Silent Slaves: Reconstructing Slave Perspectives on the Grave Stele of Hegeso

Abstract

The Grave Stele of Hegeso (400 BCE) depicts a ‘mistress and maid’ scene and preserves valuable insights into elite iconography. The stele also explores the experiences of wealthy Athenian women in their social roles and domestic spaces. The slave attendant, if discussed at length, primarily functions as a method of contrast and comparison to her elite master. While the comparison between elite and non-elite women is a valuable interpretation for studies of gender and class in classical Athens, more can be done in regard to examining the slave attendant on the stele, and as a result, examining slave figures in Greek art. Slaves made up a sizeable portion of classical Athenian society and were present in both elite and poor households. However, due to a lack of material and written evidence, the field of classics has not explored the concept of Greek slavery to its full extent. In addition, what little does remain to modern scholars was commissioned or written by elite voices, who were biased against slaves. The remaining elite perspective does provide insight into the role of slaves in classical Athenian households and can be reexamined to find subversive interpretations. This paper explores potential reconstructions for slave perspectives and narratives on the Grave Stele of Hegeso by drawing upon the Attic funerary practices and literary tropes of the Good Slave and Bad Slave in Athenian theater and Homeric epic. This paper also discusses the relationships between masters and slaves, household slave dynamics, and what constitutes the idealized Athenian slave. While the majority of remaining classical material and literary evidence relates to the elite, subversive ideals can be picked out from elite narratives and used to better understand the perspectives of the enslaved, construct frameworks that give voices to disenfranchised groups, and further enrich the study of surviving elite perspectives.