277. Slavery in North America among savages. Slavery is believed to have existed amongst the Indians of Virginia. "They made war, not for land or goods, but for women and children, whom they put not to death, but made them do service."674 The young men and slaves worked in the fields of the Mississippi valley. The latter were not overworked.675 The Algonquins made slaves of their prisoners, especially of the women and children.676 The Illinois are represented as an intermediate party who got slaves in the South and sold them in the West.677 The Wisconsin tribes used to make captives of Pawnees, Osages, Missouris, and Mandans. When Pawnees were such captives (slaves) they were treated with severity.678 In the Gulf region of North America slavery was common from the earliest times. That slaves might not escape, a sinew in the leg was cut, by the Six Nations.679 On the northwestern coast of North America slavery was far more developed than east of the Rocky Mountains. In Oregon and Washington slavery was interwoven with the social polity. Slaves were also harshly treated, as property, not within the limits of humanity. For a man to kill a half dozen of his own slaves was a sign of generous magnanimity on his part. One tribe stole captives from its weaker neighbors. Hence the slave trade is an important part of the commerce of all the tribes up to Alaska.680 In 1841 it was reckoned that one third of the entire population from northern British Columbia to southern Alaska were "slaves of the most helpless and abject description." "The great supply was obtained by trade with the southern Indians, in which the Tsimshian acted as middlemen. They were kidnapped or captured by the southern Indians from their own adjacent tribes and sold to the Tsimshian, who traded them to the northern Thlinkit and interior Tinné tribes for furs." "Slaves did all the drudgery, fished for their owner, strengthened his force in war, were not allowed to hold property or to marry, and when old and worthless were killed. The master's power was unlimited." The slave must commit any crime at the command of the master. The slaves were set free at some ceremonies, but they were put to death at the funerals of chiefs, or as foundation sacrifices, or in reparation for insults or wrongs. The northern Indians were more warlike and would not make good slaves. The Oregon flatheads were docile and industrious.681 The Chinooks became the wealthiest tribe in the region by acting as middlemen to sell war captives taken inland as far from home as possible.682 Amongst the Thlinkits slaves are forbidden to wear the labret, and sex intercourse with a slave woman disgraces a free man.683 "Amongst the early Central Americans the slave who achieved any feat of valor in war received his liberty and was adopted by the Capulli, or clan."684 In Mexico there were slaves of three classes,—criminals, war captives, and persons who had voluntarily sold themselves or had been sold by their parents. The captor generally sacrificed a prisoner, but might hold him as a slave. Those who sold themselves did so to get a fund for gambling. There was a public slave mart at Azcapuzalco. The system is described as kind, but slaves might lose their lives through the act of the master at feasts or funerals.685 "Actual slavery of the Indians in Mexico continued as late as the middle of the seventeenth century."686 It is evident that slavery existed all over North and Central America, but was more developed on the Pacific coast than in the Mississippi valley. The meat eaters of the buffalo region had less opportunity to use the institution.687
278. Slavery in South America. In South America we also meet with at least one case of a tribe, or part of a tribe, which is in clientage to another tribe. This is a subdivision of the third rank of the Mbaya, who voluntarily entered into a relation of clientage to the Mbaya, giving them service under arms, and in house and field, without being their slaves, being protected in return by the powerful and feared tribe.688 The Guykurus carry on frequent wars to get captives, whom they keep in stringent servitude. "There is, perhaps, no tribe of South American Indians, among whom the state of slavery is so distinctly marked as among them." Slaves and free do not intermarry, lest marriage be profaned. There is no way in which a slave may become free.689 The Guykurus are the strongest tribe in the valley of the Paraguay. They have horses and were called by the Portuguese Cavalleiros.690 In Brazil it was thought that the cultivation of the country was impossible unless the Indians were made slaves. The early laws and orders of the kings of Portugal seem to reveal a sincere desire to control greed and cruelty. In 1570 private slave raids were forbidden and slavery was confined to those captured in public and just war. Lisbon, however, became a great slave mart by the law that slaves passing from one colony (Africa) to another (America) must pass through Lisbon and pay a tax there. Peter Martyr is quoted that slavery was necessary for Indians who, if they had no master, would go on with their old customs and idolatry. Slavery killed them, however. It did not make them laborers.691 In general, in the valley of the Yapura, in the first half of the nineteenth century, slaves were war captives who were very unkindly treated.692 The aborigines began to sell their war captives to Europeans soon after the latter arrived. They wanted rosewood especially, and they took Indians to Africa as slaves.693 Boggiani694 expresses the opinion in regard to the savages of the Chaco, as the meadow region on the Paraguay river is called, that slavery amongst a people of more civilized mores, is, for them, "an incalculable benefit," and that "to hinder slavery, in such circumstances, would be a capital error." "It is necessary to force them to come out of their brutelike condition, and to awaken their intelligence, which is not wanting, if they receive practical and energetic direction." Bridges695 says that one Fuegian is thrown into clientage to another by their mode of life. "For a young man, with no wife and few relatives, must live with some one who can protect him, and with whom he can live in comfort, whose wife or wives can catch fish for him, etc."
