Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero Part 5

There were, however, very serious defects in this system of elementary education. Not only the schoolmaster himself, but the paedagogus who was responsible for the boy's conduct, was almost always either a slave or a freedman; and neither slave nor freedman could be an object of profound respect for a Roman boy. Hence no doubt the necessity of maintaining discipline rather by means of corporal punishment (to which the Romans never seem to have objected, though Quintilian criticises it)[275] than by moral force; a fact which is attested both in literature and art. The responsibility again which attached to the paedagogus for the boy's morals must have been another inducement to the parents to renounce their proper work of supervision.[276] And once more, the great majority of teachers were Greeks. As the boy was born into a bilingual Graeco-Roman world, of which the Greeks were the only cultured people, this might seem natural and inevitable; but we know that in his heart the Roman despised the Greek. Of witnesses in their favour we might expect Cicero to be the strongest, but Cicero occasionally lets us know what he really thinks of their moral character. In a remarkable pa.s.sage in his speech for Flaccus, which is fully borne out by remarks in his private letters, he says that he grants them all manner of literary and rhetorical skill, but that the race never understood or cared for the sacred binding force of testimony given in a court of law.[277] Thus the Roman boy was in the anomalous position of having to submit to chastis.e.m.e.nt from men whom as men he despised. a.s.suredly we should not like our public schoolboys to be taught or punished by men of low station or of an inferior standard of morals It is men, not methods, that really tell in education; the Roman schoolboy needed some one to believe in some one to whom to be wholly loyal; the very same overpowering need which was so obvious in the political world of Rome in the last century B.C.[278]

Of this elementary teaching little need be said here, as it did not bear directly on life and conduct. There is, however, one feature of it which may claim our attention for a moment. Both in reading and writing, and also for learning by heart, _sententiae_ [Greek: gnomai]

were used, which remind us of our copy-book maxims. Of these we have a large collection, more than 700, selected from the mimes of Publilius Syrus, who came to Rome from Syria as a slave in the age of which we are writing, and after obtaining his freedom gained great reputation as the author of many popular plays of this kind, in which he contrived to insert these wise saws and maxims. It is not likely that they found their way into the schools all at once, but in the early Empire we find them already alluded to as educational material by Seneca the elder,[279] and we may take them as a fair example of the maxims already in use in Cicero's time, making some allowance for their superior neatness and wisdom. Here are a few specimens, taken almost at random; it will be seen that they convey much shrewd good sense, and occasionally have the true ring of humanity as well as the flavour of Stoic _sapientia_. I quote from the excellent edition by Mr. Bickford-Smith.[280]

Avarus ipse miseriae causa est suae.

Audendo virtus crescit, tardando timor.

Cicatrix conscientiae pro vulnere est.

Fortunam[281] citius reperias quam retineas.

Cravissima est probi hominis iracundia.

h.o.m.o totiens moritur, quotiens amitt.i.t suos.

h.o.m.o vitae commodatus, non donatus est.

Humanitatis optima est certatio.

Iucundum nil est, nisi quod reficit varietas.

Malum est consilium quod mutari non potest.

Minus saepe pecces, si scias quod nescias.

Perpetuo vincit qui ut.i.tur clementia.

Qui ius iurandum servat, quovis pervenit.

Ubi peccat aetas maior, male discit minor.

I have quoted these to show that Roman children were not without opportunity even in early schooldays of laying to heart much that might lead them to good and generous conduct in later life, as well as to practical wisdom. But we know the fate of our own copy-book maxims; we know that it is not through them that our children become good men and women, but by the example and the un-systematised precepts of parents and teachers. No such neat [Greek gnomai] can do much good without a sanction of greater force than any that is inherent in them and such a sanction was not to be found in the ferula of the grammaticus or the paedagogus. Once more it is men and not methods that supply the real educational force.

