and investigate all the consequences and accompaniments of slavery,
not only some of them. It is further necessary in dealing with such
a question to discount the antipathy to pain and discomfort which
is so marked a feature of modern life. Granted that under certain
circumstances slavery resulted in a vast amount of hideous suffering,
still slavery was not the only condition in ancient life, or mediaeval
life, or even modern life, that has resulted in suffering. Wherever a
man finds himself in an irresponsible position towards a number of his
fellow creatures, wherever a society or the rulers of a society live in
terror of any section of that society whether slave or free, there is
always the probability of great cruelty. If all the pain and sorrows
of humanity from the beginning of time until now could be reckoned up
and estimated, and assigned to their various causes, it is questionable
whether slavery would show the blackest record.
Antiquity has left us some notorious instances of cruelty to domestic
slaves, and the stories of a few sensational cases have been preserved;
but even the English domestic servant in Christian London in the
nineteenth century is exposed to cruelty, and if the records of our law
courts survive, posterity on the evidence of a few exceptional cases
will be able to pass a stern sentence upon English men and women of
today. Could we estimate all the pains of all the operatives in modern
England, all the lives that are shortened, or rendered intolerable by
disordered health, could we arrive at a clear understanding of all
that is suffered by puddlers in iron foundries, by stokers on our
great ships, by men and women employed in lead works, in brick works,
in chemical works, in numberless other dangerous industries, we might
well pause before condemning slavery as the one social condition
predominantly productive of human suffering. True, the modern operative
is free, but free to do or to be what? The chain is there; it is only a
different kind of chain.
When St. Paul travelled from Puteoli to Rome, he passed through a
country in which a form of slavery was universal, which is commonly
held to have been the cruellest known to Italy; he passed by the
barracks of the agricultural slaves, and the conditions of travelling
were such as to give him every opportunity of making observations;
he lived certainly for two years after this date, and possibly much
longer, but he nowhere lifts up his voice against slavery in general,
or even this particular form of slavery. Not long before St. Paul made
this journey, it had been necessary to inspect the slave barracks in
the same part of Italy, because free men had acquired the habit of
adopting servitude in order to escape military service.
In fact that picture of antique slavery which represents it as a
scene of whippings and tortures, of rapes and murders, of humiliating
or disgusting services exacted by one man from another, and as the
exclusive condition under which such things occur, is a false picture.
The importance of slavery as a factor in the life of the ancients does
not in fact depend so much upon its moral influence upon individuals as
upon its political consequences, which were many and far-reaching in
their effects.
The condition of slavery in the ancient world did not in itself involve
the same measure of personal degradation with which it is associated in
these days; it was only one of many inequalities recognized by society.
If a slave could not appear in the law courts of Rome, no more could
the resident alien, however rich, however noble in the city from which
he came; if the slave could not hold real property, no more could the
sons of his master; if he could under certain conditions only acquire
personal property, his master’s son was similarly disqualified; the
ceremony by which each acquired freedom was the same; neither could
make a will, nor work entirely for his own profit; both were included
in the family; the domestic disqualifications under which the slave
lived were common to him and the children of the house; the political
disqualifications he shared with the free citizens of any community not
expressly recognized under treaty by the inhabitants of the community
in which he lived. Ancient society never contemplated individual
independence as the fundamental condition of human existence; it
was based on the contrary theory, that individual independence was
the exception, and the privilege of the few; only gradually, and
as the consequence of established law and habitual order rendering
personal security possible for the mean man without the intervention
of a powerful protector, did the modern conception of the rights and
obligations of the individual human being grow up; and in its perfect
development the conception has only very recently been realized.
The slave and his master might be, and commonly were, members of the
same race; if they were of different races, the slave might be a more
highly civilized man than his master, better educated, more capable in
many respects; there were hordes of slaves drawn from less civilized
races, and even from savage races, and the work which fell to their
share tended to be menial or arduous according to their unfitness for
work demanding previous training; but the fact that the slave was by
no means universally of an inferior type of humanity to his owner,
and frequently quite the reverse, put slavery as an institution on a
totally different footing from that which it has held in modern times.