279. Slavery in Polynesia and Melanesia. Polynesia, Melanesia, and the East Indies, especially the last, present us pictures of a society which is old and whose mores have been worn threadbare, while their stage of civilization is still very low. Codrington696 says: "There is no such thing as slavery, properly so called. In head-hunting expeditions prisoners are made for the sake of their heads, to be used when occasion requires, and such persons live with their captors in a condition very different from that of freedom, but they are not taken or maintained for the purposes of slaves." Ratzel697 says: "Slavery prevailed everywhere in Melanesia, originating either in war or debt. Sometimes it was hard; sometimes not." Somerville says that "slaves are kept chiefly for their heads, which are demanded whenever any occasion necessitates them, such as the death of the owner." He is speaking of the Solomon Islands.698 What Finsch says of the Melanesians may be extended to all the inhabitants of the South Sea islands.699 They will not work because they do not need to. They have few wants. Pfeil wants to make the people of German Melanesia work, in order that they may contribute to the tasks of the human race. The problem presents one of the great reasons for slavery in history.
280. Slavery in the East Indies. The chief of Chittagong700 wrote to the English governor, in 1774, that slavery in his district was due to the sale of himself by any person who was destitute, and had no friends or position. He and his wife must serve the master and his wife in any desired way, including services which a free servant would not perform, "through fear of demeaning himself and disgracing his family." Abolition of this slavery would produce complaints by the masters, and would not please the servants who are used to it. "Until lately the universal custom prevailed in the hills of having debtor slaves." The debtor gave one of his children or a female relative to serve as a menial until the debt should be paid. The pawned persons "were treated as members of the creditor's family and never exposed to harsh usage." The effect of interference by the English was that the wives and daughters of the great men suddenly had to do all the housework. "Debtor and creditor lost confidence in each other."701 "There is a detestable and actual slavery in these hills, which is now only carried on by independent tribes, beyond English jurisdiction. This is the captivity to the bow and spear,—men and women taken prisoners by force in war, and sold from master to master. The origin of this custom was the want of women."702 In the Chin hills there are slaves who are war captives, or criminals, or debtors, and others who are voluntary slaves, or slaves by birth. The master had full power of life and death, but, in fact, slaves were well treated. The people made raids on the Burmese lowlands and seized captives who were held for ransom. A slave man cohabits with a slave woman and brings up his children with affection "in the same humble, but not necessarily unhappy, position as his own."703 In Ceylon there were slave persons of all ranks. Those of royal rank were princes who were prisoners or criminals. Any one might obtain slaves by purchase, or accept voluntary slaves who looked to him for good support.704 A Malay will buy of a chief a number of war captives whom he takes to an island. Then he goes to a Chinaman and tells him that the slaves want to work on that island, but still owe the speaker the cost of transportation. The Chinaman pays this and gives to the slaves, on credit, clothes, etc., including money with which to gamble. Wages are low and interest high. They never can pay their debts and get their freedom again. This kind of slave trade has depopulated northern Nias.705 On Sumatra, when a debtor is called upon to pay and cannot, or when he dies and does not leave enough property to pay his debts, his children fall into semi-slavery. They can perhaps persuade some one to pay their debts and accept their services. If their master formally three times demands payment of them which they cannot give, they fall into full slavery. Slavery exists in the Malay seaport towns, but not in the rural districts, where life is too simple.706 In times of famine and want parents sell their children into slavery for a little rice. Children, especially daughters, constitute a large part of the fortune of a house father.707
At Koetei, on the Mahakkam in Borneo, all well-to-do people have debtors in pawn, whose position is somewhat better than that of slaves. The debtors seem content and submissive. Captives taken on head-hunting expeditions are held as slaves until human sacrifices are wanted.708 The souls of all those who are put to death at the death of a Dyak rajah become his servants in the other world. In this world the killer can command, as his fetich, the soul of the killed. On the death of a great man his debtor slaves are bound to the carved village post, which indicates the glory of head-hunting, and are tortured to death.709 "Slavery is greatly practiced" on Timorlaut. A thief, debtor, slanderer, or defamer may become the slave of the one he has wronged. The slave trade is also active between the islands.710 The slaves of the sea Dyaks adopt their customs and become contented. Sometimes they win affection and are adopted, freed, and married to free women. Slaves and masters eat together the same food in the rural villages.711 Among the land Dyaks slaves, by destitution and debt, "are just as happy as if perfectly free, enjoying all the liberty of their masters, who never think of ill-using them."712 In old times one who set a house on fire was liable to become the slave of any one who was burned out.713 Slaves on Timor do not seem to care for liberty. Their livelihood would not be so certain. There is a kind of slavery to the kingdom, not to any individual, but the slave cannot be sold by the king.714 In the Barito valley a debtor slave has to do any kind of work. He may be punished by blows, or fines added to his debt, which may also be increased by any breaches of customs, or by the value of broken tools or vessels. A month after a child is born to him ten gulden are added, also