A Cargo of Slaves? Demosthenes 34.10

Abstract

Existing studies of the ancient Greek slave trade lack detailed evidence for a key link in the supply chain. The geographical origins of non-Greek slaves are well known, as are the various destinations to which they were trafficked; as yet, however, little is known about their transport by sea. This article shows that a key testimonium for this phase of the trade has been lying unnoticed under historians’ noses: Demosthenes 34.10, a passage that describes the shipwreck and drowning of numerous persons. These unfortunates have long been considered free persons because one of our manuscripts (followed by many modern textual editions) describes them as ‘free bodies’ (somata eleuthera). However, most manuscripts, including the most authoritative manuscript, S (cod. Parisinus 2934, ninth–tenth century ad), simply read somata, ‘bodies’, a word that can mean ‘slaves’ in ancient Greek. Some editors have also rejected the number (‘300’) of these individuals in S, emending it to ‘30’, due to disbelief that an ancient merchantman could carry so many souls aboard. This article argues that the readings in S should stand, and that this passage illustrates an episode where the shipment of numerous slaves went disastrously wrong.

Key words:

• ancient Greece
• slavery
• slave trade
• shipwreck
• maritime trade
• Attic orators
• Demosthenes
• ancient Greek manuscripts

Among the many tangled pieces of litigation that came before Athenian lawcourts, the case described in Demosthenes’ Against Phormion (Dem. 34, dated to 327/6 bc) is of particular interest to students of both slavery and maritime history¹. The facts of the case are as follows. Chrysippos and his partner lent Phormion 2,000 drachmas for a return trading voyage between Athens and Bosporos, not to be confused with the modern Bosphorus, but an ancient kingdom centred in eastern Crimea around the Kerch Strait.² Phormion spent the sum on trade goods and provisions for the journey. Chrysippos’ loan to Phormion was recorded in a written contract (syngraphe) that was deposited with the banker Kittos; the contract secured the loan on a cargo worth 4,000 drachmas, so Phormion seems to have had other resources to draw upon, and he also seems to have contracted further loans with other lenders for the same voyage (34.6–7). Phormion chartered space on a ship whose master (naukleros) was Lampis – a man who was either a slave or a freedman at the time of the events in question.³ For a merchant (emporos) to charter space on another person’s ship – and for that ship to carry the cargoes of several merchants, who would travel on the same ship – was a common practice at this time, and Lampis surely conveyed other cargo in the same vessel.⁴ After arriving at the Bosporan kingdom, Phormion was to sell his goods and use the profits to buy another cargo, which would then be loaded onto the same ship for the return voyage to Athens. The profits from the sale of this return cargo would be used to repay the loan (plus interest), and Phormion would pocket the remainder.

When the ship arrived at its destination, Phormion found that war had erupted between King Pairisades who ruled over the Bosporan kingdom and the Scythians who lived in the hinterland beyond his borders. As a result of this war, nobody wanted to buy Phormion’s merchandise (34.8). When Lampis was ready to set off back to Athens and asked Phormion to load his return cargo, the latter replied that he could not: he needed the money from the sale of his outward cargo to buy a return cargo, and having found no buyer he was temporarily stuck in Bosporos. He told Lampis to sail on without him; he would return in another ship once he had concluded his business (34.9). Business had been better for Lampis, who had loaded a return cargo and was eager to depart. Chrysippos narrates to the court what happened next (34.10; I present here the Oxford Classical Text (OCT) of W. Rennie accompanied by my translation).

μϵτὰ ταῦτα τοίνυν, ὦ ἄνδρϵς Ἀθηναῖοι, οὗτος μὲν ἐν τῷ Βοσπόρῳ κατϵλέλϵιπτο, ὁ δὲ Λάμπις ἀναχθϵὶς ἐναυάγησϵν οὐ μακρὰν ἀπὸ τοῦ ἐμπορίου· γϵγϵμισμένης γὰρ ἤδη τῆς νϵώς, ὡς ἀκούομϵν, μᾶλλον τοῦ δέοντος, προσανέλαβϵν ἐπὶ τὸ κατάστρωμα χιλίας βύρσας, ὅθϵν καὶ ἡ διαφθορὰ τῇ νηὶ συνέβη. καὶ αὐτὸς μὲν ἀπϵσώθη ἐν τῷ λέμβῳ μϵτὰ τῶν ἄλλων παίδων τῶν Δίωνος, ἀπώλϵσϵν δὲ πλέον ἢ τριάκοντα σώματα ἐλϵύθϵρα χωρὶς τῶν ἄλλων. πολλοῦ δὲ πένθους ἐν τῷ Βοσπόρῳ ὄντος ὡς ἐπύθοντο τὴν διαφθορὰν τῆς νϵώς, ηὐδαιμόνιζον Φορμίωνα πάντϵς τουτονί, ὅτι οὔτϵ συνανήχθη οὔτϵ ἐνέθϵτο ϵἰς τὴν ναῦν οὐδέν. συνέβαινϵν δὲ παρά τϵ τῶν ἄλλων καὶ παρὰ τούτου ὁ αὐτὸς λόγος.

