The slaves, on their side, appear to have been perfectly reconciled to slavery as an institution. The writings of the ancients have left us nothing to countervail this opinion, but, on the contrary, much to confirm it. We can nowhere discover any evidence to show that the slaves of antiquity regarded slavery in any other light than as an institution natural in itself, and neither unjust nor unreasonable, provided they (the slaves) were well treated. It is true they often complained of their lot, and sometimes rebelled, too, in order to change it; but, in so doing, it is to be observed, they never complained of slavery as an institution, nor invoked the principle of Equality as the end and object of their complaints or rebellions. Their complaint was, not that slavery existed, but that they, themselves, and not others, were the slaves. And when they rebelled, it was not in order to put down slavery and establish liberty for all; it was to exchange conditions with their masters, or else to secure their own freedom at the price of taking away other people’s. The idea of making common cause with other slaves, in order to emancipate all slaves, never entered their heads. Principle, or love of equality, had nothing whatever to do with their movements. The principle of liberty for all was too sublime an idea for them. Equality before God and the law was still further beyond them. Slavery, as a principle, they had no fault to find with; they complained only of the accident that made them slaves and others free. Even of this the vast majority never complained, because the vast majority (there is reason to believe) were content with their lot, and satisfied with their masters’ treatment of them. Indeed, the whole tenour of what we read of in history respecting slaves leads to this conclusion. The vast majority were content with their condition. In general they were kindly treated; and as they knew no other state, and saw nothing unjust or unreasonable in slavery, they were attached to their masters as to benefactors (regarding them as the authors of their comfort), and might, mayhap, as a general rule, be pronounced happy.
The old classics are full of allusions and passages which go to show the high state of domestic comfort enjoyed by certain descriptions of slaves, and the free and familiar relations which subsisted between them and their masters. A kindly and homely sort of intercourse was the rule; harshness and ill-nature would appear to have been the exception. Indeed, slaves were regarded so much in the light of mere animals by masters, and masters so much as demi-gods, or superior beings, by slaves, that no possible rivalry, jealousy, or misgivings could subsist between them; but, on the contrary, that sort of mutual confidence, fidelity, and fondness with which favourite horses and dogs reciprocate the kindly treatment and caresses of their owners. Whenever we find slaves breaking out into insurrection, we may be sure it is either because they have harsh masters, or have been torn from distant homes, or are being seduced by insurgent chiefs who promise them rapine and freedom; or because they expect, through a successful insurrection, to become pirates or robbers, which was the highest occupation of honour and profit that a slave could aspire to in those days. In these insurrections, as already observed, equality was never invoked. The “rights of man” was a profound mystery in the womb of the future. The insurgents thought of no slavery but their own; and of no other or better advantages from liberty than the spoils of their masters, and exchanging conditions with them.
Limiting ourselves, for the moment, to Roman history, we find some six revolts of slaves recorded by Livy, and some three or four more made mention of by Aulus Gellius, Tacitus, and others. Livy does not go much into detail; but, from the little he says, he makes it manifest that real liberty or equality had nothing to do with any of the six revolts he treats of. The sixth revolt, which was headed by one Eunus, a Syrian, is related at greater length by Diodorus of Sicily. And what does Diodorus show? That Eunus was an impostor, who pretended a mission from the Syrian Venus, and, ejecting flames from his mouth by means of a hollow nut that he had filled with lighted sulphur, succeeded in fanaticising some 2,000 slaves, and inducing them to break loose from the work-houses. He had soon an army of some 60,000 men, gained several actions in the course of a long and bloody war, made himself master of the camps of four prætors; but at last, pressed by increasing numbers, and forced to shut himself up in the city of Enna with his followers, he and they, after defending themselves with courage and bravery amid indescribable difficulties, were at last overpowered, and perished all, by famine, pestilence, and the sword. This insurrection, which took place in Sicily, was no sooner quelled than another broke out, of a similar kind, and upon as large a scale, under the command of a slave named Athenio, who, after assassinating his master, and causing all the work-houses to rise in insurrection, had soon as large an army under his command as Eunus had. Like Eunus, Athenio had some incipient successes; he stormed and made himself master of two prætorian camps: like Eunus, however, he had soon to succumb to the united force of famine and the sword. He perished, with nearly all his followers. The immediate cause of these two servile wars—which, next to the famous one under Spartacus, appear to have been the most formidable of their kind—was the alleged violation of the work-house regulations by the masters. Indeed, Diodorus testifies, positively and clearly, that the revolt headed by Athenio arose solely from the inability of the prætor in Sicily to enforce the laws or regulations which had been made in favour of the slaves, and which, like our modern factory lords, the masters were continually seeking to evade. Plutarch lets it appear that a similar cause provoked the revolt of Spartacus.
Those three revolts, which took place during the last sixty years of the Republic—namely, the two under Eunus and Athenio, in Sicily, and the third under Spartacus, in Italy—were the most serious and destructive of the servile wars recorded of Rome. They had the ablest commanders, and met with the largest measure of success. In these, if in any wars of the kind, might we hope to find the dignity of human nature vindicated by the insurgent bondsmen. There was nothing of the sort. The harsh conduct of masters and the violation of work-house rules were the motive powers of each revolt: no higher motive seems, for a moment, to have actuated the revolters.
The conduct, too, of Eunus and Athenio, during their brief success, showed how thoroughly undemocratic, and even aristocratic, were their plans and objects. Instead of setting about the abolition of slavery and the establishment of equality, they began forthwith to ape the pomp and circumstance of their oppressors, and to deal with their followers as though they were little kings, and not fellow-slaves in rebellion. They wore purple robes and gold chains. Athenio carried a silver staff in his hand, and had his brow wreathed with a diadem, like a monarch. Indeed, Florus tells us that, while these adventurers assumed all the state and airs of royalty, they imitated royalty no less in the havoc, plunder, and devastations they spread around them. At first they contented themselves with plundering and pulling down the castles, villas, and mansions of the aristocrats and master-class; but, this accomplished, they soon began to exact the same servility from their followers that they had themselves kicked against. Liberty and equality were out of the question. Had they succeeded, their wretched followers would soon have found that they had but exchanged masters.
The revolt under Spartacus is the most horrible of all, because it was a revolt of men who were gladiators as well as slaves. Liberty or the rights of man had no more to do with this revolt than with any of the others. It arose from brutal oppression on the part of one Lentulus Batiatus, to whom a portion of the insurgents belonged: he was training them, in fact, that they might combat one another to death in the arena for his recreation. Neither in its origin, conduct, nor results did this servile war differ from any of the others. Like all of them, it originated in private wrongs, was purely personal in its antecedents, and neither in its progress nor results did it exhibit a single indication of democratic, philanthropic, or any other virtues than the usual military ones common to all Romans at the time. In truth, what we moderns understand by political and social rights (and without which we know that real liberty cannot exist for any people) was an idea altogether foreign to every class of Greeks and Romans, and, indeed, to the whole of antiquity, with the solitary exception of the Essenes.
Thus, public opinion conspired with law and custom to uphold direct human slavery throughout the ancient world. This opinion must have been all but universal, since not even slaves in revolt ever dreamt of abolishing slavery as an institution. They warred against certain incidents and accidents of slavery; never against the principle itself. This universality of public opinion in its favour, coupled with the fact that direct slavery is an evil of far lesser magnitude than the indirect slavery of modern civilization, we take to be the true explanation of the old pagan system having endured so long in the world.
