in most parts of Greece through war, commerce, piracy, and kidnapping. There were regular markets for their sale, the principal of which were held at Athens, Samos, and Chios. Negroes were among the slaves imported, Egypt furnishing the larger number of them; and they were valued for their complexion, and considered as luxuries. Most of the domestic and personal slaves were barbarians, that is, persons who were not of Greek blood, for it was the Grecian custom to allow prisoners of their own race to be ransomed. The number of slaves in Greece was very large, and it is even estimated to have been three or four times as great as that of the free population. Unlike the Romans, the Greeks did not seek to possess many slaves from motives of luxury and ostentation, but of profit. Fifty slaves were a large number for a wealthy Athenian to own, while some Romans owned 20,000 each. There were many slaves em- | ployed in the mines, but they were of the least valuable kind, and their labor was destructive of life. Most of the slave insurrections in Attica were brought about by the mining slaves, and on one occasion they took possession of Sunium, and held it for some time. The Athenian slaves were not, save on extraordinary occasions, employed as soldiers, like those of the Dorian Greeks. They fought at Marathon and at the Arginusæ, but these were remarkable exceptions. Manumitted slaves in Greece could not become citizens, but became metics, and were still under certain obligations to their former masters, neglect of which made them liable to be sold into slavery again.—In Italy slavery prevailed even more extensively than in Greece, though in the early times, it has been contended, and before the foundation of the Roman dominion, the number of slaves was so small, and they were so well treated, as hardly to deserve the name; but as there is evidence that the Etruscans had negro slaves, the slave trade must have been extensively carried on between Italy and Africa at a remote period. The Romans had slaves at the earliest dates of their annals, and far earlier than that time which is recognized as the beginning of their authentic history; but there was a great difference between the institution as it existed in the opening years of the republic and as it became several generations before the establishment of the imperial rule. As the kingdom of Rome is believed to have been far more powerful than was the Roman republic during the first two centuries of its existence, and had commercial relations with the Carthaginians, the principal slave traders of the time, the just conclusion is that slavery was more extensive under the later kings than it was under the prætors and early consuls. In the early times nearly all the domestics of the Romans were slaves, and so were the majority of the operatives in town; but that excess of agricultural slaves which in later times became a marked feature of Ro man industrial life was then unknown. Agriculture was considered an honorable pursuit, and the haughtiest of the patricians often cultivated their fields with their own hands; for they were not all rich, as the story of Cincinnatus shows. The first slaves of the Romans were exclusively prisoners of war made from the peoples in their immediate vicinity, and sold at auction by the state as booty; they strongly resembled their masters, so that their condition was probably not hard; but there was a constant change for the worse as the circle of Roman conquest extended. So long as the wars of the Romans were confined to their own immediate part of the world, the numbers obtained by war could not have been very large; but when their armies began to contend with distant peoples, and to conquer them, they were counted by myriads. They acted on the principle of sparing the humble and subduing the proud, granting both life and liberty to those who surrendered, but taking captive all those who resisted their arms, and consigning such of them to slavery as were not reserved for a fate more immediately severe. The Romans were not sparing in the infliction of this rule of war, and the consequence was, not only that the slave population was rapidly increased, but that it was made to include the most cultivated classes of the most cultivated period of antiquity, as the Roman conquests did not begin until after the highest of ancient races had completed their development. Roman slavery began to assume its great proportions in the same age that saw the beginning of its long quarrel with Carthage, which opened in 264 B. C. When the Romans made their first invasion of Africa, 256 B. C., under Regulus, they landed in a portion of the Carthaginian territory lying between the Hermæan headland and the Lesser Syrtis. This fine country was given up to all the horrors of ancient warfare, "and 20,000 persons, many of them doubtless of the highest condition, and bred up in all the enjoyments of domestic peace and affluence, were carried away as slaves." Most of the captives taken at the conquest of Carthage, who had surrendered, were sold into slavery. This treatment of the Carthaginians, a highbred and refined people, shows the character of Ronan slavery, which was not confined to the barbarous races, or to any peculiar people, but swept all within its nets who could be conquered or purchased. Corinth, one of the richest and most luxurious cities of Greece, was destroyed at the same time with Carthage, and the Corinthians were all sold into slavery; and nothing but the influence of Polybius with the younger Scipio Africanus prevented the entire population of the Peloponnesus from sharing their fate. Two generations earlier, Capua, a city not inferior to Carthage or Corinth in culture, the wealth and magnificence of which were proverbial, had many of its best citizens sold into slavery, their wives and their principal