direct statements of history, as well as by the descriptions of manners
in the comedies, etc., which have reached us from that epoch. In
proportion as the old Roman spirit and courage declined, did violence
and rowdyism increase. Among the various deleterious influences of
slavery on slaveholders, also, two which are very noticeable at that
remote time, may again, after the lapse of ages, be observed under our
own eyes: slavery either emasculates the slaveholder physically and
mentally, and thus renders him cruel from effeminacy; or else makes him
rude and reckless, and full of a coarse and savage ferocity.
The Roman oligarchs had all the polish reflected from general culture
covering the most depraved minds; and this told upon their politics
as well as upon their domestic economy. As early as the time of
Jugurtha, nearly all the senators were venal; and subsequently, those
who preserved individually some of the better Roman characteristics,
became even more rare. Such an one, toward the end of the republic,
was Sextus Roscius, whom history mentions for his good treatment of
his bondmen. Whenever a special class of society becomes anywhere
predominant, a special type of character is formed as the standard
of honor, which, however, is generally quite different from the true
standard of an honest man or an upright citizen. But, false criterions
aside, the Slave States may, and undoubtedly do, possess many honorable
planters and citizens, as Carroll of Carrollton or Aiken and Preston
of South Carolina: but none of these men give tone or character to the
manners or the laws; their influence is not permitted in Congress or
the state legislatures, nor are their opinions reflected in the press
or in the sham literature and science of their section. But the customs
and manners which now prevail, the laws enacted, the utterances of
statesmen, the condition of science and literature, and the statements
of the current press, constitute the evidence from which the social
condition of the nation is to be judged now, and the historic evidence
from which it will be judged by future generations.
The slaveholding oligarchy triumphed over Marius and Sertorius as it
triumphed over the Gracchi. _And the Roman republic expired_ composed
of slaveholders, capitalists, and beggars. The fury of the indignant
and impoverished people carried Cæsar to power over the carcasses and
the ruins of the oligarchy, which long before had reduced the liberty
and the name of the Roman people to a sham and a mockery. Domestic
slavery for several centuries undermined the Roman republic, and its
corrosive action increased with the most brilliant periods of conquest,
just as the human body, though gnawed internally by a chronic disease,
may exhibit, for a longer or shorter period, all the appearances of
health and vigor. Oligarchs, slaveholders, and capitalists destroyed a
republic founded by intelligent and industrious agriculturists, yeomen,
and freeholders.
More than one point of analogy exists between the Roman and American
republics. Independent and intelligent small farmers, with artisans,
mechanics, etc., were the founders of American independence. And the
free states have not only preserved but elevated to a higher social and
political significance the original characteristics of her existence;
and the reproaches hurled by the militant pro-slavery oligarchs against
the free farmers and operatives in the fields and workshops of the
north are sacrilegious to liberty and light. Even so the prince of
darkness curses the god of day!
XIII.
ROMANS--POLITICAL SLAVES.
It was an easy matter to engraft despotism upon a society morally,
politically, and economically ruined by the slaveholding oligarchy.
The Cæsars and the emperors inaugurated and developed it, and at
that time nothing else would have suited Rome. Domestic slavery had
destroyed the republican spirit, and the vitality of ancient republican
institutions. The political condition of the empire--that world-ruling
despotism--under the Cæsars and the emperors[14] was the legitimate
result of chattelhood and of oligarchism. Political and domestic
slavery now went hand in hand, both of them supreme over man and
society.
During the reign of the six Cæsars, rural as well as urban slavery
rapidly began to be reduced to method and to legal forms. Augustus
tried to modify somewhat the cruel treatment of the slaves: he
abolished, for instance, the custom of branding their cheeks with a
hot iron, and ordered instead that they should wear metallic collars.
It came into vogue, also, that a woman who had given birth to three
children was free from hard labor the rest of her life; if she had four
she became wholly free.
The slave traffic was very active over all the imperial Roman world
during the whole period of its existence, and was the most lucrative
branch of commerce. It was also strictly adjusted by police regulations.
Augustus likewise made efforts to morally re-invigorate, so to speak,
the decaying oligarchy; but this attempt was even more unsuccessful
than the former. Every person who is even slightly acquainted with
history must be familiar with the absolute degradation of the
oligarchs, capitalists, and rich slaveholders of imperial Rome.
