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. Dionysius of
Halicarnassus, in relating the well-known story of the Horatii, tells
us that the elder Horatius, assuming the defence of his son, the
murderer of his sister, claimed the right of solely taking cognizance
of the affair, inasmuch as his paternal quality constituted him a
born judge of his own children. If we remember aright, Racine, in
his tragedy of the Horatii and Curiatii, follows up the same idea.
Plutarch, in the Life of Publicola, relating the conspiracy of the
Aquilians in favour of the Tarquins, tells us that Junius Brutus in
like manner arrogated the right of jurisdiction in the affair of his
own son, and that he judged, condemned, and caused him to be executed
in virtue of his paternal authority, without any of those judiciary
observances which were adhered to in respect of the other conspirators.
Titus Livius, an earlier and higher authority in such matters than
Plutarch, gives a similar account of this affair.
Down to the times of Sylla, there does not appear to have been any
considerable check or restraint imposed upon paternal power. The
absolute authority of fathers was in some slight degree moderated by
a law of that dictator, known to jurisconsults under the title of
“Lex Cornelia de Sicariis”--a law aimed not so much at the domestic
jurisdiction of fathers, as at the abuse of such jurisdiction for
the purposes of private vengeance. But, that and similar laws
notwithstanding, we find, even under the emperor, examples of domestic
jurisdiction which go to prove that the sovereign authority of
fathers was carried out through every epoch of the civil law. The
philosopher, Seneca, reports the particulars of a process by a great
personage, named Titus Arrius, instituted of his own authority, at his
own domestic tribunal, against his own son. At this process or trial
Augustus himself assisted as a simple witness. Seneca’s account of
this affair, which is brief and to the purpose, is worthy of notice.
“Titus Arrius,” he says, “wishing to judge his son, invited Augustus
to his domestic council. The emperor repaired to this citizen’s
home, took his seat, and gave his presence simply as a witness of an
affair in which he was not concerned. Augustus does not say: ‘Let the
accused be brought before me at my palace;’ that would have been to
arrogate to himself jurisdiction in the matter, and to deprive the
father of his rights. After the cause had been heard--the accusation
and defence--Titus Arrius demanded of each of the council to write
down his judgment.” Tacitus, in like manner, relates that a senator,
named Plautius, sat in judgment upon his own wife, Pomponia Græcina,
who was accused of addicting herself to superstitions. She was tried
before the assembled household, and according to ancient usage.
This happened in the reign of Nero. To these pagan we might add the
Christian authority of Tertullian, who makes mention, at the opening
of his “Apologetica,” of domestic judgments which had just recently
taken place at Rome, and which, like that of Plautius, would seem
to have been directed against the Christians, whose religion, till
the reign of Constantine, was looked upon (to use the language of
Tacitus) as “a deplorable and destructive superstition.” In short,
the despotism of paternal authority appears to have prevailed in Rome
at every epoch of her history, down to the period when paganism lost
its hold upon the population. It is inferred from divers documents
still extant, that the absolute authority of fathers did not disappear
before the end of the third century; and the first law which positively
prohibited fathers from giving, selling, or contracting away their
children is said to be a law of Dioclesian and of Maximian. These laws
are recited in the fourth book of the Justinian Code. Nevertheless,
there is a law of Constantine, whereby the sale of children, in cases
of great poverty or destitution, was made legally permissible. In
truth, paternal despotism, like its offspring, direct slavery, perished
little by little, or by slow degrees. Like direct slavery itself, it
paled and sank before the rising light of the Gospel. The three first
centuries witnessed one continuous struggle of Christianity against
the establishments of paganism. Amongst the worst of these were
parental despotism and personal slavery. As the Gospel gained ground
upon paganism, parental despotism and slavery went down. Towards the
close of the third century, the majority of the better classes of the
Romans had embraced the new faith. Parental despotism and the servile
subjection of man to man being incompatible with that faith, these two
relics of primeval barbarism began rapidly to disappear; and after
the legal establishment of the Christian religion by Constantine, the
relation of master and servant (though, as we shall see by-and-by, by
no means improved) became altogether a new and different relation.
