Although much has been written on Greek and Roman slavery in antiquity, the same cannot be said for slave resistance in this period. Slave revolts have typically been dismissed as historically insignificant or exceptional events resulting from peculiar historical circumstances. In the first in-depth work on this topic to be published in two decades, Theresa Urbainczyk challenges much current thinking by looking beyond the canonical sources to reveal a longer and far more significant history of slave resistance. Her engaging, up-to-date account considers the circumstances of these revolts, looks at slave leaders and how they are recorded in history, explores the aims of slaves, examines attitudes toward freedom and slavery, and more. Dissecting both ancient and modern sources, she finds that the writers who recorded and rerecorded these slave rebellions and wars had every reason to repress large-scale resistance or to reconfigure it as something other than what it was. Slave Revolts in Antiquity also addresses one of the most important issues of our own time: the meaning of freedom itself.

Copub: Acumen Publishing Limited

Theresa Urbainczyk is Senior Lecturer in Classics at University College Dublin and author of Spartacus, among other books.

“Urbainczyk demonstrates and lays before the reader the tremendous critical analysis of the primary sources that undergirds any modern historical study of an underreported but historically important social phenomenon such as slave revolts. This study demonstrates how careful and painstaking scholarship may rise to the challenge of answering historical questions of great value and importance.”—World History Connected

“A valuable book for scholars and students alike. Urbainczyk's views will be discussed extensively, and they will stir up the debate on a topic that has been neglected.”—Constantina Katsari, University of Leicester