Part 6 (1/2)

The unfortunate human being was exhibited exactly as horses are now, and could be stripped, handled, trotted about, and treated with every kind of indignity, and of course the same sort of trickery went on in these human sales as is familiar to all horse-dealers of the present day.[322] The buyer, if he wanted a valuable article, a Greek, for example, who could act as secretary or librarian, like Cicero's beloved Tiro, or even a household slave with a special character for skill in cooking or other specialised work of a luxurious family, would have to give a high price; even as long ago as the time of the elder Cato a very large sum might be given for a single choice slave, and Cato as censor in 184 attempted to check such high prices by increasing the duties payable on the sales.[323] Towards the close of the Republican period we have little explicit evidence of prices; Cicero constantly mentions his slaves, but not their values. Doubtless for fancy articles huge prices might be demanded; Pliny tells us that Antony when triumvir bought two boys as twins for more than 800 apiece, who were no doubt intended for handsome pages, perhaps to please Cleopatra.[324] But there can be no doubt that ordinary slaves capable of performing only menial offices in town or country were to be had at this time quite cheap, and the number in the city alone must have been very great.

It is unfortunately quite impossible to make even a probable estimate of the total number in Rome; the data are not forthcoming. Beloch[325]

remarks aptly that though some families owned hundreds of slaves, the number of such families was not large, quoting the words of Philippus, tribune in 104 B.C., to the effect that there were not more than two thousand persons of any substance in the State.[326] The great majority of citizens living in Rome had, he thinks, no slaves. He is forced to take as a basis of calculation the proportion of bond to free in the only city of the Empire about which we have certain information on this point; at Pergamum there was one slave to two free persons.[327] a.s.suming the whole free population to have been about half a million in the time of Augustus, or rather more, including peregrini, he thus arrives at a slave population of something like 280,000; this may not be far off the mark, but it must be remembered that it is little more than a guess.

What has been said above will have given the reader some idea of the conditions of life which created a great demand for labour in the last two centuries B.C., and of the circ.u.mstances which produced an abundant supply of unfree labour to satisfy that demand. I propose now to treat the whole question of Roman slavery from three points of view,--the economic, the legal, and the ethical. In other words, we have to ask: (1) how the abundance of slave labour affected the social economy of the free population; (2) what was the position of the slave in the eye of the law, as regards treatment and chance of manumission; (3) what were the ethical results of this great slave system, both on the slaves themselves and on their masters.

1. From an economical point of view the most interesting question is whether slave labour seriously interfered with the development of free industry; and unfortunately this question is an extremely difficult one to answer. We can all guess easily that the opportunities of free labour must have been limited by the presence of enormous numbers of slaves; but to get at the facts is another matter. In regard to rural slavery we have some evidence to go upon, as we shall see directly, and this has of late been collected and utilised; but as regards labour in the city no such research has as yet been made,[328] and the material is at once less fruitful and more difficult to handle. A few words on this last point must suffice here.

We have seen in Chapter II. that there was plenty of employment at Rome for freemen. Friedlander, than whom no higher authority can be quoted for the social life of the city, goes so far as to a.s.sert that even under the early Empire a freeman could always obtain work if he wished for it;[329] and even if we take this as a somewhat exaggerated statement, it may serve to keep us from rus.h.i.+ng to the other extreme and picturing a population of idle free paupers. In fact we are bound on general evidence to a.s.sume for our own period that he is in the main right; the poor freeman of Rome had to live somehow, and the cheap corn which he enjoyed was not given him gratis until a few years before the Republic came to an end.[330] How did he get the money to pay even the sum of six a.s.ses and a third for a modius of corn, or to pay for shelter and clothing, which were a.s.suredly not to be had for nothing? We know again, that the gilds of trades (see above, p. 45) continued to exist in the last century of the Republic,[331] though the majority had to be suppressed owing to their misuse as political clubs. Supposing that the members of these collegia were small employers of labour, it is reasonable to a.s.sume that the labour they employed was at least largely free; for the capital needed to invest, at some risk, in a sufficient number of slaves, who would have to be housed and fed, and whose lives would be uncertain in a crowded and unhealthy city, could not, we must suppose, be easily found by such men. Here and there, no doubt, we find traces of slave labour in factories, e.g. as far back as the time of Plautus, if we can take him as writing of Rome rather than translating from the Greek:

An te ibi vis inter istas versarier Prosedas, pistorum amicas, reginas alicarias, Miseras schoeno delibutas servilicolas sordidas?[332]

_Poenulus_, 265 foll.

