CHAPTER V. OPINION OF THE ANCIENT WORLD ON SLAVERY.
Permanence of Slavery under all Revolutions—Ignorance of Principle of Human Equality—Theory and Personal Experience of Plato—Contentment of Slaves with their Condition—Occasional Comfort and Happiness of Slaves—Absence of Revolts against Slavery—Social and Political Rights ignored by Greeks and Romans.
Having, in the preceding chapters, shown how human slavery came into the world, how it originated in the despotism of paternal power, before laws or governments were known, and how, coeval with society itself, it had grown up, flourished, and everywhere established itself, as a domestic institution, before any conventional act or delegated authority of society came to consolidate it as a social institution—having shown all this, and afterwards explained the subsequent modifications, enlargements, and aggravations of slavery made by positive legislation,—let us now ascertain why the diabolical institution endured so long in the world; why it still endures in very many countries; and, above all, why every attempt to get rid of it has hitherto only had the effect of aggravating the evils of society, and making the mass of mankind more miserable slaves, without the name, than any that ever bore the name in ancient or modern times. Having ascertained this, we shall then be prepared to comprehend the only just and practicable means whereby slavery of every sort, and in every form and degree, may be effectually and for ever banished from the world.
Had slavery, amongst the ancients, originated in, and been upheld by, their laws and governments, it may be fairly presumed that some of the revolutions which, at various epochs, swept away their laws and governments would have swept away the institution of slavery amongst the rest. Whatever is forced upon a decided majority of any people, by the will of a minority, can be upheld only by fraud and coercion. Had these been the conditions of slavery amongst the ancients, it is quite certain that the moment a successful revolution, from within or from without, came to break up the authority of rulers in any particular country, the slaves or bondsmen would, that very moment, seize their opportunity to emancipate themselves; and if it was the love of equality or of social justice that made them rise, they would not lay down their arms till they had established a just social order, based upon the recognition of equal rights and equal laws for all.
Now, there is hardly any ancient state or country we could name that has not had its revolutions, and that did not witness, at some period or other, a complete subversion of its government, laws, and institutes; yet do we find the institution of slavery survive in all. In no one instance do we find the slaves of a revolutionalized state avail themselves of such a crisis to establish the rights of man as man. Intestine commotions, military insurrections, foreign invasions, popular triumphs over kings and senates—these and all other like incidents in the life of nations invariably passed away without abolishing the curse of slavery. Why was this? How happened it? Why did not the slaves of the old pagan world take advantage of some popular insurrection, or of the overthrow of their rulers by some invader, to vindicate the rights of humanity in their own persons, by at once establishing a free government for all, and by abolishing slavery altogether?
There is but one true and sufficient answer to these questions: it is this:—The doctrine of human equality, of equality in rights, duties, and responsibilities, was altogether unknown to the ancients: it was denied in theory; it was unheard of in practice. With the solitary exception before adverted to—that of the Essenes (of which more by-and-by), there is no historical record or monument extant to show that the slaves of antiquity, as a class, knew or cared anything about theories of government, much less that they comprehended what a Frenchman would understand by the words république démocratique et sociale, or what a member of the National Reform League understands by “the political and social rights of the people.” Nor does there appear to have been a single writer, teacher, philosopher, legislator, orator, or poet, amongst the whole heathen world, to inspire the slave-class with any such notions. On the contrary, the idea that one class were born to be slaves, and the other to be masters, was an idea as sedulously inculcated by the educators of ancient society, as it was implicitly believed in by the slaves themselves. The poet and the two philosophers who, more than any others of their class, exercised a moral influence upon the ancient world—to wit, Homer, Plato, and Aristotle—agreed, to a hair, in considering mankind as naturally divided into two classes—those made to command and those made to obey, alias masters and slaves. Homer tell us, formally, in the “Odyssey,” that Jove gave to slaves but the half of a soul. Plato, when citing this passage in his “Treatise on Laws,” substitutes the word mind for the Homeric word virtue, and adds his authority to that of the poet, to inculcate that the Father of the Gods bestowed mind and virtue but by halves upon the children of slavery. Plato is still more expressive elsewhere. In his dialogue entitled “Alcibiades,” he makes Socrates teach the same doctrine after his favourite fashion of question and answer. He makes him ask Alcibiades whether it is “in the class of nobles or in the class of plebeians that natural superiority is to be found;” to which the proficient pupil unhesitating makes answer, “Undoubtedly, in the class