Probably the greatest difficulty which the Roman boy had to face in his school life was the learning of arithmetic; it was this, we may imagine, that made him think of his master, as Horace did of the worthy Orbilius,[282] as a man of blows (plagosus). This is not the place to give an account of the methods of reckoning then used; they will be found fully explained in Marquardt's _Privatleben_, and compressed into a page by Professor Wilkins in his _Roman Education_[283]. It is enough to say that they were as indispensable as they were difficult to learn. "An orator was expected, according to Quintilian (i. 10. 35), not only to be able to make his calculations in court, but also to show clearly to his audience how he arrived at his results." From the small inn-keeper to the great capitalist, every man of business needed to be perfectly at home in reckoning sums of money. The magistrates, especially quaestors and aediles, had staffs of clerks who must have been skilled accountants; the provincial governors and all who were engaged in collecting the tributes of the provinces, as well as in lending the money to enable the tax-payers to pay (see above, 71 foll.), were constantly busy with their ledgers.

The humbler inhabitants of the Empire had long been growing familiar with the Roman apt.i.tude for arithmetic.[284]

Grais ingenium, Grais dedit ore rotundo Musa loqui, praeter laudem nullius avaris.

Romani pueri longis rationibus a.s.sem disc.u.n.t in partes centum diducere. "Dicat films Albini: si de quincunce remota est uncia, quid superat? poteras dixisse." "triens." "eu!

rem poteris servare tuam."[285]

This familiar pa.s.sage may be quoted once more to ill.u.s.trate the practical nature of the Roman school teaching and the ends which it was to serve. Utilitarian to the backbone, the ordinary Roman, like the ordinary British, parent, wanted his son to get on in life; it was only the parent of a higher cla.s.s who sacrificed anything to the Muses, and then chiefly because in a public career it was _de rigueur_ that the boy should not be ignorant or boorish.

When the son of well-to-do parents had mastered the necessary elements, he was advanced to the higher type of school kept by a _grammaticus_, and there made his first real acquaintance with literature; and this was henceforward, until he began to study rhetoric and philosophy, the staple of his work. We may note, by the way, that science, i.e. the higher mathematics and astronomy, was reckoned under the head of philosophy, while medicine and jurisprudence had become professional studies,[286] to learn which it was necessary to attach yourself to an experienced pract.i.tioner, as with the art of war In the grammar schools, as we may call them, the course was purely literary and humanistic, and it was conducted both in Greek and Latin, but chiefly in Greek, as a natural result of the comparative scantiness of Latin literature.[287] Homer, Hesiod, and Menander were the favourite authors studied; only later on, after the full bloom of the Augustan literature, did Latin poets, especially Virgil and Horace, take a place of almost equal importance. The study of the Greek poets was apparently a thorough one. It included the teaching of language, grammar, metre, style, and subject matter, and was aided by reading aloud, which was reckoned of great importance, and learning by heart, on the part of the pupils. In the discussion of the subject matter any amount of comment was freely allowed to the master, who indeed was expected to have at his fingers' ends explanations of all sorts of allusions, and thus to enable the boys to pick up a great deal of odd knowledge and a certain amount of history, mixed up of course with a large percentage of valueless mythology.

"In grammaticis," says Cicero, "poetarum pertractatio, historiarum cognitio, verborum interpretatio, p.r.o.nuntiandi quidam sonus."[288] The method, if such it can be called, was not at all unlike that pursued in our own public schools, Eton, for example, before new methods and subjects came in. Its great defect in each case was that it gave but little opportunity for learning to distinguish fact from fancy, or acquiring that scientific habit of mind which is now becoming essential for success in all departments of life, and which at Rome was so rare that it seems audacious to claim it even for such a man of action as Caesar, or for such a man of letters as Varro. In England this defect was compensated to some extent by the manly tone of school life, but at Rome that side of school education was wanting, and the result was a want of solidity both intellectual and moral.