After this, men of Athens, this man (sc. Phormion) had been left behind in Bosporos, whereas Lampis, having put out to sea, suffered shipwreck not far from the port; for although his ship, as we hear, was already more fully loaded than was proper, he also loaded a thousand hides on deck, for which reason the loss of the ship occurred. And he himself got to safety aboard the tender along with the other slaves of Dion; but he caused the destruction of more than 30 free persons (triakonta somata eleuthera) besides the rest. And there was much grief in Bosporos when they learned of the destruction of the ship, and everyone was calling this man Phormion fortunate, in that he neither sailed back nor put anything aboard the ship. And this same account tallied with that of other persons as well as that of this man (sc. Phormion).

That both Phormion and Chrysippos agreed about the facts of this particular event – and that other witnesses were called to confirm it – means that we can trust the basic outline of this section of the speech.⁵ Fortunately for our present purposes, we can stop here, and do not need to pursue the rest of the case, which is far from straightforward.⁶ However, it is worth noting (for it will become relevant later) that Lampis too eventually got on the wrong side of Chrysippos, and comes in for much criticism later in the speech.

This rather overlooked passage takes on a different complexion when we consider the several manuscript readings that lie behind Rennie’s edition. In fact, none of the primary manuscripts read triakonta, ‘30’; this is an editorial emendation. Of the various medieval MSS for this speech, the earliest and most authoritative, S (cod. Parisinus 2934, late ninth or early tenth century ad), has triakosia, ‘300’, as do the other primary manuscripts with the exception of A (Monacensis 485, tenth century ad), which has diakosia, ‘200’. The reading ‘30’ was first proposed in a marginal correction by Denis Lambin in 1570.⁷ What is more, A is the only primary manuscript that includes the word eleuthera, ‘free’. From a purely editorial viewpoint, we might be surprised that Rennie chose to emend the figure ‘300’ to ‘30’ and to include the reading ‘free’.

To understand these choices, we must look at earlier editions of the text. Johann Jakob Reiske in his edition of 1770 retained the reading ‘300’ of S but also included the ‘free’ of A.⁸ Immanuel Bekker in the fourth volume of his Oratores Attici (1823) followed S by retaining ‘300’ and omitting ‘free’.⁹ C. T. Penrose, in his Select Private Orations of Demosthenes (1843) – a volume aimed at schoolboys – did the same.¹⁰ However, Gottfried Schaefer, in his annotation to this passage in the fourth volume of his Apparatus criticus et exegeticus ad Demosthenem (1827), accepted the inclusion of ‘free’ for reasons that are obscure; based on this assumption he then wrote that both ‘300’ and ‘200’ were unbelievably large numbers of free persons to have fitted aboard an ancient Greek merchant ship alongside ‘the rest’, whom he took to be slaves. It would appear that Schaefer was objecting to the idea of well over 300 souls aboard, slave and free. He then brought forward an a fortiori argument to cast further doubt on the numbers ‘300’ and ‘200’: if warships of the time could only carry 120 men (an incorrect claim, as it happens), it would be improbable to suppose that several times that number could have fitted aboard a merchantman. He concluded that ‘30’ was the more probable figure.¹¹ There is some convoluted reasoning here, but Schaefer’s criticism of the numbers in the primary manuscripts was accepted by J. F. Stiévenart in his popular translation Oeuvres complètes de Démosthène et d’Eschine, published in 1842, which printed the emendation ‘30’.¹² Variants on the idea recur today; in his recent translation for the University of Texas Press Oratory of Classical Greece series, the late D. M. MacDowell wrote, ‘The manuscripts all say either “three hundred” or “two hundred,” but such high figures seem incredible, and the emendation “thirty” is generally accepted.’¹³ At any rate, by the late nineteenth century the debate had apparently been settled regarding the numbers, and the only disagreement since then has been on the question of including or omitting the word ‘free’. Dindorf’s edition for the Biblioteca Teubneriana of 1855 printed the emendation ‘30’ but omitted ‘free’.¹⁴ As we have seen, Rennie’s OCT of 1921 prints both ‘30’ and ‘free’. Louis Gernet’s edition for the Collection Budé of 1954 did the same.¹⁵ Dilts’s recent OCT of 2008, replacing Rennie’s, prints ‘30’ but omits ‘free’.¹⁶

It is vital to grasp that these different editorial choices stem not from some fine point of philology but from what makes most historical sense in context. It boils down to this: is it credible that over 300 (or 200) persons could have been aboard Lampis’ ship? And no matter which number we opt for, should we read just somata (‘bodies’), or somata eleuthera (‘free bodies’, i.e. free persons)? For if we follow S in the way that Immanuel Bekker did in his edition of 1823, the reading produces a radically different meaning,

he (sc. Lampis) himself got to safety aboard the tender along with the other slaves of Dion; but he caused the destruction of more than three hundred slaves, besides the rest . . . (author’s translation)

The word somata on its own can mean ‘slaves’ in Greek; and ‘besides the rest’ must on this reading mean ‘besides the rest of the cargo’.¹⁷ So, should we follow the most authoritative manuscript and accept that Chrysippos told the court that Lampis had been shipping over 300 slaves? Is the text of S believable as it stands, or ought it to be emended? In what follows, I propose to look first at the word ‘free’, and second at the question of the numbers.

