Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/148

 132 SLAVERY patricians, and the continual absences of citizens required by the expanding system of conquest, necessarily brought with them a demand for slave labour, which was increasingly supplied by captives taken in war. Of the number furnished from this source a few particulars from the time of the mature republic and the first century of the empire will give some idea. In Epirus, after the victories of Emilias Paullus, 150,000 captives were sold. The prisoners at Aquae Sextise and Vercellae were 90,000 Teutons and 60,000 Cimbri. Cffisar sold on a single occasion in Gaul 63,000 captives; Augustus made 44,000 prisoners in the country of the Salassi ; after immense numbers had perished by famine and hard- ship and in the combats of the arena, 97,000 slaves were acquired by the Jewish war. But slavery, as Hume has shown, is unfavourable to population, and even the wars of Rome were insufficient to maintain the supply. Hence a regular commerce in slaves was established, which was based on the "systematically- prosecuted hunting of man," and indicated an entire perversion of the primitive institution, which was essentially connected with conquest. The pirates sold great numbers of slaves at Delos, where was the chief market for this kind of wares ; and these sales went on as really, though more obscurely, after the successful expedi- tion of Pornpey. There was a regular importation at Rome of slaves, brought to some extent from Africa, Spain, and Gaul, but chiefly from Asiatic countries Bithynia, Galatia, Cappadocia, and Syria. A portorium apparently one-eighth for eunuchs, one- fortieth for others was paid on their import or export, and a duty of 2 or 4 per cent, on their sale. There were other sources from which slavery was alimented, though of course in a much less degree. Certain offences reduced the guilty persons to slavery (servi pcenas), and they were employed in public work in the quarries or the mines. Originally, a father could sell his children. A creditor could hold his insolvent debtor as a slave, or sell him out of the city (trans Tiberim). The enslavement of creditors, overwhelmed with usury in consequence of losses by hostile raids or their own absence on military service, led to the revolt of the Mons Sacer (493 B.C.). The Pcetelian law (326 B.C.) restricted the creditor's lien (by virtue of a nexum) to the goods of his debtor, and enacted that for the future no debtor should be put in chains ; but we hear of debtors addicti to their creditors by the tribunals long after even in the time of the Punic Wars. Employ- There were servi publici as well as privati. The service of the ments. magistrates was at first in the hands of freemen ; but the lower offices, as of couriers, servants of the law courts, of prisons, and of temples, were afterwards filled by slaves. The execution of public works also came to be largely committed to them, as the construc- tion of roads, the cleansing of the sewers, and the maintenance of the aqueducts. Both kinds of functions were discharged by slaves, not only at Rome, but in the rural and provincial municipalities. The slaves of a private Roman were divided between the familia rustica and the familia urbana. At the head of the familia rustica was the villicus, himself a slave, with the wife who was given him at once to aid him and to bind him to his duties. Under him were the several groups employed in the different branches of the exploitation and the care of the cattle and flocks, as well as those who kept or prepared the food, clothing, and tools of the whole staff and those who attended on the master in the various species of rural sports. A slave prison (ergastulum} was part of such an establishment, and there were slaves whose office it was to punish the offences of their fellows. To the familia urbana belonged those who discharged the duties of domestic attendance, the service of the toilet, of the bath, of the table, of the kitchen, besides the entertainment of the master and his guests by danc- ing, singing, and other arts. There were, besides, the slaves who accompanied the master and mistress out of doors, and who were chosen for their beauty and grace as guards of honour, for their strength as chairmen or porters, or for their readiness and address in remembering names, delivering messages of courtesy, and the like. There were also attached to a great household physicians, artists, secretaries, librarians, copyists, preparers of parchment, as well as pedagogues .and preceptors of different kinds, readers, grammarians, men of letters and even philosophers, all of servile condition, besides accountants, managers, and agents for the transaction of business. Actors, comic and tragic, pantomimi, and the performers of the circus were commonly slaves, as were also the gladiators. These last were chosen from the most warlike races as the Samnites, Gauls, and Thracians. Families of gladiators were kept by private speculators, who hired them out ; they were sometimes owned by men of high rank. Num- As to the numbers of slaves belonging to individual masters, Ixsrs. though we have no distinct general statement in the Roman writers, several special examples and other indirect indications serve to show that the wealthier men possessed very large familiaz. This may be inferred from the columbaria of the house of Livia and of other great houses. Vettius armed four hundred of his own slaves when he entered on the revolt which was a prelude to the Second Servile "War. The slaves of Pedanius