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In the ancient Mediterranean, slavers targeted women. Many of these enslaved women went to regional markets but some were shipped to India where they could be used to access markets that supplied the Eastern luxury products profitable back in the West. Women, labeled yavani (Ionic Greek) in India, could have been from the Persian conquests of the Eastern Mediterranean, Alexander's Hellenistic colonies in Bactria, Indo-Greeks, or eventually, women captured anywhere in the Roman Empire. Greek slaves proved to be popular in India, appearing in Sanskrit, Prakrit, Tamil, and Syriac texts in three main roles. First, lists of attendants in royal harems include yavani as early as the fifth century B.C. in Bihar. Second, dramas and poetry in late antiquity brand Greeks as the preferred female bodyguards of royals. Third, multiple sources identify Western women working as courtesans, barmaids, and "flute girls" in the robust sex/entertainment careers of ancient India. Foreign slaves provided prestige and demonstrated the imperial reach of those who possessed them. The desire for foreign exotica by the elite in a wealthy region like India increased the danger of enslavement and long-distance displacement for the women of the ancient Mediterranean, a risk that has not disappeared for those in vulnerable places today.
Keywords: sex trafficking, Yavana, slavery in Ancient India, courtesanship, sex slavery, prostitution, armed women, Mediterranean slave trade.
On the Greek island of Ceos, an early third century b.c. inscription proclaims that women were forbidden to wander around at the risk of being fined.1 Contemporary inscriptions from the nearby islands of Amorgos and Naxos reveal the threat behind this gendered restriction on movement: the theft of women by pirates.2 Why would slavers target women? Scholars of the Mediterranean assume that the slave trade served to redistribute labor around the Mediterranean.3 Indian sources, however, reveal long-distance desire for the same commodity: lightskinned women. The Eastern market demand for foreign females increased pressure to enslave Mediterranean women. The culture of ancient India required huge numbers of multi-ethnic, multi-racial women as a measure of status. Greek slave women provided prestige to the Indian elite, serving them as harem attendants, armed guards, and sex workers.4
Mining the Sources to Find Greek Slave Women
Describing the long-distance slave trade that carried Greek women east and fleshing...