Tiberius despised them and tyrannized over them with a cold-blooded and
contemptuous cruelty only equalled by the manner in which they crushed
their chattels, or the populace of Rome, whom they had impoverished and
degraded. For then, as for centuries before, the oligarchy looked with
as much contempt on the working-classes as the modern slave-drivers do
on "greasy mechanics." But, in the eye of history and humanity, it is
the "greasy mechanics" and "small-fisted farmers" of the free states
who are the glorious lights which redeem the dark side of American
polity as embodied in the slave-driving chivalry.
In fact, the Roman oligarchs were far more degraded than their
chattels. "_Turpis adulatio Senatus_," said Tacitus; and the names of
Druses, Germanicus, Britannicus, Chærea, Trasea, and a few others, can
never redeem the infamy of a whole community.
The numbers of slaves owned by the wealthy, was, as it were,
proportionate to their degradation. Athenæus says that some rich men
had from ten to twenty thousand slaves, and the statement is confirmed
by Seneca. Cæcilius Isidorus, a rich _particulier_ living under
Augustus, lost a great part of his fortune in the civil wars, and yet
left by will 4116 chattels; Elius Proculus, on his estates in Liguria,
had two thousand slaves able to bear arms; Scaurus, a wealthy senator,
owned 4116 chattels, exclusive of shepherds and tillers; Eumolpus, a
simple citizen--not one of the oligarchs or F.F.V.'s of that time, but
rather a _parvenu_--had so large a number of slaves on his estates in
Numidia, that with an army of them he could have stormed and taken the
city of Carthage, which, although reduced from its former grandeur, was
still among the first cities of Africa. Under Nero, half of Africa was
owned by six slaveholders: Nero slaughtered them and inherited their
estates.
Such was the rapidly developed internal condition of the Roman state
when Pliny dolefully exclaimed: "_Latifundi perdidere Italiam moxque
provincias_:" "Large extended estates (cultivated by slaves), ruined
Italy, and soon after the provinces," as even Spain and Gaul were
quickly devoured by the large slaveholders.
The condition and treatment of the slaves inspired pity even in a
Claudius. He prohibited the custom of starving to death the old and
disabled slaves, who had generally been exposed on an island in the
Tiber, upon which was a temple of Esculapius. By the Claudian edict,
such exposition was equivalent to emancipation. Even Nero had some pity
for the slaves, though he had none for their masters. The emperors
were terrified at the increased ravages of slavery, which spread in
continually wider and wider circles over Gaul and Spain as well as in
Africa and in the east. Edicts were issued by several emperors--as
Adrian and the Antonines--designed to stay the spread of slavery and
alleviate the condition of the chattels. These edicts encouraged
manumissions either absolute and immediate, or gradual, and conferred
the same municipal rights as were enjoyed by the enfranchised. The
_latifundia_, or large estates, nevertheless, still increased their
size; and the condition and relations of landed property required new
laws and new legal definitions, which were gradually introduced into
the _jus civile_. First in order were the common usages of the people,
and then the legalization of their customs. Thus it is not till toward
the end of the second Christian century that there are found in the
Roman law definitions of slaves as persons attached perpetually to the
soil. But their classification was so complicated, that it becomes
difficult, if not impossible, to define distinctly the various grades,
or to exhibit clearly the features in which one differs from another.
The necessities of the imperial treasury were probably the cause of
such divisions as those of _adscriptitii_, _censiti_, _perpetui_,
_conditionales_, _coloni_, _inquilini_--both of old republican
origin--_simplices_, _originarii_, _homologi_, _tributari_, _addicti
glebæ_, _agricolæ_, _aratores_, _rustici actores_, _etc._ In course of
time, also, all these names were merged under the general denomination
of serfs, which again assumed various degrees of oppression and
servitude.
