Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/147

 SLAVERY 131 Theo- retic views on slavery. on mutual respect, as in the heroic example of Ulysses and Eumteus, but on insolent self-assertion on the one side and a spirit of unworthy compliance on the other, the latter having its raison d'etre in degrading services rendered by the slave. Aristophanes and Plautus show us how often resort was had to the discipline of the lash even in the case of domestic slaves. Those employed in workshops, whose overseers were themselves most commonly of servile status, had probably a harder lot than domestics ; and the agricultural labourers were not unfrequently chained, and treated much in the same way as beasts of burden. The displeasure of the master sometimes dismissed his domestics to the more oppressive labours of the mill or the mine. A refuge from cruel treatment was afforded by the temples and altars of the gods and by the sacred groves. Nor did Athenian law leave the slave without protection. He had, as Demosthenes boasts, an action for outrage like a freeman, and his death at the hand of a stranger was avenged like that of a citizen (Eurip., Hec., 288), whilst, if caused by his master's violence, it had to be atoned for by exile and a religious expiation. Even when the slave had killed his master, the relatives of the house could not themselves inflict punishment ; they were obliged to hand him over to the magistrate to be dealt with by legal process. The slave who had just grounds of com- plaint against his master could demand to be sold ; when he alleged Ms right to liberty, the law granted him a defender and the sanctuaries offered him an asylum till judgment should be given. Securities were taken against the revolt of slaves by not associating those of the same nationality and language ; they were sometimes fettered to prevent flight, and, after a first attempt at escape, branded to facilitate their recovery. There were treaties between states for the extradition of fugitives, and contracts of mutual assurance between individuals against their loss by flight. Their inclination to take advantage of opportunities for this purpose is shown by the number that escaped from Athens to join the Spartans when occupying Decelea. There were formidable revolts at the mines of Laurium, and more than once in Chios. The evidence of slaves women as well as men was often, with the consent of their masters, taken by torture ; and that method is generally commended by the orators as a sure means of arriving at the truth, though sometimes, when it suits their immediate object, they take a different tone. The several forms of the " question " are enumerated in the Frogs of Aristophanes. If the slave was mutilated or seriously injured in the process, compensation was made, not to him, but to his master by the person who had demanded the use of torture. The slave could purchase his liberty with his peculium by agreement with his master. He comd be liberated by will, or, during his master's life, by proclamation in the theatre, the law courts, or other public places, or by having his name inscribed in the public registers, or, in the later age of Greece, by sale or donation to certain temples an act which did not make the slave a hierodule but a freeman. Conditions were sometimes attached to emancipation, as of remaining for life or a definite time with the former master, or another person named by him, or of per- forming some special service ; payments or rights of succession to property might also be reserved. By manumission the Athenian slave became in relation to the state a metic, in relation to his master a client. He was thus in an intermediate condition between slavery and complete freedom. If the freedman violated his duties to his patron he was subject to an action at law, and if the decision were against him he was again reduced to slavery. He became a full member of the state only, as in the case of foreigners, by a vote in an assembly of six thousand citizens ; and even this vote might be set aside by a graphc paranomon. Slaves who had rendered eminent services to the public, as those who fought at Arginusae and at Chaeronea, were at once admitted to the status of citizens in the class of (so-called) Platseans. But it would appear that even in their case some civic rights were reserved and accorded only to their children by a female citizen. The number of freedmen at Athens seems never to have been great. It is well known that Aristotle held slavery to be necessary and natural, and, under just conditions, beneficial to both parties in the relation views which were correct enough from the political side, regard being had to the contemporary social state. His practical motto, if he is the author of the Economics attributed to him, is "no outrage, and no familiarity." There ought, he says, to be held out to the slave the hope of liberty as the reward of his service. Plato condemned the practice, which the theory of Aristotle also by implication sets aside as inadmissible, of Greeks having Greeks for slaves. In the Laws he accepts the institution as a necessary though embarrassing one, and recommends for the safety of the masters that natives of different countries should be mixed and that they should all be well treated. But, whilst condemning harshness towards them, he encourages the feeling of contempt for them as a class. Xenophon also, in urging a mild treatment of