The one saving feature, given a really good and high-minded teacher, might be the appeal to the example of the great and good men of the past, both Greek and Roman, and the study of their motives in action, in good fortune and ill. This is the kind of teaching which we find ill.u.s.trated in the book of Valerius Maximus, which has already been alluded to, who takes some special virtue or fine quality as the subject of most of his chapters,[289]--fort.i.tudo, patientia, abstinentia, moderatio, pietas erga parentes, amicitia, and so on, and ill.u.s.trates them by examples and stories drawn mainly from Roman history, partly also from Greek. This kind of appeal to the young mind was undoubtedly good, and the finest product of the method is the immortal work of Plutarch, the Lives of the great men of Greece and Rome, drawn up for ethical rather than historical purposes. But here again we must note a serious drawback. Any one who turns over the pages of Valerius will see that these stories of the great men of the past are so detached from their historical surroundings that they could not possibly serve as helps in the practical conduct of life; they might indeed do positive mischief, by leading a shallow reasoner to suppose that what may have been justifiable at one time and under certain circ.u.mstances, regicide, for example, or exposure of oneself in battle, is justifiable at all times and in all circ.u.mstances. Such an appeal failed also by discouraging the habit of thinking about the facts and problems of the day; and right-minded men like Cicero and Cato the younger both suffered from this weakness of a purely literary early training. Another drawback is that this teaching inevitably exaggerated the personal element in history, at the very time too when personalities were claiming more than their due share of the world's attention; and thus the great lessons which Polybius had tried to teach the Graeco-Roman world, of seeking for causes in historical investigation, and of meditating on the phenomena of the world you live in, were pa.s.sed over or forgotten.

But so far as the study of language, of artistic diction, of elocution, and intelligent reading could help a boy to prepare himself for life, this education was good; more especially good as laying a foundation for the acquirement of that art of oratory which, from old Cato's time onwards, had been the chief end to be aimed at by all intending to take part in public life. Cato indeed had well said to his son, "Orator est, Marce fili, vir bonus dicendi peritus,"[290]

thus putting the ethical stamp of the man in the first place; and his "rem tene, verba sequentur" is a valuable bit of advice for all learners and teachers of literature. But more and more the end of all education had come to be the art of oratory, and particularly the art as exercised in the courts of law, where in Cicero's time neither truth nor fact was supreme, and where the first thing required was to be a clever speaker,--a vir bonus by all means if you were so disposed. But to this we shall return directly.

In such schools, if he were not educated at home, the boy remained till he was invested with the toga virilis, or pura. In the late Republic this usually took place between the fourteenth and seventeenth years;[291] thus the two young Ciceros seem both to have been sixteen when they received the toga virilis, while Octavian and Virgil were just fifteen, and the son of Antony only fourteen. In former times it seems probable that the boy remained "praetextatus"

till he was seventeen, the age at which he was legally capable of military service, and that he went straight from the home to the levy;[292] in case of severe military pressure, or if he wished it himself, he might begin his first military exercises and even his active service, in the praetexta. But as in so many other ways, so here the life of the city brought about a change; in a city boys are apt to develop more rapidly in intelligence if not in body, and as the toga virilis was the mark of legal qualification as a man, they might be of more use to the family in the absence of the father if invested with it somewhat earlier than had been the primitive custom. But there was no hard and fast rule; boys develop with much variation both mentally and physically, and, like the Eton collar of our own schoolboys, the toga of childhood might be retained or dropped entirely at the discretion of the parents.

There is, however, a great difference in the two cases in regard to the a.s.sumption of the manly dress. With us it does not mean independence; as a rule the boy remains at school for a year or two at least under strict discipline. At Rome it meant, on the contrary, that he was "of age," and in the eye of the law a man, capable of looking after his own education and of holding property. This was a survival from the time when at the age of p.u.b.erty the boy, as among all primitive peoples, was solemnly received into the body of citizens and warriors; and the solemnity of the Roman ceremony fully attests this.