But on the whole, we may with all due caution, in default of complete investigation of the question, a.s.sume that the Roman slaves were confined for the most part to the great and rich families, and were not used by them to any great extent in productive industry, but in supplying the luxurious needs of the household[333]. In all probability research will show that free labour was far more available than we are apt to think. We hear of no outbreak of feeling against slave labour, which might suggest a rivalry between the two.

Slave labour, we may think, had filled a gap, created by abnormal circ.u.mstances, and did not oust free labour entirely; but it tended constantly to cramp it, and doubtless started notions of work in general which helped to degrade it[334]. Those immense _familiae urbanae_, of which the historian of slavery has given a detailed account in his second volume[335], belong rather to the early Empire than to the last years of the Republic--the evidence for them is drawn chiefly from Seneca, Juvenal, Tacitus, Martial, etc.; but such evidence as we have for the age of Cicero seems to suggest that the vast palaces of the capitalists, which Sall.u.s.t describes as being almost like cities[336], were already beginning to be served by a familia urbana which rendered them almost independent of any aid from without by labour or purchase. Not only the ordinary domestic helpers of all kinds, but copyists, librarians, paedagogi as tutors for the children, and even doctors might all be found in such households in a servile condition, without reckoning the great numbers who seem to have been always available as escorts when the great man was travelling in Italy or in the provinces. Valerius Maximus tells us[337] that Cato the censor as proconsul of Spain took only three slaves with him, and that his descendant Cato of Utica during the Civil Wars had twelve; as both these men were extremely frugal, we can form an idea from this pa.s.sage both of the increasing supply of slaves and of the far larger escorts which accompanied the ordinary wealthy traveller.

As regards the familia rustica, the working population of the farm, the evidence is much more definite. The old Roman farm, in which the paterfamilias lived with his wife, children, and slaves, was, no doubt, like the old English holding in a manor, for the most part self-sufficing, doing little in the way of sale or purchase, and worked by all the members of the familia, bond and free. In the middle of the second century B.C., when Cato wrote his treatise on husbandry, we find that a change has taken place; the master can only pay the farm an occasional visit, to see that it is being properly managed by the slave steward[338] (vilicus), and the business is being run upon capitalistic lines, i.e. with a view to realising the utmost possible profit from it by the sale of its products. Thus Cato is most particular in urging that a farm should be so placed as to have easy communication with market towns, where the wine and oil could be sold, which were the chief products, and where various necessaries could be bought cheap, such as pottery and metal-work of all kinds.[339] Thus the farm does not entirely depend on the labour of its own familia; nevertheless it rests still upon an economic basis of slave labour.

For an olivetum of 240 jugera Cato puts the necessary hands as thirteen in number, all non-free; for a vineyard of 100 jugera at sixteen; and these figures are no doubt low, if we remember his character for parsimony and profit-making.[340] Free labour was to be had, and was occasionally needed; at the very outset of his work Cato (ch. 4) insists that the owner should be a good and friendly neighbour, in order that he may easily obtain, not only voluntary help, but hired labourers (operarii). These were needed especially at harvest time, when extra hands were wanted, as in our hop-gardens, for the gathering of olives and for the vintage. Sometimes the work was let out to a contractor, and he gives explicit directions (in chs. 144 and 145) for the choice of these and the contracts to be made with them; whether in this case the contractor (redemptor) used entirely free or slave labour does not appear distinctly, but it seems clear that a proportion at least was free.[341] What the free labourers did at other times of the year, whether or no they were small cultivators themselves, Cato does not tell us.

