were, and it is questionable if it can ever be satisfactorily settled.
Egyptian inscriptions indicate a white race in the north-eastern corner
of Libya, adjoining Egypt; while further to the west lived the blacks.
At a period exceedingly remote, the whites mixed with these negro
blacks, who probably immigrated from the centre of Africa--Soudan--and
spread over the whole of Libya. These remote epochs, however,
altogether refuse chronological limitation. But when chronology, even
of the most rudimentary kind, becomes possible, history shows us the
existence, in Libya, of a nomadic and agricultural people, who can
be no other than these cross-breeds, and who had brought a part of
the land to a high degree of cultivation. The Libyans may thus be
considered as an autochthonous African population--a theory which is
confirmed by other evidence not now necessary to give.
Among these Libyans--called by the Greeks _Afri_, and by the Romans,
_Africani_--agriculture was in a highly flourishing condition at the
epoch of the earliest myths and legends of Greece: all the Hellenic
legends relating to the distant sea-wanderings of gods or heroes, carry
them to the Libyan shores about the _Regio Syrtica_--Tripolis. Among
these are the Argonauts and Heraklides, Perseus, Kadmos, Odysseus,
and Menalaos. So the Greek myths of Atlas and the Garden of the
Hesperides have their spring and source in that part of Libya. All this
presupposes a very old culture. Herodotus says that the Ægis of the
Greek Pallas originated in Libya, as also that Athene here received
Gorgona's head for her Ægis. Even at the present day, the chiefs of
some of the tribes in the southern part of ancient Libya carry the
skins of leopards and other wild beasts on their shoulders in such a
way that the head of the animal, Ægis-like, covers their breast. The
adventurous Phoenician and Greek navigators of the earliest period
accordingly found the Libyans already a highly cultivated people. This
culture, too, they possessed previous to their intercourse with the
Canaanites, Phoenicians, or Greeks--anterior even to the wanderings of
Astarte, Anna, or Dido.
At this epoch the Libyans were possessed of written language. Their
alphabet was, in certain peculiarities, of an older type than even
the Phoenician--that father of so many eastern and western alphabets.
_Leptis_ and _Oka_ are Libyan names for Libyan cities which were in
existence previous to any Phoenician colonizations--though these
colonizations are themselves anterior to positive history.
Goats, sheep, and other domestic animals were introduced into Greece
and Italy from Libya; and from thence also came the knowledge of how to
breed and rear them. The Libyans also, in all probability, first taught
them the mode of keeping and rearing bees, as the Greek word for "wax,"
_keros_--Latin, _cera_, is by some deduced from the Berber (Libyan)
_ta-kir_, and the Greek designation for honey, _meli_, _mel_--Latin,
_mel_, from the Berber _ta-men-t_. Others, however, trace both those
words to a Sanscrit root.
As an evidence of their advanced civilization, it may be mentioned
that the Libyans were highly accomplished in horticulture at a time
when the fields of Greece and Italy were only rudely ploughed. From
Libya across the Mediterranean, the leguminous or pulse plants seem to
have been introduced into Southern Europe, together with the mode of
their use and culture; and some investigators consider that the Latin
names for "pease" (_cicer_), for "lentils" (_lens_, _lentis_), and for
"beans" (_faba_), have their origin in the Berber _ikiker_, _ta-linit_,
and _fabua_. But to these words, also, others give a Sanscrit origin.
_Cucurbis_ "cucumber," is in Berber _curumb_--although, again, it is
traced, but forcedly, to the Sanscrit. Whatever may be the origin of
the words, it is an historical fact that the Romans acquired their
whole knowledge of horticulture from the Libyans and Libyo-Phoenicians;
and it may even be surmised that the Latin _urtus_, "hortus," had its
root in the Berber _urt_.
Civilization among the Libyans, therefore, was anterior to any contact
either with Phoenicians or Greeks, and long centuries anterior to the
Carthaginian domination over the northern shores of Africa.
The Libyans were a nation of agriculturists and freeholders. No
trace of slavery appears among them, and, if it existed at all, was
altogether insignificant and accidental. When the Phoenicians and
Canaanitish settlements increased in power and number, the Libyans
became tributary colonists, and the Phoenicians instituted the
slave-trade among them, whose victims were confined mostly to the
nomads.