There seems to be no good argument for including the word ‘free’. As we have noted, S is by far the best manuscript, and omits this word, as do the other primary manuscripts with the exception of A.¹⁸ Two further reasons enjoin this reading of the Greek. First, the phrase somata eleuthera is unusual for Greek of this period; one would expect the accusative plural eleutherous used on its own as a substantive, with no mention of somata, if Demosthenes were simply trying to say ‘free persons’.¹⁹ Second, in the few cases where we do find the phrase ‘free bodies’ in contemporary Greek texts, the idiomatic word order is not somata eleuthera, but eleuthera somata.²⁰ The former word order has many parallels in Greek of the Roman and Byzantine periods, but none in Greek of the Classical period. This provides a further reason (aside from the readings of S and the other primary manuscripts) for thinking that the Urexemplar of the speech did not contain the word ‘free’, and that its presence in the recension of A owes to a copyist’s decision at some point along the transmission chain. On balance, then, we ought to follow S and omit the word ‘free’.

A related point against the inclusion of the word ‘free’ deserves consideration. Why would there be 30 free persons on board Lampis’ ship, never mind 200 or 300? They cannot all have been sailors; given the rig of classical Greek merchantmen and the labour requirements for running such vessels, 30-plus men is an excessively large crew – and this follows even if we admit that we are dealing with a large vessel and assume that it mounted a foresail as well as a mainsail.²¹ The well-known (and thrice reconstructed) Kyrenia ship had a crew of four; and Pomey points out that even the large freighter that carried 276 passengers including St Paul (Acts 27:37) probably had a crew of only about 15 sailors.²² The crew of Lampis’ ship is more likely to be identified with the ‘other slaves of Dion’ who escaped with Lampis in the tender, for we know that ships of the period might be crewed by slaves.²³ We need a different way of explaining why so many free persons were aboard Lampis’ vessel. Could they have been fare-paying passengers? Thirty would be a surprisingly large number for a cargo vessel of this period that was not specifically serving as a ferryboat, but not an impossibly large number.²⁴ But if the number ‘300’ is correct, then the idea that these people were free becomes completely implausible.

That brings us to the vexed question of numbers. Is it inconceivable for 300 persons to have fitted into a merchant ship of this period, as many editors of Demosthenes have supposed? We have just noted that St Paul sailed on a ship several centuries later in which he was one of 276 on board. As Nantet notes his recent book on the capacity of ancient ships, this was probably a large Roman annona ship whose passengers were not crammed in like slaves and had ample space.²⁵ However, the fact that a ship of a few centuries later could carry 276 passengers comfortably ought to warn us that the close confinement of a similar number of souls in a vessel of the fourth century bc is far from implausible. We must now turn to the practical aspects of this problem.

For our purposes, a useful place to start is the Life of Josephus, which at §3 narrates the historian’s shipwreck in the Adriatic around ad 64. Josephus claims that before foundering the ship in which he sailed carried 600 souls. Nantet has calculated that this number of passengers, plus the weight of their baggage, water, and victuals for the voyage, will have come to at least 139.27 metric tonnes, and possibly as much as 164.27 metric tonnes.²⁶ (All weights given below are also in metric tonnes unless otherwise noted.) Since we are interested in just over 300 persons aboard, not 600, we may halve the larger figure (= 82.135 tonnes) and round up a little (say, to 85 tonnes) to gain an estimate of the maximum total weight of Lampis, the slave crew, over 300 other souls, and the necessary water and victuals. We must also add the weight of the hides.²⁷ The northern Black Sea region was the source of all manner of hides. Herodotus (4.109) mentions otter and beaver pelts; but the term used in our speech (34.10), bursa, may more specifically mean ‘ox-hide’. Allowing for 30 kilogrammes per hide, we may therefore add a further 30 tonnes to our load, adding up to a total deadweight tonnage of 115 tonnes.²⁸ Now, we must bear in mind that our problem involves not simply a matter of weight, but of space; since there is no reason to think that there were specialized slave ships in this period (see further below), and since human beings cannot be packed into the hold of a ship as tightly as amphoras or sacks of grain (however close our recent ancestors came to perfecting this grim practice in the Atlantic trade),²⁹ we must make some further allowance, and assume that these putative 300-plus persons would only fit into a vessel that could carry a significantly larger deadweight of grain or amphoras, even if the hold and perhaps some of the deck were filled with crouching, closely confined slaves in chains. In technical terminology, then, we are dealing not simply with a problem of cargo density, but of stowage factor.³⁰ Let us therefore for the sake of argument double our load, resulting in a deadweight tonnage of 230 tonnes. Were there ships in operation in the Athens–Crimea trade in the late fourth century large enough to carry such a cargo, and could Lampis have operated one?

