Slaves were ubiquitous in ancient Greek society. Yet they are often invisible in classical studies today. How can we come to terms with this ubiquity and its erasure as we consider texts, images and objects from antiquity? How does the history of the discipline of classics in the U.S., with its own history of slave-holding, affect our relationship to the ancient world? The paper will address these issues, comment on some ancient works of art and on texts such as Aristophanes’ comedy about the Athenian jury system, the Wasps.
