Slavery may no longer exist as a legal institution, but we still find many forms of non-freedom in contemporary societies. It is a troubling paradox, and one this book addresses by considering a period in which the definition of slavery and freedom proved considerably flexible. Between more familiar forms of slavery--those of antiquity and of the Americas--the institution as it was practiced and theorized in the Byzantine Mediterranean was of a different nature.

Looking at the Byzantine concept of slavery within the context of law, the labor market, medieval politics, and religion,...