November - 2025

In Les salariés de l’Égypte romano-byzantine: essai d’histoire économique (Paris, ACHCByz, 2022, 392 pages, €40.00), Christel Freu sought to understand the economic motivations for hiring wage labourers in workshops, services, and on agricultural estates in Roman Egypt (30 BCE - 641 CE). Primarily through the analysis of employment and apprenticeship contracts, accounting books, payment orders, and some petitions, all preserved on papyrus, Freu investigated both the genesis and development of the processes of supply and demand for wage labour, involving the availability and circulation of workers, goods, and information, as well as conflicts between employees and employers. Furthermore, Freu investigated the organizations, techniques, and tools of the productive structures and the levels of standardization of manufacturing through material sources. Thus, his accounting analysis of long-term wage fluctuations and hierarchies goes further and allows us to glimpse the material conditions and fields of possibility for action of those who received wages for their work, such as men, women, and children.

In Diverse Slaveries: Slaving Strategies and Experiences of Slavery in Classical Athens (Edinburgh University Press, 2025, 248 pages, £90.00, open access PDF), Jason Douglas Porter revisits slavery in classical Athens, arguing that it should not be seen as a uniform phenomenon. Using literary texts, the author analyzes the different “slavery strategies”: that is, the varied ways in which owners used their enslaved people, according to the type of work, the structure of the household, or the industry involved. The author also emphasizes how these strategies resulted in distinct modes of control and social relations, and the equally diverse effects these had on the experiences of the enslaved and their opportunities for autonomy, social advancement, and the formation of diverse relationships. Thus, the book contributes to a more complex understanding of Athenian slavery, showing that the condition of being a slave did not determine a uniform destiny, allowing, albeit limited, space for individual experiences.