A History of Rome During the Later Republic and Early Principate

by A. H. J. Greenidge

An abundant supply and quick returns imply reasonable prices; and the cheapness of the labour supplied by the slave-trade, whether as a consequence of war or piracy, was at once a necessary condition of the vitality of the plantation system and a cause of the recklessness and neglect with which the easily replaced instruments might be used. Cato, a shrewd man of business, never cared to pay more than fifteen hundred denarii for his slaves.[241] This must have been the price of the best type of labourer, of a man probably who was gifted with intelligence as well as strength. Ordinary unskilled labour must have fetched a far smaller sum; for the prices which are furnished by the comic poetry of the day—prices which are as a rule conditioned by the value of personal services or qualities of a particular kind, by the attractions of sex and the competition for favours—do not on the average far exceed the limit fixed by Cato.[242] For common work newly imported slaves were actually preferred, and purchasers were shy of the veterator who had seen long service.[243] Employment in the fashionable circles of the town doubtless enhanced the value of a slave, when he was known to have been in possession of some peculiar gift, whether it were for cookery, medicine or literature; but the labours of the country could easily be drilled into the newest importation, and prices diminished instead of rising with the advancing age and experience of the rustic slave.[244]

The cheapened labour which was now spread over Italy presented as many varieties of moral as of physical type, and these came to be well known to the prospective owner, not because he aimed at being a moral influence, but because he objected to being worried by the vagaries of an eccentric type. Sardinians were always for sale, not because they were specially abundant, but because they showed an indocility that rendered them a sorry possession.[245] The passive Oriental, the Spaniard fierce and proud, required different methods of management and inspired different precautions; yet experience soon proved that the hellenised sons of the East had a better capacity for organising revolt than their fellow-sufferers from the North and West, and much of the harshness of Roman slavery was prompted by the panic which is the nemesis of the man who deals in human lives. But more of it was due to the indifference which springs from familiarity, and from the cold practical spirit in which the Roman always tended to play with the pawns of his business game, even when they were freemen and fellow-citizens. A man like Cato, who had sense and honesty enough to look after his own business, elaborated a machine-like system for governing his household, the aim of which was the maximum of profit with the minimum amount of humanity which is consistent with the attainment of such an end. The element of humanity is, however, accidental. There is no conscious appeal to such a feeling. The slaves seem to be looked on rather as automata who perform certain mental and physical processes analogous to those of men. Cato's servants were never to enter another house except at his bidding or at that of his wife, and were to express utter ignorance of his domestic history to all inquirers; their life was to alternate between working and sleeping, and the heavy sleeper was valued as presumably a peaceful character; little bickerings between the servants were to be encouraged, for unanimity was a matter for suspicion and fear; the death sentence pronounced on any one of them by the law was carried out in the presence of the assembled household, so as to strike a wholesome terror into the rest. If they wished to propagate their kind, they must pay for the privilege, and a fixed sum was demanded from the slave who desired to find a mate amongst his fellow-servants.[246] The rations were fixed and only raised at the people's festivals of the Saturnalia and Compitalia;[247] a sick slave was supposed to need less than his usual share[248]—perhaps an excellent hygienic maxim, but one scarcely adopted on purely hygienic grounds. Such a life was an emphatic protest against the indulgence of the city, the free and careless intercourse which often reversed the position of master and slave and formed part of the stock-in-trade of the comedian. Yet, even when the bond between the man of fashion and his artful Servants had merely a life of pleasure and of mischief as its end, we Are at least lifted by such relations into a human sphere, and it is exceedingly questionable whether the warped humanity of the city did mark so low a level as the brutalised life of the estate over which Cato's fostering genius was spread. If we develop Cato's methods but a little, if we admit a little more rigour and a little less discrimination, we get the dismal barrack-like system of the great plantations—a barrack, or perhaps a prison, nominally ruled by a governor who might live a hundred miles away, really under the control of an anxious and terrified slave, who divided his fears between his master who wanted money and his servants who wanted freedom. The villicus had been once the mere intendant of the estate on which his master lived; he was now sole manager of a vast domain for his absent lord,[249] sole keeper of the great ergastulum which enclosed at nightfall the instruments of labour and disgorged them at daybreak over the fields. The gloomy building in which they were herded for rest and sleep showed but its roof and a small portion of its walls above the earth; most of it lay beneath the ground, and the narrow windows were so high that they could not be reached by the hands of the inmates.[250] There was no inspection by the government, scarcely any by the owners.[251] There was no one to tell the secrets of these dens, and if the unwary traveller were trapped and hidden behind their walls, all traces of him might be for ever lost.[252] When the slaves were turned out into the fields, the safety of their drivers was secured by the chains which bound their limbs, but which were so adjusted as not to interfere with the movements necessary to their work.[253] Some whose spirit had been broken might be left unbound, but for the majority bonds were the only security against escape or vengeance.[254]