Yes. As Lionel Casson rightly remarked some 50 years ago, ‘The capacity of seagoing freighters has been consistently and seriously underrated.’³¹ Subsequent research has greatly improved our knowledge of this issue.³² One must bear in mind that, in the general absence of accurate information on the dimensions of ancient hulls, we must normally make do with the weight of the cargo as a proxy for the size of vessels. The weight of a cargo can be estimated from shipwreck evidence where a full load of amphoras can be counted and its weight quantified, or from written sources that mention cargo sizes. We are not well served in terms of classical shipwrecks, and most that have been found are from the smaller end of the spectrum. The Tektaş Burnu ship carried a cargo estimated at just around 9.8 tonnes when it sank near Chios sometime between 440 and 425 bc.³³ The well-preserved Kyrenia and Ma’agan Mikhael ships, both of which have been raised, preserved, and recreated in full-scale replicas, were slightly larger: the Ma’agan Mikhael ship, which sank around 400 bc, could carry a cargo of 15.9 tonnes; and the Kyrenia ship, which sank around 295–285 bc but was built around the time the Against Phormion was delivered before an Athenian court, could carry a cargo of 23.3 tonnes.³⁴ More formidable is the Alonissos ship of about 420–400 bc, which on its final voyage carried a cargo of amphoras reckoned by Nantet at about 130 tonnes, making it in his view a middling vessel for its time.³⁵ Regarding written sources, Demosthenes (Against Lacritus 18–19) describes a ship that could carry 3,000 amphoras, weighing either 78 or 108 tonnes on Nantet’s reckoning, and which was involved in the Athens–Crimea run (via Chalkidike in the northern Aegean) around the middle of the fourth century bc; this vessel falls at the lower end of the ‘middling’ category.³⁶ Honorary decrees inscribed on stelae provide us with further information. In IG II³ 1, 367 Athens honours a grain trader from Cypriot Salamis in a clutch of decrees from precisely our period; and we can see from lines 29–46 that he was active on the Black Sea– Athens route, since these mention that his ship was forced into port and his sails confiscated by the navy of Heraclea Pontica, a city on the southern Black Sea coast. He twice ‘donated’ to the Athenians cargoes of 3,000 medimnoi of wheat at below the market price (lines 10 and 68–9), which Nantet reckons at 90 tonnes per cargo (an Attic medimnos being 52.53 litres).³⁷ In SEG I 361 Samos honours Gyges of Torone for conveying a cargo of 3,000 medimnoi of wheat to its port. Depending on the kind of wheat (which is not specified in the document), Nantet estimates Gyges’ cargo at between 90–117 tonnes.³⁸ IG II³ 1, 339 honours two merchants of Heraclea Pontica who delivered to Athens a cargo of 4,000 medimnoi of Sicilian wheat, computed by Nantet at perhaps 163 tonnes.³⁹ IG II² 400 honours Eucharistes for bringing one cargo of 8,000 medimnoi and another of 4,000 medimnoi to Athens; on Nantet’s reckoning, this means cargoes of 241–311 tonnes in the former case, and 120–156 tonnes in the latter.⁴⁰ IG II³ 1, 1064 honours Aischron son of Proxenos for bringing in another huge cargo of 8,000 medimnoi to Athens in the third century bc.

At the top end of the scale of classical-era merchantmen are the myriophoroi or ‘ten-thousand-carriers’ mentioned by Thucydides (7.25.5–8) and Ctesias (Indica 6). Here the question lies in what precisely the unit of measurement implicit in the name is taken to be; if it is talents (1 talent = about 26 kilogrammes), then a myriophoros could carry cargoes of up to about 260 tonnes (and thus comfortably carry our 230-tonne-equivalent cargo). But H. T. Wallinga argued convincingly that the unit in question was either the medimnos or the amphora, which Nantet has shown is backed up by shipwreck evidence, meaning that a myriophoros could carry cargoes up to about 360 tonnes.⁴¹ These were the largest merchant ships afloat before the launching of super-freighters in the Hellenistic period.⁴² In sum, the evidence shows that freighters at the upper end of the scale for the late classical period could certainly manage to carry over 300 persons; even freighters that when fully loaded could carry a hundred tonnes less cargo than the largest ships afloat could have done the job. We might compare the famous eighteenth-century Atlantic slaver Brooks, described by Captain Parrey rn, thus, ‘Ship Brooks—burthen 297 Tons contains in her different apartments for the Negroes 4178 square feet, which allows for one half the number she carried (609).’⁴³ Indeed, on its third slaving voyage (1785–6) the Brooks carried no fewer than 740 enslaved Africans.⁴⁴ Of course, this ship had been specifically fitted out as a slaver, with two decks for stowing its human cargo, each of which mounted a further platform or shelf to maximize stowage space. Obviously, Lampis’ ship was not thus equipped, and therefore even if closely confined, far fewer slaves could be fitted into his hold. But even very small eighteenth-century slavers could carry astonishing numbers of enslaved Africans, and across the Atlantic at that.⁴⁵ An even closer parallel may be found in a ship bound from the Black Sea to Alexandria, that in 1347 carried over 300 people (many of them slaves) and another cargo – bubonic plague. Only 45 disembarked in Egypt.⁴⁶ A comparative view, then, underscores the plausibility of the figure ‘300’ in S.