expenses of education when the child is ready to go to work. He may be slain at a feast of the dead by his master. The owner can torment the debtor by new fines, and keep up the debt or even increase it.715 In the Katingan valley there are no debtor slaves, because after three years a debtor who cannot pay becomes an hereditary slave, and cannot get his liberty even if he should get the means to pay his debt.716 If he ever gets the means to pay and attempts to free himself he is compelled to pay fees, taxes, and customary dues to the "spirits of the house," etc. When he leaves his master's house he must not return to it for a year or two, nor eat anything brought from it—"to prove his independence." Then he gives a feast and becomes free.717 "Slavery and pawnship are, in the nature of the case, the same."718 The Dyaks put their Eden on a cloud island. They have a myth that the daughters of the great Being let down seven times seven hundred cords of gold thread in order to lower mortals upon a mountain, but the mortals were overhasty and tried to lower themselves by bamboos and rattans. The god, angry at this, condemned them to slavery. The myth, therefore, accounts for a caste of slaves. Formerly also war captives and criminals who could not pay fines became slaves. Debts cause men to fall into pawnship. Extravagant living, and gambling, lead to this condition. If a man becomes pawn for a debt his whole household goes with him. All have to work very hard to try to satisfy a greedy master. The pawn is entitled to one tenth of the harvest, or of the gain by trade. Free men despise pawns.719 Wilken720 says of the Bataks that a slave, by diligence and thrift, can always buy himself. In addition to all the ill chances of gambling, extravagance, making love to another man's wife, etc., by which a man may become a debtor slave, customs exist which are traps for the unwary. Sago and rice are left in the woods, in some islands, until wanted. If a man passes the store, he is supposed to take away the spirit of the goods. If caught, he and all his family become slaves. If a man dies who was wont to fish at a certain place, the place becomes taboo to his ghost. Any one who fishes there becomes a slave to his family. Also, if a district is in mourning, any one who breaks the mourning customs is made a slave.721 The education of the Chinese in ethical doctrines has made slavery amongst them slight and mild. It is attributed to poverty, which forces parents to sell their daughters.722 The owners must provide female slaves with husbands, and the law forbids the separation of husband and wife, or of parents and little children.723 It appears that slavery is forbidden by law, but is tolerated in the case where the parents are poor. Boys once enslaved continue in bondage and their children follow them, but there is no legal possession. Girls become free at marriage.724
281. Slavery in Asia. Slavery in Asia is of a kind which puts the slave largely at the mercy of his owner, but the mores have taught the slave owner to use his power with consideration. This is generally, not universally, true. Nivedita says725 that "slavery in Asia, under the régime of great religious systems, has never meant what Europe and America have made of it.... It is a curious consequence of this humanity of custom [or rather, of the judgment in the mores as to the wisest course of conduct in a class of cases] that the word 'slave' cannot be made to sting the Asiatic consciousness as it does the European."
282. Slavery in Japan. In Japan slavery was a common punishment, in early times, for crime. Debtors unable to pay became slaves of their creditors, and thieves were made slaves of those whom they had robbed. The attempt to introduce Christianity into Japan and the resistance to it led to the slavery of many Christian converts, if they refused after torture to recant. This was an alternative to death. Slaves were tattooed with marks to show ownership. "Slaves were bought and sold like cattle in early times, or presented as tribute by their owners,—a practice constantly referred to in the ancient records." Their sex unions were not recognized. "In the seventh century, however, private slaves were declared state property, and great numbers were then emancipated, including nearly all,—probably all, who were artisans, or followed useful callings. Gradually a large class of freedmen came into existence, but until modern times the great mass of the common people appear to have remained in a condition analogous to serfdom."726
283. Slavery in higher civilization. It appears quite clear that men in savagery and barbarism used each other, if they could, to serve their interests, and slavery resulted. The hardships of life caused it. The rules of war were "Woe to the vanquished!" and "To the victors the spoils." Debt was a relation which might come about between two men from incidents in the struggle for existence, or from loans of money and goods. All mischance might be converted into lack of resources (money and goods), and he who borrowed fell into dependence and servitude. All violations of custom and law led to fines; all need of civil authority made it necessary to pay fees. The debtor pledged his future working time. His relation to his creditor was personal. That he was a borrower proved that he had nothing which could form a property security. The laws of Hammurabi provide that a debtor may give his wife and children as pawn slaves, but only for three years. In the fourth year the creditor was to set them free. The pawn persons were to be well treated. A slave given in pawn might be sold, but not if it was a female slave with children.727 To aid or conceal a fugitive slave was a capital offense.728 Many Chaldean contracts have been found in which the debtor bound himself to work for the creditor until he should pay the debt.729 It appears that the Babylonian slaves could form a peculium and carry on business with it as a capital, paying their owners a tax upon it.730