As we have before said, the poor white colonists sent from Canaan and
Phoenicia to Libya intermarried with the natives; and from this union
came the Libyo-Phoenicians of history. The relations which the Libyans
(and subsequently the Libyo-Phoenicians, when again subjugated) held
to Phoenician and Canaanitish settlers, were similar to those which
free Romans afterward held to the Longobard and Frankish conquerors who
settled upon and held the lands of which they were once the masters.
IV.
CARTHAGINIANS.
AUTHORITIES:
_Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Polybius, Corippus, Moevers, etc._
The Carthaginians were the great ethnic offshoots of Phoenicia in
the western part of the ancient world. It would not be in place here
to inquire what motives led these wanderers away from their Asiatic
home, or what was the nature of the settlement which they made. They
left Tyre and founded the celebrated city of Carthage, on a spot
where an ancient colony from Sidon previously existed.[6] Carthage
very early--indeed, we might almost say, at the start--assumed a
higher character than any previous colony or city of Phoenicia. It
soon became, in fact, an independent political power. It began to
flourish at a time when Tyre and Sidon were on the decline, and when
these once great cities had become tributary to Asiatic potentates.
The Carthaginians became first the protectors, and soon afterward,
the masters of all the ancient Phoenician colonies scattered over
the western world. Nor did they stop here; they became a warlike and
conquering empire. The political misfortunes of their mother country
increased, by almost uninterrupted immigration, the number of poor
free citizens in Carthage, as well as in other seacoast cities now
Punic, though once Phoenician--many of them, indeed, having a numerous
Libyo-Phoenician population. This surplus the Carthaginians sent off as
colonists into the interior of Libya, where they founded smaller cities
or settled as agriculturists among the native population, whose lands,
in many instances, were assigned to the new-comers. The Carthaginian
oligarchy soon began to oppress and look with contempt upon the ancient
Phoenicians, Libyo-Phoenicians and Libyans. In process of time, the new
colonists mixed with the ancient populations, and all were soon equally
sufferers from oppressive tributes and exactions. The common hatred of
these various populations against the oligarchy, which frequently led
to revolt, was a powerful aid to the Numidian kings and to the Romans
in their efforts to crush haughty Carthage.
The great Carthaginian oligarchs and slaveholders extended and
perfected what the Phoenicians perhaps only began. They acquired in
various ways vast landed estates, and oppressed and impoverished the
tributary colonists and small freeholders by grievous exactions; they
seized their homesteads, and finally reduced them to serfdom and
slavery. Toward the decline of Carthaginian power, such estates were
mostly cultivated by slaves; and these slaves--those in the country as
well as those in the cities--were either Libyo-Phoenicians and Libyans,
or belonged to Asiatic and European races--the unhappy individuals
being either bought or taken as prisoners of war. The subdued and slave
populations were as mixed as the Carthaginian armies, which, in Africa
especially, contained a vast number of negroes--thus presenting an
antetype of the French Turcos.
The gigantic struggle of Carthage with Rome decided the destinies of
the world. Carthage fell. But the breath of the moribund slave-holding
oligarchy of Carthage poisoned Rome. The tragic malediction of Dido
received its fulfilment, though not in the precise manner recorded by
Virgil in the Ænead.
After having conquered Carthage and Numidia, the Romans distributed
among their own colonists the immense estates of the Carthaginian
slaveholders, which, however, had been previously appropriated by
the Numidian kings. Phoenicians, Libyo-Phoenicians, Libyans and
Carthaginians, all now either became Roman colonists, or else serfs
and chattels in the villas of their Roman masters. When the Vandals
conquered Africa, the Romans in their turn shared the fate of all
their predecessors, who had in succession been reduced to serfdom and
domestic slavery, the one by the other. In the character of serfs
and chattels, these various races now cultivated for their Vandal
masters the lands and farms which once were their own. Thus affording
an additional illustration of the eternal and omnipotent law of
_retribution_ and _compensation_.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 6: The name _Carthage_ signifies a "new borough," or "city."]
V.