supplies of men from the interior of Africa, the slave trade of that region, like that of Asia and Greece, being much older than history. Many slaves were obtained by commerce from the East, and the cities on the shores of the Euxine were among the chief slave marts of antiquity far down into the days of the empire. Barbarians of whom the Romans otherwise knew nothing found their way to the imperial city as slaves. At the Britain, Gaul, Scandinavia, Germany, Sarmatia, Dacia, Spain, the different countries of Africa, from Egypt to the Troglodytes of Ethiopia, the western Mediterranean islands, Sicily, Greece, Illyria, Thrace, Macedonia, Bithynia, Phrygia, Cappadocia, Syria, Media, and almost every other country to which ambition or avarice could lead the soldier or the trader to penetrate. All races furnished their contributions to the greatest population of slaves that ever existed under one dominion. Unlike the Greeks, the Romans " acknowledged the general equality of the human species, and confessed the dominion of masters to flow entirely from the will of society;" but this did not prevent them from enslaving all men upon whom they could lay their hands, while they were much harsher toward their slaves than the Greeks were. Not a few slaves were procured by kidnapping persons, and it was notorious that even Roman freemen were seized and shut up in the ergastula of the great proprietors, which invasion of personal rights the whole power of the government was unable to prevent. Children were sometimes sold into slavery by their parents, either from love of gain or to save them from starvation; and the number of these sales was large in times of general distress. Men were also sold for debts due to the imperial treasury. Under a variety of circumstances poor people could sell themselves into slavery, but such sales were not irrevocable until the second century of the cmpire, and then the law was somewhat limited, the object being to punish those who had sold themselves with the intention of reclaiming their freedom, the purchaser in such cases having no redress. Romans who had committed crimes that were ignominiously punished became slaves through that fact, and were known as servi pœnæ, or slaves of punishment, and were public property. They remained slaves even if pardoned, unless specially restored to citizenship; and it was not until the reign of Justinian that this form of slavery was abolished. In early times, persons who did not give in their names for enrolment in the public force were sold into slavery, after being beaten; and incorrect returns to the censors led to the same punishment. Poor thieves, who could not make a fourfold return of the amount of their booty, became slaves to the party stolen from; and a father could give up a child who had stolen to the prosecutor. Poor debtors were sold as slaves.-The em children being also thus sold; "and it was especially ordered that they should be sold at Rome, lest some of their countrymen or neighbors should purchase them for the purpose of restoring their liberty." After the close of the second Punic war, the conquests of Rome went on with great rapidity, and the numbers of the slave population increased at the same rate, so that in 70 years even the free agricultural population of Italy had mostly disappeared. The absorption of small free-height of her power Rome had slaves from holds in large estates, along with war, led to the decrease of that population, and the places thus made vacant were filled by the purchase of slaves, the latter being taken in war to a considerable extent, though the slave traders were by no means idle. One of the consequences of the successes of Emilius Paulus in Macedonia was the sale of 150,000 Epirotes, who had been seized because their country was friendly to Perseus. The demand for slaves became very great full two centuries B. C. in Sicily, which had then fallen completely under the Roman dominion, and because corn was much wanted in Italy, then beginning to recover from the effect of the Carthaginian invasion and occupation; and the state of things in Sicily was so favorable to the aggregation of wealth, that it soon extended to Italy, where the land passed into the hands of the few. Great estates succeeding to the many small farms that had been known in the preceding generations, the soil was now cultivated or attended to by great masses of slaves, the property chiefly of the leading members of the optimates, or the high aristocratical party. The wars in Spain, Illyria, Greece, Syria, and Macedonia furnished large numbers of slaves, the common sorts of whom were sold at low rates, and were employed in the country. The invasion of the Roman territories by the Teutones and Cimbri, which ended in the total defeat of those barbarians by Marius, added considerably to the number of slaves, 60,000 of the Cimbri alone being taken captive in the last great battle of the war. The conquests of Sulla, Lucullus, and Pompey in Greece and the East, actually flooded the slave markets, so that in the camp of Lucullus, in Pontus, men were sold for four drachmæ each, or about 62 cents of our money. Cicero sold about 10,000 of the inhabitants of the Cilician town of Pindenissus. The Gallic wars of Julius Cæsar furnished almost half a million slaves; and Augustus sold 36,000 of the Salassi, nearly a fourth of whom were men of military age. In the Jewish war which ended in the destruction of Jerusalem, 90,000 persons were made captives. But Roman slavery would not have been so comprehensive if the Romans had been compelled to rely solely upon war for slaves. Commerce has been a chief means of feeding slavery from the beginning of the world. Before the Romans had obtained dominion over Italy, they were slave purchasers from the Carthaginians, who drew ployments of Roman slaves, both public