Secundus, who, in spite of a threatened outbreak of the indignant populace, were all put to death because they had been under their master's roof when he was murdered, were four hundred in number. Pliny tells us that Ceecilius, a freedman of the time of Augustus, left by his will as many as 4116. The question as to the total number of slaves at Rome or in Italy is a very difficult one, and it is not, perhaps, possible to arrive with any degree of certainty at an approximate estimate. Gibbon supposes that there were in the Roman world in the reign of Claudius at least as many slaves as free inhabitants. But Blair seems right in believing that this number, though prob- ably correct for an earlier period, is much under the truth for the age to which it is assigned. He fixes the proportion of slaves to free men as that of three to one for the time between the conquest of Greece (146 B.C.) and the reign of Alexander Severus (222-235 A.D.). The entire number of slaves in Italy would thus have been, in the reign of Claudius, 20,832,000, that of the free population being 6,944,000. By the original Roman law the master was clothed with Laws, absolute dominion over the slave, extending to the power of life and death, which is not surprising when we consider the nature of the patria potestas. The slave could not possess property of any kind ; whatever he acquired was legally his master's. He was, however, in practice permitted to enjoy and accumulate chance earnings or savings, or a share of what he produced, under the name of peculium. A master could not enter into a contract with his slave, nor could he accuse him of theft before the law ; for, if the slave took anything, this was not a subtraction, but only a displacement, of property. The union of a male and female slave had not the legal character of a marriage ; it was a cohabita- tion (contuberniwri) merely which was tolerated, and might be terminated at will, by the master ; a slave was, tberefore, not capable of the crime of adultery. Yet general sentiment seems to have given a stronger sanction to this sort of connexion ; the names of husband and wife are freely used in relation to slaves on the stage, and even in the laws, and in the language of the tombs. For entering the military service or taking on him any state office a slave was punished with death. He could not in general be examined as a witness, except by torture. A master, when accused, could offer his slaves for the " question, " or demand for the same purpose the slaves of another ; and, if in the latter case they were injured or killed in the process, their owner was indemnified. A slave could not accuse his master, except of adultery or incest (under the latter name being included the violation of sacred things or places) ; the case of high treason was afterwards added to these. An accused slave could not invoke the aid of the tribunes. The penalties of the law for crime were more severe on guilty slaves than on freemen; "majores nostri," say the legists, "in omni supplicio severius servos quam liberos punierunt." The capital punishment of the freeman was by the sword or the precipice, of the slave by the axe or the cross. The lex Cornelia punished the murder of a slave or a freeman alike ; but the master who killed his own slave was not affected by this law. Columella, like Xenophon, favours a certain friendliness and Treat- familiarity in one's intercourse with his farm slaves. Cato ate and ment of drank the same coarse victuals as his slaves, and even had the slaves, children suckled by his wife, that they might imbibe a fondness for the family. But that rigid old economist had a strict eye to profit in all his dealings with them. He allowed the contubernium of male and female slaves at the price of a money payment from their peculium. Columella regarded the gains from the births as a sufficient motive for encouraging these unions, and thought that mothers should be rewarded for their fecundity ; Varro, too, seems to have taken this view. The immense extension of the rural estates (latifundia] made it impossible for masters to know their slaves, even if they were disposed to take trouble for the purpose. Effective superintendence even by overseers became less easy ; the use of chains was introduced, and these were worn not only in the field during working hours but at night in the ergastulum where the labourers slept a practice which Pliny lamented as a disgrace to agriculture. Urban slaves had probably often a life as little enviable, especially those who M-orked at trades for speculators. Even in private houses at Rome, so late as the time of Ovid, the porter was chained. In the familia urbana the favourites of the master had good treatment, and might exercise some influence over him which would lead to their receiving flattery and gifts from those who sought his vote or solicited his support. Doubtless there was often genuine mutual affection; slaves sometimes, as in noted instances during the civil wars, showed the noblest spirit of devotion to their masters. Those who were not inmates of the household, but were employed outside of it as keepers of a shop or boat, chiefs of workshops, or clerks in a mercantile business, had the advantage of greater freedom of action. The slaves of the leno and the lanista were probably in most cases not only degraded but unhappy. The lighter punish- ments inflicted by masters were commonly personal chastisement or banishment from the town house to rural labour ; the severer were employment in the mill (pistrinum] or relegation to the mines or