284. Slavery amongst Jews. The Jewish law had a provision like that in the law of Hammurabi, except that the limit was six years instead of three. A debtor was not to be a slave, but to give service until the year of jubilee.731 In 2 Kings iv. 1 the widow tells Elisha that her husband's creditors will come and take her two sons to be bondmen. The creditors of some of the Jews who returned from exile threatened to make them debtor slaves. Nehemiah appealed to them not to do so.732 In Matt. xviii. 25 the man who could not pay was to be sold with his wife and children. Kidnapping was punishable by death.733 In Job xxxi. 15 we find the ultimate philosophico-religious reason for repudiating slavery: "Has not He who made me made him [the slave] also in his mother's womb?" The laws of the "Book of Covenants" begin with laws about slaves.734 A male slave, with his wife, is to be freed in the seventh year, unless he prefers to remain a slave. A man may sell his daughter into slavery, i.e. to be a concubine. There was no difference in principle between a daughter given to wife and one sold to be a concubine. In Deut. xv. 12 the female slave is also set free in the seventh year, and persons so freed are to be given gifts when they depart. The slaves were war captives, or bought persons, or criminals.735 The lot of slaves was not hard. The owners had not the power of life and death. The slave could acquire property.736 If the slave was an Israelite he was protected by especial restrictions on the master in behalf of fellow-countrymen.737
285. Slavery in the classical states. Slavery came to the two great classical states from the antecedent facts of savage and barbaric life. When Aristotle came to study slavery he could not find a time when it was not. We have seen how it had become one of the leading institutions of uncivilized society, and how it had been developed in different forms and degrees. The two great classical states, more especially Rome, built their power on slavery. Both states pursued their interests with little care for the pain they might inflict on others, or the cost in the happiness of others. The Roman state began by subjugating its nearest neighbors. It used its war captives as slaves, increased its power, conquered more, and repeated the process until it used up all the known world. The Phœnicians were merchants, who kidnapped men, women, and children, if they found opportunity, and sold them into slavery far from home. The Ionians, who grew rich by commerce, bought slaves and organized states in which slaves did all the productive work. In both Greece and Rome productive work came to be despised. One is amazed to find how easily any one who went on a journey might fall into slavery, or how recklessly the democracy of one city voted to sell the people of a defeated city into slavery, yet how unhesitatingly everybody accepted and repeated the current opinions about the baseness of slave character. Homer says that a slave has only half the soul of a man.738 The love stories in the Scriptores Erotici very often contain an incident of kidnapping. The story of Eumæus must have been that of many a slave.739 It is also only rarely and very incidentally that the classical writers show any pity for slaves, although they often speak of the sadness of slavery.740 If any man, especially a merchant, who went on a journey incurred a great risk of slavery, why was not slavery a familiar danger of every man, and therefore a matter for pity and sympathy? In the great tragedies the woes of slavery, especially the contrasts for princes and princesses, heroes and heroines, are often presented. Polyxena, in Euripides's Hekuba, 360, bewails her anticipated lot as a slave. A fierce master will buy her. She will have to knead bread for him, to sweep and weave, leading a miserable life, given as wife to some base slave. She prefers to be sacrificed at Achilles's tomb. When the Greeks were going to kill her, she asked them to keep their hands off. She would submit. Let her die free. "It would be a shame to me, royal, to be called a slave amongst the dead." In the Trojan Women the screams of the Trojan women are heard, as they are distributed by lot to their new Greek masters. The play is full of the woes of slavery. At Athens slaves enjoyed great freedom of manners and conduct. They dressed like the poorest freedmen. No one dare misuse the slave of another simply because he was a slave. If the master abused a slave, the latter had an asylum in the temple and could demand to be sold. Slaves could pursue any trade which they knew, paying a stipulated sum to their owners, and could thus buy their manumission. Their happiness, however, depended on the will of another.741 In the law they were owned as things were, and could be given, lent, sold, and bequeathed. They could not possess property, nor have wives in assured exclusive possession against masters. Their children belonged to their masters. Plato thought that nature had made some to command, others to serve.742 He thought the soul of a slave base, incapable of good, unworthy of confidence.743 Aristotle thought that every well-appointed house needs animate and inanimate tools. The animate tools are slaves, who have souls, but not like those of their masters. They lack will. Slaves are like members of the master, ruled by his will. Their virtue is obedience.744 He says that there were men in his time who said that slavery was an injustice due to violence and established by law.745
286. Slavery at Rome. It is in ancient Rome that we find slavery most thoroughly developed. Any civilization which accomplishes any great results must do so by virtue of force which it has at its disposal. The Romans conquered and enslaved their nearest neighbors. By virtue of their increased power they extended their conquests. They repeated this process until they had consumed all the known world. The city of Rome was a center towards which all the wealth of the world was drawn. There was no reverse current of goods. What went out from Rome was government,—peace, order, and security. The provinces probably for a time made a good bargain, although the price was high. In the earliest times slaves were used for housework, but were few in number per household. In 150 B.C. a patrician left to his son only ten. Crassus had more than five hundred. C. Caec. Claudius, in the time of Augustus, had 4116.746 In the early days a father and