THE SLAVE MARKET.
In the meantime Isidorus, with well-filled purse, and armed with
credentials under the Imperial seal, had set off upon his difficult and
doubtful quest.
"However it turn out," he said to himself, "it will be strange if I do
not climb a few steps higher on the ladder on which my feet are now
placed. Being the confidential agent of the Empress is better than
being the secretary of the rude soldier, Sertorius, and being snubbed by
him every day, too."
Mounted on one of the best horses in the Imperial stables, he rode forth
upon the famous Salarian Way, which led straight as an arrow over the
wide Campagna, and over the rugged Appenines to the distant city of
Ravenna, among the marshes of the Adriatic. Now a decayed and
grass-grown city, six miles from the sea, it was then a great and busy
port, and had been for two centuries and a half an important see of the
Christian Church. Not to the prefect of the city, but to the bishop of
Ravenna, Isidorus, with his natural tact and shrewdness, betook himself.
The sign manual of the Emperor, which he confidently exhibited, did not
command that regard which he had anticipated; but a private letter from
Adauctus, commending Isidorus to all Christian bishops and presbyters,
procured for him a much more cordial reception. He was hospitably
entertained, and every possible assistance given him in his quest. The
bishop called together the deacons who had the care of the poor of the
Church, but none of them knew anything of Demetrius. The bishop had
ransomed many Christian slaves--prisoners taken in war, or captured by
pirates. A few years before, when the resources of the Church had been
completely exhausted by the exercise of this charity,[26] a company of
captives had been sold by pirates to a Jewish slave-dealer named Ezra,
and conveyed by him to the city of Mediolanum, or as we now call it,
Milan, as offering, next to Rome, the best market for his wares. And one
of the deacons remembered among this slave-gang an old man who resembled
the description given of Demetrius.
To Milan, therefore, crossing again the Appenines, and riding up the
broad, rich valley of the Po, went Isidorus. He was surprised to find a
city, almost rivalling in extent Rome itself, and with a history
reaching back to the times of the Etruscans, well-nigh a thousand years.
First he sought the Jewish slave-dealer, who kept a regular mart for the
sale or hire of human beings, just as one now-a-days keeps a
livery-stable for the sale or hire of horses. There was as much fraud,
too, in selling slaves then, as has been proverbially connected with
horse-dealing and jockeying in every age. The _ergastulum_, or slave-pen
of Ezra, was a large prison-like structure, surrounding the four sides
of a hollow square. There were no windows to the street, and only very
small iron-grated ones to the inner court; with heavy, iron-studded
doors to the stable-like stalls, where the slaves were chained to a
stout beam running along the wall.
A slave-auction was in progress when Isidorus arrived, so he had to wait
till it was over before plying his quest. A gang of slaves, unchained,
but guarded by keepers, armed with whips and spears, awaited their fate.
Stripped nearly naked, they were rudely examined, pinched, handled, and
made to stoop, lift heavy weights, walk, run, and show their paces like
horses for sale. Many had their ears bored--a sign of servitude from the
time of Moses--and others were seamed with scars of the cruel lash.
This, however, lessened their market value, as it was evidence of their
intractable and troublesome character.
Slavery was, at the time of which we write, one of the greatest evils of
the Roman empire. It was a deadly canker, eating out the national life.
It cast a stigma of disgrace on labour, and prevented the formation of
that intelligent middle class which is the true safeguard of liberty.
Never in the history of the world was society so based upon the abject
misery of vast multitudes of human beings. The slaves outnumbered, many
times, their masters. They were forbidden to wear a peculiar garb, lest
they should recognize their numbers and their strength, and rise in
universal revolt. As it was, servile insurrections were of frequent
occurrence. But they were crushed and punished with ruthless severity.
In one slave revolt, 60,000 of these wretched beings were slain. The
first question about a man's property was, _"Quot pascit servos?"_--"How
many slaves does he keep?" Ten was considered the least number
consistent with any degree of respectability. Four hundred slaves
deluged with their blood the funeral pyre of Pedanius Secundus. Vidius
Pollio fed his lampreys with the bodies of his human chattels. A single
freed-man left over 4,000 at his death. Some 2,000 men were lords of the
Roman world, and the great mass of the rest were slaves. Their condition
was one of inconceivable wretchedness. They had no rights of marriage,
nor any claim to their children. Their food was a pound of bread a day,
with a little salt and oil. Flesh they never tasted, and even wine,
which flowed like water, almost never. Colossal piles, built by their
blood and sweat, attest to the present day the bitterness of their
bondage. The lash of the taskmaster was heard in the fields, and
crosses, bearing aloft their quivering victims, polluted the wayside.