HEBREWS, OR BENI-ISRAEL.
AUTHORITIES:
_The Scriptures, Ewald, Rénan, Duncker, Gessenius, Grotefend, etc._
The pro-slavery party, pacific as well as militant, has long sought to
fall back on the Mosaic records for the justification of the "sacred"
and "patriarchal" institution. The historic records throw a bright
light on the gray dawn of Hebraic life--giving us an insight into the
primitive forms of society, not only of the Hebrews, but of the other,
and especially the Shemitic inhabitants of Syria and of Fore-Asia. And,
truly enough, servants and slaves are found around the tent of the
patriarch.
It has already been mentioned that in times long prior to any definite
chronology, the regions constituting Syria, Palestine and Arabia
were inhabited by various tribes--some of whom were offshoots from
one stem and some from another. Of these tribes, some had already
formed themselves into well-developed societies, while others, if they
were not absolutely roving nomads, yet often changed their dwellings
according to the exigencies of pastoral life. Palestine, the final home
of the Hebrew, was, in all probability, the earliest as well as the
chief highway of antiquity--especially for the Shemitic and Chamitic
races, just as the Caucasus and its slopes are supposed to have been
the highway for Aryan or Indo-European emigrants, and for Finnic,
Altaïc, and Mongolian or yellow races. This character it had before the
time when Terah, Abraham's father, drove his herds from the table-lands
of Mesopotamia (_Naharaina_); and it preserved it under Phoenician as
well as under Hebrew dominion. Repeatedly did Egyptians, Assyrians
and Babylonians, as well as Persians, and finally Alexander and his
generals, march through Palestine in their invading and conquering
expeditions. The important part which Palestine played in the early
commercial history of the world, also, has already been pointed out
while treating of the Phoenicians.
The origin first of domestic servitude, and then of absolute
chattelhood, among the primitive pastoral tribes, may be traced to
two distinct sources, both of them springing from abnormal conditions
and events. One source was the constant feuds and wars of the tribes;
the other, individual indolence and shiftlessness. The household of a
patriarch, originally composed of a family and then of a clan, soon had
its share of restless as well as indolent dependents. Such hangers-on
were neither as frugal nor as industrious as the patriarch's family,
and so enjoyed but small consideration; generally, moreover, they were
most likely strangers who, through necessity or gratitude, adhered
to the house and considered themselves an integral part of it. But
the patriarch had the most absolute power over all the members of the
family--over his wife, his sons and daughters, and all their progeny
and relations. He could banish them from the family and hearth; he
could sell them away to others; he had power of life and death over
them all; and such powers, of course, extended over dependents and
servants. In fact, the patriarch was the supreme and only-existing
law. His will, and absolute obedience thereto, was the only guarantee
of order inside of the tent, and outside of it also in their relations
with the tents and clans of other patriarchs. The more exclusive and
distinct such a family or clan was, the more independent it was in
all its relations with similar social crystallizations; and the more
closely did the dependents adhere to it for support and protection.
Such was undoubtedly the origin of the domestic servitude which
appears in the Scriptures with the apparition of Abraham as a distinct
historical individuality. But such servants and dependents being
a part of the family, were not commonly sold nor made an article
of merchandise, and were not, strictly speaking, chattels, as were
prisoners made in feuds or wars.[7] Besides, in the formation
of the primitive patriarchal household, the domestic, pastoral
and agricultural labors were performed by the family--children,
grandchildren, etc.; just as it is in the present day in every
simple household--for a simple family formed the germ of the tribe
and of the retainers around the tent of the patriarch. As the family
increased, so did the herds, and so also did the duties to be
performed. Meanwhile the members of the expanding family continued to
attend to the household services--just as is now the case in similar
circumstances--without their becoming slaves or chattels for all that.
The primitive Aryan language (of which hereafter) clearly confirms
what both reason and analogy assert as being an inherent fact in the
constitution of every family, whatever may be the peculiarities of
skin or skull, or their other ethnic characteristics. Moreover, even
according to those opposed to the absolute unity of the whole human
race, the Shemites descend from the same common progenitor as the Aryas
(of whom are we), and this affinity strengthens what was said above
concerning the similarity of their domestic life.