them, seems to have in view, not their own well- being, but the security of the masters. The later moral schools of Greece scarcely at all concern themselves with the institution. The Epicurean had no scruple about the servitude of those whose labours contributed to his own indulgence and tranquillity ; he would at most cultivate an easy temper in his dealings with them. The Stoic regarded the condition of freedom or slavery as an external accident, indifferent in the eye of wisdom ; to him it was irrational to see in liberty a ground of pride or in slavery a subject of complaint ; from intolerable indignity suicide was an ever-open means of escape. The poets especially the authors of the New Comedy strongly inculcate humanity, and insist on the funda- mental equality of the slave. The celebrated "homo sum" is a translation from Alexis, and the spirit of it breathes in many passages of the Greek drama. A fragment of Philemon declares, as if in reply to Aristotle, that not nature, but fortune, makes the slave. Euripides, as might be expected from his humanitarian cast of sentiment, and the "premature modernism" which has been remarked in him, rises above the ordinary feelings of his time in regard to the slaves. As Mr Paley says, he loves "to record their fidelity to their masters, their sympathy in the trials of life, their gratitude for kindness and considerate treatment, and their pride in bearing the character of honourable men. . . . He allows them to reason, to advise, to suggest ; and he even makes them philosophize on the follies and the indiscretions of their superiors" (compare Med., 54; Orest., 869; Hel., 728; Ion, 854 ; Frag. Melon., 506 ; Phrix., 823). But we are not to suppose that even he, latitudinarian and innovator as he was, could have conceived the possibility of abolishing an institution so deeply rooted in the social conditions, as well as in the ideas, of his time. The case of the Helots of Laconia was different from that of the The slaves in most Grecian communities. The origin of this class is Helots, disputed, and we cauuot here cuter into the controversy. They were regarded as the property of the state, which gave their services to individuals but kept in its own hands the power of emancipat- ing them. The domestic servants of the Spartans were all Helots, and they waited on their masters at the syssitia or public meal. But they were in the main serfs, living in small country villages or in detached farms, cultivating the lands of the Spartan pro- prietors, and paying to those proprietors a proportion of the pro- duce which could not be increased. They enjoyed their homes, wives, and families, could acquire property, were not to be sold out of the country, and perhaps could not be sold at all. They were, doubtless, employed in public works ; in war they commonly acted as light-armed troops attending on the Spartan or Pericecic hoplites, but in particular emergencies themselves served as hoplites (Thucyd., iv. 80). They were sometimes rewarded for good service by emancipation, which, however, did not make them Periceci, but introduced them into a special class known as neodamodeis. The condition of the Helot does not seem to have been economically onerous ; but his consciousness of Grecian lineage, which Grote regards as an alleviation of his lot, must surely have been one of its bitterest elements, whilst it constantly kept alive the fear and consequent hatred of his Spartan masters, and made the relation between the two classes less natural than that of the ordinary Greek masters with slaves of foreign and less civilized races. By the ruling powers of Sparta the Helots were never trusted, and in one memorable case some two thousand of them, selected for special military merit, were massacred in secret (Thucyd., iv. 80). According to Plutarch, whose statement, how- ever, has not always been credited, the ephors declared war against the Helots every year, and there was a practice, known as the krypteia, of detailing a number of young Spartan citizens for the purpose of assassinating such of them as were considered formidable. Wallon estimates the number of the Helots at 220,000, that of the Spartans being 32,000. The Penesfce in Thessaly and the Clarotffi in Crete seem to have occupied a position somewhat similar to that of the Helots in Laconia. We have already observed that the Roman system of ROME. life was that in which slavery had its most natural and relatively legitimate place ; and accordingly it was at Home that, as Blair has remarked, the institution wa.s more than anywhere else " extended in its operation and methodized in its details." Not only on this ground is it especially deserving of our study, but because out of the slave-class, as it was organized by the Romans in the countries subject to the empire, the modern proletariate has been historically evolved. We must distinguish from the later slavery at Rome what Sources. Mommsen calls "the old, in some measure innocent" slavery, under which the farmer tilled the land along with his slave, or, if he possessed more land than he could manage, placed the slave either as a steward, or as a sort of lessee obliged to render up a portion of the produce over a detached farm. Though slaves were obtained by the early victories of Rome over her Italian neighbours, no large number was employed on the small holdings of those periods. But the extension of properties in the hands of the