Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XV.djvu/99

 SLAVERY 91 children being also thus sold; "and it was especially ordered that they should be sold at Rome, lest some of their countrymen or neighbors should purchase them for the pur- pose of restoring their liberty." After the close of the second Punic war, the conquests of Rome went on with great rapidity, and the numbers of the slave population increased at the same rate, so that in 70 years even the free agricultural population of Italy had most- ly disappeared. The absorption of small free- holds in large estates, along with war, led to the decrease of that population, and the places thus made vacant were filled by the purchase of slaves, the latter being taken in war to a considerable extent, though the slave traders were by no means idle. One of the conse- quences of the successes of ^Emilius Paulus in Macedonia was the sale of 150,000 Epirotes, who had been seized because their country was friendly to Perseus. The demand for slaves becanie very great full two centuries B. C. in Sicily, which had then fallen complete- ly under the Roman dominion, and because corn was much wanted in Italy, then beginning to recover from the effect of the Carthaginian invasion and occupation; and. the state of things in Sicily was so favorable to the aggre- gation of wealth, that it soon extended to Italy, where the land passed into the hands of the few. Great estates succeeding to the many small farms that had been known in the pre- ceding generations, the soil was now culti- vated or attended to by great masses of slaves, the property chiefly of the leading members of the optimates, or the high aristocratical party. The wars in Spain, Illyria, Greece, Syria, and Macedonia furnished large numbers of slaves, the common sorts of whom were sold at low rates, and were employed in the country. The invasion of the Roman territories by the Teu- tones and Cimbri, which ended in the total defeat of those barbarians by Marius, added considerably to the number of slaves, 60,000 of the Cimbri alone being taken captive in the last great battle of the war. The conquest of Sulla, Lucullus, and Pompey in Greece and the East, actually flooded the slave markets, so that in the camp of Lucullus, in Pontus, men were sold for four drachmae each, or about 62 cents of our money. Cicero sold about 10,000 of the inhabitants of the Cilician town of Pindenissus. The Gallic wars of Julius Csesar furnished almost half a million slaves; and Augustus sold 36,000 of the Salassi, nearly a fourth of whom were men of military age. In the Jewish war which ended in the de- struction of Jerusalem, 90,000 persons were made captives. But Roman slavery would not have been so comprehensive if the Ro- mans had been compelled to rely solely upon war for slaves. Commerce has been a chief means of feeding slavery from the beginning of the world. Before the Romans had ob- tained dominion over Italy, they were slave purchasers from the Carthaginians, who drew their principal supplies of men from the inte- rior of Africa, the slave trade of that region, like that of Asia and Greece, being much older than history. Many slaves were obtained by commerce from the East, and the cities on the shores of the Euxine were among the chief slave marts of antiquity far down into the days of the empire. Barbarians of whom the Romans otherwise knew nothing found their way to the imperial city as slaves. At the height of her power Rome had slaves from Britain, Gaul, Scandinavia, Germany, Sarma- tia, Dacia, Spain, the different countries of Af- rica, from Egypt to the Troglodytes of Ethio- pia, the western Mediterranean islands, Sicily, Greece, Illyria, Thrace, Macedonia, Bithynia, Phrygia, Cappadocia, Syria, Media, and almost every other country to which ambition or ava- rice could lead the soldier or the trader to penetrate. All races furnished their contribu- tions to the greatest population of slaves that ever existed under one dominion. Unlike the Greeks, the Romans " acknowledged the gen- eral equality of the human species, and con- fessed the dominion of masters to flow entire- ly from the will of society; 1 ' but this did not prevent them from enslaving all men upon whom they could lay their hands, while they were much harsher toward their slaves than the Greeks were. Not a few slaves were pro- cured by kidnapping persons, and it was no- torious that even Roman freemen were seized and shut up in the ergastula of the great pro- prietors, which invasion of personal rights the whole power of the government was unable to prevent. Children were sometimes sold into slavery by their parents, either from love of gain or to save them from starvation ; and the number of these sales was large in times of general distress. Men were also sold for debts due to the imperial treasury. Under a variety of circumstances poor people could sell them- selves into slavery, but such sales were not ir- revocable until the second century of the em- pire, and then the law was somewhat limited, the object being to punish those who had sold themselves with the intention of reclaiming their freedom, the purchaser in such cases hav- ing no redress. Romans who had committed crimes that were ignominiously punished be- came slaves through that fact, and were known as servi pana, or slaves of punishment, and were public property. They remained slaves even if pardoned, unless specially restored to citizenship ; and it was not until the reign of Justinian that this form of slavery was abol- ished. In early times, persons who did not give in their names for enrolment in the pub- lic force were sold into slavery, after being beaten ; and incorrect returns to the censors led to the same punishment. Poor thieves, who could not make a fourfold return of the amount of their booty, became slaves to the party stolen from ; and a father could give up a child who had stolen to the prosecutor. Poor debtors were sold as slaves. The em-