this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2025
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As in most of history, the majority of folks would've been subsistence farmers and, outside of Sparta, free (though not necessarily enfranchised) folk.
Athens is one of the major slaver cities, but even there the percentage of slaves is somewhere between 20%-33%; a horrific amount, but far from the majority. Most of those slaves, as well, would not have been in the high-mortality mines. For that matter, Diogenes himself was a slave for a time in his life.