> In my mind a slave is someone you own, you can sell or kill.
It varies a lot place to place and era to era what exactly is a slave and what isn't. Servants? Serfs? Even in a single era and a single place, as soon as one of the laws changes, things are not the same. Like in China, after the Unification, Chin Han called his administers what Westerners call "servants" or "slaves". I think this is a Western thing. Really, a better translation would be they were his "perkins," a Chilean word that basically means "someone who does what someone else says." But it doesn't have a definition, don't think in terms of definitions, think in terms of the relationship between words. That's the thing, the West is big on titles, I suppose the East is to a degree, but it's really meaningless. I wonder what they call Emperor Augustus in Chinese, what else it means. Ultimately, it's not what your title is, it's what you can do. Same with slaves, the word is just a word, the question is what will you have to do.
EDIT: In general there actually are laws against killing them. Sparta declared war on the Helots about every year, because killing just like that, openly, for no reason, just raw murder, was just too gross. Just the level of cruelty. Even in the American South there were laws that said if a master just can't get a slave to submit, he's tried everything (I can't get an authoritative quote on this, what I'm giving you is the desert island version[1]), then in that case, the master can kill them. But I think it doesn't say kill, it's some other word. Of course, that's the law, the reality is different, the limit is far too low but there is a limit. Super basic stuff and difficult to prove, but for another example masters couldn't practice Satanism with their slaves, we're talking like egregiously egregious stuff. Which does occasionally happen.
[1] The desert island version of a text is what you remember without being able to search for it online, or review your notes, nothing. Like if it were you and I, dear reader, on a desert island, the Bible is what we remember, that's it.
It varies a lot place to place and era to era what exactly is a slave and what isn't. Servants? Serfs? Even in a single era and a single place, as soon as one of the laws changes, things are not the same. Like in China, after the Unification, Chin Han called his administers what Westerners call "servants" or "slaves". I think this is a Western thing. Really, a better translation would be they were his "perkins," a Chilean word that basically means "someone who does what someone else says." But it doesn't have a definition, don't think in terms of definitions, think in terms of the relationship between words. That's the thing, the West is big on titles, I suppose the East is to a degree, but it's really meaningless. I wonder what they call Emperor Augustus in Chinese, what else it means. Ultimately, it's not what your title is, it's what you can do. Same with slaves, the word is just a word, the question is what will you have to do.