Augustus is proverbially said to have pacified the world; and indeed,
with few exceptions, the Roman empire enjoyed internal peace during
the first two Christian centuries. But under Claudius, during the war
with Tiridates of Pontus, the entire population of some of the captured
cities was sold into slavery, as were also one hundred thousand Jews,
when Jerusalem fell under Vespasian. There were now, however, no more
rich cities or cultivated countries to be conquered, no peoples to be
enslaved by millions, as there had been under the republic; wars now
were waged only on the outskirts of the empire, and generally with
barbarous nations. Prisoners of war, captives and subdued barbarians,
were no longer sold into slavery, but the emperors colonized the
waste lands with them. They thus attempted to repeople Italy and the
provinces, and to revive the ancient mode of rural economy, as also
to increase the revenue of the imperial treasury. Such colonizations
were frequent after the time of Marcus Aurelius. But all this could not
stop the growth of the social cancer. Chattelhood, encouraged, as will
be shown by political slavery and taxations, was wildly rampant, and
overleaped every barrier to its progress which the emperors attempted
to raise.
During the whole epoch of the growth and maturity of domestic slavery
in Rome, no one of her moralists, philosophers, poets, priests or
satirists ever preached or sang of the idyllic beauties of slavery;
none of her statesmen considered it as the foundation, corner-stone
or cement of society or of the empire, or even as "ennobling"[15] to
the slaveholder, and orations and discourses in exaltation of human
bondage were unknown. Pliny, Seneca and Plutarch only spoke of it in
extenuating language.
The Roman jurisconsult of the better times of the empire crystallized
into legal form the sense of justice and equity inherent in the Roman,
nay, in human society. He expounded the law for the _de facto_ existing
society, and therefore generally in favor of the owner, slaveholder,
etc., and against the thing, the _res_, which was the chattel. The
object of the Roman law was only to regulate existing relations, and
such was domestic slavery. But with all its unbending severity, the
Roman law, through the conscientious voice of the Roman jurisconsult,
declared slavery a condition, "_qua quis dominio alieno contra naturam
subiicitur_," and rarely missed an occasion to favor the slave, to
alleviate his status, and to facilitate his emancipation. No clause
or decision of the law re-enslaved, in any case, the chattel once
emancipated. Even if a will provided for the emancipation of a slave in
terms like these: "I will and command that my slave A becomes free; but
upon condition that he live with my son, and if he refuses or neglects
to do this he returns to slavery," the law decided, that "A, being
emancipated by the first paragraph of the will, cannot be re-enslaved
by the subsequent conditional paragraph; therefore A is free, and he
may or may not fulfil the condition."
The child also followed the condition of the mother when born from
illicit intercourse, _nisi lex specialis alius inducit_. If the father
was a slave and the mother a free woman, the child was free, _quia non
debet calamitas matris ei noceri qui in utero est_--"the misfortune
of the mother shall not bear on the product of the womb." A change of
the status of the mother from liberty to slavery during pregnancy was
always construed favorably to the child, who thus might be born free
if the mother was free for even the shortest time during the period of
pregnancy.
Under the emperors, freemen began to sell themselves into slavery--a
thing unknown during the existence of the republic. But a freeman who
sold himself into slavery, if afterward manumitted, could not become
again a full citizen. And whoever was once emancipated could on no
pretence be re-enslaved, under penalty of death.
Modern pro-slavery legislators and jurisconsults boldly overthrow all
these Roman ideas of justice and equity.
The law established various _just_ causes for emancipation. Among these
were, natural relationships, as children, brothers, sisters, mothers,
cousins, grandparents, etc., when slaves; and whoever _ad impudicitiam
turpemque violationem servos compellat_, lost his _potestas_, or power,
over the slave.
These facilities for emancipation operated principally in favor of
the urban chattels, or those of the household proper, and also rural
overseers, but were rarely applied to the rural slaves; consequently,
during the most brilliant period of the existence of the empire, the
cities were filled with enfranchised slaves of various kinds and
various nations. The country, too, was altogether abandoned by the
slaveholders, who lived and rioted in the imperial city. Most of these
emancipated slaves, as also, indeed, many of the free-born citizens,
finally lost their liberty by the operation of those causes which,
notwithstanding emancipations and state colonizations, continually
increased the _latifundia_ or large estates, and transformed into
bondmen the freeholders as well as those who rented land from the state
or from private individuals.
The civil administration of the Roman empire, heathen and Christian,
down to its last agonies in Constantinople, may be very briefly
summed up: it was _fiscality_. Every administrative measure aimed
at replenishing the imperial exchequer. The imperial treasury was
bottomless, and its owners cold, rapacious, cruel and insatiable.
