Page:The rise, progress, and phases of human slavery.djvu/25

 CHAPTER III.

CAUSES OF PARENTAL DESPOTISM.

Evidences from Egypt and Persia—Supreme Authority of Family Head—First Legal Limitation under Roman Empire—Necessity for gradual Growth of Slavery—Source of Paternal Riches—Importance of Chief of the Family.

We stated, in our last chapter, that human slavery, according to the concurrent testimony of history and philosophy, originated in the unbounded power which fathers or heads of families exercised, in the infancy of society, over their household—over wives, concubines, and children. Of the existence of this power amongst the ancient Jews, Greeks, and Romans we adduced some remarkable evidences. Similar evidences abound with respect to Egypt, Persia, Media, Asia Minor, and, indeed, of every other ancient people of which any traditions are preserved. The records of the various tribes and nations which inhabited Asia Minor go to show that the authority of fathers over their offspring continued to be supreme and absolute even down to a period not far removed from the Christian era. For example, Xenophon relates, in his "Anabasis," how a certain Thracian king, named Teutes, offered to give him his daughter, and to purchase one of his (Xenophon's), if he had any, "according to the law of Thrace." Plutarch, in his Life of Lucullus, furnishes similar evidences. He relates, that during the distress in which the proprietors of Asia Minor found themselves after the defeat of King Tigranes, those fathers of families who, upon the arrival of Lucullus, had not wherewith to satisfy the demands of the Roman tax-collectors, sold their little children and marriageable daughters. That such things should prevail under pure despotisms like those of ancient Asia Minor, Egypt, Persia, &c., or under the patriarchal régime of the Jews, when manners were primitive and the government a theocracy, is what we might expect in the natural order of things; but that they should occur under the more democratic and polished governments of Greece and Rome is what appears astonishing to our modern notions; yet so it was. The authority of paternity was no less supreme in the later than in the older countries. The early annals of Rome exhibit some glaring but curious instances of it, which, taken in connection with the revelations of later times, not only render the fact undoubted, but will account for many of the harsher qualities of the Romans, and, at the same time, strengthen our theory of human slavery. Going back to the very cradle of the Romans, we find that, when Rhea was delivered of Romulus and Remus, Amulius, her uncle, ordered the immediate exposure of the infants. This Roman fact corresponds with the exposure of Moses in Egypt, and with the Greek legend which describes Œdipus as having been similarly exposed and found suspended from a tree by the feet.