These preliminary remarks upon the history of fathers of families and
of the ancient paternal authority must not be considered irrelevant,
or otherwise than essential to our design. Without them, we could not
account for the origin of human slavery; and, without knowing its
origin, we could not well develop its progress and the various phases
it has assumed up to the present time. No ancient record or tradition
in existence goes to show that human slavery originated in positive
laws or in coercive ordinances enforced by the sword. Reason and
experience naturally coincide with history in this matter. That any
portion of society, after living on terms of equality with the rest,
should suddenly allow all its rights to be extinguished by brute force,
or consent to have its liberties and independence voted away, when it
had arms and instincts to defend them, is contrary to common sense and
to all experience. Much less is it probable that the great majority
would have everywhere suffered a contemptible minority to usurp the
rights and powers of the whole. The ancient slave-class were everywhere
a majority. Nothing but the force of early habit and traditional
example could have made the majority the willing bondsmen of the
minority. But as the relation must have commenced at some period before
such habits and such traditional example could take effect, and as some
sort of authority was absolutely necessary to establish the relation,
it follows that, in the absence of all other competent authority, it
must have been the natural authority of parents over their offspring
that first established slavery. Such slavery must, of course, in the
first instance have been direct; for, in a rude and primitive society,
no other would be intelligible or possible.
If we be right in these antecedents, our conclusions from them must be,
that the first fathers were the first masters, and the first children
were the first slaves. To determine the history of the first masters
is,therefore, virtually to suggest the history of the first slaves.
Yes, the unbounded power of paternity in the first ages of the world
was the origin of all human slavery; and therefore is slavery a thing
anterior to all written constitutions, to all human laws, traditional
or imposed.
Now come the questions, Why did our first parents make slaves of
their children? and how came the domestic institution, established by
parental despotism, to become a social institution diffused throughout
the whole of society? Our natural instincts, undeveloped by reason
and undisciplined by knowledge and experience, would, methinks, lead
us to account satisfactorily for both facts. It was natural that the
head of the family should govern the family. It was not unnatural that
the parent, who had given life to the child, and who had preserved
that life when the child was unable to take care of itself, should
in some measure regard that life as his own; and as the maintenance
of his offspring must have been a burden on the parent, and kept him
comparatively poor in the days of early manhood, it is no more than
what we should expect from the selfishness of old age--especially in
a rude social state--that he should seek to indemnify himself, by the
future labour of his children, for his cost and pains in bringing them
up. Let us also bear in mind, that we are treating of those primitive
times when man’s animal instincts interpreted polygamy and the law of
nature to be one and the same--times which Dryden describes as
“Those ancient times, e’er priestcraft did begin--
’Twas e’er polygamy was deemed a sin.”
In those days, the larger the family, the greater the wealth and power
of the head of the household. In infancy, the offspring might be a
charge and a source of poverty; but, as they grew up, they more than
repaid the cost of maintenance,--they became, in fact, a source of
wealth and power and aggrandisement to the parent. Now, according to
all known traditions, the ancient fathers of families gloried in a
numerous progeny. In the history of the Jews, families of fifty and
upwards are frequently spoken of. Josephus informs us, that Gedeon had
seventy sons; Jair, thirty; Apsan, thirty sons and thirty daughters;
Abdon, forty sons--all of them living at the time of his death--besides
thirty grandsons. Indeed, the Old Testament abounds in examples showing
the multitudinous progeny ascribed to the old patriarchs--most of
them, too, born of concubines, under what the modern world would call
_disparaging_ circumstances.
The traditions of early Greece harmonise, in this respect, with those
of the Jews. Who has not read of the fifty daughters of Danaüs? In
Homer, we find old Priam appealing to his numerous progeny, as the
best means of exciting pity and respect in the vindictive breast of
Achilles. We find him telling of his fifty children--of nineteen born
of the same mother, Hecuba; and all the rest, of concubines. Livy
and Plutarch tell us of the three hundred Fabians--all of the same
family--who perished in a great battle against the Tuscans, fought in
the early wars of the Republic; and Plutarch also makes mention, in his
Life of Theseus, of a certain personage, Pallas, who had fifty children.
From these and innumerable testimonies of a similar kind, we may
readily conceive that these numerous wives and concubines kept by the
heads of families in early times made fathers vastly more important
personages than they are nowadays, and gave them progenies which, in
comparison with modern ones, might be considered clans or tribes. What
with wives, concubines, children, and grandchildren, every such father
was veritably the head of a community; and inasmuch as his power was
absolute over each and all, he had every motive that selfishness could
dictate to make them, and keep them, slaves for his aggrandisement and
pleasure. In fact, the more numerous his progeny and household, the
greater was his source of wealth, the higher his status, and the better
his security against personal violence in lawless times. That slavery
should originate and grow up in this way appears to us perfectly
natural. At all events, in no other way has it ever been, or can it
ever be, satisfactorily accounted for.
