Female slaves are known to have been occupied in woolwork and the retail trade; they were also used as wet nurses for infants and known to have worked in craft shops around the agora. Female slaves also worked as prostitutes in brothels and as concubines. However, a concubine had no rights whatsoever.
Greek women had virtually no political rights of any kind and were controlled by men at nearly every stage of their lives. The most important duties for a city-dwelling woman were to bear children--preferably male--and to run the household.
Slaves in ancient Greece did not have any human or civil rights. They were tortured for different reasons; their owner could beat them whenever he wanted; when their testimony was needed for a lawsuit, they were tortured into confessing to their own guilt or incriminate someone else.
All activities were open to slaves with the exception of politics. For the Greeks, politics was the only occupation worthy of a citizen, the rest being relegated wherever possible to non-citizens. It was status that was of importance, not occupation.
Basic garment of female slaves consisted of a one-piece frock or slip of coarse "Negro Cloth." Cotton dresses, sunbonnets, and undergarments were made from handwoven cloth for summer and winter. Annual clothing distributions included brogan shoes, palmetto hats, turbans, and handkerchiefs.
As we have seen, in most places, throughout the classical, the Hellenistic, and probably the Roman period, the punishment for a slave amounted to whipping with a set number of lashes (usually fifty but sometimes left to the magistrates to decide).
Some were sent to row on Greek ships and spent the rest of their lives inside without any sunlight or fresh air, eating nothing but bread and drinking nothing but water. Likewise, slaves were also sent to work in mines, and they might live only two or three years before the lead, a poisonous material, killed them.
In Sparta, there were state-owned slaves called helots. Helots were assigned to work a certain piece of land. They were also forced to give part of what they grew to the state. At times, helots outnumbered the free Spartans by twenty to one.
One peculiarity about slavery in Athens was the surprising degree of autonomy that some owners afforded their slaves. Some slaves had the freedom to live and work in the city unsupervised or transport goods on ships to foreign destinations. Additionally, some slaves could earn manumission, or release from slavery.
Women looked up to Aphrodite, Goddess of love, sex, beauty and fertility and depicted her with a round face, large breasts and a pear-shaped body. This then became the beauty ideal for Greek women.
Many girls were married by the age of 14 or 16, while men commonly married around the age of 30. The son-in-law and father-in-law became allies (ἔται, etai, "clansmen") through the exchange of gifts in preparation for the transfer of the bride.
Women in the ancient Greek world had no possess all rights as men possessed and had few rights in comparison to male citizens. The key restrictions that women had was that they could not vote in different public affairs, and also could not own or inherit land.
While most enslaved people remained in servitude until death, it was possible to be freed by a master – the process of manumission, or enfranchisement.
In addition to domestic and agricultural slaves, there was a class of slaves called chôris oikountes, or those living separately.
Africans also served as slaves in ancient Greece (74.51. 2263), together with both Greeks and other non-Greek peoples who were enslaved during wartime and through piracy. However, scholars continue to debate whether or not the ancient Greeks viewed black Africans with racial prejudice.
Neither Athens nor Rome enslaved people based on ethnicity or skin color but they did discriminate by enslaving non-citizen foreigners, a majority of whom were captured during war or sold by slave-traders. Children born to enslaved parents were also enslaved.
Skilled slaves arrived with knowledge of a wide range of traditional African crafts—pottery making, weaving, basketry, wood carving, metalworking, and building—that would prove valuable in the Americas, particularly during the preindustrial colonial period, when common household goods, such as thread, fabric, and soap, ...
Weekly food rations -- usually corn meal, lard, some meat, molasses, peas, greens, and flour -- were distributed every Saturday. Vegetable patches or gardens, if permitted by the owner, supplied fresh produce to add to the rations. Morning meals were prepared and consumed at daybreak in the slaves' cabins.
This was temperamental, as well. One of the ways in which they tried to bring death on when they couldn't jump overboard: they tried to just starve themselves to death. And so, in order to discourage this they would force the slave to eat.
Faunal remains in excavations have confirmed that livestock such as pigs and cows were the principal components of slaves' meat diets. Other sites show remnants of wild species such as opossum, raccoon, snapping turtle, deer, squirrel, duck, and rabbit.
The brazen bull, also known as the bronze bull, Sicilian bull, or bull of Phalaris, was a torture and execution device designed in ancient Greece.
Athenian slave society was finally destroyed by Philip II of Macedonia at the battle of Chaeronea (338 bce), when, on the motion of Lycurgus, many (but not all) slaves were freed. The next major slave society was Roman Italy between about the 2nd century bce and the 4th century ce.
Greek children had toys and spent the day playing games. When boys became seven years old, they started school. They learned math, reading, and writing. Sometimes they would also learn a musical instrument.