For the age with which we are more specially concerned, we have the evidence of Varro's three books on husbandry, written in his old age, after the fall of the Republic. Here we find the economic condition of the farm little changed since the time of Cato. The permanent labour is non-free, but in spite of the vast increase in the servile labour available in Italy, there is still a considerable employment of freemen at certain times, on all farms where the olive and vine were the chief objects of culture. In the 17th chapter of his first book, in which he gives interesting advice for the purchase of suitable slaves, he begins by telling us that all land is cultivated either by slaves or freemen, or both together, and the free are of three kinds,--either small holders (pauperculi) with their children; or labourers who live by wage (conducticii), and are especially needed in hay harvest or vintage; or debtors who give their labour as payment for what they owe (obaerati).[342] Varro too, like Cato, recognises the necessity of purchasing many things which cannot well be manufactured on a farm of moderate size, and thus the landowner may in this way also have been indirectly an employer of free labour; but so far as possible the farm should supply itself with the materials for its own working,[343] for this gives employment to the slaves throughout the year,--and they should never be allowed to be idle.[344]

Thus it is abundantly clear that even in the time of Cicero there was a certain demand for free labour in the ordinary Italian oliveyard and vineyard, and that the necessary supply was forthcoming, though the permanent industrial basis was non-free, and the tendency was to use slave-labour more exclusively. The rule that the slave cannot be allowed to be unemployed was a most important factor in the economical development, and drove the landowner, who never seems to have had any doubt about the comparative cheapness of slave-labour,[345] gradually to make his farm more and more independent of all aid from outside. In the work of Columella, written towards the end of the first century A.D., it is plain that the work of the farm is carried on more exclusively by slave-labour than was the case in the last two centuries B.C.[346]

To this not unpleasant picture of the conditions of Italian agricultural slavery a few words must be added about the great pastoral farms of Southern Italy. If a man invested his capital in a comparatively small estate of olives and vineyards, such as that which Cato treats of, and which seems to have been his own; or even in a latifundium of the kind which Varro more vaguely pictures, containing also parks and game and a moderate amount of pasture, he would need slaves mainly of a certain degree of skill. But on the largest areas of pasture, chiefly in the hill districts of Southern Italy, where there was little cultivation except what was necessary for the consumption of the slaves themselves, these were the roughest and wildest type of bondsmen. The work was that of the American ranche, the life harsh, and the workmen dangerous. It was in these districts and from these men that Spartacus drew the material with which he made his last stand against Roman armies in 72-71 B.C.; and it was in this direction that Caelius and Milo turned in 48 B.C. in quest of revolutionary and warlike bands. These roughs could even be used as galley-slaves; more than once in the Commentaries on the Civil War Caesar tells us that his opponents drafted them into the vessels which were sent to relieve the siege of Ma.s.silia[347]. It was here too, in the neighbourhood of Thurii, that a b.l.o.o.d.y fight took place between the slaves of two adjoining estates, strong men of courage, as Cicero describes them, of which we learn from the fragments of his lost speech _pro Tullio_. They were of course armed, and as we may guess from Varro's remarks on the kind of slaves suitable for shepherding,[348] this was usually the practice, in order to defend the flocks from wild beasts and robbers, particularly when they were driven up to summer pasture (as they still are) in the saltus of the Apennines. The needs of these shepherds would be small, and the latifundia of this kind were probably almost self-sufficing, no free labour being required. After their day's work the slaves were fed and locked up for the night, and kept in fetters if necessary;[349] they were in fact simply living tools, to use the expression of Aristotle, and the economy of such estates was as simple as that of a workshop.

The exclusion of free labour is here complete: on the agricultural estates it was approaching a completion which it fortunately never reached. Had it reached that completion, the economic influence of slavery would have been altogether bad; as it was, the introduction of slave-labour on a large scale did valuable service to Italian agriculture in the last century B.C. by contributing the material for its revival at a time when the necessary free labour could not have been found. However lamentable its results may have been in other ways, especially on the great pastures, the economic history of Italy, when it comes to be written, will have to give it credit for an appreciable amount of benefit.