Could Lampis, a slave (or perhaps former slave), have operated a vessel large enough to ship over 300 slaves? According to Chysippos, Lampis lent Phormion a thousand drachmas for his voyage (36.6), so he seems to have had his own supply of capital. Later in our speech (34.36) we find a report that when Pairisades decreed a tax exemption for all those who would carry grain to Athens, Lampis loaded a ‘large ship’ with grain on these export conditions but conveyed it to Acanthus instead of Piraeus. That Lampis in this instance operated a ‘large ship’, which we can contextualize in terms of the capacities sketched above, is telling. Furthermore, the fact that our ship that sank seems to have belonged, like the crew, to Dion, and the fact that Lampis either was or had been Dion’s slave (36.5), points to the financial muscle of Dion lying behind Lampis’ commercial ventures. In other words, there is every reason to think that Lampis could have been operating with the sort of freighters large enough to carry several hundred slaves closely confined.⁴⁷

In sum, the reading of S, which is preferable a priori anyway, should stand. Of course, Chrysippos may be exaggerating the number of ‘over 300’ victims in order to blacken Lampis’ name; but he cannot be exaggerating into the realms of fantasy, or else he will have made himself look ridiculous before a court of Athenians who were used to seeing large freighters in Piraeus (cf. Xenophon, Oeconomicus 8.11– 16), who regularly heard in Assembly meetings about the grain supply ([Aristotle], Athenian Constitution 43.4), and who passed honorary decrees for various merchants transporting large cargoes of grain to Piraeus and selling them for less than the going rate (cf. the decrees discussed above). Chrysippos also brought witness testimony to back up his assertions about the sinking of Lampis’ ship (34.10), and it is unlikely that he would have gone to the trouble of bribing witnesses to corroborate this detail, which anyway was not vital to his case. We must therefore conclude that Lampis, for this voyage at least, had indeed chosen to ship slaves, probably aboard one of the larger freighters that normally transported, e.g., wine from the Aegean to the Crimea and carried a shipment of Crimean grain for the return voyage – in other words, the sort of ship that we know Lampis otherwise operated.

This makes sense for another reason: the Black Sea was a major source of slaves for the Aegean Greeks from the archaic period onwards.⁴⁸ Strabo (11.2.3) noted that the town of Tanais, located at the mouth of the River Don as it empties into the Sea of Azov, was a key export point for both hides and slaves. On their way to the Mediterranean such exports must have passed the cluster of cities located around the Kerch Strait, and thus bypassed the exact locale where Lampis was operating. Although writing in the Augustan period, in this passage Strabo is referring to the Bosporan Kingdom in the past and uses a verb in the imperfect tense.⁴⁹ Indeed, a recently discovered merchant’s letter dating to the fourth or third century bc, written in Greek on a lead tablet and found in Kerch Bay, mentions a slave boy.⁵⁰ Buying a cargo of slaves would have been particularly attractive to Lampis because of the war that Pairisades was waging against the Scythians. We do not know the details of this war, but a good parallel can be found slightly earlier, at the end of the previous century; for Xenophon (Anabasis 7.3.43–7.4.2) recounts how another northern warlord, the Thracian warlord Seuthes II, took him on a slave raid. They captured and burned an enemy village, rounding up 1,000 captives and 12,000 head of livestock, and sent these to the Greek town of Perinthos on the coast of the Sea of Marmara for sale. (Unlike the Thracians, the Scythians were largely nomadic; but a raid on a large seasonal camp cannot have been much different.) A few years after Seuthes’ raid, the Spartan king Agesilaos’ raids in Asia Minor had so flooded local markets with booty that prices plummeted, and slave traders were abandoning elderly and infant slaves by the roadside as not worth the bother of transporting to market (Xenophon, Agesilaos 1.18 and 1.21–2).⁵¹ We know of other occasions when war had this effect on slave prices.⁵²

This makes Lampis’ actions as reported in Demosthenes 34.10 intelligible. With the financial muscle of Dion behind him, Lampis was not in the sort of precarious position that faced Phormion. War was potentially disastrous for merchants like Phormion who counted on selling their outbound cargo and using the profits to buy a return cargo. But the opposite was true for those who had access to sufficient capital without worrying about getting their funds solely from selling their outbound cargo. For such merchants, war provided a golden opportunity, buying up slaves on the cheap. If we accept the reading of S, then Lampis’ actions appear in this light: he was not a regular slave trader but an opportunist, who saw that under the current market conditions he could make a greater profit in exporting slaves than in shipping a cargo of grain. Having bought a large crowd of slaves – quite likely recently enslaved war captives – he crammed these unfortunates into his ship until it was loaded ‘more fully than was proper’. This phrase can simply mean that every available inch of space was packed with slaves, not necessarily that the weight of the cargo was too great. Given that slaves cannot be stowed as closely as sacks of grain or amphoras of oil or wine, Lampis was indeed probably shipping a lesser weight than was safe, meaning that his ship was riding high in the water. Furthermore, when lading the ship he may have left room for Phormion’s putative cargo which, as we have seen, Phormion was unable to provide. It may be for these reasons that, instead of properly ballasting the ship, Lampis added the cargo of hides to weigh down the vessel and thus reduce the freeboard. These hides had the advantage of being saleable, whereas proper ballast may or may not have been saleable depending on what was available; perhaps millstones, etc., were not available to Lampis at the Crimea, and perhaps he did not like the idea of wasting valuable space by ballasting his ship with sand and stones.⁵³