After a sacrifice in the house, and the dedication of his boyish toga and bulla to the Lar familiaris, he was invested with the plain toga of manhood (libera, pura), and conducted by his father or guardian, accompanied (in characteristic Roman fas.h.i.+on, see below, p. 271) by friends and relations, to the Forum, and probably also to the tabularium under the Capitol, where his name was entered in the list of full citizens.[293]

With the new arrangement, under which boys might become legally men at an earlier age than in the old days, it is obvious that there must often have been an interval before they were physically or mentally qualified for a profession. As the sole civil profession to which boys of high family would aspire was that of the bar, a father would send his son during that interval to a distinguished advocate to be taken as a pupil. Cicero himself was thus apprenticed to Mucius Scaevola the augur: and in the same way the young Caelius, as soon as he had taken his toga virilis, was brought by his father to Cicero. The relation between the youth and his preceptor was not unlike that of the _contubernium_ in military life, in which the general to whom a lad was committed was supposed to be responsible for his welfare and conduct as well as for his education in the art of war: thus Cicero says of Caelius[294] that at that period of his life no one ever saw him "except with his father or with me, or in the very well-conducted house of M. Cra.s.sus" (who shared with Cicero in the guardians.h.i.+p).

"Fuit a.s.siduus mec.u.m," he says a little farther on. This kind of pupilage was called the _tirocinium fori_, in which a lad should be pursuing his studies for the legal profession, and also his bodily exercises in the Campus Martius, so that he might be ready to serve in the army for the single campaign which was still desirable if not absolutely necessary. When he had made his first speech in a court of law, he was said _tirocinium ponere_,[295] and if it were a success, he might devote himself more particularly henceforward to the art and practice of oratory. No doubt all really ambitious young men, who aimed at high office and an eventual provincial government, would, like Caesar, endeavour to qualify themselves for the army as well as the Forum. Cicero, however, whose instincts were not military, served only in one campaign, at the age of seventeen, and apparently he advised Caelius to do no more than this. Caelius served under Q. Pompeius proconsul of Africa, to whom he was attached as _contubernalis_, choosing this province because his father had estates there.[296] It was only on his return with a good character from Pompeius that he proceeded to exhibit his skill as an orator by accusing some distinguished person--in this case the Antonius who was afterwards consul with Cicero.[297]

To attain the skill in oratory which would enable the pupil to make a successful appearance in the Forum, he must have gone through an elaborate training in the art of rhetoric. Cicero does not tell us whether he himself gave Caelius lessons in rhetoric, or whether he sent him to a professional teacher; he had himself written a treatise on a part of the subject--the _de Inventione_ of 80 B.C., the earliest of all his prose works--and was therefore quite able to give the necessary instruction if he found time to do so. It is not the object of this chapter to explain the meaning of rhetoric as the Graeco-Roman world then understood it, or the theory of a rhetorical education; for this the reader must be referred to Professor Wilkins' little book,[298] or, better still, to the main source of our knowledge, the _Inst.i.tutio Oratoris_ of Quintilian. Something may, however, be said here of the view taken of a rhetorical training by Cicero himself, very clearly expressed in the exordium of the treatise just mentioned, and often more or less directly reiterated in his later and more mature works on oratory.

"After much meditation," he says, "I have been led to the conclusion that wisdom without eloquence is of little use to a state, while eloquence without wisdom is often positively harmful, and never of any value. Thus if a man, abandoning the study of reason and duty, which is always perfectly straight and honourable, spends his whole time in the practice of speaking, he is being brought up to be a hindrance to his own development, and a dangerous citizen." This reminds us of Cato's saying that an orator is "vir bonus dicendi peritus." Less strongly expressed, the same view is also found in the exordium of another and more mature treatise on rhetoric, by an author whose name is unknown, written a year or two before that of Cicero: "Non enim parum in se fructus habet copia dicendi et commoditas orationis, si recta intelligentia et definita animi moderatione gubernetur."[299]

We may a.s.sume that in Cicero's early years the best men felt that the rhetorical art, if it were to be of real value to the individual and the state, must be used with discretion, and accompanied by high aims and upright conduct.

