Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XV.djvu/100

 02 SLAVERY ployments of Roman slaves, both public and -.-, were very various, and were minutely subdivided. Besides filling all the more menial , many of them occupied the positions of librarians, readers, reciters, story tellers, jour- nal keepers, amanuenses, physicians and sur- geons, architects, diviners, grammarians, pen- men, musicians and singers, players, builders, engravers, antiquaries, illuminators, painters, silversmiths, gladiators, charioteers of the cir- . Before a slave could become a sol- ilicr ho was emancipated, and into the Ro- man armies of the early republic not even fivedmi'M ere allowed to enter; but the de- inand for soldiers did away with this delicacy, ami slaves were regularly enlisted in the sec- ond Punic war, and did good service to the state. Many of the Roman slaves were on the most intimate terms with their masters, and must have been well treated, or the state of society would have been intolerable ; and we read of not a few instances in which the lives of masters were saved by their slaves, in the times of the proscriptions and massacres of Marius and Sulla, and of the triumvirs, and on other occasions. But the masses of the slaves were treated harshly, and the laws and regula- tions affecting them were mostly severe. The Romans were generally hard masters ; and 44 the original condition of slaves, in relation to freemen, was as low as can be conceived. They were not considered members of the community, in which they had no station nor place. They possessed no rights, and were not deemed persons in law; so that they could neither sue nor be sued in any court of civil judicature, and they could not invoke the pro- tection of the tribunes. So far were these notions carried, that when an alleged slave claimed his freedom on the ground of unjust detention in servitude, he was under the ne- cessity of having a free protector to sue for him, till Justinian dispensed with that formal- ity. 1 ' Slaves were allowed only a special kind of marriage (contubernium), and they had no power over their children. Few of the ties of blood were recognized among them ; and they could hold property only by the sanction or tolerance of their masters. "The criminal law was equally harsh, slaves being treated under it as things, but it was gradually meliorated. The severest and most ignominious punish- ments were shared by slaves with the vilest malefactors, as crucifixion and hanging, and later they were burned alive. Under the em- pire the condition of the slaves was better than it had been under the republic. The emperors were, however, far from pursuing a uniform policy toward the servile class, and some of them even restored cruel laws that had been abolished. In theory Roman slavery was per- petual, and to this theory the practice con- formed, inasmuch as by no act of his own could the slave become free. Freedom could proceed only from the action of the master. Manumission was not uncommon, and there were numerous freedmen who exercised much influence, as well in public life as in families. Freedom was the reward of good conduct, and the ease with which the places of freed slaves could be filled up by new purchases made manumission much more frequent than it would have been under other circumstances. Dying masters freed slaves by the hundred, in order that they might swell their funeral pro- cessions. On joyful occasions a wealthy mas- ter would manumit many of his slaves. Some- times slaves were liberated in- the article of death, in order that they might die in free- dom. Manumission was often the result of agreement between masters and slaves, the lat- ter either purchasing freedom with money, or binding themselves to pursue certain courses that should be for their former owner's inter- est. The republican period was favorable to emancipation, and freedmen were so numer- ous at the formation of the empire that some of the early emperors sought to restrict manu- mission, less however to promote the interest of slaveholders, or to increase the number of slaves, than for the purpose of increasing the numbers of the ingenuous class, an ob- ject much thought of and aimed at by several generations of Roman statesmen, but always without success. The later emperors favored emancipation, particularly after they had be- come Christian ; and Justinian removed nearly every obstacle to it. Augustus labored strenu- ously to limit emancipation, but even he had recourse to the society of freedmen, in accord- ance with a custom of the great men of his country ; and in 30 years after his death the Roman world was governed by members of that class of persons. Julius Caesar employed no freedmen, and Tiberius employed but few, and gave them none of his confidence, thus imitating Casar rather than Augustus; and even Caligula used them but little. Claudius they ruled, and through him the empire. It is impossible to estimate with an approach to accuracy the number of Roman slaves. Gib- bon thought it was equal to that of the free population, which Zumpt pronounces a "gross error;" and Blair estimates that during the 14 generations that followed the conquest of Greece, there were three slaves to one free- man. Gibbon's estimate, which applies to the reign of Claudius, would give 60,000,000, and probably it is not far from the truth, though we may agree with Blair that it seems much too low for those places which were inhabit- ed by Romans properly so called. Many indi- viduals owned immense numbers, though the figures in some of these cases are perhaps exaggerated, or the results of the mistakes of copyists. The prices of slaves were not fixed. Good doctors, actors, cooks, beautiful women, and skilled artists brought heavy sums, and "ruled high;" and so did handsome boys, eunuchs, and fools. Learned men, gramma- rians, and rhetoricians also sold at high rates. Some descriptions of artisans and laborers