This dumb, weltering mass of humanity, crushed by power, and led by
their lusts, became a hot-bed of vice, in which every evil passion grew
apace. To these wretched beings came the gospel of liberty, with a
strange, a thrilling power. The oppressed slave, in the intervals of
toil or torture, caught with joy the emancipating message, and sprang up
enfranchised by an immortalizing hope. He exulted in a new-found freedom
in Christ, which no wealth could purchase, no chains of slavery fetter,
nor even death itself destroy. In the Christian Church the distinctions
of worldly rank were abolished.[27] The highest spiritual privileges
were opened to the lowliest slave. In the ecclesiastical hierarchy were
no rights of birth, and no privileges of blood. In the inscriptions of
the Catacombs, no badges of servitude, no titles of honour appear. The
wealthy noble, the lord of many acres, recognized in his lowly servant a
fellow heir of glory. They bowed together at the same table of the Lord,
saluted each other with the mutual kiss of charity, and side by side in
their narrow graves, at length returned to indistinguishable dust. The
story of Onesimus was often repeated, and the patrician master received
his returning slave, "not now as a servant, but above a servant--a
brother beloved." Nay, he may even have bowed to him as his
ecclesiastical superior, and received from his plebeian hands the
emblems of their common Lord.
We return from this digression to the slave-market of Milan. Very few of
Ezra's stock were black--not more than half a dozen, from Nubia and
Libya. Most of them were as white as himself, or whiter still. There
were Dalmatians, Illyrians, Iberians, Gauls, Greeks, Syrians, and many
other nationalities. Ezra was engaged in busy converse, in a broken
mixture of Latin and Greek, with the wealthy patrician, Vitellius, the
lord of wide corn lands on the fertile banks of the Po.
"Field hands your Excellency wants? I have some splendid ones," he said,
eagerly. "Here, you fellows, step out there and show your muscles;" and
he struck with his whip-lash two brawny white-skinned, blue-eyed,
yellow-haired British slaves.
"Sullen dogs these British often are," he said, "but they are as good as
gold. They never run away like the Germans, nor steal like the Greeks,
nor kill themselves like the Gauls."[28]
"Glad of that," said Vitellius. "I have had a perfect epidemic of
suicide among my slaves. I had to kill several of them to keep them from
killing themselves"--a sad but frequent comment on the utter
wretchedness of their condition, from which death itself was the only
refuge.
"Does your Excellency want anything of a higher grade?" asked Ezra.
"Some skilled workmen to finish your elegant villa, for instance. I have
a splendid Greek sculptor, almost another Phidias, and another a second
Zeuxis with the brush. Then if you want a steward, or bookkeeper, or
secretary, or reader, or a skilled physician, I have them all; or a
hand-maid for your Excellency's wife. I have a beautiful Greek girl
here, highly accomplished; can embroider, play the zither, sing in two
languages. I sold her sister last week for 100,000 sesterces[29]--nieces
of an ex-archon. I felt really sorry for them, but what would
you?--trade is trade. Times are bad. Poor Ezra has had bad luck. Several
of his slaves kill themselves. Market glutted; price falls. I sell them
very cheap--very cheap."
Vitellius made his purchases, had them chained together in a gang, and
driven by his steward, like cattle, to his farm. The account of Ezra's
interview with Isidorus we must defer to another chapter.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[26] This might easily happen, for after successful raids or slave
hunts, the victims were sold by their pirate captors by the thousand.
The fact is on record, that at Delos, a famous slave market, 60,000 were
sold by Celician pirates in a single day.
[27] Apud nos inter pauperes et divites, servos et dominos, interest
nihil. Lactant. _Div. Inst._ v. 14, 15.
[28] These were the most common faults of slaves, for attempting which
they were often branded on cheek or brow.
[29] Over $4,000 of our money. Very beautiful or accomplished slaves
sometimes brought twice that amount.
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