However, by stowing the hides on the deck, he raised the ship’s centre of mass, exacerbating its pitch and roll once it left harbour.⁵⁴ When the ship listed too far and started to take on water, Lampis and the crew escaped on the tender, but the human cargo – many perhaps chained in the hold – went to a watery grave.⁵⁵ If this interpretation is correct, then it provides a precious testimonium for the sea-transit phase of the ancient Greek slave trade, about which we are otherwise relatively uninformed, as well as the role of slave sailors and merchants in running its supply lines.⁵⁶ It also illustrates what has hitherto been expected on the basis of guesswork: that in the ancient Greek world slaves usually travelled as part of mixed cargoes, and not on specialized slave ships, though Lampis was probably exceptional for trying to load so large a consignment of slaves.⁵⁷ But above all it shows the fatal consequences of Lampis’ greed. Like the freedman-turned-slave-trader Aulos Kapreilios Timotheos who transported coffles of slaves down to the north-Aegean coast several centuries later, Lampis’ background as a slave (or former slave) seems not to have occasioned any reservations about trafficking in human beings; nor does his apparent inexperience in this line of business seem to have worried him sufficiently to ship his usual (but in this case less profitable) cargo of grain.⁵⁸ His gamble sent perhaps hundreds of souls to a miserable death.

Acknowledgments

This paper has benefited from the advice of numerous scholars; I thank Edward Harris, Theodora Hadjimichael, Mirko Canevaro, Jason Porter, Vincent Gabrielsen, Ben Russell, Moritz Hinsch, Stephen Hodkinson and Marios Anastasiadis for reading it in draft and providing valuable suggestions. The paper was delivered as the British School at Athens Scotland Lecture (5 May 2021); I thank John Bennet for the invitation to speak and the audience (particularly Chris Parmenter, Andrew Wilson, Michael Edwards and Stephen Lambert) for their comments and criticisms. Finally, my thanks to the editor, copy-editor and reviewers for helpful suggestions. None of the above is to be held complicit in the argument.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David M. Lewis

David M. Lewis is lecturer in Greek history and culture at the University of Edinburgh. He has written several essays on the ancient Greek slave trade and is author of Greek Slave Systems in their Eastern Mediterranean Context, c. 800–146 bc (Oxford, 2018).

Notes

1 For the date see MacDowell, Demosthenes the Orator, 279–80, and 279–84 for an overview of the speech.

2 For the Bosporan kingdom see Moreno, Feeding the Democracy, 169–208.

3 For the reference to Lampis at 34.5 as ‘the slave of Dion’ and at 34.10 to him and ‘the other slaves of Dion’; hostile Athenian litigants sometimes referred to former slaves as if they were still slaves; see Ismard, La cité et ses esclaves, 102–3. On the translation of naukleros as shipmaster (not ‘ship owner’) see Woolmer, Emporoi kai nauklēroi. If Lampis was a slave, then naukleros cannot mean ‘ship owner’, and Lampis would have been an agent of his owner Dion, who owned the ship. If Lampis was a freedman, then he cannot have been an agent of Dion in the legal sense, but may have been his business partner carrying out the practical side of the business. For the position of the law on these arrangements see Ismard, La cité et ses esclaves, 21–54; Harris, Democracy and the Rule of Law, 241–8; idem, ‘Were There Business Agents in Ancient Greece?’

4 See Woolmer, Emporoi kai nauklēroi, who rightly points out that not all emporoi had to charter space in the vessel of another since some were shipowners themselves.

5 Immediately after the quoted passage, Chrysippos asks the clerk of the court to read out witness testimony. For the methods required to sort credible from spurious claims in the Attic orators, see Harris, Aeschines and Athenian Politics, 7–16.

6 The point of dispute is whether or not Phormion had sent back the money he owed to Chrysippos using Lampis as his emissary. Phormion claimed that he had done this, and since the contract had a get-out clause in the event of shipwreck, no further liability existed for him towards Chrysippos. Chrysippos, on the other hand, claimed that this was a lie, and that the debt was still pending. For a lucid discussion of the legal issues, see Harris, ‘The Meaning of the Legal Term Symbolaion’, 27–9. For the contractual minutiae and various loans mentioned in this speech see Thompson, ‘An Athenian Commercial Case’. For an excellent discussion of ancient Greek maritime trade between the Black Sea and the Aegean, see Gabrielsen, ‘Trade and Tribute’.