and private, were very various, and were minutely subdivided. Besides filling all the more menial offices, many of them occupied the positions of librarians, readers, reciters, story tellers, journal keepers, amanuenses, physicians and surgeons, architects, diviners, grammarians, penmen, musicians and singers, players, builders, engravers, antiquaries, illuminators, painters, silversmiths, gladiators, charioteers of the circus, &c. Before a slave could become a soldier he was emancipated, and into the Roman armies of the early republic not even freedmen were allowed to enter; but the demand for soldiers did away with this delicacy, and slaves were regularly enlisted in the second Punic war, and did good service to the state. Many of the Roman slaves were on the most intimate terms with their masters, and must have been well treated, or the state of society would have been intolerable; and we read of not a few instances in which the lives of masters were saved by their slaves, in the times of the proscriptions and massacres of Marius and Sulla, and of the triumvirs, and on other occasions. But the masses of the slaves were treated harshly, and the laws and regula- | tions affecting them were mostly severe. The Romans were generally hard masters; and "the original condition of slaves, in relation to freemen, was as low as can be conceived. They were not considered members of the community, in which they had no station nor place. They possessed no rights, and were not deemed persons in law; so that they could neither sue nor be sued in any court of civil judicature, and they could not invoke the protection of the tribunes. So far were these notions carried, that when an alleged slave claimed his freedom on the ground of unjust detention in servitude, he was under the necessity of having a free protector to sue for him, till Justinian dispensed with that formality." Slaves were allowed only a special kind of marriage (contubernium), and they had no power over their children. Few of the ties of blood were recognized among them; and they could hold property only by the sanction or tolerance of their masters. The criminal law was equally harsh, slaves being treated under it as things, but it was gradually meliorated. The severest and most ignominious punishments were shared by slaves with the vilest malefactors, as crucifixion and hanging, and later they were burned alive. Under the empire the condition of the slaves was better than it had been under the republic. The emperors were, however, far from pursuing a uniform policy toward the servile class, and some of them even restored cruel laws that had been abolished. In theory Roman slavery was perpetual, and to this theory the practice conformed, inasmuch as by no act of his own could the slave become free. Freedom could proceed only from the action of the master. Manumission was not uncommon, and there were numerous freedmen who exercised much influence, as well in public life as in families. Freedom was the reward of good conduct, and the ease with which the places of freed slaves could be filled up by new purchases made manumission much more frequent than it would have been under other circumstances. Dying masters freed slaves by the hundred, in order that they might swell their funeral processions. On joyful occasions a wealthy_master would manumit many of his slaves. Sometimes slaves were liberated in the article of death, in order that they might die in freedom. Manumission was often the result of agreement between masters and slaves, the latter either purchasing freedom with money, or binding themselves to pursue certain courses that should be for their former owner's interest. The republican period was favorable to emancipation, and freedmen were so numerous at the formation of the empire that some of the early emperors sought to restrict manumission, less however to promote the interest of slaveholders, or to increase the number of slaves, than for the purpose of increasing the numbers of the ingenuous class, an object much thought of and aimed at by several generations of Roman statesmen, but always without success. The later emperors favored emancipation, particularly after they had become Christian; and Justinian removed nearly every obstacle to it. Augustus labored strenuously to limit emancipation, but even he had recourse to the society of freedmen, in accordance with a custom of the great men of his country; and in 30 years after his death the Roman world was governed by members of that class of persons. Julius Cæsar employed no freedmen, and Tiberius employed but few, and gave them none of his confidence, thus imitating Cæsar rather than Augustus; and even Caligula used them but little. Claudius they ruled, and through him the empire.-It is impossible to estimate with an approach to accuracy the number of Roman slaves. bon thought it was equal to that of the free population, which Zumpt pronounces a "gross error;" and Blair estimates that during the 14 generations that followed the conquest of Greece, there were three slaves to one freeman. Gibbon's estimate, which applies to the reign of Claudius, would give 60,000,000, and probably it is not far from the truth, though we may agree with Blair that it seems much too low for those places which were inhabited by Romans properly so called. Many individuals owned immense numbers, though the figures in some of these cases are perhaps exaggerated, or the results of the mistakes of copyists. The prices of slaves were not fixed. Good doctors, actors, cooks, beautiful women, and skilled artists brought heavy sums, and "ruled high;" and so did handsome boys, eunuchs, and fools. Learned men, grammarians, and rhetoricians also sold at high rates. Some descriptions of artisans and laborers Gib would sell at good prices, upward of $300 of | ites. The Greeks were