There was, however, one type of desperate character who was permitted to roam at large. This was the guardian of the flocks, who wandered unrestrained over the mountains during the summer months and along the prairies in the winter season. These herdsmen formed small bands. It was reckoned that there should be one for every eighty or hundred sheep and two for every troop of fifty horses.[255] It was sometimes found convenient that they should be accompanied by their women who prepared their meals—women of robust types like the Illyrian dames to whom child-birth was a mere incident in the daily toils.[256] Such a life of freedom had its attractions for the slave, but it had its drawbacks too. The landowner who preferred pasturage to tillage, saved his capital, not only by the small number of hands which the work demanded, but also by the niggardly outlay which he expended on these errant serfs. It was not needful to provide them with the necessaries of life when they could take them for themselves. When Damophilus of Enna was entreated by his slaves to give them something better than the rags they wore, his answer was: "Do travellers then travel naked through the land? Have they nothing for the man who wants a coat?" [257] Brigandage, in fact, was an established item In the economic creed of the day.

The desolation of Italy was becoming dangerous, and the master of the lonely villa barred himself in at nights as though an enemy were at his gates. On one occasion Scipio Africanus was disturbed in his retreat at Liternum by a troop of bandits. He placed his armed servants on the roof and made every preparation for repelling the assault. But the visitors proved to be pacific. They were the very élite of the fraternity of brigands and had merely come to do honour to the great man. They sent back their troops, threw down their arms, laid presents before his door and departed in joyous mood.[258] The immunity of such bands proved that a slave revolt might at any moment imperil every life and every dwelling in some unprotected canton. It was indeed the epoch of peace, when Roman and Phoenician armies no longer held the field in Italy, that first suggested the hope of liberation to the slave. Hannibal would have imperilled his character of a protector of Italian towns had he encouraged a slave revolt, even if the Phoenician had not shrunk from a precedent so fatal to his native land. But one of the unexpected results of the Second Punic War was to kindle a rising in the very heart of Latium, and it was the African slave, not the African freeman, that stirred the last relics of the war in Italy. At Setia were guarded the noble Carthaginians who were a pledge of the fidelity of their state. These hostages, the sons of merchant princes, were allowed to retain the dignity of their splendid homes, and a vast retinue of slaves from Africa attended on their wants. The number of these was swelled by captive members of the same nationalities whom the people of Setia had acquired in the recent war.[259] A spirit of camaraderie sprung up amongst men who understood one another's language and had acquired the spurious nationality that comes from servitude in the same land. Their numbers were obvious, the paucity of the native Setians was equally clear, and no military force was close at hand. They planned to increase their following by spreading disaffection amongst the servile populations of the neighbouring country towns, and emissaries were sent to Norba in the North and Circei in the South. Their project was to wait for the rapidly approaching games of the Setian folk and to rush on the unarmed populace as they were gazing at the show; when Setia had been taken, they meant to seize on Norba and Circei. But there was treason in their ranks. The urban praetor was roused before dawn by two slaves who poured the whole tale of the impending massacre into his ear. After a hasty consultation of the senate he rushed to the threatened district, gathering recruits as he swept with his legates through the country side, binding them with the military oath, bidding them arm and follow him with all speed. A hasty force of about two thousand men was soon gathered; none knew his destination till he reached the gates of Setia. The heads of the conspiracy were seized, and such of their followers as learnt the fact fled incontinently from the town. From this point onward it was only a matter of hunting down the refugees by patrols sent round the country districts. Southern Latium was freed from its terror; but it was soon found that the evil had spread almost to the gates of Rome. A rumour had spread that Praeneste was to be seized by its slaves, and it was sufficient to stimulate a praetor to execute nearly five hundred of the supposed delinquents.[260]

