Slavery in History

by Adam Gurowski

The law established various just causes for emancipation. Among these were, natural relationships, as children, brothers, sisters, mothers, cousins, grandparents, etc., when slaves; and whoever ad impudicitiam turpemque violationem servos compellat, lost his potestas, or power, over the slave.

These facilities for emancipation operated principally in favor of the urban chattels, or those of the household proper, and also rural overseers, but were rarely applied to the rural slaves; consequently, during the most brilliant period of the existence of the empire, the cities were filled with enfranchised slaves of various kinds and various nations. The country, too, was altogether abandoned by the slaveholders, who lived and rioted in the imperial city. Most of these emancipated slaves, as also, indeed, many of the free-born citizens, finally lost their liberty by the operation of those causes which, notwithstanding emancipations and state colonizations, continually increased the latifundia or large estates, and transformed into bondmen the freeholders as well as those who rented land from the state or from private individuals.

The civil administration of the Roman empire, heathen and Christian, down to its last agonies in Constantinople, may be very briefly summed up: it was fiscality. Every administrative measure aimed at replenishing the imperial exchequer. The imperial treasury was bottomless, and its owners cold, rapacious, cruel and insatiable. All the colonizations of free laborers had for their single aim but to increase the income of the state; and tributes and taxations of every conceivable kind were imposed, first upon the provinces, and in course of time, on Italy itself. These, of course, were principally supplied by the laboring classes in the cities and on the lands. The rapacity of the state was heightened also by the individual greed of the magistrates, from the prefects down to the meanest military or political official or tax-gatherer; indeed, locusts more destructive than the Roman officials never devoured the fruits of toil or the accumulations of industry. These fiscal measures and lawless extortions, fostered chattelhood almost as much as wars and conquests had formerly done.

The inquilini and coloni of the last century of the republic were free, rent-paying farmers (who paid the rent in money), or free laborers. When, after the time of Sylla, the republican oligarchs partially enslaved these farmers, the rent had to be paid in kind, in sign of dependence, if not of absolute bondage. The colonists settled by the emperors also had to pay tribute and submit to various other servitudes; and thus the once free colonists were, by a slow but uninterrupted process, transformed into bondmen, serfs and slaves. As in the last days of the republic, so under Augustus and his successors, the free yeoman or colonist, in order to avoid being violently expelled from his homestead and shut up in the ergastulum with the chattels, frequently sold himself and his little property, on certain conditions, to the rich and powerful slaveholder, and thus secured patronage and protection. In proportion as exaction, oppression and lawlessness increased under the emperors, so also did the forced or voluntary submission of colonists to influential slaveholders. As the imperial tax-gatherer was wont to sell the children of the poor for tax or tribute, the peasant often preferred to become a slave in order to obtain protection from his master, who became responsible to the treasury for the taxes of the bondman and his lands. Frequently whole villages of colonists thus gave up their rights for the sake of patronage and protection.

The exchequer had a roll inscribed with the names of all the colonists on the domains belonging to the state, the cities, or to private individuals. From this census for taxation was derived the legal designation, and afterward the condition of adscriptus. And the imperial government, whose sole object was to gather taxes and have responsible tax-payers, had little if any objection to this transformation of colonists and their homesteads into the bondmen of the rich. The change was not made at once by any special law,[16] but was brought about by the slow progress of social decomposition. When the serfdom of the colonists first became an object of jurisprudence—a little before and under Theodosius—it had already existed as a fact; and ex facto nascitur jus was an old axiom of the civil law. By and by slaves proper—that is, movable chattels, not persons attached to the soil—both in the city and on the lands, were taxed on the plantation roll; and Constantine prohibited the sale of chattels from one province to another, most probably with the view of facilitating their control by the tax-gatherer.

Rapacious taxation, the first outgrowth of imperial despotism which was originated by the slaveholders, forced into the grip of the oligarch all that remained of free soil and independent labor, or what was intended to be such by the colonizing emperors. The same cause also disorganized the ancient municipal regime in the cities of Italy and throughout the Roman world.

The curia of Italian cities, and afterward of all other cities privileged with Italian law, constituted the body politic of each municipality. The most influential and wealthy citizens, therefore, were curiales; next to them were municipes, common burghers, small traders, etc.; then clients, free plebeian proletarians, the enfranchised, etc. The decurions or city senate, and other dignitaries called patrons, protectors, etc., administered the affairs of the city; these and all other offices were light and honorable while the cities were flourishing, as in the first two centuries of the empire; but even then, various legal immunities released curiales from performing public municipal service. During the peace enjoyed by the Roman world in the early times of the empire, the taxes, tolls, excises, venalicium, etc., imposed on Italianized cities, were moderate. These cities were then rich; they accumulated and loaned capital; they owned slaves and extensive domains. By means of their slaves they erected those public edifices and monuments whose splendor rivalled those of Rome and whose ruins are still in many places preserved; and the administration of the revenues and the honors of the city were in the control of rich oligarchs and slaveholders. The same accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few, existed in the cities as in the country, as the same oligarchs generally lived in the city, and indeed necessarily belonged to some municipium; for in the Roman world the whole political and civic status was exclusively embodied in and bestowed on the city; and the country, as such, had no political or civil significance.