Again, if the slave had to suffer from political disqualifications,
he had corresponding immunities; for one thing, he was exempt from
military service. One very important consequence of this aspect of
slavery was the restriction of the field from which recruits could be
drawn for armies; it would perhaps be an exaggeration to say that the
whole of the industrial population of antiquity was not available for
military purposes, but the statement is somewhere near the truth; and
from this followed a further consequence, which eventually helped to
break up the Empire, viz., that the armies were increasingly recruited
from the populations on the confines of the Empire, and ceased to be
Italian. First Gaul, Spain and Illyria, and Thrace, then the Teutons
from Central Europe, sent free recruits to the Roman armies, till
the time came when the less civilized military element threw off
the traditions of the civil government, and society returned to the
conditions which had prevailed before the Roman Empire inaugurated
the reign of peace. Agricultural slavery in Italy is sometimes said
to have been the cause of the depletion of the Roman armies; ancient
authors complain that the hardy breed of peasants from the central
hills of Italy disappeared, and that, because their place had been
taken by slaves, the recruiting grounds were barren of the right
kind of population. The real state of the case was the reverse: the
Roman wars had exhausted the Roman free population, which was then
replaced by slaves. Between the end of the second Punic War and Cæsar’s
campaigns in Gaul, Rome had been continuously draining Italy of her
free population; it was inevitable that the sons of the small farmer
should be replaced by slaves, and that eventually small farms should be
merged in large holdings, and that the slave barrack should stand alone
where the scattered homesteads of the peasant proprietor had adorned
the landscape.
Two forms of slavery in antiquity have almost monopolized the attention
of most writers on the subject--domestic slavery and agricultural
slavery; both lend themselves to sensational treatment; but along with
these there was industrial slavery in all its forms; where we have free
artisans, antiquity had slaves; and it is questionable whether the
slaves employed by a great manufacturing firm in antiquity were less
well off than the mill hands of a Lancashire town of today; in many
industries they were possibly better off than the class of operatives
who are “sweated” in East London; the slave of antiquity was at least
provided with the necessaries of life by his employer. It is true that
the slave operative could be bought and sold and even mortgaged; he
could be bequeathed by will, but these mischances commonly happened to
him collectively, and no more affected him individually than a change
of owners affects the men working in an English manufactory; indeed,
the slave had an advantage over the free artisan; he was part of the
capital, his value was relatively greater, he occupied the place now
taken by the machinery. A body of well trained, well organized slaves
stood in much the same relation to capital in ancient times as the
plant of a manufactory to the modern capitalist; and a new owner would
no more have thought of disbanding or disabling the slaves employed
in a publishing establishment, or brick works, than a modern owner
would break up the machines in a cotton mill which he had acquired.
When we read of the enormous number of slaves owned by some ancient
millionaire, we must not think of butlers and grooms and footmen,
but of clerks and “hands”; where we now say that such and such a
capitalist employs so many thousand men, the ancients said that he
owned so many thousand slaves.
The slave could earn money for himself, and we can see through the
minute regulations of the codes as to the conditions under which he
could earn and hold money, a recognition of the fact that a man’s
free labour is generally more effective than his forced labour; the
slave’s opportunity of earning put him, as we should now say, upon
piece work; he earned so much for his master, so much for himself;
his master gave him the advantages of organization, of capital, of a
commercial reputation, and for these he paid in a proportion fixed from
time to time by legislation, keeping the remainder of his earnings;
that he paid more highly for these advantages than the present value
of money, and the general security of society would render equitable,
is quite true; but then the whole scale of interest on capital was
far higher than it is now. The slave who traded, as he often did,
with his master’s capital, paid less for its use than the interest
which would have been demanded of a stranger. We must not think of the
“peculium,” the slave’s private earnings, as we may think of the purse
accumulated by a modern domestic servant from gratuities and other
sources of private revenue, but as a real wage earned even by a slave.
The regulations which still bound the enfranchized slave to his master
in the new relation of patron seem at first sight harsh, the liberty in
reference to the former master remaining incomplete, but their aspect
changes when we reflect that they rendered manumission more easy, and
that the slave’s opportunities of earning money both before and after
manumission were made for him by his connexion with his master. The
proprietor of a large business might have every feeling of kindliness
and consideration for a trusted slave, who managed some department
of that business, but he might think twice before rewarding him with
his liberty, if that act involved not only the loss of the slave’s
services, but the creation of a commercial competitor.
Much has been written in condemnation of Roman agricultural slavery,
and justly so, if the agricultural slave was dealt with in the spirit
of the elder Cato; but here again we must be careful to distinguish.
The ergastula, the slave barracks, did not account for all the
agricultural slaves, and in the later days of Augustus the ergastula
were preferred by free men to military service; nor can the system of
the ergastula have been as rigorous in practice as in theory; the two
great servile insurrections which proved so serious a danger to Rome
could not have assumed such alarming dimensions, had not the slaves
who organized them been in possession of means of communication. Nor
must it be forgotten that there were many slaves who would now be
convicts, many who had been sold into slavery from a conquered country,
never having known any other condition of life. The ancients did not
often make the mistake of setting a delicately nurtured man to hard
menial labour, for his value in that capacity was small; similarly the
increasing difficulty of finding slaves after Rome ceased to extend her
conquests increased the value even of navvies, and their condition was
improved by the exigencies of sound economy; even a Cato, when slaves
were dear, took care not to wear them out before their time. Though a
slave was not protected except by public opinion against his master,
who might beat and even kill him, he was protected against all other
men, who could not injure him without incurring damages for wanton
destruction of another man’s property. There were cruel savage men
among the ancients as there are among the moderns, but on the whole the
servile condition does not seem to have been abused. Roman masters and
even mistresses occasionally beat their slaves, but vapulation was a
constant feature of human existence till a very few years ago even in
Europe. Shakespeare’s masters frequently strike their servants; that
worthy though foolish citizen, M. Jourdain, after frequent threats and
much aggravation, slapped his maidservant on the face; the use of the
stick is not an exclusive prerogative of the slave owner.