Two years later a rising, which almost became a war, shook the great plantation lands of Etruria.[261] Its suppression required a legion and a pitched battle. The leaders were crucified; others of the slaves who had escaped the carnage were restored to their masters. But these disturbances, that may have seemed mere sporadic relics of the havoc and exhaustion left by the Hannibalic war, were only quelled for the moment. It was soon found that the seeds of insecurity were deeply planted in the settlement that was called a peace. During the year 185 the shepherds of Apulia were found to have formed a great society of plunder, and robbery with violence was of constant occurrence on the grazing lands and public roads. The praetor who was in command at Tarentum opened a commission which condemned seven thousand men. Many were executed, although a large number of the criminals escaped to other regions.[262]

These movements in Italy were but the symptoms of a spirit that was spreading over the Mediterranean lands. The rising of the serfs only just preceded the great awakening of the masses of the freemen.[263] Both classes were ground down by capital; both would make an effort to shake the burden from their shoulders; and, as regards the methods of assertion, it is a matter of little moment whether they took the form of a national rising against a government or a protectorate, a sanguinary struggle in the Forum against the dominance of a class, or an attack by chattels, not yet brutalised by serfdom but full of the traditions and spirit of freemen, against the cruelty and indifference of their owners. In one sense the servile movements were more universal, and perhaps better organised, than those of the men to whom, free birth gave a nominal superiority. A sympathy for each other's sufferings pervaded the units of the class who were scattered in distant lands. Sometimes it was a sympathy based on a sense of nationality, and the Syrian and Cilician in Asia would feel joy and hope stirring in his heart at the doings of his brethren who had been deported to the far West. The series of organised revolts in the Roman provinces and protectorate which commence shortly after the fall of Carthage and close for the moment with the war of resistance to the Romans in Asia, forms a single connected chain. Dangerous risings had to be repressed at the Italian coast towns of Minturnae and Sinuessa; at the former place four hundred and fifty slaves were crucified, at the latter four thousand were crushed by a military force; the mines of Athens, the slave market of Delos, witnessed similar outbreaks,[264] and we shall find a like wave of discontent spreading over the serf populations of the countries of the Mediterranean just before the second great outbreak in Sicily which darkens the close of the second century. The evil fate which made this island the theatre of the two greatest of the servile wars is explicable on many grounds. The opportunity offered by the sense of superiority in numbers was far ampler here than in any area of Italy of equal size. For Sicily was a wheat-growing country, and the cultivated plains demanded a mass of labour which was not needed in more mountainous or less fertile lands, where pasturage yielded a surer return than the tilling of the soil. The pasture lands of Sicily were indeed large, but they had not yet dwarfed the agriculture of the island. The labour of the fields was in the hands of a vast horde of Asiatics, large numbers of whom may conceivably have been shipped from Carthage across the narrow sea, when that great centre of the plantation system had been laid low and the fair estates of the Punic nobles had been seized and broken up by their conquerors.[265] In the history of the great Sicilian outbreaks Syrians and Cilicians meet us at every turn. These Asiatic slaves had different nationalities and they or their fathers had been citizens of widely separated towns. But there were bonds other than a common suffering which produced a keen sense of national union and a consequent feeling of ideal patriotism in the hearts of all. They were the products of the common Hellenism of the East; they or their fathers could make a claim to have been subjects of the great Seleucid monarchy; many, perhaps most of them, could assert freedom by right of birth and acknowledged slavery only as a consequence of the accidents of war or piracy. The mysticism of the Oriental, the political ideal of the Hellene, were interwoven in their moral nature—a nature perhaps twisted by the brutalism of slavery to superstition in the one direction, to licence in the other, but none the less capable of great conceptions and valiant deeds. The moment for both would come when the prophet had appeared, and the prophet would surely show himself when the cup of suffering had overflowed.[266]

