Ancient Greece

===Social structure===
Only free, land-owning, native-born men could be citizens entitled to the full protection of the law in a city-state. In most city-states, unlike the situation in [[Ancient Rome|Rome]], social prominence did not allow special rights. Sometimes families controlled public religious functions, but this ordinarily did not give any extra power in the government. In Athens, the population was divided into four social classes based on wealth. People could change classes if they made more money. In Sparta, all male citizens were called ''[[homoioi]]'', meaning "peers". However, Spartan kings, who served as the city-state's dual military and religious leaders, came from two families.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Powell |first1=Anton |title=A Companion to Sparta |date=2017 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |isbn=9781119072379 |page=187 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QqA6DwAAQBAJ |access-date=4 July 2022}}</ref>

====Slavery====
{{Main|Slavery in ancient Greece}}
[[File:Grabstein einer Frau mit Dienerin.jpg|thumb|Gravestone of a woman with her slave child-attendant, {{circa}} 100 BC]]
Slaves had no power or status. Slaves had the right to have a family and own property, subject to their master's goodwill and permission, but they had no political rights. By 600 BC, [[chattel slavery]] had spread in Greece. By the 5th century BC, slaves made up one-third of the total population in some city-states. Between 40–80% of the population of [[Classical Athens]] were slaves.<ref>[http://student.britannica.com/comptons/article-201729/ANCIENT-GREECE Slavery in Ancient Greece] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081201123710/http://student.britannica.com/comptons/article-201729/ANCIENT-GREECE |date=1 December 2008 }}. ''Britannica Student Encyclopædia''.</ref> Slaves outside of Sparta almost never revolted because they were made up of too many nationalities and were too scattered to organize. However, unlike later [[Western culture]], the ancient Greeks did not think in terms of [[race (human categorization)|race]].<ref>{{Cite book| publisher = W.W. Norton & Company| isbn = 978-0-393-04934-3| last = Painter| first = Nell| title = The History of White People| location = New York| date = 2010| page = [https://archive.org/details/historyofwhitepe00pain/page/5 5]| url = https://archive.org/details/historyofwhitepe00pain/page/5}}</ref>

Most families owned slaves as household servants and laborers, and even poor families might have owned a few slaves. Owners were not allowed to beat or kill their slaves. Owners often promised to free slaves in the future to encourage slaves to work hard. Unlike in Rome, [[freedman|freedmen]] did not become citizens. Instead, they were mixed into the population of ''[[metic]]s'', which included people from foreign countries or other city-states who were officially allowed to live in the state.

City-states legally owned slaves. These public slaves had a larger measure of independence than slaves owned by families, living on their own and performing specialized tasks. In Athens, public slaves were trained to look out for [[Coin counterfeiting|counterfeit coinage]], while temple slaves acted as servants of the temple's [[List of Greek mythological figures|deity]] and [[Scythians|Scythian]] slaves were employed in Athens as a police force corralling citizens to political functions.

Sparta had a special type of slaves called ''[[helots]]''. Helots were [[Messenia (ancient region)|Messenians]] enslaved en masse during the [[First Messenian War|Messenian Wars]] by the state and assigned to families where they were forced to stay. Helots raised food and did household chores so that women could concentrate on raising strong children while men could devote their time to training as [[hoplite]]s. Their masters treated them harshly, and helots [[slave rebellion|revolted]] against their masters several times. In 370/69 BC, as a result of [[Epaminondas]]' liberation of Messenia from Spartan rule, the helot system there came to an end and the helots won their freedom.<ref>{{cite book|last=Cartledge|first=Paul|title=The Spartans: An Epic History|year=2002|publisher=Pan Macmillan|page=67}}</ref> However, it did continue to persist in Laconia until the 2nd century BC.