Section LXXV.. The Same Subject Continued.

The Same Subject Continued.

Even in antiquity, the principal nations of the world could not keep the humanizing influence of civilization from making itself felt on their slaves. And if they did not go so far as to bring about the total abolition of slavery, it is unhesitatingly to be attributed to their religious inferiority.(441) In Athens, during the Peloponnesian war, it was almost impossible to distinguish the slaves from the poorer freemen by their looks or dress. Their treatment was mild in proportion as desertion was easier by reason of the smallness of the state or the frequency of war. It was forbidden to beat them; and only a court of justice could punish them with death.(442) Emancipation, in individual cases, was very frequent, and the names of Agoratos and of the law-reviser Nicomachos show how great a part an emancipated slave might play in the nation.(443) The helot system of the Lacedemonians preserved much longer a great deal more of medieval barbarism; but even here, we may infer from the frequent uprisings and emancipations of the helots, from their services in war etc., that their lot was made less hard than it had been.(444)

Among the Romans, with whom war and conquest were so long considered(445) the principal means of acquisition, slavery was relatively very hard.(446) But, later, there came to be several different grades of slavery (servi ordinarii and mediastini etc.); and in slavery, every gradation denotes some amelioration of condition.(447) The slave obtained the right to possess resources of his own (peculium).(448) In addition to this, emancipation became much more frequent in the later republic; so much so, that Augustus considered it necessary to pass laws taxing frivolous emancipation. (L. Aelia Sentia and Furia.)(449) Where men like Terence, Roscius, Tiro, Phædrus and the father of Horace rose from the condition of slavery, the treatment of slaves cannot have been entirely brutalizing.(450) Under the emperors who oppressed the free citizens, legislation was directed more than ever towards the protection of the slaves.(451) Instead of permanent slavery, a condition of things was introduced and became more general every day, one in which the bondman might contract a legal marriage, have property of his own, and in which he was protected against an arbitrary increase of the quota he had to pay his master, whether in money or produce, although he still remained bound to the land. This class was formed not only of the originarii, or those born into it, but also of a large number of impoverished freemen, barbarian prisoners of war etc.(452)(453)