Yet within a generation of the date when these wise words were written, the letters of Caelius show us that the art was used utterly without discretion, and to the detriment both of state and individual.

The high ideal of culture and conduct had been lost in the actual practice of oratory, in a degenerate age, full of petty ambitions and animosities. We ourselves know only too well how a thing good in itself as a means is apt to lose its value if raised into the place of an end;--how the young mind is apt to elevate cricket, football, golf, into the main object of all human activity. So it was with rhetoric; it was the indispensable acquirement to enable a man to enjoy thoroughly the game in the Forum, and thus in education it became the staple commodity. The actual process of acquiring it was no doubt an excellent intellectual exercise,--the learning rules of composition, the exercises in applying these rules, i.e. the writing of themes or essays (proposita, communes loci), in which the pupil had "to find and arrange his own facts,"[300] and then the declamatio, or exercise in actual speaking on a given subject, which in Cicero's day was called causa, and was later known as controversia.[301] Such practice must have brought out much talent and ingenuity, like that of our own debating societies at school and college. But there were two great defects in it. First, as Professor Wilkins points out, the subjects of declamation were too often out of all relation to real life, e.g.

taken from the Greek mythology; or if less barren than usual, were far more commonplace and flat than those of our debating societies. To harangue on the question whether the life of a lawyer or a soldier is the best, is hardly so inspiring as to debate a question of the day about Ireland or India, which educates in living fact as well as in the rules of the orator's art. Secondly, the whole aim and object of this "finis.h.i.+ng" portion of a boy's education was a false one. Even the excellent Quintilian, the best of all Roman teachers, believed that the statesman (civilis vir) and the orator are identical: that the statesman must be vir bonus because the vir bonus makes the best orator; that he should be sapiens for the same reason.[302] And the object of oratory is "id agere, ut iudici quae proposita fuerint, vera et honesta _videantur_":[303] i.e. the object is not truth, but persuasion. We might get an idea of how such a training would fail in forming character, if we could imagine all our liberal education subordinated to the practice of journalism. But fortunately for us, in this scientific age, words and the use of words no longer serve as the basis of education or as the chief nurture of young life. We need to see facts, to understand causes, to distinguish objective truth from truth reflected in books. But the perfect education must be a skilful mingling of the two methods; and it may be as well to take care that we do not lose contact with the best thoughts of the best men, because they are contained in the literature we show some signs of neglecting.

We may say of science what Cicero said of rhetoric, that it cannot do without sapientia.

Of schools of philosophy I have already said something in the last chapter, and as the study of philosophy was hardly a part of the regular curriculum of education properly so called, I shall pa.s.s it over here. The philosopher was usually to be found in wealthy houses, and if he were a wholesome person, and not a Philodemus, he might a.s.suredly exercise a good influence on a young man. Or a youth might go to Athens or Rhodes or to some other Greek city, to attend the lectures of some famous professor. Cicero heard Phaedrus the Epicurean at Rome and then Philo the Academician, who had a lasting influence on his pupil, and then, at the age of twenty-seven, went to Greece for two years, studying at Athens, Rhodes, and elsewhere. Caesar also went to Rhodes, and he and Cicero both attended the lectures of Molo in rhetoric, in which study, as well as in philosophy, lectures were to be heard in all the great Greek cities.[304] Cicero sent his own son to "the University in Athens" at the age of twenty, giving him an ample allowance and doubtless much good advice. The young man soon outran his allowance and got into debt; the good advice he seems to have failed to utilise, and in fact gave his father considerable anxiety.

