One of Athens' key sources of wealth in the Classical period was the use of slaves in the fields, in workshops, and in the silver mines at Laurion. Slaves mainly came from Thrace, the Balkan, or Paphlagonia in Asia Minor. We can also tell their origins by collecting the names of slaves or freed (manumitted) slaves that we know from tombs: most of these names are non-Hellenic. The above does not mean that there were not known cases of other Greeks being enslaved. From Demosthenes we learn that three thousand prisoners of war were taken by the general Chabrias after the battle of Naxos in 376 B.C., and sold into slavery at Athens. The sale realized one hundred talents, which Chabrias needed to pay his troops.

The port of Piraeus was the chief centre of the slave trade. Slaves fetched high prices: the pick of them entered house or shop service. Condemned criminals went cheap.

A slave's average price was something between 150 and 200 drachmae. Nikias (it was said) once paid 6,000 drachmae (one talent) for a specialist mine overseer. It was Nikias too, who (according to Xenophon) would hire slaves out at one obol per slave per day; whereas other citizens hired out six hundred slaves at one mna per day (and three hundred for half that price). By 355 B.C. the daily hire of a slave had risen (Xenophon tells us, Poroi 4) to ten obols.

In the fifth century, a fair number of Athenians of note had made a fortune based on the use of slaves. One instance is Sophilos from Kolonos (father of the writer of tragedies Sophocles). Sophilos was the owner of slave smiths or carpenters. Theodoros (father of the orator Isocrates) was owner of a factory where slaves manufactured the musical instrument known as aulos (pipe). The general Nikias from the deme of Kydantidaia was owner of one thousand slaves, whom he hired out on contract in the mines.
To make a generalization, one can assert that slaves' work in the workshops and the mines enabled owners to enjoy free time and to actively engage in Athenian politics.

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