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  • Servitude Tragique. Esclaves et héros déchus dans la tragédie grecque by Anastasia Serghidou
  • Kathryn Mattison
Anastasia Serghidou. Servitude Tragique. Esclaves et héros déchus dans la tragédie grecque. Besançon: Presses universitaires de Franche-Comté. Pp. 366. €32.00. ISBN 9782848672793.

The slave in tragedy is a nearly constant presence, whether it is in a supporting role or as the main character, and whether slavery is an explicit theme or an underlying reflection of social reality. In Servitude Tragique, Anastasia Serghidou promises to provide a thorough analysis of the theme of slavery in tragedy – a lofty goal since she includes under the umbrella of slavery those born into it, those enslaved as a result of war, as well as those who are dependent and submissive or those who are oppressed by divinities or fate (13). The book is structured in two parts, with the first part focusing more on defining terms and laying a foundation for the second part, which presents examples from the tragedies of the different kinds of slaves, their employment, their mannerisms, and their appearance.

Serghidou’s working definition of a slave is anyone who is living in subjection under a sovereign, a protector, or a political or religious authority figure (20). This definition casts a wide net and the resulting discussion is an impressive catalogue of slaves in tragedy, but a somewhat disjointed whole. The breadth of the definition allows her to gloss over some of the details of the rich discourse of slavery in the fifth century. For example, in the introduction Serghidou makes only a passing reference to the important fifth-century sophistic antithesis of slavery by nature and by custom. More troubling is her assertion that her study is centered on how real or metaphoric [End Page 240] slaves conceive of living in slavery (20). This seems to be not only impossible to prove but also removed from her notion of tragedians using the concept of slavery to contrast with the ideal heroic standard of life (16, 19)—that is, specifically not talking about slaves as real slaves in society, but as a literary trope to talk about society in general.

The first chapter continues to lay the methodological groundwork of the book with Serghidou discussing the ways in which the themes of slavery (douleia) and freedom can differ from author to author. She points out that the slave (doulos) in Aeschylus refers to oppressed characters or those deprived of their status, but lacks a clear judicial meaning (28). In Euripides, however, the doulos is more directly related to social standing and denotes the exclusion of the character from civic society (29). Sophocles’ slave she places somewhere in between these two, with elements from each. With such a distinction in the way the tragedians present slavery broadly and slaves individually, the reader (or this reader at least) expects there to be a similar distinction when Serghidou comes to present her thematic examples, but this turns out to be far from the case. In the second chapter, Serghidou begins with a discussion of war, the fallen warrior, and how war is an important element in the topic of slavery in tragedy because of the social degradation and overturning of the hero’s life that it can create (53). The chapter goes on to focus on how women, so often presented in tragedy as war captives, are not merely the victims of war, but become symbols of the potential upheaval of the family order and civic authority (60). This is an attractive point, because it removes women from the simple categories of “victim” or “transgressive other” and makes them instead powerful symbolic figures for the whole of society. Thus, the laments, which women so often voice, not only express their own loss of status but become hymns to liberty that emphasize the value of freedom (61). As the chapter moves on to examine the domestic problems that arise when captive women are introduced into the household, Serghidou begins to lose focus on this compelling analysis. For example, in the section entitled Barbares (et) dependants, she diverges from the topic of women altogether and discusses the socio-political reality...

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