All the colonizations of free laborers had for their single aim but
to increase the income of the state; and tributes and taxations of
every conceivable kind were imposed, first upon the provinces, and in
course of time, on Italy itself. These, of course, were principally
supplied by the laboring classes in the cities and on the lands.
The rapacity of the state was heightened also by the individual
greed of the magistrates, from the prefects down to the meanest
military or political official or tax-gatherer; indeed, locusts more
destructive than the Roman officials never devoured the fruits of toil
or the accumulations of industry. These fiscal measures and lawless
extortions, fostered chattelhood almost as much as wars and conquests
had formerly done.
The _inquilini_ and _coloni_ of the last century of the republic
were free, rent-paying farmers (who paid the rent in money), or free
laborers. When, after the time of Sylla, the republican oligarchs
partially enslaved these farmers, the rent had to be paid in kind,
in sign of dependence, if not of absolute bondage. The colonists
settled by the emperors also had to pay tribute and submit to various
other servitudes; and thus the once free colonists were, by a slow
but uninterrupted process, transformed into bondmen, serfs and
slaves. As in the last days of the republic, so under Augustus and
his successors, the free yeoman or colonist, in order to avoid being
violently expelled from his homestead and shut up in the _ergastulum_
with the chattels, frequently sold himself and his little property,
on certain conditions, to the rich and powerful slaveholder, and thus
secured patronage and protection. In proportion as exaction, oppression
and lawlessness increased under the emperors, so also did the forced
or voluntary submission of colonists to influential slaveholders. As
the imperial tax-gatherer was wont to sell the children of the poor
for tax or tribute, the peasant often preferred to become a slave in
order to obtain protection from his master, who became responsible to
the treasury for the taxes of the bondman and his lands. Frequently
whole villages of colonists thus gave up their rights for the sake of
patronage and protection.
The exchequer had a roll inscribed with the names of all the
colonists on the domains belonging to the state, the cities, or to
private individuals. From this census for taxation was derived the
legal designation, and afterward the condition of _adscriptus_. And
the imperial government, whose sole object was to gather taxes and
have responsible tax-payers, had little if any objection to this
transformation of colonists and their homesteads into the bondmen of
the rich. The change was not made at once by any special law,[16] but
was brought about by the slow progress of social decomposition. When
the serfdom of the colonists first became an object of jurisprudence--a
little before and under Theodosius--it had already existed as a fact;
and _ex facto nascitur jus_ was an old axiom of the civil law. By and
by slaves proper--that is, movable chattels, not persons attached
to the soil--both in the city and on the lands, were taxed on the
plantation roll; and Constantine prohibited the sale of chattels from
one province to another, most probably with the view of facilitating
their control by the tax-gatherer.
Rapacious taxation, the first outgrowth of imperial despotism which was
originated by the slaveholders, forced into the grip of the oligarch
all that remained of free soil and independent labor, or what was
intended to be such by the colonizing emperors. The same cause also
disorganized the ancient municipal regime in the cities of Italy and
throughout the Roman world.
The _curia_ of Italian cities, and afterward of all other cities
privileged with Italian law, constituted the body politic of each
municipality. The most influential and wealthy citizens, therefore,
were _curiales_; next to them were _municipes_, common burghers,
small traders, etc.; then clients, free plebeian proletarians,
the enfranchised, etc. The _decurions_ or city senate, and other
dignitaries called patrons, protectors, etc., administered the affairs
of the city; these and all other offices were light and honorable while
the cities were flourishing, as in the first two centuries of the
empire; but even then, various legal immunities released _curiales_
from performing public municipal service. During the peace enjoyed by
the Roman world in the early times of the empire, the taxes, tolls,
excises, _venalicium_, etc., imposed on Italianized cities, were
moderate. These cities were then rich; they accumulated and loaned
capital; they owned slaves and extensive domains. By means of their
slaves they erected those public edifices and monuments whose splendor
rivalled those of Rome and whose ruins are still in many places
preserved; and the administration of the revenues and the honors of the
city were in the control of rich oligarchs and slaveholders. The same
accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few, existed in the cities
as in the country, as the same oligarchs generally lived in the city,
and indeed necessarily belonged to some _municipium_; for in the Roman
world the whole political and civic status was exclusively embodied in
and bestowed on the city; and the country, as such, had no political or
civil significance.