of nobles,” or “in those nobly born.” Aristotle is still more emphatic than Plato in laying down the theory of human inequality. In one place he goes so far as to call children “the animated tools of their parents,” signifying by that, that children are by birth the natural slaves of their fathers. In his “Treatise on Politics,” he tells us, roundly, that at the very moment of their birth all created beings are naturally fashioned, some to obey, and some to command—or, rather, some to be commanded, and the others to command; for it is the same verb he makes use of in both cases, using the passive mood for the slaves and the active for the slave-owners. In the same treatise he tells us, further on, that nature actually makes the bodies of freemen (genteel folk) different from those of slaves; that the latter are purposely made robust and hardy for the necessities of labour, whilst those of gentlemen are made so slight and upright as to be unfit for physical labour, but well qualified for the business of government. In citing this passage, we have given an almost literal translation of the Greek—a translation more expressive of the author’s sense than a strictly verbal translation would be. The very terms made use of by Aristotle show clearly his belief that slaves were made to be slaves, and their masters to govern them. The words we have rendered by the free translation, “qualified for the business of government,” mean, “literally, availably useful for political life,” which, if not so intelligible, is stronger and of wider signification than our translation. At all events, there can be no doubt as to Aristotle’s meaning. Like Homer and Plato, he was a firm believer in the duality of human nature—that is to say, that slaves were born with one nature, and their masters with another. Indeed, Plato carried this creed so far, that he made slavery to consist in the moral and mental man himself, and not in the servility of his condition as a slave. A wise man, he contended, could not be made a slave of: the natural superiority of such a man would rise superior to any, or all, conditions that might be imposed upon him. Plato lived to have his doctrine tried in his own person. Dionysius, the tyrant of Sicily, had him sold for a slave by one Pollio, a Lacedemonian chief; but history does not say whether Plato the slave held the same opinions on slavery as Plato the freeman and philosopher. It was one of his maxims that “a wise and just man could be as happy in a state of slavery as in a state of freedom.” Dionysius took him at his word, and, tyrant though he was, we think he served Plato right. The sage who believed in two natures, one for slaves and another for freemen, and who taught that a wise and just man could be as happy in slavery as in freedom, deserved to have such doctrines tried and verified in his own person. Plato had them tried in his; but, great philosopher as he was, we suspect he must have found some little difference between slavery and freedom, when we find him seizing the first opportunity to recover his liberty, and preferring to live a freeman, in Athens, to living a slave at Ægina.
When such were the opinions of philosophers and poets (whose mission and function it was to live for other generations and other times them their own), what may we not expect from the vulgar herd who lived only for themselves? Their ideas were just what we might expect. High and low, gentle and simple, rich and poor, freemen and slaves—all, all believed in the duality of human nature—in the divine origin of kings, and in the no less divine origin of slavery. On these points the whole of pagan antiquity appears to have been unanimous. The treatment of their helots by the Spartans, who, in order to disgust their children with drunkenness, used to exhibit those unfortunates in a state of bestial intoxication, speaks volumes for the notions the ancients had of slaves and slavery. Their occasional decimation of the helots by wholesale and deliberate slaughter, for no other or better reason than to thin their ranks and reduce their numbers for their own convenience, is a still more glaring exemplification. It shows that a slave was a mere thing—a chattel—a nobody—even a nuisance, if his master only chose to think him so.
The Elder Cato, who was cried up for his goodness as a master to his slaves, thought it not unworthy of himself, nor unjust to them, to keep them always quarrelling with one another, by artfully fomenting jealousies amongst them. Plutarch tells us, too, that when they got old and broken down, Cato used to treat them as he (Plutarch) would not use the ox or the horse that had served him faithfully. He used to sell them, or dispose of them any way, when there was no more work to be got out of them. Yet Cato was a model for the gentlemen slave-owners of his day. He was the Benjamin Franklin of his republic; the Adam Smith of the Roman political economy of his time. When he behaved so to his slaves, what must have been the opinions and behaviour of such masters as were brutes by nature, tyrants by instinct and culture? Seneca describes one of these worthies to us, under the name of Vedius Pollio, who, if we are to believe that philosopher, was in the habit of feeding the fish in his ponds with the flesh of his slaves! It is impossible to conceive that slaves must not have been considered of a different and inferior nature, when every description of masters, good and bad, are found (however differing in their mode of treatment) to deal with them as with beings having no rights of their own—no rights but what their masters might choose to confer.