Social Justice and the Legitimacy of Slavery: The Role of Philosophical Asceticism from Ancient Judaism to Late Antiquity

In 371 Gregory of Nyssa was caught by his own brother, Basil of Caesarea, forging not one but two letters in the name of his uncle, a bishop. The public shame of the epistolary fake led Basil to pen Gregory an angry rebuke calling out his brother’s lies as “imbecilic” and “unbecoming” a Christian, and was the cause of Basil’s inability to trust anything at face value ever again (Basil, Ep. 58). This historical moment of fraternal estrangement bears significance for the monograph under review, because Basil in passing remarks to Gregory that the delivery of the second forged letter came “through your slave Asterios” (dia tou oiketou sou Asteriou) (58.1).1 The episode thus illustrates the challenge facing the historian investigating ancient slavery––slaves can be barely visible in our primary sources, receiving mention only anecdotally or in passing. And the reader of Social Justice and the Legitimacy of Slavery would never learn this crucial detail about Gregory’s slave Asterios. Instead we find repeated assurances that Gregory––author of the best apparent condemnation of legal slavery to survive from antiquity (Hom. Eccl. 4)––neither participated in nor was implicated in the peculiar institution of ancient