With the increase of the tribes and families, neighboring or
scattered, increased the degeneracy of the dependents, until finally
these miserable persons, grown to be an excrescence on the primitive
Hebrew family life, and unable to take care of themselves, willingly
accepted slavery--at times indeed craved it. The same phenomenon, under
different modifications, and occasioned by various causes, again and
again reappears in divers nations and empires, just as the same bodily
maladies have constantly reproduced themselves throughout the countless
centuries of human existence. And indeed the _morale_ of Noah's curse
can only be, that servitude, being generated by corruption of manhood,
was, in its very nature, a diseased and degraded condition.
Abraham belonged to a class common to the Arabs, Hebrews, and all the
Shemitic races--shieks or chiefs of warlike tribes, who were in the
habit of making war against each other, carrying off prisoners, and
even kidnapping on occasion. It was these victims chiefly that were the
objects of traffic; and this very trait is true of the Arab tribes down
to the present day.
The Hebrews, liberated from captivity in Egypt--that is, from political
slavery, which must never be confounded with chattelhood--fought
against their kinsmen, the Shemitic Canaanites, with a view to make
themselves a home in a country already thickly settled, and in
comparatively advanced culture and civilization. The Hebrews, poor,
energetic, and hardened by the privations of a long captivity, bore
the same relation to the nations of Canaan which they invaded, as the
half-naked, half-starved barbarians of a long subsequent epoch bore to
the Roman world, against which they rushed with the force of doom. The
invading Israelites, according to the commands of Jahveh (Jehovah),
carried on wars of extermination against the Phoenicians, Philistines,
Ammonites, Amorites, Moabites, and other inhabitants of south-western
Syria. Many of these original occupants and cultivators of the land of
Canaan fled even to Africa, from the exterminating fury of the Jews,
led by Moses, Aaron, and Joshua. Meanwhile the Jews took possession
of the conquered and abandoned lands, which were divided between
the tribes; and the great body of the Hebrews settled on them as
agriculturists and free yeomen. In process of time, under the direction
and inspiration of Jahveh, the supreme Lord of Israel, the body of
commandments, regulations and ceremonials, called the Mosaic law, was
framed.
The law of Moses has two prominent divisions--first, imperative
commands, and second, dispensations. In respect of all absolute duties
to God, as well as domestic and social duties, the law lays down its
commands even to the minutest details, and rigidly condemns their
violator. But, on the other hand, taking into account human frailty,
and the temptations to which it is exposed, as also the exigencies and
customs of life, the law is also full of dispensations. This twofold
character of the Mosaic law affords its antagonists a broad field for
assaults on its apparent contradictions. The law condemns idolatry,
yet Aaron, the first high-priest, casts a golden calf for the people
to worship, while Moses raises a brazen serpent before their eyes
as a material symbol for their faith. The law commands monogamy,
but permits and regulates concubinage. It prohibits licentiousness,
fornication, and rape, but overlooks them in certain instances, as,
for example, after a successful battle or the storming of a city,
because such crimes are unavoidable when the demoniac passions are
brought powerfully into play. Many other illustrations of this twofold
character of the Mosaic law might be pointed out.
But minute and precise though the Mosaic record is in its religious and
social commands and obligations, it nowhere commands the Hebrews, as a
religious or social duty, to enslave the Canaanitish idolaters among
whom they lived. Enslavement and chattelhood are nowhere laid down as
special duties, nor is slavery regarded as forming the corner-stone of
the Jewish social, civil, and religious structure. Slavery is not the
subject of the covenant with God or of the covenant with man; neither
did the possession of slaves confer any political, religious, or social
rights. All this was left for the deduction of modern theology and
politics.
The Mosaic law deals with slavery as with an existing evil, and
regulates it as an abnormal institution. The lawgiver recalls to the
memory of the Jews that they were themselves captives and bondsmen--an
historic fact to which, as we have already seen, the ancestry of many
of the slaveholders in the United States, at the present day, furnish a
parallel.
But perhaps Biblical commentators have not drawn with sufficient
severity the distinction in meaning between the Hebrew word for
"servant," "attendant," etc., and that for an "absolute chattel."