The following letter, which seems to show that a youth who had excellent opportunities might still be lacking in principle and self-control, is the only one which survives of the letters of undergraduates of that day. It was written by the young Cicero, after he had repented and undertaken to reform, not to his father himself, but to the faithful friend and freedman of his father, Tiro, who afterwards edited the collection of letters in which he inserted it.[305] It is on the whole a pleasing letter, and seems to show real affection for Tiro, who had known the writer from his infancy. It is a little odd in the choice of words, perhaps a trifle rhetorical. The reader shall be left to decide for himself whether it is perfectly straight and genuine. In any case it may aptly conclude this chapter.

"I had been anxiously expecting letter-carriers day after day, when at last they arrived forty-six days after they left you. Their arrival was most welcome to me. I took the greatest possible pleasure in the letter of the kindest and best beloved of fathers, but your own delightful letter put the finis.h.i.+ng touch to my joy. So I no longer repent of dropping letter-writing for a time, but am rather glad I did so, for my silence has brought me a great reward in your kindness. I am very glad indeed that you accepted my excuse without hesitation.

"I am sure, my dearest Tiro, that the reports about me which reach you answer your best wishes and hopes. I will make them good, and I will do my best that this beginning of a good report about me may daily be repeated. So you may with perfect confidence fulfil your promise of being the trumpeter (buccinator) of my reputation. For the errors of my youth have caused me so much remorse and suffering, that it is not only my heart that shrinks from what I did--my very ears abhor the mention of it. I know for a fact that you have shared my trouble and sorrow, and I don't wonder; you always wished me to do well not only for my sake but for your own. So as I have been the means of giving you pain, I will now take care that you shall feel double joy on my account.

"Let me tell you that my attachment to Cratippus is that of a son rather than a pupil: I enjoy his lectures, but I am especially charmed by his delightful manners. I spend whole days with him, and often part of the night, for I get him to dine with me as often as I can. We have grown so intimate that he often drops in upon us unexpectedly while we are at dinner, lays aside the stiff air of a philosopher, and joins in our jests with the greatest good will. He is such a man, so delightful, so distinguished, that you ought to make his acquaintance as soon as ever you can. As for Bruttius, I never let him leave me.

He is a man of strict and moral life, as well as being the most delightful company. Surely it is not necessary that in our daily literary studies there should never be any fun at all. I have taken a lodging close to him, and as far as I can with my pittance I subsidise his narrow means. I have also begun practising declamation in Greek with Ca.s.sius; in Latin I like having my practice with Bruttius. My intimate friends and daily company are those whom Cratippus brought with him from Mitylene,--good scholars, of whom he has the highest opinion. I also see a great deal of Epicrates the leading man at Athens, and Leonides, and people of that sort. So now you know how I am going on.

"You say something in your letter about Gorgias. The fact is that I found him very useful in my daily practice of declamation, but I put my father's injunctions before everything else, and he had written telling me to give up Gorgias at once. I wouldn't s.h.i.+lly-shally about it, for fear my making a fuss might put some suspicion in my father's head. Moreover it occurred to me that it would be offensive for me to express an opinion on a decision of my father's. However, your interest and advice are welcome and acceptable.

"Your apology for want of time I readily accept, for I know how busy you always are. I am very glad you have bought an estate, and you have my best wishes for the success of your purchase. Don't be surprised at my congratulations coming at this point in my letter, for it was at the corresponding point in yours that you told me of this. You must drop your city manners (urbanitates); you are a 'rusticus Roma.n.u.s!'

How clearly I see your dearest face before me at this moment! I seem to see you buying things for the farm, talking to your bailiff, saving the seeds at dessert in your cloak. But as to the matter of money, I am sorry I was not there to help you. Don't doubt, my dear Tiro, about my helping you in the future, if fortune will but stand by me, especially as I know that this estate has been bought for our mutual advantage. As to my commissions about which you are taking trouble, many thanks! I beg you to send me a secretary at the first opportunity, if possible a Greek: for he will save me much trouble in copying out notes. Above all, take care of your health, that we may have some literary talk together some day. I commend Anteros to you.

