Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XV.djvu/101

 SLAVEEY 93 would sell at good prices, upward of $300 of our money each; but $100 was a fair average price for a common slave, and when a slave could be bought for about half that sum the price was held to be low. Insurrections and servile wars were not uncommon. Two such wars broke out in Sicily after the conquest of that island by the Komans, and were extin- guished only in the blood of myriads of men, and through the exertions of consular armies. Toward the close of the 7th century of Kome the war of the gladiators, waged on the one side by slaves alone, from general to camp servants, brought the republic to the verge of ruin. The war was commenced by a few gladiators from the schools of Capua, under the lead of Spartacus, a Thracian, 73 B. C., and lasted for more than two years. Several Koman armies, commanded by praetors and consuls, were defeated, and for a time the re- volted slaves had the peninsula more at their command than it was at the command of the Komans. The country was horribly ravaged, and it was not until Crassus took the field, and 200,000 men were employed, that the insur- rection was subdued ; and the final battle was won by the Romans more as the consequence of the death of Spartacus before it was half fought than from their superior generalship. Six thousand of the slaves were hanged or cru- cified after their defeat. The punishment of rebellious slaves was always very severe. Many slaves had enlisted under Sextus Pompey, and thousands of them who fell into the hands of Octavius were sent to the horrible death of the cross, with the general approbation of the citizens. They were crucified solely as fugi- tives, as all whose masters could be found were restored to them ; and the cruel act was per- petrated in violation of plighted faith. It more than once happened that Roman leaders in the civil wars either called upon slaves to rebel, or availed themselves of the services of slaves. Marius, on his return from Africa to Italy, and just before his death, proclaimed liberty to all slaves who would join him, and at least 4,000 enlisted under his banner. Before his exile he had tried the same plan, but without success. The Cornelians of Sulla were 10,000 freed slaves, who had belonged to members of the Marian party that had been proscribed by the conqueror, and who took their appellation from the gentile name of their patron. The slave trade of antiquity comprehended the whole hemisphere in its circle. Its origin is unknown, for it was practised in all its parts at the earliest period of which any knowledge is to be obtained. The Phoenician slave trade was very extensive, and supplied in part by piracy. They stole Greeks and sold them 12 centuries before Christ, and they also sold stolen people to the Greeks. They had a land traffic in slaves, obtaining them in the coun- tries between the Black and Caspian seas ; and they exchanged Hebrew slaves for the produc- tions of Arabia with the Sabseans and Edom- ites. The Greeks were also great slave tra- ders, and were as skilful in kidnapping persons as were the Phoenicians. Their slave traffic extended to Egypt, Thrace, Phrygia, Lydia, Syria, and other countries. From Egypt they obtained blacks, then regarded as slaves of luxury. Their slaves came mostly from the north and the east. The chief Grecian slave marts were Athens, Samos, Chios, Ephesus, Cyprus, and Corinth. The Carthaginians, who were the Phoenicians of the west, rival- led their progenitors in the extent and com- prehensiveness of their slave traffic. They had an immense traffic with the interior of Africa, a caravan trade, like that of the Egyptians and of the Cyrenasans. Women were preferred to men in the trade with the African slave dealers, as they sold for much higher prices in some northern countries. There was a large demand for negroes in the Balearic islands, and especially for women. Corsica also furnished many valuable slaves to the Carthaginians. The Roman slave trade as much exceeded that of any other country of antiquity as the institu- tion of Roman slavery exceeded slavery in other countries. In remoter times the Romans were no better than robbers in their treatment of foreigners, imitating the Etruscans in this re- spect, who were the worst pirates of antiquity. Corinth had been the chief slave mart of Greece toward the close of its independence, before it fell into the hands of the Romans, and at the time when slavery was beginning to in- crease rapidly in Italy ; and it is supposed, its situation being favorable to trade of the kind, that many slaves were sent thence from the East to the cities on the eastern Italian coast. But the destruction of Corinth by the Romans, 146 B. C., transferred the slave trade to Delos, which became the most noted slave market of that age, though the trade in slaves was but one branch of the immense commerce that centred there. The importance of the slave trade in that island was owing to the Roman demand, as it was most favorably situated to minister to the desire for slaves from eastern countries Greeks, Syrians, Phrygians, Bithyn- ians, and others. According to Strabo, it was possible, so complete were the arrangements, to import 10,000 slaves in one day, and to export them on the same day. But all this prosperity came to an end when the forces of Mithridates entered Greece. They landed on Delos, and devastated the island, so that it never recov- ered from their ravages. The Mediterranean pirates had supplied Delos with many slaves; and at Side, in Pamphylia, they had a great market of their own, at which they disposed of their captives, many of whom were cap- tured far inland, even Italy itself not being safe from their ravages, and its villas and high- roads furnishing victims to the marauders, who became very powerful during that disturbed period of Roman history in which occurred the social war and the contest between Marius and Sulla. From Alexandria the Romans obtained