>>46693691Slavery in antiquity wasn't based around the concept of race as it was in the Americas. In fact one of the driving forces in the development of the concept of race was the trans atlantic trade.
In antiquity people divided themselves by cultural spheres. For the Ancient Greeks certain costumes and spoken languages set them apart from the so-called 'barbarians'. Of course 'barbarian' doesn't mean primitive, the people of Hellas considered the Egyptians and Persians as barbarians but also as very civilized, but decadent and submissive, people. But even so one could still be seen as a semi-barbarian people despite being very Greek like. The people of Aetolia spoke Greek but also had barbarian costumes like carrying weapons in open spaces and living in a mostly rural society, marks that put them in a semi-barbarian category.
In antiquity skin tone was not a mark of a slave. Rather people would enslaves one another regardless of appearance. The Greeks had no trouble enslaving one another despite belonging to the same cultural group. They would commit atrocities like killing the adult men and enslaving women and children, a fate suffered by the neutral Melos at the hands of the Athenians. The warriors of the failed Athenian expedition of Syrakuse were worked to the death in mines.