Adieu."

CHAPTER VII

THE SLAVE POPULATION

In the last age of the Republic the employment of slave labour reached its high-water mark in ancient history.[306] We have already met with evidence of this in examining the life of the upper cla.s.ses; in the present chapter we must try to sketch, first, the conditions under which it was possible for such a vast slave system to arise and flourish, and secondly, the economical and ethical results of it both in city and country. The subject is indeed far too large and complicated to be treated in a single short chapter, but our object throughout this book is only to give such a picture of society in general as may tempt a student to further and more exact inquiry.

We have seen that the two upper cla.s.ses of society were engaged in business of various kinds, and especially in banking and carrying out public contracts, or in the work of government, and in Italian agriculture. All this business, public and private, called for a vast amount of labor, and in part, of skilled labour; the great men provided the capital, but the details of the work, as it had gradually developed since the war with Hannibal, created a demand for workmen of every kind such as had never before been known in the Graeco-Roman world. Clerks, accountants, messengers, as well as operatives, were wanted both by the Government and by private capitalists. In the households of the rich the great increase of wealth and luxury had led to a constant demand for helps of all kinds, each with a certain amount of skill in his own particular department; and on the estates in the country, which were steadily growing bigger, and were tending to be worked more and more on capitalistic lines, labour, both skilled and unskilled, was increasingly required. Thus the demand for labour was abnormally great, and had been created with abnormal rapidity, and the supply could not possibly be provided by the free population alone. The lower cla.s.ses of city and country were not suited to the work wanted, either by capacity or inclination. It was not for a free Roman to be at the beck and call of an employer, like the clerks and underlings of to-day, or to act as servant in a great household; and for a great part of the necessary work he was not sufficiently well educated. Far less was it possible for him to work on the great cattle-runs. And the State wanted the best years of his life for service in the army, which, as has been well remarked, was the real industry of the Roman freeman. But luckily in one sense, and in another unluckily, for Rome, there was an endless supply of labour to be had, of every quality and capacity, for the very same abnormal circ.u.mstances which had created the demand also provided the supply.

The great wars and the wealth accruing from them in various ways had produced a capitalist cla.s.s in need of labour, and also created a slave-market on a scale such as the world has never known before or since.

Ever since the time of Alexander and the wars of his successors with each other and their neighbours, it is probable that the supply of captives sold as slaves had been increasing; and in the second century B.C. the little island of Delos had come to be used as a convenient centre for the slave trade. Strabo tells us in a well-known pa.s.sage that 10,000 slaves might be sold there in a single day.[307] But Rome herself was in the time of Cicero the great emporium for slaves; the wars which were most productive of prisoners had been for long in the centre and the west of the Mediterranean basin. All armies sent out from Rome were accompanied by speculators in this trade, who bought the captives as they were put up to auction after a battle, and then undertook the transport to Rome of all who were suited for employment in Italy or were not bought up in the province which was the seat of war. The enormous number of slaves thus made available, even if we make allowance for the uncertainty of the numbers as they have come down to us, surpa.s.ses all belief; we may take a few examples, sufficient to give some idea of a practice which had lasting and lamentable results on Roman society.

After the campaign of Pydna and the overthrow of the Macedonian kingdom, Aemilius Paullus, one of the most humane of Romans, sold into slavery, under orders from the senate, 150,000 free inhabitants of communities in Epirus which had sided with Perseus in the war.[308]

