Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 2).djvu/360

 category thus indicated I propose to advert only to two phenomena in Roman sociology, namely, slavery and debt.

1. In modern times the only slavery recognized in Western civilization has been that of some degraded race, whom nature seems to have created as almost akin to the lower animals. Hence it was considered to be no injustice to subjugate or domesticate them as such, and to pass them from owner to owner at a price. But the Roman slave, as a rule, was not racially distinguishable from his master; and might even be his superior in natural endowments and education. For the latter advantage, however, he would almost invariably be indebted to his owner. He was generally a member of a foreign state, most probably a captive taken in war, or the descendant of one; but sale by parents within the Roman dominions and kidnapping were not uncommon. In the early ages of the Republic the master had as much power over his slave as over his ox or his ass, and lay under no penalty if he should choose to kill him; but the position of the human commodity was gradually ameliorated. The advance of humane conceptions, which attained their most emphatic expression in the Stoic philosophy, soon exerted its influence on the servile condition; and even under Augustus a master could not imperil the life of his slave without first obtaining magisterial sanction. Half a century later it was enacted by Claudius that a man who wantonly killed his slave should be guilty of murder. Hadrian and the Antonines legislated in the same spirit