The more domestic of the Latin authors, such as Cicero and Horace, do
not give us a disagreeable picture of slavery; the relations between
slaves and masters in their day seem to have been in every respect as
pleasant as those between employers and servants in these days; and the
taunt of servile origin so frequent in the Classics amounts to little
more than the taunt of connexion with trade so common in some circles
in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In fact the frequency
of this disparagement tends to prove that it was easy to rise from the
servile condition to positions of great wealth, and even political
influence. The two vulgar rich men in the Satyricon of Petronius,
Trimalchio and Habinna, had both been slaves; and the latter is made
to say that he had become a slave voluntarily, as that was the easiest
method of becoming a Roman citizen; this may be wilful exaggeration on
the part of Petronius for a satirical purpose; but it would have no
point if it did not carry a certain element of truth. Pallas and his
brother Felix, the freedmen of the Emperor Claudius, were, the former
practically Prime Minister, the latter Procurator of Judæa; numerous
similar instances show that a man might have been a slave and yet rise
to high office; the intermediate step seems generally to have been
through the Equestrian Order--in one of its aspects, as we have seen,
the financial department of the Civil Service.
This introduces us to another feature of slavery as practised in
antiquity, viz. its cosmopolitan influence, which was at work in every
class of society, but in the highest class most of all; nothing else
so effectually broke down the barrier between the Greek and the Roman,
between the Eastern and Western half of the Mediterranean, between
North and South.
War in ancient times had many of the aspects of a speculation, and
among the profits of war the sale of captives was reckoned; the
conquered had no rights against the conqueror except under special
terms. When the victim was a civilized State, the free men who were
thus sold into slavery had the opportunity of buying back their own
freedom; they practically paid a ransom; the transaction was a rough
and ready and efficacious method of exacting an indemnity. There
would be a certain proportion who could not pay the indemnity, and
these became slaves, but in their new status they were not wasted
on unprofitable occupations; the philosopher, the physician, the
accountant, the merchant, continued their various occupations in the
service of their master, and if they proved their efficiency rapidly
passed through the stage of slavery to that of freedmen.
Of the twenty famous schoolmasters whom Suetonius honours with short
biographies, three only were certainly not freedmen, Orbilius, the
teacher of Horace, Pomponius Marcellus, and a certain Valerius Probus,
who hailed from Beyrout, and must have been himself free, whatever his
parentage, as he began life with the endeavour to get a centurion’s
commission; fifteen were certainly freedmen, and two probably. Their
nationalities are strangely varied; three were certainly Italians,
three others possibly, two were Syrians, if we so class Probus, three
Gauls, one Spaniard, one Illyrian, six certainly Greek, and one
probably. Of the three Gauls, one, M. Antonius Gnipho, gave lessons
first in the house of Julius Cæsar during the latter’s boyhood; he was
a man of exceptional intellectual brilliance and generous character.
Suetonius does not state that Gnipho actually taught Cæsar, though the
inference suggests itself, and in any case the youthful Cæsar must
have known him, and have received impressions, if not information,
which may have influenced the future conqueror of Gaul. These men
were for the most part highly respected and made large professional
incomes; they taught either in houses of their own, or by special
arrangement in the houses of their patrons; one of them, M. Verrius
Flaccus, taught on these terms the grandchildren of Augustus, who paid
him a handsome annual stipend on condition that he only admitted such
pupils to his classes as were approved of by his employer; he had
previously taught independently; a statue was erected to his memory at
Præneste; this indicates that in spite of his servile origin he was
held in high honour. Horace must have known Verrius Flaccus, even if he
were not actually a relative, and Horace’s allusion to the persuasive
schoolmasters, who coax children to learn the elements by giving them
biscuits, suggests a well known trait of this Verrius Flaccus, who was
the first schoolmaster to offer prizes, “some ancient book handsome
or scarce,” says Suetonius. It is interesting to note that the most
fashionable of these schoolmasters, and the one who made the largest
fortune, was a man who, in the opinion of the Emperors Tiberius and
Claudius, both good judges, was totally unfit to be entrusted with the
charge of youth; while the one of whom it is recorded that in his old
age he sank into extreme poverty is Horace’s old friend, the freeborn
Italian Orbilius. This man also was honoured with a statue.