After the war with the Cimbri and Teutones, 90,000 of the latter and 60,000 of the former are said to have been sold;[309] and though the numbers may be open to suspicion, as they amount again to 150,000, the fact of an enormous capture is beyond question. Caesar, like Aemilius Paullus one of the most humane of Romans, tells us himself that on a single occasion, the capture of the Aduatuci, he sold 53,000 prisoners on the spot.[310] And of course every war, whether great or small, while it diminished the free population by slaughter, pestilence, or capture, added to the number of slaves. Cicero himself, after his campaign in Cilicia and the capture of the hill stronghold Pindonissus, did of course as all other commanders did; we catch a glimpse of the process in a letter to Atticus: "mancipia venibant Saturnalibus tertiis."[311] It is hardly necessary to point out that we should be getting our historical perspective quite wrong if we allowed ourselves to expect in these cultured Roman generals any sign of compa.s.sion for their victims; it was a part of their mental inheritance to look on men who had surrendered as simply booty, the property of the victors; Roman captives would meet with the same fate, and even for them little pity was ever felt. When Caesar in 49 within a few months dismissed two surrendered armies of Roman soldiers, once at Corfinium and again in Spain, he was doubtless acting from motives of policy, but the enslavement of Roman citizens by their fellows would, we may hope, have been repugnant to him, if not to his own soldiers.[312]

War then was the princ.i.p.al source of the supply of slaves, but it was not the only one. When a slave-trade is in full swing, it will be fostered in all possible ways. Brigandage and kidnapping were rife all over the Empire and in the countries beyond its borders in the disturbed times with which we are dealing. The pirates of Cilicia, until they were suppressed by Pompeius in 66, swarmed all over the Mediterranean, and snapped up victims by raids even on the coasts of Italy, selling them in the market at Delos without hindrance. Cicero, in his speech in support of the appointment of Pompey, mentions that well-born children had been carried off from Misenum under the very eyes of a Roman praetor.[313] Caesar himself was taken by them when a young man, and only escaped with difficulty. In Italy itself, where there was no police protection until Augustus took the matter in hand, kidnapping was by no means unknown; the _gra.s.satores_, as they were called, often slaves escaped from the prisons of the great estates, haunted the public roads, and many a traveller disappeared in this way and pa.s.sed the rest of his life in a slave-prison.[314] Varro, in describing the sort of slaves best suited for work on the great sheep-runs, says that they should be such as are strong enough to defend the flocks from wild beasts and brigands--the latter doubtless quite as ready to seize human beings as sheep and cattle. And slave-merchants seem to have been constantly carrying on their trade in regions where no war was going on, and where desirable slaves could be procured; the kingdoms of Asia Minor were ransacked by them, and when Marius asked Nicomedes king of Bithynia for soldiers during the struggle with the Cimbri, the answer he got was that there were none to send--the slave-dealers had been at work there.[315] Every one will remember the line of Horace in which he calls one of these wretches a "king of Cappadocia."[316]

There were two other sources of the slave supply of which however little need be said here, as the contribution they made was comparatively small. First, slaves were bred from slaves, and on rural estates this was frequently done as a matter of business.[317] Varro recommends the practice in the large sheep-farms,[318] under certain conditions; and some well-known lines of Horace suggest that on smaller farms, where a better cla.s.s of slaves would be required, these home-bred ones were looked on as the mark of a rich house, "ditis examen domus."[319] Secondly, a certain number of slaves had become such under the law of debt. This was a common source of slavery in the early periods of Roman history, but in Cicero's day we cannot speak of it with confidence. We have noticed the cry of the distressed freemen of the city in the conspiracy of Catiline, which looks as though the old law were still put in force; and in the country there are signs that small owners who had borrowed from large ones were in Varro's time in some modified condition of slavery,[320] surrendering their labour in lieu of payment. But all these internal sources of slavery are as nothing compared with the supply created by war and the slave-trade.

This supply being thus practically unlimited, prices ran comparatively low, and no Roman of any considerable means at all need be, or was, entirely without slaves. He had only to go, or to send his agent, to one of the city slave-markets, such as the temple of Castor,[321]

where the slave-agents (mangones) exhibited their "goods" under the supervision of the aediles; there he could pick out exactly the kind of slave he wanted at any price from the equivalent of 10 upwards.