Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XV.djvu/98

 00 SLAVERY in most parts of Greece through war, com- merce, piru.-y, and kidnapping. There were iv Milur markets for their sale, the principal of which wo iv IK-M ut Athens, Samoa, and Chios. Negroes were among the slaves imported, Egypt furnishing the larger number of them ; !inl they wore valued for their complexion, and considered as luxuries. Most of the do- mestic and personal slaves were barbarians, that is, IKT-MMS who were not of Greek blood, for it was the Grecian custom to allow prison- ers of their own race to be ransomed. The number of slaves in Greece was very large, and it is even estimated to have been three or four times as great as that of the free pop- ulation. Unlike the Komans, the Greeks did not seek to possess many slaves from mo- tives of luxury and ostentation, but of profit. Fifty slaves were a large number for a wealthy Athenian to own, while some Romans owned 20,000 each. There were many slaves em- ployed in the mines, but they were of the least valuable kind, and their labor was de- structive of life. Most of the slave insurrec- ti'Mis in Attica were brought about by the mining slaves, and on one occasion they took possession of Sunium, and held it for some ti:ne. The Athenian slaves were not, save on extraordinary occasions, employed as sol- diers, like those of the Dorian Greeks. They fought at Marathon and at the Arginusse, but these were remarkable exceptions. Manumit- ted slaves in Greece could not become citi- zens, but became metics, and were still under c.-rtain obligations to their former masters, neglect of which made them liable to be sold into slavery again. In Italy slavery prevailed even more extensively than in Greece, though in the early times, it has been contended, and before the foundation of the Roman dominion, the number of slaves was so small, and they were so well treated, as hardly to deserve the name ; but as there is evidence that the Etrus- rans had negro slaves, the slave trade must have been extensively carried on between Italy and Africa at a remote period. The Romans had slaves at the earliest dates of their annals, and far earlier than that time which is recog- nized as the beginning of their authentic his- tory ; but there was a great difference between the institution as it existed in the opening years of the republic and as it became several generations before the establishment of the imperial rule. As the kingdom of Rome is It. have been far more powerful than was the Roman republic during the first two centuries of its existence, and had commercial relations with the Carthaginians, the principal slave traders of the time, the just conclusion is that slavery was more extensive under the ings than it was under the praetors and
 * >. In the early times nearly all the


 * ' the Romans were slaves, and so
 * ie majority of the operatives in town;

but that excess of agricultural slaves which in later times became a marked feature of Ro- man industrial life was then unknown. Agri- culture was considered an honorable pursuit, and the haughtiest of the patricians often cul- tivated their fields with their own hands ; for they were not all rich, as the story of Cincin- natus shows. The first slaves of the Romans were exclusively prisoners of war made from the peoples in their immediate vicinity, and sold at auction by the state as booty; they strongly resembled their masters, so that their condition was probably not hard; but there was a constant change for the worse as the circle of Roman conquest extended. So long as the wars of the Romans were confined to their own immediate part of the world, the numbers obtained by war could not have been very large ; but when their armies began to contend with distant peoples, and to conquer them, they were counted by myriads. They acted on the principle of sparing the humble and subduing the proud, granting both life and liberty to those who surrendered, but taking captive all those who resisted their arms, and consigning such of them to slavery as were not reserved for a fate more immediately se- vere. The Romans were not sparing in the infliction of this rule of war, and the conse- quence was, not only that the slave popula- tion was rapidly increased, but that it was made to include the most cultivated classes of the most cultivated period of antiquity, as the Roman conquests did not begin until after the highest of ancient races had completed their development. Roman slavery began to assume its great proportions in the same age that saw the beginning of its long quarrel with Car- thage, which opened in 264 B. C. When the Romans made their first invasion of Africa, 256 B. C., under Regulus, they landed in a portion of the Carthaginian territory lying between the Hermsean headland and the Less- er Syrtis. This fine country was given up to all the horrors of ancient warfare, "and 20,000 persons, many of them doubtless of the highest condition, and bred up in all the enjoyments of domestic peace and affluence, were carried away as slaves." Most of the captives taken at the conquest of Carthage, who had surrendered, were sold into slavery. This treatment of the Carthaginians, a high- bred and refined people, shows the character of Roman slavery, which was not confined to the barbarous races, or to any peculiar people, but swept all within its nets who could be conquered or purchased. Corinth, one of the richest and most luxurious cities of Greece, A as destroyed at the same time with Carthage, and the Corinthians were all sold into slavery ; and nothing but the influence of Polybius with the younger Scipio Africanus prevented the entire population of the Peloponnesus from sharing their fate. Two generations earlier, Capua, a city not inferior to Carthage or Cor- inth in culture, the wealth and magnificence of which were proverbial, had many of its best citizens sold into slavery, their wives and