What happened in the case of one father of a family would as naturally
happen in respect of others. In the progress of time, some of the
younger branches would naturally stray from the paternal home, and
emigrate to other lands, where they would settle down and, in time,
become the heads of families--the founders of new races of slaves.
Indeed, we have but to imagine the case of one to apply to thousands
similarly circumstanced, and we shall see the origin of human slavery
at once satisfactorily explained. Those early fathers, or heads of
families, would naturally love some of their children better than
others; at least, they would have more confidence in some one than in
the rest. To those so loved, or so favoured, would naturally devolve
the headship of the family, or such portions of the patrimonial estate
as might enable them to found new families elsewhere. These families,
like the parent one, would as naturally resolve themselves into little
communities of masters and slaves; so that in course of time, by the
natural operation of one and the same first cause, the whole of society
would find itself, what we find it to have been in all early history,
an aggregation of souls divided everywhere into two great classes--a
master-class possessing, and a slave-class possessed.
Let us not imagine, however, that a social order which appears to us
so inhuman and so unnatural was viewed in this light, or inspired
_our_ feelings, in the ancient world; it would be a great mistake to
suppose this. Nothing was further from the contemplation of the men of
antiquity than our notions and theories about the equality of human
rights. The idea of what man ought to be, or is capable of being made,
was an idea unknown to the ancient world. The division of the human
race into masters and slaves appeared to them a perfectly natural
division: they saw no other; they never heard of any other; they
appear never to have conceived the possibility of any other. Even the
slaves themselves never complained of slavery _as an institution_;
they never demanded liberty in the sense we demand it. When they did
complain, it was not because they thought that one class ought not to
be a master-class and the other a slave-class: that was an idea quite
beyond them. When they complained--and they often _did_ complain, and
sometimes rebel too--it was either because they found their masters
harsh and cruel, and wished to exchange them for new and better ones,
or because they hoped, by breaking their fetters and becoming soldiers,
pirates, or adventurers of some kind, to exchange their condition as
slaves for the more enviable one of slave-owners. History records
several insurrections of slaves that took place in ancient times; but
in no one instance does it appear that the insurgents took up arms for
the principle of equality, or for any cause common to other slaves
as well as to themselves. Of this fact we shall adduce some notable
evidences in the progress of this inquiry. For the present, we shall
content ourselves with the assertion that, as a general rule, the
religious doctrine of men’s equality before God, and the political and
social doctrine of man’s equality before the law, or as a member of
society, were doctrines utterly unknown to, or uncared for amongst, the
old pagan world. In hazarding this assertion, we would be understood
as applying it to all classes and callings of the ancients alike--to
philosophers, poets, orators, and statesmen, as well as to mechanics,
labourers, house-servants, even the very lowest description of menial
slaves. That one or two philosophers and poets, here and there, may be
found to have uttered sentiments prophetic of “the good time coming,”
or indicative of a tacit belief that man was made for a higher and
brighter destiny than was his then lot, we pretend not to deny. But
that any class or calling of men existed in the old pagan world who
believed in, much less contended for, the political and social rights
of man _as man_ is what, we fearlessly assert, cannot be proved from
any historical authority extant. With the exception of the Essenes of
Judæa and the Therapeutæ of Egypt, we know of no attempt having been
made in ancient times to realise the social views latterly so prevalent
amongst the working classes in France, Germany, and, indeed, in most
parts of Central and Western Europe, England included. The Essenes
and Therapeutæ, however, can hardly be considered an exception to the
general rule, seeing that the latter was a Christian sect, and that
the Essenes, being Jews, believed in the same God that all Christians
professed to worship. Besides, the Essenes were but a very small sect,
hardly exceeding 4,000 souls in all; and though they held and practised
the theory of human equality, and proscribed slavery from amongst them,
yet, like the Shakers of America, they so mixed up absolute celibacy,
and other ascetic doctrines and practices, with their community-system
that, in the very nature of things, they could never be more than a
small, isolated sect, utterly incapable of influencing, by creed or
example, the destinies of the human race.
But how the cause of human liberty came to be hopeless under the old
pagan systems, and how Christianity itself has hitherto failed in its
divine mission, must be the subject of future chapters.