"Periclean democracy was founded on slavery and could not have existed without it. Though most free citizens  had to work for a living, they could create leisure slaves to do the heavier part of their labors for them.

Slaves were used in work ships and mines, on the land and in domestic service. All Greeks regarded slavery an unalterable condition of society, and accepted it as such. It may not have troubled them very deeply or raised ugly questions of natural justice. But they were aware of it, at times uneasily, and at least sought excuses for it or pointed out the good points of slaves.

 The Athenians were as aware as Homer that slavery robs a man of half his life and remarked more than once that some slaves had the minds of and the self-respect of free men, that for a free man to become a slave was the most terrible thing that could happen to him.

 The tragedians portray slaves who speak on equal terms to their masters and are sometimes more admirable. Slaves were protected to some degree by law and owned a certain amount of property. No doubt many were well enough treated. Since the higher
class of artisans in the workshops of sculptors were often slaves, it was much to their owners' interest to look properly after them.

We do not know how slaves did really skilled and difficult work as, for instance, in carving the sculptures of the Parthenon, but we assume that at least some such labor was done by them

Slaves seem to have assumed a greater freedom of manners in Athens then elsewhere, and one sharp critic of the democracy says:

"At Athens there is the greatest license amoung slaves and aliens, and neither is it permissible to strike them then or there, nor will a slave make way for you."

"Xenophon," Athenian Constitution 1.10

This at least indicates that slaves were treated quite well, if only because they were indispensable. Free Athenians valued leisure because it enabled them to exercise their minds and bodies in agreeable ways, and to secure this they needed slaves to perform the duller, and not only the duller, chores of common life. They themselves were thus free to meet and discuss politics, enjoy the arts and athletic sports, take their seats on juries, listen to debates in the Assembly, and vote on its motions.

When war meant that they were not able to supervise their farms and workshops, workmen might take their place. If they had qualms of conscience, they could perhaps argue that most slaves were not Greeks but barbarians, aliens who did not share the Greek outlook or Greek habits.

The Greeks assumed without question that they were superior to all foreigners and, though they might admire Persians and Egyptians and at times form friendships with them, they saw nothing wrong in making slaves of them.

Greek slaves were rather a different matter. They certainly existed and, as war brutalized in participants, there was a horrifying tendency to enslave the women and children of the defeated.

In the long run slavery did irreparable harm to the ancient world. Because it provided a large pool of cheap and usually unskilled labor, it gave no incentive to the invention of machines as substitutes for human hands. The failure of the Greeks to apply mathematics to practical needs such as engineering and their increasing reliance on slave labor, accounts for their failure to improve their material circumstances and for the static monotony of their culture in the centuries after Alexander's conquests. Applied knowledge was rejected by creative minds as below

their dignity, and even war, which sometimes stirs the inventive faculty, continued to use its age-old weapons and armor.

 Some slaves must have been skilled artisans and even artists. A slave who did work at this level was not only close to free men in his interests but able to speak to them on their own terms. Many Athenian households were small enough for slaves to be almost members of the family and mix easily with them, thus avoiding the segregation which ruins self-respect.

Slaves could be given their liberties and often were, perhaps because their owners felt that they were human beings like themselves. Yet it is a sad paradox that democratic Athens, which built so much on its belief in the individual worth of every man, endured a system which completely contradicted it.

Athenian slaves were probably treated better than Spartan Helots, but they cannot have enjoyed the high sense of personal honor which Athens proclaimed to the world as the right end of men."

Bowra, C. M, Periclean Athens, Dial Press, c1971.