his sons cultivated a holding together. Slaves were used when more help was needed. There was one slave to three sons and they lived in constant association of work and play. When conquest rendered slaves numerous and cheap, free laborers disappeared.747 Ti. Semp. Gracchus, in 177 B.C., after the war in Sardinia, sold so many Sardinian slaves that "cheap as a Sardinian" became a proverb.748 His son Tiberius is reported to have been led into his agrarian enterprise by noticing that the lands of Etruria were populated only by a few slaves of foreign birth.749 Bücher750 puts together the following statistics of persons reduced to slavery about 200 B.C.: after the capture of Tarentum (209 B.C.), 30,000; in 207 B.C., 5400; in 200 B.C., 15,000.751 Roman slaves were not allowed to marry until a late date. They were systematically worked as hard as it was possible to make them work, and were sold or exposed to perish when too old to work. Such was the policy taught by the older Cato.752 The number on the market was always great; the price was low; it was more advantageous to work them so hard that they had no time or strength to plot revolts. This is the most cynical refusal to regard slaves as human beings which can be found in history. They were liable to be tortured in their owners' cases in court. They might be given over to the gladiatorial shows and set to fight each other, or wild beasts. Seventy-eight gladiators condemned to fight to the death revolted in 74 B.C. under Spartacus, who defeated five armies. Crassus was sent against him with eight legions. Lucullus was recalled from Thrace and Pompey from Spain. Spartacus was cut to pieces in his last battle. Crassus crucified six thousand prisoners along the road from Capua to Rome.753
287. Slave revolts. The severity of the Roman system of slavery is shown by the number of revolts and the severe proceedings in each of them. There was such a revolt in 499 B.C. The guilty were crucified. The following year there was another.754 In 416 there was another. The aim always was to take the citadel and burn the city.755 Sicily was covered with a swarm of slaves at the beginning of the second century B.C. They were especially Syrians, very tough and patient. They were managed under Cato's plan: "Work or sleep!" In 196 B.C. the slaves in Etruria revolted and were suppressed with great severity.756 In 104 those of Sicily revolted. They were subdued four years later and the last remnant were sent to Rome to fight beasts. They killed themselves in the arena.757 The later Roman system was that the mob of the city put the world in the hands of one or another, and he gave them bread and games as their part of the plunder. The frumentaria were the permanent and steady pay of the "world conquerors." They made herding the best use of Italian land. "Where before industrious peasants prospered in glad contentment, now unfree herdsmen, in wide wastes, drove the immense herds of Roman senators and knights."758 The Sicilian landowners left their shepherds to steal what they needed, so that they were educated to brigandage. The greatest sufferer was the small freeman.759 There is a story in Diodorus,760 of Damophilos, an owner of great latifundia, whose slaves came to him to beg clothes. He replied: "Do the travelers, then, go naked through the country? Are they not bound to pay toll to him who needs clothes?" He caused them to be flogged and sent them back to work. The misery of the slave population seems to have reached its acme at Enna where two roads across the island cross each other. The town lies 3000 feet high. It was a great fortress down into the Middle Ages.761 At this place began a slave revolt, led by a Syrian skilled in sorcery. The slaves took the city and engaged in rapine and murder. A band was sent to capture Damophilos. The men killed him, and the women his wife. Their daughter was sent in security to her relatives.762 It was ten years before peace was restored to the island.
288. Later Roman slavery. Slaves in the civil wars. Clientage. Down to about 200 B.C. slavery, although mechanical and cruel, was domestic. The slave was a member of the household, on intimate terms with the master or his children, shared in the religious exercises, and the graves of slaves were under religious protection.763 In the second century B.C. Roman expansion gained momentum and produced power and wealth. The factions of the city were fighting for control of the booty. Roman character became mechanical and hard. This affected the type of slavery. By 100 B.C. Carthaginians, Greeks, and Romans had developed a system of holding slaves which was cruel and reckless, and slaves had acquired a character of hatred, venom, and desire for revenge. They were malignant, cunning, and hypocritical.764 In the civil wars each leader sought the help of slaves. Sulla set free 10,000 of them, whom he put in the tribes of the city.765 After the battle of Cannæ the Romans armed 8000 slaves whom they enfranchised.766 Æmilius Paulus sold 15,000 Epirotes. Marius made 90,000 Teutons captives at Aquæ Sextiæ and 60,000 Cimbrians at Vercellæ. When Marius offered liberty to slaves only three followed him.767 Sulla promised liberty to the slaves of the proscribed, if they would bear testimony against their masters. One did so. Sulla freed him, but then put him to death. Thus the slaves were the sport of political factions and leaders. The Roman conquests caused everywhere a certain servile temper. All conquered people were depressed into quasi-slavery. All had to pay a head tax, which was a mark of servitude. The Roman system reduced all to servitude. A late emperor called the senators "slaves in the toga." When all were rendered nil under the emperor the slaves gained. They were not in worse case than the rest.768 During the conquests entire peoples became clients. If any one did not attach himself as client to a great family he was lost. Freed women, for this reason, almost always fell into vice.769 Clientage became the refuge of loafers. "Romans did not give anything gratis." All who were outside the social system had to seek the patronage of a great man. For his protection he took pay in money or service. The status was a modified slavery.
