia, which is the foundation of virtue according to Xenophon’s Socrates. This seems to some extent to anticipate a view destined to a decisive development in Hellenistic age, according to which virtue is accessible also to slaves.
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References
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