Thus, even during the most brilliant periods, the numerous free persons in the cities became more and more impoverished, and lived by panem et circenses, as in Rome. Under this deceitful glitter, the disease slowly undermined the prosperity of the cities, and the first shock revealed the terrible reality. Soon fiscal rapacity seized hold of every thing both in the Italian and Italianized cities. Not only the poorer classes but even the wealthy began to feel it. One after another the cities lost their domains and their treasure, and thus lost the means to sustain their internal administration. With the growing imperial rapacity increased also the danger and the difficulties of public office, as the decurions and other officials were responsible to the imperial treasury for all the taxes and imposts levied upon the city. The rich men, patrons, etc., now used extensively their right of exemption from office, and excused themselves from public service in proportion as the fiscal pressure increased, and as they found it more lucrative to profit from general calamities than to attempt to avert them. Besides, taxes for the central exchequer were to be imposed and levied as well as taxes for the local administration of the cities. All this finally almost entirely crushed the impoverished burghers, and in the second century large numbers of burghers were inscribed in the curia. First the poorer shopkeepers, artisans, and small property holders, and then almost all the viles, with the exception of the infames—that is, those who at any time had undergone any infamous condemnation—became curiales. Taxes on lands, houses, and slaves, and also on persons (per capita), increased almost daily, and were imposed under various guises and new names. All handicraftsmen, tradesmen, and merchants, had to pay special taxes, and the poorest plebeian had to pay a capitatio or illatio. When the cities had thus been reduced to poverty, and were obliged to tax themselves heavily to sustain their existence, the severest of all labor was to be a city official, and every one tried to avoid public honors, as even to be a curialis was considered a heavy calamity. The surplus of the poor free population, no longer supported by the magistrates or decuriones, abandoned the cities and became colonists on the imperial domains, on the remaining city domains, or on private lands; and there sank deeper and deeper into the mire of slavery. Soon the curiales began to follow the plebeians, in order to escape from their privileges and dignities. With this, however, an imperial edict interfered, and small proprietors, curiales, etc., were prohibited from selling their property. The eventual acquirer of such property was made ipso facto curial, and responsible for both past and current taxes, and the other exactions and servitudes imposed. The law put various other impediments on the personal liberty of poor but taxable curiales: they became bondmen of the state or of their own municipality; they could not change their residence, and suffered innumerable annoyances. The curiales, thus goaded, often preferred even the hateful military service on the utmost frontiers of the empire: they voluntarily entered the legions, in order to be exempted from taxation and the grip of the imperial and municipal tax-gatherer. More of them, however, chose rather to seek patrons, and became bondmen to the rich, the slaveholders, and exempted persons, giving both themselves and their property to their protectors. Thus frequently the impoverished descendants of former honoratiores became first bondmen and then slaves. During that long epoch of grinding oppression and taxation, the division and subdivision of the community into classes and grades originated. This classification was based on pursuits and occupations, and also according to the imposts levied on each class, from the magnate—as the rich social successors of the oligarchs were now called—down to the lowest laborer and chattel. Finally, the whole property in the Roman world—the country, the city, the lands, houses, and slaves—was centred in the hands of a few magnates, who owned incalculable numbers of colonists, bondmen, serfs, and chattels.

The famous Roman legions were recruited from yeomen, plebeians, workmen and colonists; in one word, from the free population. When freemen diminished, foreigners and barbarians were hired and enrolled. Sylla's military murderers were in great part Spanish Celts; and after Sylla and Marius, foreigners entered more and more into the composition of the Roman armies. Caligula had a kind of body-guard composed of Germans; and soon all the nations conquered by Rome were represented, not only in the armies, but even under the imperial canopy. Then arose the intestine wars for imperial power carried on by pretenders, each proclaimed by some province or legion. These wars resulted in slaughter, devastation, ruin and universal misery; and thus enlarged the number of slaves, and powerfully revived the slave traffic, which survived the downfall of heathenism and the Roman world.

Domestic slavery, acting through long centuries, brought about a thoroughly diseased and depraved condition of society, which, in turn, reacted upon its producing cause, exacerbating and intensifying it. The result was, that domestic slavery quite overmastered the ancient Roman world. At the melancholy period of Rome's disruption, the high-souled, patriotic citizen—that compact and columnar type of character—had become quite extinct, and in his place were large slave-owners, slave-drivers, and slave-traders. The masters and protectors of Rome were foreigners and barbarians. The slaveholders could not defend the empire, and beneath them was a degraded population of so-called freemen, and millions of serfs and slaves, all of them without a spark of love for their country, and destitute even of material incitements to urge them to defend their homes or uphold the existing condition of society. None of them had any interest to sustain their slaveholding masters or the fiscality of the empire; and at times the lower classes, the slaves especially, even joined the invaders. Thus, when Alaric appeared before Rome, over forty thousand slaves joined his camp.