289. Manumission. Natural liberty. The slave dealers developed tricks far surpassing those of horse dealers in modern times.770 By enfranchisement the owner got rid of the worst worry of slavery, and tied the freedman to himself by a contract which it was for the interest of the freedman to fulfill. The owner made a crafty gain.771 Tacitus772 says that, in his time, the Roman people was almost entirely freedmen. If that is so, we must notice that the "people," under the empire, are a different set from what they were under the republic. When the Romans got an educated artisan as a slave they set him to teach a number of others. When no more outsiders were conquered and enslaved the slaves taught each other. The work then became gross and ran down.773 This was another of the ways in which Rome consumed the products and culture of the world. Very few instances, real or fictitious, of sympathy with slaves can be cited. In the story of Trimalchio, Encolpius and his friends beg off a slave who is to be whipped for losing the garment of another slave in the bath. At a supper at which Augustus was present a slave broke a vase. His master ordered him cast to the murenae in a tank. The slave begged Augustus to obtain for him an easier death, which Augustus tried to do. The master refused. Augustus then gave the slave complete grace, broke the host's other vases himself, and ordered the tank filled up.774 Under Nero, Pedanius having been murdered, his slaves, four hundred in number, were all condemned to death, according to law. The populace rose against this sentence, which was fulfilled, but it shows that there was a popular judgment which would respond upon occasion.775 "Not once, in all antiquity, does a serious thought about the abolition of slavery arise."776 It was the basis of the entire social and political order. They were in terror of the slaves and despised them, but could not conceive of a world without them. Probably we could not either, if we had not machines by means of which we make steam and electricity work for us. Individuals were manumitted on account of the gain to the master. The owner said, in the presence of a magistrate, "I will that this man be free, after the manner of the Quirites." The magistrate touched the head of the slave with his rod, the master boxed his ears, and he was a free man.777 The law provided a writ, "resembling in some respects the writ of habeas corpus, to compel any one who detained an alleged freedman to present him before a judge."778 The Roman lawyers also, if they could find a moment during gestation when the mother had been free, employed legal fiction to assume that the child had been born at that moment.779 Florentinus defined slavery as "a custom of the law of nations by which one man, contrary to the law of nature, is subjected to the dominion of another."780 Ulpian likewise said that, "as far as natural law is concerned, all men are equal."781
290. Slavery as represented in the inscriptions. "The inscriptions reveal to us a better side of slave life, which is not so prominent in our literary authorities." They show cases of strong conjugal affection between slave spouses, and of affection between master and slave.782 In the first century the waste of the fortunes won by extortion from the provinces, and the opening of industrial opportunities by commerce, with security, gave great stimulus to free industry. The inscriptions "show the enormous and flourishing development of skilled handicrafts," with minute specialization. "The immense development of the free proletariat, in the time of the early empire, is one of the most striking social phenomena which the study of the inscriptions has brought to light." The time was then past when Roman society depended entirely on slave labor for the supply of all its wants.783 Dill thinks that "the new class of free artisans and traders had often, so far as we can judge by stone records, a sound and healthy life, sobered and dignified by honest toil, and the pride of skill and independence."784 The slave acted only under two motives, fear and sensuality. Both made him cowardly, cringing, cunning, and false, and at the same time fond of good eating and drinking and of sensual indulgence. As he was subject to the orders of others, he lacked character, and this suited his master all the better. The morality of slaves extended in the society, and the society was guided by the views of freedmen in its intellectual activity. The strongest symptom of this was the prevalence of a morality of tips, which put on the forms of liberality. It was no more disgrace to take gifts than to give them. Senators took gifts from the emperor, and all, including the emperor, reckoned on legacies. Thus the lack of character spread.785 Slavery proved a great corrupter of both slaves and owners. It was the chief cause of the downfall of the state which had been created by it. It made cowards of both owners and slaves. "The woes of negro slaves were insignificant, like a drop to an ocean, in comparison with the sufferings of ancient slaves, for the latter generally belonged to civilized peoples."786
291. Rise of the freedmen in industry. The freedmen were the ones who were free from the old Roman contempt for productive labor. They seized the chances for industry and commerce and amassed wealth. "Not only are they crowding all the meaner trades [in the first and second centuries of the Christian era], from which Roman pride shrank contemptuously, but, by industry, shrewdness, and speculative daring, they are becoming great capitalists and landowners on a senatorial scale."787 "The plebeian, saturated with Roman prejudice, looking for support to the granaries of the state or the dole of the wealthy patron, turned with disdain from the occupations which are in our days thought innocent, if not honorable."788 "After all reservations, the ascent of the freedmen remains a great and beneficent revolution. The very reasons which made Juvenal hate it most are its best justification to a modern mind. It gave hope of a future to the slave. By creating a free industrial class it helped to break down the cramped social ideal of the slave owner and the soldier. It planted in every municipality a vigorous mercantile class, who were often excellent and generous citizens. Above all, it asserted the dignity of man."789 But for the freedmen the society seems to have contained but two classes,—"a small class of immensely wealthy people, and an almost starving proletariat."790
292. The freedmen in the state. Every despot needs ministers. The history of all despotisms shows that they find those best suited to their purpose in persons of humble rank. They can use such ministers against nobles or other great men, and can command their complete loyalty. Julius Cæsar made some of his freedmen officers of the mint. It was simply an extension of the usage of aristocratic households. The emperor employed freedmen to write letters and administer the finances of the empire as he would have used them to manage his private estate. "Under Caligula, Claudius, and Nero, the imperial freedmen attained their greatest ascendancy. Callistus, Narcissus, and Pallas rose to the rank of great ministers, and, in the reign of Claudius, were practically masters of the world. They accumulated enormous wealth by abusing their power, and making a traffic in civic rights, in places, or pardons."791 The freedmen favorites carried the evil effects of slavery on character to another stage and were agents of the corruption of the new form of the state by the inheritance of slavery. "The women of the freedmen class, for generations, wielded, in their own way, a power which sometimes rivaled that of the men." They often had great charms of person and mind. "Their morals were the result of an uncertain social position, combined with personal attractions, and education." Some of them did great mischief. Panthea, mistress of Lucius Verus, is celebrated as one of the most beautiful women who ever lived. She had a lovely voice, was fond of music and poetry, and had a very superior mind. She "never lost her natural modesty and simple sweetness."792 In the first century some freedmen married daughters of senatorial houses. They were very able men. No others could have performed the duties of the three great secretaryships,—appeals, petitions, and correspondence. The fortunes of these men were often adventurous in the extreme, like those of the ministers of sultans in the Arabian Nights. A slave, advanced to a higher position in a household, then to a position of confidence, where he proved his ability and devotion, got a great office and became master of the world. Men of this kind have always been refused social status.793 In the second century the system was changed, and knights became the great officers of administration.
