Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/34

 The servile war which took place among the Samians had a more fortunate issue, though but few particulars respecting it have come down to us. It was related, however by Malacos in his annals of the Siphnians, that Ephesos was first founded by a number of Samian slaves, who, having retired to a mountain on the island to the number of a thousand, inflicted numerous evils on their former tyrants. These, in the sixth year of the war, having consulted the oracle, came to an understanding with their slaves, who were permitted to depart in safetv from the island. They sailed away, and became the founders of the city and people of Ephesos.

In Attica the institution of slavery, though attended by innumerable evils is said to have exhibited itself under the mildest form which it any where assumed in the ancient world. With their characteristic attention to the interests of humanity, the Athenians enacted a law, in virtue of which, slaves could indict their masters for assault and battery. Hyperides observed in his oration against Mantitheos,"our laws, making no distinction in this respect between freemen and slaves, grant to all alike the privilege of bringing an action against those who insult or injure them." To the same effect spoke Lycurgus in his first oration against Lycophron. Flato was less just to them than the laws of their country. If, in his imaginary state, a slave killed a slave in self-defense, he was judged innocent; if a freeman, he was put to death like a parricide. But Demosthenes has preserved the law which empowered any Athenian, not laboring under legal disability, to denounce to the Thesmothetæ the person who offered violence to man, woman or child, whether slave or free. Such actions were tried before the court of Heliæa, and numerous were the examples of men who suffered death for crimes committed against slaves. Another privilege enjoyed by the slave class in Attica was that of purchasing their own freedom, as often as, by the careful management of the peculium secured them by law, they were enabled to offer their owners an equivalent for their services.

At Athens, with some exceptions, every temple in the city appears to have been open to them. Occasionally, certain of their number were selected to accompany their masters to consult the oracle at Delphi, when they were permitted, like free citizens, to wear crowns upon their heads, which, for the time, conferred upon them exemption from blows or stripes. Among their more serious grievances was their liability to personal chastisement; which was too much left to the discretion of their owners. In time of war, however, this privilege was not practised, since the flogged slaves could go over to the enemy, as sometimes happened. They are said, besides, to have worked the mines in fetters; probably, however, only in consequence of a revolt, in which they slew the overseers of the mines, and taking possession of the acropolis of Sunium, laid waste, for a time, the whole of the adjacent districts. This took place simultaneously with the second insurrection of the slaves in Sicily, in the quelling of which nearly a million of their number were destroyed.

We find from contemporary writers, that except in cases of incorrigible perverseness, slaves were encouraged to marry; it being supposed they would