The masters who worked this human mechanism were driving it at a pace which must have seemed dangerous to any human being less greedy, vain and confident than themselves. The wealth of these potentates was colossal, but it was equalled by their social rivalry and consequent need of money. A contest in elegance was being fought between the Siceliot and the Italian.[267] The latter was the glass of fashion, and the former attempted to rival, first his habits of domestic life and, as a consequence, the economic methods which rendered these habits possible. Here too, as in Italy, whole gangs of slaves were purchased like cattle or sheep; some were weighed down with fetters, others ground into subordination by the cruel severity of their tasks. All without exception were branded, and men who had been free citizens in their native towns, felt the touch of the burning iron and carried the stigma of slavery to their graves.[268] Food was doled out in miserable quantities,[269] for the shattered instrument could so easily be replaced. On the fields one could see little but abject helplessness, a misery that weakened while it tortured the soul. But in some parts of Sicily bodily want was combined with a wild daring that was fostered by the reckless owners, whose greed had overcome all sense of their own security or that of their fellow-citizens. The treatment of pastoral slaves which had been adopted by the Roman graziers was imitated faithfully by the Italians and Siceliots of the island. These slaves were turned loose with their flocks to find their food and clothing where and how they could. The youngest and stoutest were chosen for this hard, wild life: and their physical vigour was still further increased by their exposure to every kind of weather, by their seldom finding or needing the shelter of a roof, and by the milk and meat which formed their staple food. A band of these men presented a terrifying aspect, suggesting a scattered invasion of some warlike barbarian tribe. Their bodies were clad in the skins of wolves and boars; slung at their sides or poised in their hands were clubs, lances and long shepherds' staves. Each squadron was followed by a pack of large and powerful hounds. Strength, leisure, need, all suggested brigandage as an integral part of their profession. At first they murdered the wayfarer who went alone or with but one companion. Then their courage rose and they concerted nightly attacks on the villas of the weaker residents. These villas they stormed and plundered, slaying any one who attempted to bar their way. As their impunity increased, Sicily became impracticable to travellers by night, and residence in the country districts became a tempting of providence. There was violence, brigandage or murder on every hand. The governors of Sicily occasionally interposed, but they were almost powerless to check the mischief. The influence of the slave-owners was such that it was dangerous to inflict an adequate punishment.[270]