293. Philosophers opponents of slavery. The great neostoics of the first century first denounced slavery and uttered the great humanitarian doctrines. The real question in regard to Roman slavery was this: Is a slave not a man? If he was one, he was either the victim of misfortune or the inheritor of the misfortune of an ancestor. If he did not thereby lose human status as a member of the race he deserved pity and help. The humanitarian philosophy, therefore, had the simplest task and the most direct application. Dio Chrysostom declared the evil effects of slavery on the masters, sensuality, languor, and dependence. He pointed out the wide difference between personal status and character,—the possible nobility of a slave and the possible servility of a freeman.794 Seneca especially taught the abstract philosophy of liberalism, kindness, and humanity. He represented a movement in public opinion. Pliny cultivated all the graces of the debonair gentleman. Dill compares him to a "kindly English squire." The inscriptions show that "his household was by no means a rare exception."795 Slaves had such perquisites and chances that "the slave could easily purchase his own freedom." "The trusted slave was often actually a partner, with a share of the profits of an estate, or he had a commission on the returns."796 Plutarch's whole philosophy of life is gentle and kindly. It is unemotional and nonstimulating. The neostoics had the character of an esoteric sect. We never are sure that their writings are any more than rhetorical exercises, or that they act or expect others to act by their precepts. Slavery was such a fact in the social order that no one could conceive of the abolition of it, or propose abolition as a thing within the scope of statesmanship.
294. The industrial colleges. The Romans had a genius for association and organization. Under the republic artisans began to unite in colleges. In the last century of the republic the political leaders took alarm at these unions and forbade them. Cæsar and Augustus abolished the right of association. In the second century a certain number of societies existed, in spite of prohibitions,—miners, salt workers, bakers, and boatmen. Until Justinian all such unions were carefully watched as dangerous to public peace and order. In the civil law they were authorized, and made like natural persons.797 The fashion of them became very popular. "The colleges in which the artisans and traders of the Antonine age grouped themselves are almost innumerable, even in the records which time has spared. They represent almost every conceivable branch of industry, or special skill, or social service."798 "Men formed themselves into these groups for the most trivial or whimsical reasons, or for no reason at all, except that they lived in the same quarter and often met. From the view which the inscriptions give us of the interior of some of these clubs, it is clear that their main purpose was social pleasure."799 "And yet, many an inscription leaves the impression that these little societies of the old pagan world are nurseries, in an imperfect way, of gentle charities and brotherliness."800 They had many honorary members from among the richer classes. Wandering merchants and military veterans, as well as young men fond of sport, formed clubs on the same type. Alexander Severus organized all the industrial colleges and assigned them defensores. In the colleges all were equal, so that they were educational in effect. "But these instances cannot make us forget the cruel contempt and barbarity of which the slave was still the victim, and which was to be his lot for many generations yet to run. Therefore the improvement in the condition of the slave, or of his poor plebeian brother, by the theoretical equality in the colleges may be easily exaggerated."801 The statesmen had feared that the artisans might use their organization to interfere in politics. What happened in the fourth century was that the state used the organizations to reduce the artisans to servitude, and to subject them to heavy social obligations by law.
295. Laws changed in favor of slaves. When the conquests ceased and the supply of new slaves was reduced those slaves who were born in the households or on the estates came into gentler relations to their owners. Slaves rose in value and were worth more care. The old plan of Cato became uneconomical. All sentiments were softened in the first century as war became less constant, less important, and more remote. The empire was an assumption by the state of functions and powers which had been family powers and functions, and part of the patria potestas. Women, children, and slaves shared in emancipation until the state made laws to execute its jurisdiction over them. Hadrian took from masters the power of life and death over slaves. Antoninus Pius confirmed this, and provided that he who killed his own slave should suffer the same penalty as he who killed the slave of another.802 This brought the life of every slave into the protection of the state. Under Nero a judge was appointed to hear the complaints of slaves and to punish owners who misused them. Domitian forbade castration. Hadrian forbade the sale of slaves to be gladiators. The right to sell female slaves into brothels was also abolished.803
296. Christianity and slavery. In 1853 C. Schmidt published an essay on the "Civil Society of the Roman World and its Transformation by Christianity," in which he thought it right to attribute all the softening of the mores in the first three Christian centuries to Christianity. Lecky, on the other hand, says: "Slavery was distinctly and formally recognized by Christianity, and no religion ever labored more to encourage a habit of docility and passive obedience."804 Schmidt is obliged to take the ground that Christianity received and accepted slavery as a current institution, in which property rights existed, and that it suffered these to stand. If that is true, then Christianity could not exert much influence on civil society. What Christianity did was to counteract to a great extent the sentiment of contempt for slaves and for work. It did this ritually, because in the church, and especially in the Lord's Supper, all participated alike and equally in the rites. The doctrine that Christ died for all alike combined with the philosophical and humanitarian doctrine that men are of the same constitution and physique to produce a state of mind hostile to slavery. In the fourth century the church began to own great possessions, including slaves, and it accepted the standpoint of the property owner.805 In the Saturnalia of Macrobius (fl. 400 A.D.) Prætextatus reaffirms the old neostoic doctrine about slavery, of Seneca and Dio Chrysostom. Dill806 takes the doctrine to be the expression of the convictions of the best and most thoughtful men of that