2. The legal and political aspect of slavery. A slave was in the eye of the law not a _persona_, but a _res_, i.e. he had no rights as a human being, could not marry or hold property, but was himself simply a piece of property which could be conveyed (res mancipi)[350]. During the Republican period the law left him absolutely at the disposal of his master, who had the power of life and death (jus vitae necisque) over him, and could punish him with chastis.e.m.e.nt and bonds, and use him for any purpose he pleased, without reference to any higher authority than his own. This was the legal position of all slaves; but it naturally often happened that those who were men of knowledge or skill, as secretaries, for example, librarians, doctors, or even as body-servants, were in intimate and happy relations with their owners[351], and in the household of a humane man no well-conducted slave need fear bodily degradation. Cicero and his friend Atticus both had slaves whom they valued, not only for their useful service, but as friends. Tiro, who edited Cicero's letters after his death, and to whom we therefore owe an eternal debt of grat.i.tude, was the object of the tenderest affection on the part of his owner, and the letters addressed to him by the latter when he was taken ill at Patrae in 50 B.C. are among the most touching writings that have come down to us from antiquity. ”I miss you,” he writes in one of them[352], ”yes, but I also love you. Love prompts the wish to see you in good health: the other motive would make me wish to see you as soon as possible,--and the former one is the best.” Atticus, too, had his Tiro, Alexis, ”imago Tironis,” as Cicero calls him in a letter to his friend,[353]

and many others who were engaged in the work of copying and transcribing books, which was one of Atticus' many pursuits. All such slaves would sooner or later be manumitted, i.e. trans.m.u.ted from a _res_ to a _persona_; and in the ease with which this process of trans.m.u.tation could be effected we have the one redeeming point of the whole system of bondage. According to the oldest and most efficient form (vindicta), a legal ceremony had to be gone through in the presence of a praetor; but the praetor could easily be found, and there was no other difficulty. This was the form usually adopted by an owner wis.h.i.+ng to free a slave in his own lifetime; but great numbers were constantly manumitted more irregularly, or by the will of the master after his death.[354]

Thus the leading facts in the legal position of the Roman slave were two: (1) he was absolutely at the disposal of his owner, the law never interfering to protect him; (2) he had a fair prospect of manumission if valuable and well-behaved, and if manumitted he of course became a Roman citizen (libertus or libertinus) with full civil rights,[355]

remaining, however, according to ancient custom, in a certain position of moral subordination to his late master, owing him respect, and aid if necessary. Let us apply these two leading facts to the conditions of Roman life as we have already sketched them. We shall find that they have political results of no small importance.

First, we must try to realise that the city of Rome contained at least 200,000 human beings over whom the State had no direct control whatever. All such crimes, serious or petty, as are now tried and disposed of in our criminal courts, were then, if committed by a slave, punishable only by the master; and in the majority of cases, if the familia were a large one, they probably never reached his ears.

The jurisdiction to which the slave was responsible was a private one, like that of the great feudal lord of the Middle Ages, who had his own prison and his own gallows. The political result was much the same in each case. Just as the feudal lord, with his private jurisdiction and his hosts of retainers, became a peril to good government and national unity until he was brought to order by a strong king like our Henry II. or Henry VII., so the owner of a large familia of many hundreds of slaves may almost be said to have been outside of the State; undoubtedly he became a serious peril to the good order of the capital. The part played by the slaves in the political disturbances of Cicero's time was no mean one. One or two instances will show this.

Saturninus, in the year 100, when attacked by Marius under orders from the senate, had hoisted a pilleus, or cap of liberty which the emanc.i.p.ated slave wore, as a signal to the slaves of the city that they might expect their liberty if they supported him;[356] and Marius a few years later took the same step when himself attacked by Sulla.