The proceedings of these militant shepherds must have opened the eyes of the mass of the slaves to the possibilities of the position. Secret meetings began to be held at which the word "revolt" was breathed. An occasion, a leader, a divine sanction were for the moment lacking. The first requisite would follow the other two, and these were soon found combined in the person of Eunus. This man was a Syrian by birth, a native of Apamea, and he served Antigenes of Enna. He was more than a believer in the power of the gods to seize on men and make them the channel of their will; he was a living witness to it in his own person. At first he saw shadows of superhuman form and heard their voices in his dreams. Then there were moments when he would be seized with a trance; he was wrapt in contemplation of some divine being. Then the words of prophecy would come; they were not his utterance but the bidding of the great Syrian goddess. Sometimes the words were preceded by a strange manifestation of supernatural power; smoke, sparks or flame would issue from his open mouth.[271] The clairvoyance may have been a genuine mental experience, the thaumaturgy the type of fiction which the best of media may be tempted to employ; but both won belief from his fellows, eager for any light in the darkness, and a laughing acceptance from his master, glad of a novelty that might amuse his leisure. As a matter of fact, Eunus's predictions sometimes came true. People forgot (as people will) the instances of their falsification, but applauded them heartily when they were fulfilled. Eunus was a good enough medium to figure at a fashionable séance. His latest profession was the promise of a kingdom to himself; it was the Syrian goddess who had held out the golden prospect. The promise he declared boldly to his master, knowing perhaps the spirit in which the message would be received. Antigenes was delighted with his prophet king. He showed him at his own table, and took him to the banquets given by his friends. There Eunus would be questioned about his kingdom, and each of the guests would bespeak his patronage and clemency. His answers as to his future conduct were given without reserve. He promised a policy of mercy, and the quaint earnestness of the imposture would dissolve the company in laughter. Portions of food were handed him from the board, and the donors would ask that he should remember their kindness when he came into his kingdom. These were requests which Eunus did not forget.

With such an influence in its centre, Enna seemed destined to be the spring of the revolt. But there was another reason which rendered it a likely theatre for a deed of daring. The broad plateau on which the town was set was thronged with shepherds in the winter season,[272] and some of the great graziers of Enna owned herds of these bold and lawless men. Conspicuous amongst these graziers for his wealth, his luxury and his cruelty was one Damophilus, the man who had formulated the theory that the shepherd slave should keep himself by robbing others. Damophilus was a Siceliot, but none of the Roman magnates of the island could have shown a grander state than that which he maintained. His finely bred horses, his four-wheeled carriages, his bodyguard of slaves, his beautiful boys, his crowd of parasites, were known all over the broad acres and huge pasture lands which he controlled. His town house and villas displayed chased silverwork, rich carpets of purple dye and a table of royal elegance. He surpassed Roman luxury in the lavishness of his expense, Roman pride in his sense of complete independence of circumstance, and Roman niggardliness and cruelty in his treatment of his slaves. Satiety had begotten a chronic callousness and even savagery that showed itself, not merely in the now familiar use of the ergastulum and the brand, but in arbitrary and cruel punishments which were part of the programme of almost every day. His wife Megallis, hardened by the same influences, was the torment of her maidens and of such domestics as were more immediately under her control. The servants of this household had one conviction in common—that nothing worse than their present evils could possibly be their lot.

This is the conviction that inspires acts of frenzy; but the madness of these slaves was of the orderly, systematic and therefore dangerous type. They would not act without a divine sanction to their whispered plans. Some of them approached Eunus and asked him if their enterprise was permitted by the gods. The prophet first produced the usual manifestations which attested his inspiration and then replied that the gods assented, if the plan were taken in hand forthwith. Enna was the destined place; it was the natural stronghold of the whole island; it was foredoomed to be the capital of the new race that would rule over Sicily.[273] Heartened by the belief that Heaven was aiding their efforts, the leaders then set to work. They secretly released such of Damophilus's household as were in bonds; they gathered others together, and soon a band to the number of about four hundred were mustered in a field in the neighbourhood of Enna. There in the early hours of the night they offered a sacrifice and swore their solemn compact. They had gathered everything which could serve as a weapon, and when midnight was approaching they were ready for the first attempt. They marched swiftly to the sleeping town and broke its stillness with their cries of exhortation. Eunus was at their head, fire streaming from his mouth against the darkness of the night. The streets and houses were immediately the scene of a pitiless massacre. The maddened slaves did not even spare the children at the breast; they dragged them from their mothers' arms and dashed them upon the ground. The women were the victims of unspeakable insult and outrage.[274] Every slave had his own wrongs to avenge, for the original assailants had now been joined by a large number of the domestics of the town. Each of these wreaked his own peculiar vengeance and then turned to take his share in the general massacre.