The Primacy of Politics in Classical Greece
"The Primacy of Politics in Classical Greece", by Paul A. Rahe, The American Historical Review, Vol. 89, No. 2 (Apr., 1984), pp. 265-293.
The citizen intent on mentioning the good things in life can think only of eros, poetry, and politics while the slave in precisely the same situation ponders nothing but subsistence and the pleasures of filling his belly. The root of servility was taken to be an obsessive and degrading love of mere life. ...
THE PRESENCE OF THE WOMEN AND THE SLAVES was a permanent reminder to the citizens that privacy is privative and that a life centered on domestic concerns-on Mr. Dooley's family quarrels and his drinking bouts, on love, marriage, and the never-ending struggle to make ends meet-is a life of deprivation