What kind of chores would a young slave girl have had to do in ancient Greece ?

Question

I want to find out what chores a young slave girl ( a teenager ) would have had to do in ancient Greece for a story I'm planning . Thank you in advance . : )

Answer 1

Like the Chinese and Muslim cultures women are not worth as much as men and many were allowed to die at birth while many families sold their own daughters into slavery. They would do everything a poor family would do; what was considered womens' chores kitchen, house cleaning, etc. Work the fields, grapes or whatever craft that might be included in the household. Sex would certainly be expected as it was males. Then off course the family would spend the next 5000 years blaming slavery, demanding reparations. Oh, wait they did not do that they forgot about it and worked at bettering themselves and making a moral life for themselves and family.

God Bless You and Our Southern People.

Answer 2

Young Slave Girl

Answer 3

An appalling number of teen-aged slave girls in the USA had to have sex with their owner, or his sons. If you do genealogy enough you run into it. Assuming men didn't change for the worse over the ages, I suspect young slave girls in Greece would have had the same "chore", as well as the standard cooking, cleaning and mending, under supervision of the Mistress of the house or the older slaves.

Answer 4

Depends a lot on the kind of household she was in.

At an agricultural place, unless the master was particularly well to do, she would probably have to help in the farm, probably at the vegetable garden, as well as such secondary agricultural work as gathering straw after harvest, tending orchards (remember, olives are big in Greece), and the like. This applies in addition to what I note below.

In a more urban setting, she would do women's work. spinning, weaving, making clothes, kitchen work (from shelling the peas and making foodstuff ready for preparation to actual cooking to washing the dishes), and serve at table. She would of course do housework (sweeping, washing floors etc). She might also serve as a personal attendant to a given member of the household, likely female, men were attended either by men, or by their nurse, who tended to be older women, as their duties began with actually nursing the infant with their own milk, meaning they already had at least one child of their own. As an attendant, they would help in grooming and dressing.

A young and comely girl might of course be ordered to satisfy the men of the house in more personal way.

Her exact work might depend on her comeliness and how and why she came in the house. A girl bought at market for hard labor would of course get the most menial job, while the daughter of the nurse of the house's master, or one of his sons might enjoy lighter work and a favored status.

Answer 5

Check this out. It tells all about the duties of slaves in Ancient Greece...
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Rhodes/1319/herstory/greekslaves.html

Answer 6

Whether life was hard for a child or fun depended, much as it does today, on which social class a child was born into. Certainly, the life of a child of an aristocrat or citizen was different from the life of a child slave. It is mostly the aristocrats who are shown on the vase paintings.
As the male children of aristocrats continued with their education, the lives of girls and slave children took other courses. Girls were instructed by older women in the domestic arts of cooking and textile making, and in dancing. Children of artisans and farmers became apprentices or went to work the fields. Slave children became servants. One vase shows a young slave boy accompanying his master home from a drinking party, where the man has overindulged. Although the painting is meant to be humorous, it illustrates the lowly tasks assigned to slave children. “It is interesting note here that the word for child Greek, pais, can also mean slave,” says Neils. “It indicates that their status was not all that different."

Most teenage slave girls would have been domestic servants who performed household tasks.

"Slaves were treated differently in ancient Greece depending upon what their purpose was.
If one was a household servant, they had a fairly good situation, at least as good as slavery could be. They were often treated almost as part of the family.
They were even allowed to take part in the family rituals, like the sacrifice.
They were always supervised by the woman of the house who was responsible for making sure that all the slaves were kept busy and didn't get out of line.
This could be quite a task as most wealthy Greek households had as many as 10-20 slaves.
There were limits to what a slave could do. They could not enter the Gymnasium or the Public Assembly.
They could not use their own names, but were assigned names by their master.
It is important to remember that these people were thought of as property of their masters rather than citizens of Greece
Not all forms of slavery in ancient Greece were as tolerable as that of the domestic servant.
Slave labor was an essential element of the ancient world. While male slaves were assigned to agricultural and industrial work, female slaves were assigned a variety of domestic duties which included shopping, fetching water, cooking, serving food, cleaning, child-care, and wool-working. In wealthy households some of the female servants had more specialized roles to fulfil, such as housekeeper, cook or nurse.
Because female slaves were literally owned by their employers, how well slaves were treated depended upon their status in the household and the temperament of their owners. As a result of her vulnerable position within the household, a female slave was often subjected to sexual exploitation and physical abuse. Any children born of master-servant liaisons were disposed of because female slaves were prohibited from rearing children.
As Xenophon's Oceonomicus reveals, slaves were even prohibited from marrying, as marriage was deemed the social privilege of the elite citizens of Athens.
In addition to their official chores in the household, slave girls also performed unofficial services. For example, there is evidence that close relationships developed between female slaves and their mistresses. Given the relative seclusion of upper-class women in the private realm of their homes, many sought out confidantes in their slave girls.
For example, Euripedes' tragic character of Medea confided her deepest feelings with her nurse, who both advised and comforted her in her troubled times. Furthermore, slaves always accompanied their mistresses on excursions outside of the home.
Tombstones of upstanding Athenian women often depict scenes of familiarity between the deceased and her slave companion. It is likely that a sense of their common exclusion from the masculine world of public affairs would have drawn women together, regardless of class. The only public area in which women were allowed to participate was religion.
Slave women were included in some religious affairs and could be initiated to the Eleusinian Mysteries which celebrated the myth of Persephone.
Thus, the fate of a Greek slave girl was determined by circumstance and more or less rested in the hands of her owners, who had the power to shape her existence.

Answer 7

They would probably be maids under the instruction of the mistress ogf the house, help with housekeeping, cooking, etc. Sex was not part of their "job", but there were concubines and prostitutes for that purpose.

Answer 8

house keeping, i guess but when men cant resist temptations of the young girls then sex would come into the picture...