time. It is not to be found in Jerome, Augustine, or Chrysostom. Nevertheless the church favored manumission and took charge of the ceremony. It especially favored it when the manumitted would become priests or monks. The church came nearest to the realization of its own doctrines when it refused to consider slave birth a barrier to priesthood. In all the penitential discipline of the church also bond and free were on an equality. The intermarriage of slave and free was still forbidden. Constantine ordered that if a free woman had intercourse with her slave she should be executed and he should be burned alive.807 The pagan law only ordered that she should be reduced to slavery. The manumissions under Constantine were believed, in the sixteenth century, to have caused almshouses and hospitals to be built, on account of the great numbers of helpless persons set adrift.808 Basil the Macedonian (♰ 886) first enacted that slaves might have an ecclesiastical marriage, but the prejudice of centuries made this enactment vain.809 The abolition of crucifixion had special value to the slave class. There was no longer a special and most infamous mode of execution for them. A law of Constantine forbade the separation of members of a family of slaves.810 These are the most important changes in the law of slavery until the time of the codex of Justinian. Lecky thinks that Justinian advanced the law beyond what his predecessors had done more in regard to slavery than on any other point. His changes touched three points: (1) He abolished all the restrictions on enfranchisement which remained from the old pagan laws, and encouraged it. (2) He abolished the freedmen as an intermediate class, so that there remained only slave and free, and a senator could marry a freed woman, i.e. a slave whom he had already freed. (3) A slave might marry a free woman, if his master consented, and her children, born in slavery, became free if the father was enfranchised. The punishment for the rape of a slave woman was made death, the same as for the rape of a free woman.811 Isidore of Seville (♰ 636) said: "A just God alloted life to men, making some slaves and some lords, that the liberty of ill-doing on the part of slaves might be restrained by the authority of rulers." Still he says that all men are equal before God, and that Christ's redemption has wiped away original sin, which was the cause of slavery.812
297. The colonate. At the end of the empire population was declining, land was going out of use and returning to wilderness, the petty grandees in towns were crushed by taxes into poverty, artisans were running away and becoming brigands because the state was immobilizing them, and peasants were changed into colons. The imperial system went on until the man, the emperor, was above all laws, the senate were slaves, and the provinces were the booty of the emperor. The whole system then became immobilized. What the colons were and how they came into existence has been much disputed. They were immobilized peasants. We find them an object of legislation in the codex Theodosianus in the fourth century. They were personally free (they could marry, own property, could not be sold), but they were bound to the soil by birth and passed with it. They cultivated the land of a lord, and paid part of the crops or money.813 Marquardt thinks that they arose from barbarians quartered in the Roman empire.814 Heisterbergk815 thinks that there are three possible sources, between which he does not decide,—impoverished freemen, emancipated slaves, barbarian prisoners. Wallon816 ascribes the colonate to the administration. As society degenerated it became harder and harder to get the revenue, and the state adopted administrative measures to get the property of any one who had any. This system impoverished everybody. To carry it out it was necessary to immobilize everybody, to force each one to accept the conditions of his birth as a status from which he could not escape. What made the colonate, then, was misery.817 Emancipated slaves and impoverished peasants met in the class of colons, in state servitude. The proprietors were only farmers for the state. The tribute was the due of the state. Laborers were enrolled in the census and held for the state. The interest of the fiscus held the colon to the soil.818 The words "colon" and "slave" are used interchangeably in the codex Justinianus.
298. Depopulation. The depopulation of Italy under the empire is amply proved. Vespasian moved population from Umbria and the Sabine territory to the plain of Rome.819 Marcus Aurelius established the Marcomanni in Italy.820 Pertinax offered land in Italy and the provinces to any one who would cultivate it.821 Aurelian tried to get land occupied.822 He sent barbarians to settle in Tuscany.823 As time went on more and more land was abandoned and greater efforts were made to secure settlers. Valentinian settled German prisoners in the valley of the Po.824 In the time of Honorius, in Campania five hundred thousand arpents were discharged from the fiscus as deserted and waste. In the third century, if the colon ran away from land which no one would take he was pursued by all the agencies of the law and brought back like a criminal.825 The colons ran away because the curiales, their masters, put on them the taxes which the state levied first on the curiales.826 What was wanted was men. The Roman imperial system had made men scarce by making life hard. Pliny said that the latifundia destroyed Italy. The saying has been often quoted in modern times as if it had some unquestionable authority. It is a case of the common error of confusing cause and consequence. The latifundia were a consequence and a symptom. Heisterbergk827 thinks that the latifundia were not produced by economic causes, but by vanity and ostentation. The owners did not look to the land for revenue. He asks828 how a strictly scientific system of grand culture with plenty of labor could ruin any country. Rodbertus829 thinks that the latifundia went from a grand system to a petty system between the times of the elder and the younger Pliny by the operation of the law of rent. He thinks that there must have been garden culture in Italy at the beginning of the empire, and that the colonate arose from big estates with petty industry and from the law of mortgage. He thinks, further, that the colons, until the fourth century, were slaves, and that their status was softened by the legislation of the fourth century. Heisterbergk thinks that the colonate began in the corn provinces, and that it was, at the beginning of the fourth century, on the point of passing away, but the legislation of the fourth century perpetuated it. He thinks that it was injured, as an institution, by the great increase of taxation after Diocletian. Then legislation was necessary to keep the colons on the land.830