The proportion of men of servile origin in this one profession was
very large, if we may infer that the short list given by Suetonius
of its leaders indicates conditions which prevailed through the rank
and file; nor was it held in special disrepute. Tacitus mentions a
schoolmaster not included in this list who became a Senator; another,
M. Pomponius Marcellus, was admitted to the inner council of Tiberius,
and anticipated the “supra grammaticam” episode of a much later age; he
reproved the Emperor for a solecism in the wording of a decree, telling
him, “You can give the citizenship to men, Cæsar, but not to a word.”
Men who had been freeborn in their native countries, but had passed
into servitude by fortune of war, found new and wider careers open to
them in the service of their conquerors; they obtained access to the
masters of the world, and were able to direct their thoughts to new
channels, and directly influence their policy; they were further able
to push the fortunes of their relatives and connexions at home; for as
freedmen, and even as slaves, they were not cut off from correspondence
with the countries which they had left.
Their influence, great as it was in breaking down the intellectual
barriers between Rome and her allies and subjects, and in forming
the conception of a world-wide empire, was even greater in the world
of finance. Even the great Cæsar failed to throw open the Roman
Senate to the civilized world, and admission to that body continued
to be jealously guarded, in spite of occasional exceptions, till the
Senate had been practically superseded by the Imperial Household; but
admission to the Equestrian Order was a relatively easy matter; no
sanctity attached to the Order, no historic glamour; and a skilled
financier found his way into its ranks with comparative ease. Roman
bankers such as Cicero’s friend Atticus, needed the assistance of
clever Jews and Greeks, for Roman money was invested privately as well
as publicly in all parts of the Empire; municipal securities, then as
now, were a favourite investment; cities and colonies were in the habit
of borrowing money for local improvements; the knowledge possessed by
men, who had been acquainted with the local and personal conditions was
a valuable commodity; and any Roman, who aspired to play a great part
in the financial world, drew into his service men from all parts of the
Empire; these men were not infrequently rewarded by admission to the
Equestrian Order; some of them were free men, the majority were slaves
to begin with. The process was so common that the term “Libertus” is
used much in the same way as we employ the terms “agent,” or “man of
business.” Not the least important consequence of the system was the
admission of the Jews to a share in the control of administration;
“they of Cæsar’s Household” were not domestic servants, but financial
secretaries of considerable importance.
Slavery has been reproached with being responsible for the horrors
of the arena, and a general indifference to the sanctity of human
life; but this love of spectacular bloodshed, this indifference to
the sufferings and death of human beings and animals, is by no means
an exclusive feature of societies in which slavery is an accepted
institution. Bull fights are being extended at the present day from
Spain to France; bull baiting, bear baiting, badger baiting, prize
fighting, cock fighting, were accepted amusements in England till the
beginning of the present century, some of them are not unknown to our
contemporaries; nor is it easy to distinguish that delight in the
sufferings of condemned criminals, or in the encounters between trained
combatants, which filled the Roman amphitheatres, from the excitement
which drew crowds to look on at the merciless tortures and executions
of the period of the Reformation, and led the fashionable friends
of Madame de Sevignê to watch a woman being burned alive. So far
were gladiatorial combats from being one of the hardships imposed by
slavery, that we have repeated references in the early Imperial period
to the misconduct of Roman knights, and even Senators, who exhibited
themselves in the arena. A skilled gladiator risked his life, as does
a skilled toreador, and he enjoyed the same measure of popular favour;
there were statues of gladiators as well as of schoolmasters.
The tendency of the Empire was to break down the barriers between the
free man and the slave; as political power ceased to be the privilege
of a caste, and became the reward of recognized merit bestowed by
the head of the administration, the importance of free descent was
diminished; the spiteful remarks about freedmen and servile origin,
which we occasionally find in the Latin authors, were suggested by the
improved position of slaves and freedmen; they represent the impotent
malice of a caste, which saw that the sceptre was departing from
between its knees; the distinction was long preserved by literature,
for the boys of the Roman Empire, like the boys of England, were
brought up on the works of the great Athenians, who spoke of the
slave as the slave was spoken of when the free citizens in the most
liberal of Greek States were really an aristocracy of birth entrusted
with the conduct of affairs among a population by which they were far
outnumbered, and which included many men as wealthy as the freeborn
citizens, and no less enlightened.
It was largely through slavery that men of letters, men of science,
architects, engineers, sailors, and even soldiers, found their way from
all parts of the world into the executive services of the Empire. Rome
had become cosmopolitan without being aware of the fact, long before
the genius of Cæsar finally started her on an admittedly cosmopolitan
career.