Laughing at Slaves: the Greek Comic Slave and the American Blackface Minstrel

Ancient Greek and American slave representations might not have an obvious association, however, similar categories of imagery can arise out of two societies that are disparate in culture, location, and time. In ancient Greece and the antebellum United States, laughter was used as a mechanism to distinguish between slave and free, outsider and citizen. Both societies produced comic theatre that portrayed a subset of male slave characters in ways that often appear strikingly similar. This article examines the popular, entertaining, and derogatory representations of male slaves that appear in Greek comedy and American blackface minstrelsy. These were the types of characters that were the most likely to draw laughter and, perhaps, derision. They also illustrate the negative stereotypes (or “stock” characteristics) typically attributed to male slaves and demonstrate some of the ways in which ancient Greeks and nineteenth-century Americans attempted to justify slavery.