also great slave traour money each; but $100 was a fair average | ders, and were as skilful in kidnapping persons price for a common slave, and when a slave could be bought for about half that sum the price was held to be low. Insurrections and servile wars were not uncommon. Two such wars broke out in Sicily after the conquest of that island by the Romans, and were extinguished only in the blood of myriads of men, and through the exertions of consular armies. Toward the close of the 7th century of Rome the war of the gladiators, waged on the one side by slaves alone, from general to camp servants, brought the republic to the verge of ruin. The war was commenced by a few gladiators from the schools of Capua, under the lead of Spartacus, a Thracian, 73 B. C., and lasted for more than two years. Several Roman armies, commanded by prætors and consuls, were defeated, and for a time the revolted slaves had the peninsula more at their command than it was at the command of the Romans. The country was horribly ravaged, and it was not until Crassus took the field, and 200,000 men were employed, that the insurrection was subdued; and the final battle was won by the Romans more as the consequence of the death of Spartacus before it was half fought than from their superior generalship. Six thousand of the slaves were hanged or crucified after their defeat. The punishment of rebellious slaves was always very severe. Many slaves had enlisted under Sextus Pompey, and thousands of them who fell into the hands of Octavius were sent to the horrible death of the cross, with the general approbation of the citizens. They were crucified solely as fugitives, as all whose masters could be found were restored to them; and the cruel act was perpetrated in violation of plighted faith. It more than once happened that Roman leaders in the civil wars either called upon slaves to rebel, or availed themselves of the services of slaves. Marius, on his return from Africa to Italy, and just before his death, proclaimed liberty to all slaves who would join him, and at least 4,000 enlisted under his banner. Before his exile he had tried the same plan, but without success. The Cornelians of Sulla were 10,000 freed slaves, who had belonged to members of the Marian party that had been proscribed by the conqueror, and who took their appellation from the gentile name of their patron.-The slave trade of antiquity comprehended the whole hemisphere in its circle. Its origin is unknown, for it was practised in all its parts at the earliest period of which any knowledge is to be obtained. The Phoenician slave trade was very extensive, and supplied in part by piracy. They stole Greeks and sold them 12 centuries before Christ, and they also sold stolen people to the Greeks. They had a land traffic in slaves, obtaining them in the countries between the Black and Caspian seas; and they exchanged Hebrew slaves for the productions of Arabia with the Sabæans and Edom as were the Phoenicians. Their slave traffic extended to Egypt, Thrace, Phrygia, Lydia, Syria, and other countries. From Egypt they obtained blacks, then regarded as slaves of luxury. Their slaves came mostly from the north and the east. The chief Grecian slave marts were Athens, Samos, Chios, Ephesus, Cyprus, and Corinth. The Carthaginians, who were the Phoenicians of the west, rivalled their progenitors in the extent and comprehensiveness of their slave traffic. They had an immense traffic with the interior of Africa, a caravan trade, like that of the Egyptians and of the Cyrenæans. Women were preferred to men in the trade with the African slave dealers, as they sold for much higher prices in some northern countries. There was a large demand for negroes in the Balearic islands, and especially for women. Corsica also furnished many valuable slaves to the Carthaginians. The Roman slave trade as much exceeded that of any other country of antiquity as the institution of Roman slavery exceeded slavery in other countries. In remoter times the Romans were no better than robbers in their treatment of foreigners, imitating the Etruscans in this respect, who were the worst pirates of antiquity. Corinth had been the chief slave mart of Greece toward the close of its independence, before it fell into the hands of the Romans, and at the time when slavery was beginning to increase rapidly in Italy; and it is supposed, its situation being favorable to trade of the kind, that many slaves were sent thence from the East to the cities on the eastern Italian coast. But the destruction of Corinth by the Romans, 146 B. C., transferred the slave trade to Delos, which became the most noted slave market of that age, though the trade in slaves was but one branch of the immense commerce that centred there. The importance of the slave trade in that island was owing to the Roman demand, as it was most favorably situated to minister to the desire for slaves from eastern countries-Greeks, Syrians, Phrygians, Bithynians, and others. According to Strabo, it was possible, so complete were the arrangements, to import 10,000 slaves in one day, and to export them on the same day. But all this prosperity came to an end when the forces of Mithridates entered Greece. They landed on Delos, and devastated the island, so that it never recovered from their ravages. The Mediterranean pirates had supplied Delos with many slaves; and at Side, in Pamphylia, they had a great market of their own, at which they disposed of their captives, many of whom were captured far inland, even Italy itself not being safe from their ravages, and its villas and highroads furnishing victims to the marauders, who became very powerful during that disturbed period of Roman history in which occurred the social war and the contest between Marius and Sulla. From Alexandria the Romans obtained slaves, Egyptians and