7 Lambin, Demosthenous, 540.

8 Reiske, Demosthenes, 910.

9 Bekker, Orationes, 1006.

10 Penrose, Select Private Orations, 93, with notes at 180.

11 Schaefer, Apparatus, 543.

12 Stiévenart, Oeuvres complètes, 486, with the note at 490.

13 MacDowell, Demosthenes, 118 n. 24.

14 Dindorf, Demosthenis Orationes, 392.

15 But regarding this particular line he writes ‘Texte quelque peu incertain’ (Gernet, Démosthène, 156 n. 3).

16 Dilts, Demosthenis Orationes vol. 3, 130.

17 As noted by Penrose, Select Private Orations, 180. As far as I am aware, the only recent scholar of slavery who has considered this possibility is Hans Klees, and just in a footnote, Sklavenleben, 53 n. 246 (although retaining the reading ‘30’).

18 See the remarks of Dilts, Demosthenis Orationes 1, v–xx, esp. xvi, ‘The essential appeal of S lies in the fact that it tends to have a recension that is briefer than AFY, which often have readings that are easier to comprehend and therefore suspect, according to the principle lectio difficilior potior. If this principle is used to explain differences between S and AFY, the fuller recension of AFY is the result of an attempt to simplify the text.’ Accordingly, ἐλϵύθϵρα can be taken as a misguided attempt to clarify the meaning of Demosthenes’ text, perhaps an intrusive gloss. For the editorial principle lectio difficilior potior see Reynolds and Wilson, Scribes and Scholars, 221–2.

19 The earliest parallels for σώματα ἐλϵύθϵρα I have found are [Hippocrates], Letters 27 line 122 (σωμάτων ἐλϵυθέρων) of the late Hellenistic or Roman period (but this is a medical text); and Hellenistic inscriptions: SIG³ 521 has σώματα ἐλϵυθέρων καὶ δούλων (cf. SEG XXV 958, [σωμά]των ἐλϵυθέρων καὶ δ[ούλων]) as a way of talking about ‘captives, both free and slave’. Marios Anastasiadis points out to me the papyrus C. Ord. Ptol. 22 = C. Ptol. Sklav. 3 (260 bc), with the locution σῶμα λαικὸν ἐλϵύθϵρον (line 2). In general, when not literally meaning ‘bodies’, the term σώματα can be used of slaves and captives (e.g. Demosthenes 20.77; [Demosthenes] 59.29); it is not normally used to refer to free persons.

20 This was pointed out to me by Theodora Hadjimichael. For the sense of crimes committed against the body of a free person, see Aeschines 2.5 and Dinarchus 1.20; for captives, Xenophon, Hellenica 2.1.19; for segueing from talking about slave bodies to those of the free, Hypereides Against Athenogenes 16. Aenaeas Tacticus, Poliorcetica 10.3, in using the term to mean ‘person’, seems to be an exception to the trend.

21 An early classical merchantman thus rigged can be seen in the fresco from the Tomba della Nave in Tarquinia; see L. Casson, Ships and Seamanship, illustration no. 97. Even earlier depictions have recently been found in Attica; see Van de Moortel and Langdon, ‘Archaic Ship Graffiti’, 399–400.

22 For the Kyrenia ship see Steffy, Wooden Shipbuilding, 42–59. For the crew and its effects, see Berlin, ‘At Home On Board’. For St Paul’s ship, see Pomey, ‘Le voyage de Saint Paul’, 13.

23 See Demosthenes 33.8–10 and 35.33 with Casson, Ships and Seamanship, 328.

24 For the bulky possessions of passengers, including klinai (that is, beds – for they would sleep on deck), see Xenophon Anabasis 7.5.14 with Bresson, La cité marchande, 143. For ferries, see Barnes, ‘The ferries of Tenedos’. For passengers and crew, see Vélissaropoulos, Nauclères, 74–86.

25 Nantet, Phortia, 196.

26 Ibid., 196–7.

27 On the trade in hides see Dercy, Le travail des peaux, 168–9.

28 The Scythian cattle from Salgótarján in Hungary had a mean withers height of 98.3 cm, significantly smaller than the top Greek and Roman breeds. See Bartosiewicz and Gál, ‘Living on the Frontier’, 117; cf. Kron, ‘Animal Husbandry’, 110–11. Modern ox breeds can produce hides that when salted weigh as much as 50 kg; I assume here 30 kg as a generous estimate for the maximum weight of a dried Scythian ox hide.

29 Rediker, The Slave Ship, 41–72 and 308–42.

30 Lucid discussion in relation to ancient Mediterranean trade in McGrail, ‘Shipment of Traded Goods’.

31 Casson, Ships and Seamanship, 171.

32 Nantet, Phortia, provides an excellent summary on the current state of knowledge.

33 Ibid., 309–10.

34 Ibid., 262–3; full discussion on pp. 314–18 (Ma’agan Mikhael); 323–6 (Kyrenia).

35 Ibid., 118 and 312–14.

36 Ibid, 548. It is described at Dem. 35.18 as an eikosoros, that is, a merchant galley. See Casson, Ships and Seamanship, 157–68, with the correction of Davis, ‘Commercial Navigation’, 53 n. 6.

