Slavery in ancient Greece varied substantially across places and periods. In classical Athens, enslaved people worked in households, agriculture, workshops, public service, prostitution, and the silver mines at Laurion. Enslavement could follow war, piracy, trade, birth, or abandonment, and markets connected the Aegean to Thrace, Anatolia, the Black Sea, and the eastern Mediterranean.

The institution existed alongside a political culture that defined freedom and citizenship narrowly. Athenian democracy excluded enslaved people, women, and resident foreigners from political membership. Enslaved workers could exercise skill, handle money, or live apart from an owner, but those arrangements did not remove an owner's power to punish, sell, or reclaim them.

Spartan helots should be distinguished from ordinary market chattel slaves. Helots, particularly the conquered population of Messenia, formed a hereditary agricultural population subordinated collectively to Spartan households and the state. Their labor supported the Spartan citizen-warrior system, while their local roots and numbers made fear of revolt a persistent feature of Spartan rule.

Ancient Greek writers also debated or justified slavery. Aristotle's theory of "natural slavery" attempted to present domination as a consequence of innate capacity, although Greek enslavement in practice also arose from contingent events such as warfare and sale.

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