SLAVERY. A slave is an individual who is the property, or at the disposal of another, who has a right to employ or treat him as he pleases. Such is the state of the slave in the most absolute sense of the term; but slavery has been subjected to innumer able limitations and modifications.
Slavery probably arose at an early period of the world's history out of the accident of capture in war. Savages, in place of massacring their captives, found it more profit able to keep them in servitude. All the ancient oriental nations of whom we have any records, including the Jews, had their slaves. The Hebrews were authorized by their law to possess slaves, not only of other races, but of their own nation. The latter were gen erally insolvent debtors, who had sold themselves through poverty, or thieves who lacked the means of making restitution; and the law dealt with them far more leniently than with stranger slaves. They might be redeemed; and if not redeemed, became free in the space of seven years from the beginning of their servitude; besides which, there was, every fiftieth year, a general emancipation of native slaves.
Slavery existed in ancient Greece; in the Homeric poems, it is the ordinary destiny of prisoners of war; and the practice of kidnapping slaves is also recognized—Ulysses himself narrowly escaping a fate of this kind. Nonp of the Greek philosophers con sidered the condition of slavery objectionable on the score of morals. Aristotle defends its justice on the ground of a diversity of race, dividing mankind into the free and the slaves by nature; while Plato only desires that no Greeks should be made slaves. One class of the Greek slaves were the descendants of an earlier and conquered race of inhabitants, who cultivated the land which their masters had appropriated, paid rent for it, and attended their masters in -war. Such were the Helots in Sparta, the Penestm in Thessaly, the Bithynians at Byzantium, etc., who were more favorably dealt with than other slaves, their condition somewhat resembling that of the' serfs of the middle ages. They could not be sold out of the country, or separated from their families, and were even capable of acquiring property. Domestic slaves obtained by purchase were the unrestricted property of their owners, who could dispose of them at pleasure. In Athens, Corinth, and the other commercial states, they were very numerous, and mostly barbarians. They were employed partly in domestic service, as bakers, cooks, tailors, or in other trades, and in mines and manufactories; and_ their labor was the means by which the owner obtained profit for his outlay in their purchase. These slaves were, for the most part, purchased; but few were born in their master's family, partly from the general discouragement of the cohabitation of slaves, and partly from the small number of the female in comparison with the male slaves. An extensive traffic in slaves was carried on by the Greek colonists in Asia Minor with the interior of Asia; and another source of supply arose from the practice common among .Thracian parents of selling their children. In Greece in general, and especially at Athens, slaves were mildly treated, and enjoyed a large share of legal protection. According to Demosthe
nes, a slave at Athens was better off than a free citizen in many other countries.
The Roman condition of slavery differed in some particulars from that of Greece. All men were considered by the Roman jurists to be free by natural law; while slavery was regarded as a state contrary to natural law, but agreeable to the law of nation, when a captive was preserved, instead of being slain (hence the name servus, quasi, servo/am); or agreeable to the civil law, when a free man sold himself. In earlier times, there was no restriction on the master's power of punishing or putting to death his slave; and even at a later period, when the law on this head was much modified, slaves were used with considerable rigor. The estimation in which their lives were held is illustrated by the practice of gladiatorial .combats, as also bS• the conduct of Vedius Pollio, who, in Ale polite age of Augustus, flung such slaves as displeased him into his fish-ponds, to feed his lampreys, and on the matter brought under the emperor's notice, was visited with no severer punishment than the destruction of his ponds. Old and useless slaves were often exposed to starve in an island of the Tiber. Under the empire, the cruelty of masters was in some degree restrained by law. It was enacted, that a man who put to death his Own slave without cause suould be dealt with 'as if the slave had been the property of another; and that if the cruelty of the master was intolerable, he might be compelled to sell the slave. A constitution of Claudius declared the killing of a slave to be murder, and it was also enacted, that in sales of slaves, parents and children, brothers and sisters, should not be separated. A slave could not contract marriage, and no legal relation between him and his children was recognized. The children of a female slave followed the status of their mother. There was various ways in which a slave might be manumitted, but the power of manumission was restricted by law. The harboring of a runaway slave was illegal. The number of slaves in Rome, originally small, was increased much by war and- commerce; and the cultivation of the soil came, in the course of time, to be entirely given up to them. During the later republic and empire, persons in good circumstances kept an immense number of slaves as personal attendants; and the possession of a numerous retinue of domestic slaves was matter of ostentation 200 being no uncommon number for one person. A multitude of slaves were also occu pied in the mechanical arts and the games of the amphitheater. Originally, a slave was incapable of acquiring property, all his acquisitions belonging to his master; but when slavet came to be employed in trade, this condition was mitigated, and it became the practice to allow a slave to consider part of his gains, called his peculium, as his own, ' a stipulation being sometimes made that he should purchase his freedom with his pecu lium, when it amounted to a specific sum.