37 Nantet, Phortia, 569; Bresson, The Making of the Ancient Greek Economy, 439.

38 Nantet, Phortia, 569 and 573 n. 18.

39 Ibid., 569 and 573 n. 10.

40 Ibid., 569.

41 Wallinga, ‘Nautica’; Nantet, Phortia, 115–119; 548.

42 For super-freighters, see Meijer and Sleeswyk, ‘On the Construction of the “Syracusia”’.

43 Quoted in Rediker, The Slave Ship, 310.

44 Ibid., 311.

45 Ibid., 61–6, noting e.g. a Bristol slaver of 25 tons that would ship 70 slaves, and a 10-ton slaver from Liverpool that carried 30 slaves to St Kitts in 1761.

46 Borsch, The Black Death, 1–2.

47 Demosthenes, Against Aristocrates 211 (dating to a couple of decades earlier than the Against Phormion) mentions a resident of Aegina named Lampis who owned the biggest shipping interest in Greece. He is probably not the same man as our Lampis; perhaps Dion named our Lampis after him, as a nickname. Cf. Plato, Cratylus 384d.

48 See Finley, ‘The Black Sea’, Gavriljuk, ‘The Graeco-Scythian Slave Trade’; Avram, ‘Some Thoughts about the Black Sea and the Slave Trade’; Fischer, ‘Der Schwarzmeerraum und der antike Sklavenhandel’; Parmenter, ‘Journeys into Slavery’. For systems of slavery in the Black Sea hinterland, see Heinen, ‘Sklaverei im nördlichen Schwarzmeerraum’.

49 On ancient Black Sea trade routes see Saprykin, ‘Ancient Routes’; Parmenter, ‘Journeys into Slavery’.

50 See Bekhter, Dana and Butyagin, ‘Opisthographic Lead Letter’. For other Black Sea lead letters see Parmenter, ‘Journeys into Slavery’.

51 See van Wees, ‘Agesilaos’ Abandoned Babies’, 194. For the activities of camp-follower merchants see O’Connor, ‘Private Traders’.

52 e.g. Plutarch, Life of Lucullus 14.1. Cf. Ruffing and Drexhage, ‘Antike Sklavenpreise’, 321–2, where the per capita prices attested for slaves captured en masse in wartime (specifically Thucydides 8.28.4, Diodorus Siculus 14.11.4 and 17.14.1) are noticeably lower than peacetime slave prices.

53 The Kyrenia ship carried millstones made from Nisyros basalt as ballast, Katzev, ‘The Kyrenia Ship’, 79. For millstones from Nisyros, see Bresson, The Making of the Ancient Greek Economy, 196–7. Andrew Wilson suggests to me an alternative reconstruction: Lampis had already bought the hides before buying the slaves, and moved the hides from the hold onto the deck to make room below for the slaves. I would like to thank Ben Russell for discussing issues of stowage with me.

54 Cf. Penrose, Select Private Orations, 180.

55 Although slave chains have not been found in any ancient shipwreck, I do not see how these slaves can have otherwise been restrained, unless we consider (archaeologically perishable) ropes, as Nantet suggests (Phortia, 196, ‘jusqu’à present, les épaves antiques n’ont apparemment pas livre des chaînes ou d’entraves, peut-être parce que celles-ci pouvaient être constituées de liens en matériaux organiques’). At any rate, if this cargo of slaves was indeed restrained in the hold, it explains why all of them drowned despite the wreck occurring a short distance from the port. Vincent Gabrielsen and Stephen Hodkinson point out to me a possible objection: if these were all slaves, why then the grief at Bosporos? (Rennie’s apparatus criticus shows that he was thinking along the same lines.) Gabrielsen supplies one possible answer (pers. comm., 9 Feb. 2021), ‘The rhetorical effect of this is definitely to magnify the harm caused by Lampis’ greed and recklessness.’ But it is also worth noting that Greeks might simultaneously (and rather hypocritically) lament the human tragedy of the slave trade while buying and exploiting slaves, as does Hypereides when in the Against Timandros he claims that even slave merchants would rather make a loss by selling a slave family together than sell them separately for a greater profit. See Jones, ‘Hyperides and the Sale of Slave Families’, Schmitz, ‘Die Verkauf einer Sklavenfamilie’. Moritz Hinsch on the other hand points out to me that when the passage says that there was much grief over the loss of the ship, it might literally mean just that, that business partners of Lampis in Bosporos may have lamented the loss of a large and expensive vessel.

56 Cf. Nantet, Phortia, 195, ‘Les sources écrites sont silencieuses sur le transport des esclaves dans le monde antique.’ Slaves as instrumental to the operation of maritime trade: see note 23, above. See also §§ 8, 28, 29, 31, 37, and 41 of Demosthenes, Against Phormion. A possible example of a slave trader is Xenokrates of Chios, honoured by Athens in IG II³ 1, 1004 (250/49 bc). For the argument that Xenokrates is a slave trader, see Marasco, Economia, 171–8. Against this interpretation, see Will, ‘Compte rendu’, 582–3. Marasco’s argument seems to me plausible though not provable. For slaves in transit, see also Parmenter, ‘Journeys into Slavery’.

57 e.g. Lewis, ‘The Market for Slaves’, 323. But cf. Harper, Slavery in the Late Roman World, 91–9, for possible evidence of specialized slave ships in late antiquity.

58 On Aulos Kapreilios Timotheos see Finley, Aspects of Antiquity, 154–66.