The only compensation the slave had in his miserable life was that he lived near his master, that he was more familiarly treated; that, being obliged to help him in his sufferings and share his hard lot, he was looked upon less as a slave than a kinsman. Moreover, it must be noted that, in Rome as in the East to-day, he always formed part of the family. In modern times master and servants, being both free and united by a temporary contract on conditions already agreed upon between them, live apart from one another, although under the same roof. They are two jealous individualities who keep a watch on each other and are very determined to maintain their respective rights. At Rome the slave had no rights; he was not a citizen and hardly a man. His dignity did not prevent him from wholly abandoning himself to the man to whom he belonged and becoming one with him.
There was thus more intimacy and less reserve in their bearing towards each other. There remain many tombs erected by masters in memory of their servitors. They often bear the expression of the most tender feelings; not only is homage paid to their good service, they are also thanked for their affection. In return it must be remembered that they were treated with kindness,“like sons of the house,” and some significant words are even ascribed to them: “Servitude, thou hast never been too heavy for me.” On the tomb of a centurion of the fourth legion, which was erected by his freedmen, are these words: “I never married, and I possessed children,” and the slaves’ answer, “Thanks and farewell.”
What strikes us most of all in studying Roman society is that most of the vices which devoured it and caused its ruin were due to slavery. We have seen that it favoured the corruption of the higher classes, that in accustoming a man to rely continually on the activity of others it paralysed his strength and enfeebled his will. It is also responsible for having nourished a contempt of human life. Cruelty may be learned. Perhaps it is naturally repugnant to mankind, but it feeds on example. It may be said that the houses of many of the rich were public schools of inhumanity. The slave long suffered from it and the master also ended by being its victim. If under the cæsars the crowd saw the deaths of so many illustrious people with great indifference, was it not because tortures and death were no new things to them, and because, when they had become used to seeing manhood no longer respected in the slave, they were less moved to anger at seeing it outraged in the noble? Another graver reproach which can be made against slavery is that it created that miserable populace of the time of the empire which disgusts us so much in the narratives of Tacitus. Its baseness and cowardice are no longer astonishing when we remember its origin. It was the outcome of slavery; slavery formed it, and naturally it was formed for slavery. Not only did its moral degradation and political indifference render the tyranny of the cæsars possible, but the recollection of the injustice it had suffered must have nourished in it those feelings of bitterness and hostility which exposed society to perils little dreamed of.
If there was no servile war in Italy after Spartacus, it is none the less true that slavery kept up a kind of perpetual conspiracy against the public safety. Above all it was the most determined enemy of that spirit of conservatism and tradition which had been the strength of the Roman race. The slaves did not spring from the soil of Rome, their recollections and affections were elsewhere, and when they became citizens they did not hesitate to welcome foreign customs and to introduce them into the city. Whilst the statesmen and leading men wore themselves out in trying to preserve what remained of the ancient spirit and the old customs, down below, amongst those classes of the populace which were constantly being recruited from slavery, there was a continual working to destroy it. It was thus that, thanks to this secret and powerful influence, new religions easily spread throughout the empire.
At the time nobody seems to have perceived the amount of the evil, and as its extent was not realised only partial remedies were proposed. Efforts, often successful, were made to render the slaves’ lot less hard. They were given some security against their masters; the philosophers proclaimed, and all recognised with them, that these were men; lawyers even inscribed in the codes that slavery was contrary to nature. It seems as if this principle, had it been followed out in all its consequences, must have eventually led to the abolition of slavery; but when would the day for it have come, or would it have come at all, if the ancient world had continued? It may well be doubted, in view of the slowness with which progress is accomplished and the frequent recurrence of causeless reactions. Even in the most enlightened times, when opinion seems to give the strongest impulse towards liberal measures, it may chance on a sudden that power, obeying other instincts, again becomes cruel or severe, or that it hovers between severity and indulgence, unable to decide which course to pursue.
Roman Dolls
(From the British Museum)
It is under Augustus, just when manners are becoming milder and humanity seems to triumph, that a senatus-consultum ordains that when a master has been assassinated by a servant, all those who slept under his roof that night, innocent or guilty, shall be put to death. It is no less a matter of surprise that under Constantine, in Christian times, the laws, which since the Antonines had become much more humane, all at once revert to the ancient severities against slaves. These sudden relapses made them lose in a moment all the ground that they had gained during centuries, and all had to be begun again. Let us add that the measures taken to protect slaves were not always so efficacious as might be expected. Humane laws were hardly ever carried out except by well-disposed men, who were themselves inclined to humanity. Others found ways to evade the laws. Authority, always averse to interfering with the family and restraining the sacred power of the master, generally shut its eyes, and thus abuses, practically beyond the reach of the law, became general.
What is most remarkable of all is that no ancient writer ever expressed, either as a far-away hope, or as a fugitive wish, or as an improbable hypothesis, the idea that slavery might one day be abolished. Whether favourable to slavery or not, no one so much as imagined that it could cease to be. Those even who complain of it with bitterness, who count up the dangers that it occasions and the annoyances to which it gives rise, those who say with Seneca: “How many starving animals, whose voracity we have to gratify! What expense to clothe them! What anxiety to watch all those rapacious hands! What pleasure is there in being waited upon by people who murmur against us and detest us?”—even they did not seem to think that some day these people might be dispensed with. The institution was so ancient, and had so entered into the habits of the nation, that life could not be imagined without it. Men who thought slavery indispensable were not inclined, even when they knew it to be unjust, to take much trouble to abolish it. It was one of those radical reforms that one is scarcely justified in expecting in the ordinary course of events, and we may say that such a complete change, which no one either desired or foresaw, could only be accomplished by one of those revolutions which renovate the world.[h]