Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/149

 SLAVERY 133 quarries. To the mines speculators also sent slaves ; they worked half-naked, men and women, in chains, under the lash and guarded by soldiers. Vedius Pollio, in the time of Augustus, was said to have thrown his slaves, condemned sometimes for trivial mistakes or even accidents, to the lampreys in his fishpond. Cato advised the agriculturist to sell his old oxen and his old slaves, as well as his sick ones ; and sick slaves were exposed in the island of .dSsculapius in the Tiber ; by a decree of Claudius slaves so exposed, if they recovered, could uot be reclaimed by their masters. Though the Roman slaves were not, like the Spartan Helots, kept obedient by systematic terrorism, their large numbers were a constant source of solicitude in the later period of the republic and under the early empire. The law under which the slaves of Pedanius were put to death, probably first made under Augustus and more fully enacted under Nero, is sufficient proof of this anxiety, which indeed is strongly stated by Tacitus in his narrative of the facts. There had been many conspiracies amongst the slaves in the course of Roman history, and some formidable insurrections. We hear of a conspiracy about 500 B.C. and another in 419 B.C. ; again just before the sea-fight of Duilius and between the battles of Trasimenus and Canute. In 198 B.C. a servile war had almost broken out; in 19(3 B.C. there was a rising in Etruria and in 185 B.C. in Apulia. The growth of the latifundia made the slaves more and more numerous and formidable. Free labour was discountenanced. Cato, Varro, and Columella all agree that slave labour was to be preferred to free except in unhealthy regions and for large occasional operations, which probably transcended the capacity of the permanent familia, rusticu. Cicero and Livy bear testimony to the disappearance of a free plebs from the country districts and its replacement by gangs of slaves working on great estates. The policy of the Gracchi and their successors of the popular party was opposed to this reduction of the free workiug population, which they sought to counteract by agrarian laws and by colonization on a large scale projects which could not be effectively carried out until civil supremacy was united with military power in the hands of a popular chief, and which, even when this condition was satisfied by the establishment of the empire, were inadequate to meet the evil. The worst form of prsedial slavery existed in Sicily, whither Mommsen supposes that its peculiarly harsh features had been brought by the Carthagin- ians. In Sicily, accordingly, the first really serious servile insurrections took place, at once provoked by the misery of the slaves and facilitated by the habits of brigandage which, it is said, the proprietors had tolerated and even encouraged as lighten- ing the cost of subsistence of their slaves. The rising under Eunus in 133 B.C. was Avith some difficulty suppressed by Rupilius. Partial revolts in Italy succeeded ; and then came the second Sicilian insurrection under Trypho and Athenio, which, after a severe struggle, was put down by Aquilius. These were followed by the Servile War in Italy under Spartacus, which, occurring at an otherwise critical period, severely tested the military resources of Rome. In the subsequent civil conflicts the aid of slaves was sought by both parties, even by Marius himself, and afterwards by Catiline, though he finally rejected their services. Clodius and Milo employed bands of gladiators in their city riots, and this action on the part of the latter was approved by Cicero. In the First Civil War they were to be found in both camps, and the murderers of Cresar were escorted to the Capitol by gladiators. Antony, Octavius, and Sextus Pompeius employed them in the Second Civil War ; and it is recorded by Augustus on the Monumentum Ancyranum that he gave back to their masters for punishment about 3'0,000 slaves who had absconded and borne arms against the state. Under Tiberius, at the death of Caligula, and in the reign of Nero there were threatening movements of the slaves. In the wars from Otho to Vespasian they were employed, as Tacitus tells us, even by the most scrupulous generals. Moral Of the moral influences of slavery we have already spoken. In and the particular case of Rome it cannot be doubted that it largely social contributed to the impurities which disgraced private life, as seen effects.' in the pages of Juvenal, Martial, and Petronius. It is shocking to observe the tone in which Horace, so characterized by geniality and bonhomie, speaks of the subjection of slaves to the brutal passions of their masters (Sat., i. 2, 116). The hardening effect of the system appears perhaps most strikingly in the barbarous spectacles of the amphitheatre, in which even women took pleasure and joined in condemning the gladiator who did not by his desperate courage satisfy the demands of a sanguinary mob. It led, further, to a contempt for industry, even agriculture being no longer held in esteem ("quum sit publice accepta et confirmata jam vulgaris existimatio, rem rusticam sordidum opus," Col., i., prref. 