now refer to is the system of slavery on a great scale, which in the Roman state, as formerly in the Carthaginian, grew out of the ascendency of capital. While the captives taken in war and the hereditary transmission of slavery sufficed to keep up the stock of slaves during the earlier period, this system of slavery was, just like that of America, based on the methodically-prosecuted hunting of man; for, owing to the manner in which slaves were used with little regard to their life or propagation, the slave population was constantly on the wane, and even the wars which were always furnishing fresh masses to the slave-market were not sufficient to cover the deficit.
No country where this species of game could be hunted remained exempt from visitation; even in Italy it was a thing by no means unheard of, that the poor freeman was placed by his employer among the slaves. But the Negroland of that period was western Asia[7], where the Cretan and Cilician corsairs, the real professional slave-hunters and slave-dealers, robbed the coasts of Syria and the Greek islands; and where, emulating their feats, the Roman revenue-farmers instituted human hunts in the client states and incorporated those whom they captured among their slaves. This was done to such an extent, that about 650 the king of Bithynia declared himself unable to furnish the required contingent, because all the people capable of labour had been dragged off from his kingdom by the revenue-farmers. At the great slave-market in Delos, where the slave-dealers of Asia Minor disposed of their wares to Italian speculators, on one day as many as 10,000 slaves are said to have been disembarked in the morning and to have been all sold before evening - a proof at once how enormous was the number of slaves delivered, and how, notwithstanding, the demand still exceeded the supply. It was no wonder. Already in describing the Roman economy of the sixth century we have explained that it was based, like all the large undertakings of antiquity generally, on the employment of slaves[8]. In whatever direction speculation applied itself, its instrument was without exception man reduced in law to a beast of burden. Trades were in great part carried on by slaves, so that the proceeds fell to the master. The levying of the public revenues in the lower grades was regularly conducted by the slaves of the associations that leased them. Servile hands performed the operations of mining, making pitch, and others of a similar kind; it became early the custom to send herds of slaves to the Spanish mines, whose superintendents readily received them and paid a high rent for them.
The vine and olive harvest in Italy was not conducted by the people on the estate, but was contracted for by a slave-owner. The tending of cattle was universally performed by slaves. We have already mentioned the armed, and frequently mounted, slave-herdsmen in the great pastoral ranges of Italy[9]; and the same sort of pastoral husbandry soon became in the provinces also a favourite object of Roman speculation - Dalmatia, for instance, was hardly acquired (599) when the Roman capitalists began to prosecute the rearing of cattle there on a great scale after the Italian fashion. But far worse in every respect was the plantation-system proper - the cultivation of the fields by a band of slaves not unfrequently branded with iron, who with shackles on their legs performed the labours of the field under overseers during the day, and were locked up together by night in the common, frequently subterranean, labourers' prison. This plantation-system had migrated from the east to Carthage[10], and seems to have been brought by the Carthaginians to Sicily, where, probably for this reason, it appears developed earlier and more completely than in any other part of the Roman dominions[11]. We find the territory of Leontini, about 30,000
The difference between Italian and Sicilian slavery is very clearly apparent from the fact, that the slaves of the Mamertine community, which lived after the Italian fashion, were the only slaves who did not take part in the Sicilian servile revolt of 619-622.
The abyss of misery and woe, which opens before our eyes in this most miserable of all proletariates, may be fathomed by those who venture to gaze into such depths; it is very possible that, compared with the sufferings of the Roman slaves, the sum of all Negro sufferings is but a drop. Here we are not so much concerned with the hardships of the slaves themselves as with the perils which they brought upon the Roman state, and with the conduct of the government in confronting them. It is plain that this proletariate was not called into existence by the government and could not be directly set aside by it; this could only have been accomplished by remedies which would have been still worse than the disease. The duty of the government was simply, on the one hand, to avert the direct danger to property and life, with which the slave-proletariate threatened the members of the state, by an earnest system of police for securing order; and on the other hand, to aim at the restriction of the proletariate, as far as possible, by the elevation of free labour. Let us see how the Roman aristocracy executed these two tasks.
The servile conspiracies and servile wars, breaking out everywhere, illustrate their management as respects police. In Italy the scenes of disorder, which were among the immediate painful consequences of the Hannibalic war[13], seemed now to be renewed; all at once the Romans were obliged to seize and execute in the capital 150, in Minturnae 450, in Sinuessa even 4000 slaves (621). Still worse, as may be conceived, was the state of the provinces. At the great slave-market at Delos and in the Attic silver-mines about the same period the revolted slaves had to be put down by force of arms. The war against Aristonicus and his 'Heliopolites' in Asia Minor was in substance a war of the landholders against the revolted slaves[14]. But worst of all, naturally, was the condition of Sicily, the chosen land of the plantation system. Brigandage had long been a standing evil there, especially in the interior; it began to swell into insurrection. Damophilus, a wealthy planter of Enna (Castrogiovanni), who vied with the Italian lords in the industrial investment of his living capital, was attacked and murdered by his exasperated rural slaves; whereupon the savage band flocked into the town of Enna, and there repeated the same process on a greater scale. The slaves rose in a body against their masters, killed or enslaved them, and summoned to the head of the already considerable insurgent army a juggler from Apamea in Syria who knew how to vomit fire and utter oracles, formerly as a slave named Eunus, now as chief of the insurgents styled Antiochus king of the Syrians. And why not? A few years before another Syrian slave, who was not even a prophet, had in Antioch itself worn the royal diadem of the Seleucids[15]. The Greek slave Achaeus, the brave 'general' of the new king, traversed the island, and not only did the wild herdsmen flock from far and near to the strange standards, but the free labourers also, who bore no goodwill to the planters, made common cause with the revolted slaves.
In another district of Sicily Cleon, a Cilician slave, formerly in his native land a daring bandit, followed the example which had been set and occupied Agrigentum; and, when the leaders came to a mutual understanding, after gaining various minor advantages they succeeded in at last totally defeating the praetor Lucius Hypsaeus in person and his army, consisting mostly of Sicilian militia, and in capturing his camp. By this means almost the whole island came into the power of the insurgents, whose numbers, according to the most moderate estimates, are alleged to have amounted to 70,000 men capable of bearing arms. The Romans found themselves compelled for three successive years (620-622) to despatch consuls and consular armies to Sicily, till, after several undecided and even some unfavourable conflicts, the revolt was at length subdued by the capture of Tauromenium and of Enna. The most resolute men of the insurgents threw themselves into the latter town, in order to hold their ground in that impregnable position with the determination of men who despair of deliverance or of pnrdon; the consuls Lucius Calpurnius Piso and Publius Rupilius lay before it for two years, and reduced it at last more by famine than by arms[16].
These were the results of the police system for securing order, as it was handled by the Roman senate