Ethiopians, that city having a great trade in men. Others were drawn from Thrace, which continued to be a slavebreeding country long after the fall of Greece. After the devastation of Delos, the slave trade fell back nearer to its sources, and the Romans obtained slaves direct from the marts on the Euxine, where the trade had existed from time immemorial, being fed by the constant warfare that was waged by the neighboring tribes. Many came from Scythia, and Scythian and slave were all but convertible terms. The Galatians carried on an extensive slave trade; and between Italy and Illyria this commerce was considerable in the first days of the empire. The Roman wars fed the slave trade, and enabled those who carried it on to accumulate immense fortunes. So long as those wars were fought near home, the victors could sell their captives easily, without much aid from traders; but as soon as they extended to any distance from Italy, the trader's aid became necessary. The trader followed the camp, and in the camp the human booty was sold, and often at prices so low as to appear incredible. The Romans neither encouraged nor discouraged the slave trade. They held the slave trader in contempt, and deemed his business utterly unworthy of merchants. Special names were given to such traders, implying that they were necessarily cheats; but their enormous wealth made them powerful.-Slavery is regarded as one of the chief causes of the decline of Rome. The institution existed in all parts of the Roman empire, and prevailed in the countries which were formed from its fragments, though essentially modified by a variety of circumstances. The influence of Christianity upon it was very great. It had indeed existed before the extension of the Roman dominion, and was known to most of the peoples who invaded and overthrew the empire, and on its ruins established the feudal system and serfdom. (See SERF.) The rise of the Saracens tended to increase the number of slaves, and to feed the trade in them, as Christians felt no scruples about enslaving Mussulmans, and the Mussulmans were quite as unscrupulous toward Christians. The wars between the Germans and Slavs furnished so many of the latter race for the market, that the word slave is derived from them. The great commercial republics of Italy were much engaged in slave trading. The Venetians had many slaves, and the history of their commerce shows that they pursued the slave trade with vigor and profit. In spite of the efforts of the popes, they sold Christians to Moslems. Slavery also existed in Florence, though the slaves were almost exclusively Moslems and other unransomed prisoners of war. In England, under the Saxons, the slave trade flourished, Bristol being the chief mart, whence many slaves were exported to Ireland. But in this island slaveholding was never very popular, and the Irish early emancipated their bondmen. At the close of the middle ages two | peculiar forms of slavery and the slave trade began to be known, one of which has but recently ceased to exist, while the other is not yet entirely extinguished. The new phase of Mohammedanism that came up with the rapid development of the power of the Turks, in the 14th and 15th centuries, nearly synchronizes with the origin and progress of what is known specifically as negro slavery. The Turks completed the establishment of their power in Europe by the conquest of Constantinople in 1453; and not quite 40 years later the last Mussulman state in Spain, Granada, was conquered by the Christians. These two events had a remarkable effect on slavery. The fears of Christendom were excited by the rapid and sweeping successes of the Turks, and the anger of the Mussulmans was roused by the overthrow and enslavement of their brethren in Spain; and from these feelings the system of slavery received an impetus and acquired forms that under other conditions it never could have known. We have seen that the church, at a much earlier period, did not object so much to the traffic in men as to the traffic in Christians, and that lay legislators took the same view of human duties; and it was also the case that the selling of Christians to Moslems was more strictly forbidden than was the selling of Christians to other Christians. The sentiment that prevailed while the Saracens were so strong as to excite fears throughout all Christendom for its safety, was revived in the 15th century, and did not become altogether extinct until after the middle of the 17th. In the East, and for the greater part of the time in most of N. Africa, the Mohammedans were in the ascendant, they having become masters of Barbary and lords of the Levant. Between the Turks on the one side and the Italians and Spaniards on the other the long struggle was principally carried on in the south, the English being too remote from the scene to take much part in it, while the French, though occasionally furnishing some gallant volunteers, were as a nation the friends and sometimes the allies of the infidels. The knights of St. John of Jerusalem, first in Palestine, then at Rhodes, and afterward at Malta, carried on perpetual warfare with the Mussulmans. The contending parties divided between them the whole of the sea dominion of the Romans, and the compound rivalry of religion and race doomed multitudes of civilized people to slavery. Men who were taken in war did not alone compose these slaves, but among them were many women and children, the victims of razzias that were undertaken by the parties to the bitter and prolonged contest. The light, low vessels of the Mussulmans often ran into the ports of the Spaniards and Italians by night, and plundered and burned them, while the inhabitants were either murdered or carried into captivity. Watch towers were built along the coasts, that the approach of the corsairs might be detected. So marked |