20). The existence of slavery, degrading free labour while competing with freemen for urban employment, multiplied the idle and worthless population of Rome, who sought only " panem et circenses." These had to be supported by public distributions, which the emperors found they could not discontinue, and by the bounty of patrons, and, like the "mean whites" of modern America, formed a danger- ous class, purchasable by selfish ambitions and ready to aid in civil disturbances. Blair, in comparing the Greek and Roman systems of slavery, Emanci- points with justice to the greater facility and frequency of pation. emancipation as the great superiority of the latter. No Roman slave, he says, "needed to despair of becoming both a freeman and a citizen." Manumission was of two kinds justa or regular, and minus justa. Of manumissio justa there were four modes : (1) by adoption, rarely resorted to ; (2) by testament, already recognized in the Twelve Tables ; (3) by census, which was of exceptional use, and did not exist later than the time of Vespasian ; and (4) by vindictn, which was the usual form. In the last method the master turned the slave round, with the words " liber esto," in the presence of the prater, that officer or his lictor at the same time striking the slave with his rod. The manumissio minus justa was effected by a sufficient manifestation of the will of the master, as by letter, by words, by putting the pilcus (or cap of liberty) on the slave, or by any other formality which had by usage become significant of the intention to liberate, or by such an act as making the slave the guardian of his children. This extra- legal sort of manumission was incomplete and precarious ; even after the lex Julia Norbana (19 A.D. ), which assimilated the position of those so liberated to that of the Latin colonists, under the name of Latini juniores, the person remained in the eye of the law a slave till his death and could not dispose of his peculium. A freedman, unless he became such by operation of law, re- mained client of his master, and both were bound by the mutual obligations arising out of that relation. These obligations existed also in the case of freedmen of the state, of cities, temples, and corporations. The freedman took his former master's name; he owed him deference (obscquium) and aid (officiuni); and neglect of these obligations was punished, in extreme cases even with loss of liberty. Conditions might be annexed by the master to the gift of freedom, as of continued residence with him, or of general service or some particular duty to be performed, or of a money payment to be made. But the prtetor Rutilius, about the beginning of the 1st century B.C., limited the excessive imposition of such, conditions, and his restrictions were carried further by the later jurists and the imperial constitutions. Failing natural heirs of an intestate freedman, the master, now patron, succeeded to his property at his death ; and he could dispose by will of only half his possessions, the patron receiving the other half. Freedmen and their sons were subject to civil disabilities ; the third genera- tion became ingenua (full citizens). Thus, by a process of constant infiltration, the slave element tended to merge itself in the general popular body ; and Scipio ./Emilianus could reply to the murmurs of a plebeian crowd, " Taceant quibus Italia noverca est ; non efficietis ut solutes verear quos alligatos adduxi" (Val. Max., vL 2, 3). It was often a pecuniary advantage to the master to liberate his slave ; he obtained a payment which enabled him to buy a substitute, and at the same time gained a client. This of course presupposes the recognition of the right of the slave to his peculium ; and the same is implied in Cicero's statement that a diligent slave could in six years purchase his freedom. Augustus set himself against the undue multiplication of manumissions, probably considering the rapid succession of new citizens a source of social instability, and recommended a similar policy to his successor. The lex JElia. Sentia (about 3 A.n. ) forbade manumission, except in strictly limited cases, by masters under 20 years of age or of slaves under 30 ; and the lex Furia Caninia (about 7 A.D.) fixed the proportion of a man's slaves which he could liberate by testament, and forbade more than a hundred being so enfranchised whatever might be the number of the familia. Under the empire the freedmen rose steadily in influence; they became admissible to the rank of equites and to the senate ; they obtained provincial governments, and were appointed to offices in the imperial household which virtually placed them at the head of adminis- trative departments. Pallas and Narcissus are familiar types of the unworthy members of this class, and there were doubtless many outside of official life who exhibited the ostentation and insolence of the parvenu ; but there were others who were highly deserving of esteem. Freedmen of humbler rank filled the minor offices in the administrative service, in the city cohorts, and in the army ; and we shall find that they entered largely into the trades and professions when free labour began to revive. They appeared also in literature. ; we hear of several historical and biographical memoirs by freedmen under the republic and the early empire ; many of them were professors of grammar and the kindred arts, as Tiro, the amanuensis of Cicero, and Hyginus, the librarian of Augustus ; and names of a higher order are those of Livius Andronicus, Csecilius, Statius, Terence, Publius Syrus, Phoedrus, and Epictetus. In the 2d century of the Christian era we find a marked change Reforms, with respect to the institution of slavery, both in the region of thought and in that of law. Already the principles of reason and humanity had been applied to the subject by Seneca who, what-