Catiline, in 63, Sall.u.s.t a.s.sures us, believed it possible to raise the slaves of the city in aid of his revolutionary plans, and they flocked to him in great numbers; but he afterwards abandoned his intention, thinking that to mix up the cause of citizens with that of slaves would not be judicious.[357] It is here too that the gladiator slaves first meet us as a political arm; Cicero had the next spring to defend P. Sulla on the charge, among others, of having bought gladiators during the conspiracy with seditious views, and the senate had to direct that the bands of these dangerous men should be dispersed to Capua and other munic.i.p.al towns at a distance. Later on we frequently hear of their being used as private soldiery, and the government in the last years of the Republic ceased to be able to control them.[358]

Again, in defending Sestius, Cicero a.s.serts that Clodius in his tribunate had organised a levy of slaves under the name of collegia, for purposes of violence, slaughter, and rapine; and even if this is an exaggeration, it shows that such proceedings were not deemed impossible.[359] And apart from the actual use of slaves for revolutionary objects, or as private body-guards, it is clear from Cicero's correspondence that as an important part of a great man's retinue they might indirectly have influence in elections and on other political occasions. Quintus Cicero, in his little treatise on electioneering,[360] urges his brother to make himself agreeable to his tribesmen, neighbours, clients, freedmen, and even slaves, ”for nearly all the talk which affects one's public reputation emanates from domestic sources.” And Marcus himself, in the last letter he wrote before he fled into exile in 58, declares that all his friends are promising him not only their own aid, but that of their clients, freedmen, and slaves,--promises which doubtless might have been kept had he stayed to take advantage of them.[361]

The mention of the freedmen in this letter may serve to remind us of the political results of manumission, the second fact in the legal aspect of Roman slavery. The most important of these is the rapid importation of foreign blood into the Roman citizen body, which long before the time of Cicero largely consisted of enfranchised slaves or their descendants; it was to this that Scipio Aemilia.n.u.s alluded in his famous words to the contio he was addressing after his return from Numantia, ”Silence, ye to whom Italy is but a stepmother” (Val.

Max. 6. 2. 3). Had manumission been held in check or in some way superintended by the State, there would have been more good than harm in it. Many men of note, who had an influence on Roman culture, were libertini, such as Livius Andronicus and Caecilius the poets; Terence, Publilius Syrus, whose acquaintance we made in the last chapter; Tiro and Alexis, and rather later Verrius Flaccus, one of the most learned men who ever wrote in Latin. But the great increase in the number of slaves, and the absence of any real difficulty in effecting their manumission, led to the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of crowds of rascals as compared with the few valuable men. The most striking example is the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of 10,000 by Sulla, who according to custom took his name Cornelius, and, though destined to be a kind of military guarantee for the permanence of the Sullan inst.i.tutions, only became a source of serious peril to the State at the time of Catiline's conspiracy. Caesar, who was probably more alive to this kind of social danger than his contemporaries, sent out a great number of libertini,--the majority, says Strabo, of his colonists,--to his new foundation at Corinth[362]. But Dionysius of Halicarna.s.sus, writing in the time of Augustus, when he stayed some time in Rome, draws a terrible picture of the evil effects of indiscriminate manumission, unchecked by the law[363].

”Many,” he says, ”are indignant when they see unworthy men manumitted, and condemn a usage which gives such men the citizens.h.i.+p of a sovereign state whose destiny is to govern the world. As for me, I doubt if the practice should be stopped altogether, lest greater evil should be the result; I would rather that it should be checked as far as possible, so that the state may no longer be invaded by men of such villainous character. The censors, or at least the consuls, should examine all whom it is proposed to manumit, inquiring into their origin and the reasons and mode of their enfranchis.e.m.e.nt, as in their examination of the equites. Those whom they find worthy of citizens.h.i.+p should have their names inscribed on tables, distributed among the tribes, with leave to reside in the city. As to the crowd of villains and criminals, they should be sent far away, under pretext of founding some colony.”

These judicious remarks of a foreigner only expressed what was probably a common feeling among the best men of that time. Augustus made some attempt to limit the enfranchising power of the owner; but the Leges Aelia Sentia and Furia Caninia do not lie within the compa.s.s of this book. No great success could attend these efforts; the abnormal circ.u.mstances which had brought to Rome the great familiae of slaves reacted inevitably upon the citizen body itself through the process of manumission. Rome had to pay heavily in this, as in so many other ways, for her advancement to the sovereignty of the civilised world. I may be allowed to translate the eloquent words in which the French historian of slavery, in whose great work the history of ancient slavery is treated as only a scholar-statesman can treat it, sums up this aspect of the subject: