Still, she is not the slave of the people for whom she works, and is promised such compensation (θρεπτήρια) for her services as would make her an object of envy to the women of the household.[[29]]
Aphrodite learned Anchises’ language from her Trojan nurse:
γλῶσσαν δ’ ὑμετέρην καὶ ἡμετέρην σάφα οἶδα·
Τρῳὰς γὰρ μεγάρῳ με τροφὸς τρέφεν, ἡ δὲ διαπρό
σμικρὴν παῖδ’ ἀτίταλλε φίλης παρὰ μητρὸς ἑλοῦσα.[[30]]
The nurse is probably a slave, for wherever slave-trading was known it must have been usual to employ a foreign nurse.
The historians naturally have but little occasion to speak of domestic life. Herodotus, however, introduces into his narrative not only political history, but also matters of purely social interest. Hence we are not surprised to find a nurse in his sixth book.[[31]] This nurse is presumably a slave, for she receives the commands of the parents to show the child to no one.
In Tragedy.
The nurses of Tragedy are old women who have spent years in the service of their masters (παλαιὸν οἴκων κτῆμα).[[32]] Even after the child they had nursed had grown up, they were still retained in the household.[[33]] There can be no doubt that like the nurses of Homer they were slaves.[[34]] Medea’s nurse is addressed as κτῆμα δεσποίνης[[35]] and when speaking to the παιδαγωγός, she calls herself σύνδουλος.[[36]] Then, too, the fall of the mistress involved that of the nurse, a calamity hinted at in Hippolytus:
οὐ δῆθ’ ἑκοῦσά γ’, ἐν δὲ σοὶ λελείψομαι;[[37]]