Chattelhood, in the modern legal and practical application of the term,
was undoubtedly a rare condition in the time of the patriarchs, and
even in the primitive theocratic epochs of Beni-Israel. The Hebrew
language has four words to express the primitive domestic relations
of the race, and neither of them will admit the meaning of positive
chattelhood. Probably the oldest is the word _a'buddah_, which occurs
in the book of Job, whose dialect is considered by modern philologists
to be far older than the Mosaic scriptures; the same word is also found
once only in Genesis (Gessenius Dict.). It is a collective noun, and
signifies "attendants," "laborers," and, according to some exegetes, it
also signifies an "_estate_." Such may perhaps be its meaning in the
book of Job, as it occurs after the enumeration of various movables,
such as flocks and herds, and may thus, in distinction, convey the
idea of real property. The logical sequence in such enumerations was
undoubtedly the same then as it is now--movables first in order,
then landed property. Another Hebrew word for the primitive domestic
servant is _na'ar_, but its application seems to have been rather
limited; it is mostly employed to designate a "lad-servant" or
"apprentice." The word most generally used, however, and the one most
variously translated and explained by lexicographers is _e'bed_: it
variously signifies "subject," "servant," "serf," "slave," "attendant,"
"officer," etc. Its application to a "serf" or "slave" has perhaps
rather a moral or ideal than a positive legal or social sense. Thus,
when in Genesis it is said that "Moses removed the swarms of flies from
Pharaoh, from his servants (_e'bed_), and from his people," the word
_e'bed_ undoubtedly signifies "ministers," "courtiers," "officers,"
and "servants of the court," and not actual serfs or slaves. Common
sense would surely indicate that chattels could not have been mentioned
immediately after the great Pharaoh, and before his people; and still
less likely is it that the oriental despotism which reduced _all_
to political slaves was unknown in the Egypt of the early Pharaohs.
Finally, the word _abduh_ alone may signify a "slave" in the strict
sense of the term; it is used by Ezra, and belongs to a period of
national degradation, when both slavery and idolatry flourished in
Israel.
Slavery, however, never became an integral element of Hebrew life, nor,
during their centuries of glory, did its pestilence-breath endanger the
national vitality. The Mosaic record, covering a period of nearly one
thousand years, never mentions any slave revolt, such as so often shook
the neighboring and contemporaneous Phoenicians.
For domestic slaves, the Hebrews procured foreigners, through traffic
or by war; and such slaves were of the same race as the slaves of
the Phoenicians and other neighboring nations. In the history of the
Beni-Israel, there are long episodes containing accounts of wars,
principally with tribes belonging to the same Shemitic family from
which the Hebrews themselves sprang, and many of the slaves made in
these wars must have belonged to the nearest cities and kingdoms.
If these had been so numerous as to be employed in large bodies
in agricultural labor, undoubtedly there would have been revolts
during the absence of their masters on military expeditions, or even
during times of peace. The absence of any such event in the history
of the Hebrews, proves that domestic slavery was for many long
centuries recognized only as an abnormal institution, and its growth
circumscribed by jubilees and limitary statutes.
The regulations prescribing the status of slaves, and their general
condition, are within, the reach of every one. Their spirit is mild
and beneficent for the bond-man; the duration of his slavery is
limited--his treatment is humane, and the condition not ordinarily
hereditary. In the times of the early patriarchs, a servant could
become the chief of the family--thus proving that some commentators
have made a strange confusion in the interpretation of the
above-mentioned Hebrew word (_e'bed_), when they construe it as
applying to such a system as modern American slavery. A servant who
was eligible to become the chief of a family could not be a chattel,
but must necessarily have been a member of the clan, with independent
powers and rights, and at least the proprietorship of himself.
Among the Hebrews, also, a man could voluntarily sell himself into
slavery; thus the debtor paid his debts with his own body, or with
that of his wife or child. This custom was almost universal in early
antiquity, as well as among the Romans and the barbarous Germans. But
the Mosaic law appointed a regular epoch for the emancipation of all
slaves, and therefore of debtors among the rest; and the operation of
this law it was which made hereditary slavery of such comparatively
rare occurrence.