Page:The rise, progress, and phases of human slavery.djvu/32

 them from the possession of their gods or ancestral images, we find that the taking or keeping possession of these gods was always a vital consideration in the sieges and battles of antiquity. Once taken by the enemy, the capture and enslavement of their possessors was deemed inevitable. Those left without gods, in this sense, were regarded as outlaws by their fellow-citizens, and their future slavery was considered a mere matter of course by themselves, as well as by their conquerors. We may readily imagine what a prolific source of slavery this must have been in lawless times, when might alone conferred right. We may also conceive how greatly it must have aggravated and embittered the aboriginal relations between master and slave.

Asylums, or houses of refuge, were another means of extending slavery under the positive law. The man who took sanctuary in one of these places became the slave or chattel of the protector who had given him safety. These asylums, of which we find mention made in the primitive traditions of almost every old country, drew together not only maltreated slaves from other quarters, but malefactors and vagabonds of all sorts, and, in general, that restless and turbulent class of people who love action for its own sake, and cannot live out of broils and adventure. History testifies to the opening of such asylums by rulers, and founders of cities, as an essential feature of their policy. Thus, Moses determined six certain cities in which manslayers might take refuge from the avenger. Theseus opened a refuge at Athens, the remembrance of which was so fresh in Plutarch's time, that that biographer thinks the phrase of the common criers in his day, "All peoples, come hither!" were the identical words used by Theseus himself. Romulus, as before observed, opened an asylum at Rome for the fugitive slaves of Latium, which, it is said, remained open for upwards of 750 years. Indeed, if we are to believe Suetonius, it and similar places of refuge were to be found in Rome, and in the provinces, till Tiberius formally abolished "the law and custom" of them by an edict. It may be observed, generally, of these asylums that, originally or primitively, the parties who fled for refuge to them became the slaves, or subjects, or clients of their protectors, yielding to the latter their personal liberty and service in exchange for their preservation; but at later epochs the character both of asylums and of those who fled to them changed altogether. When opened by free cities within the boundaries of their liberties, or by priests in their temples, they were sacred to freedom, and not to slavery. There is no doubt, however, that in the early ages of the world both law and custom turned them largely to account in extending the domain of slavery.

Next to war, indebtedness, or the relation of debtor to creditor, was probably the most odious and prolific source of slavery under the positive law. Such appears to have been the case, at least, amongst Greeks and Romans, with whose histories the moderns are better acquainted than with those of other ancient countries. Plutarch tells us, in his Life of Solon, that that legislator, on his arriving at power, found a large proportion of the citizens in a state of actual slavery to their creditors, and that one of his greatest difficulties and triumphs was the adjustment of their conflicting claims.