There was a brisk trade in slaves carried on from the coasts of Africa, the Euxine, Syria, and Asia Minor. The island of Delos was at one time a great mart for slaves, who were imported thi ther by the Cilician pirates. (Strabo, p. 668, Casaub.) The Illyriaus procured numerous slaves for the Italian market, whom they bought or stole from the bar barous tribes in their neighbourhood. But the chief supply of slaves was derived from Asia and Africa. In most coun tries it was customary for indigent pa rents to sell their children to slave-dealers. Criminals were also in certain cases con demned to slavery, like the galley-slaves of our own times.
Both law and custom forbade prisoners taken in civil wars, especially in Italy, to be dealt with as slaves ; and this was perhaps one reason of the wholesale massacres of captives by Sulla and the Triumviri. In the war between the party of Otho and Vitellius, Antonius, who commanded the army of the latter, having take Cremona, ordered that none of the captives should be detained, upon which the soldiers began to kill those who were not privately ransomed by their friends.
In the later period of the empire free born persons of low condition were glad to secure a subsistence by labour on the estates of the great landowners, to which, after a continued residence for thirty years, they and their families be came bound by a tacit agreement under the name of Coloni, Rustici, Adscrip titii, &c. The phrase " serti term," which is applied to them, shows their connection with the coil. They could marry, which slaves could not. Though they bear a considerable resemblance to the serfs and villeins (villani) of the middle ages, yet there are some import ant points of difference and there is no evidence of any historical connection be tween the Coloni and Villani. The sub ject of the Coloni is discussed by Savigny, Ueber den Riimischen Colonat ; Zeit schriftfiir Geschicht. Rechtssoissenschajt, vol. vi.
The customary allowance of food for a slave appears to have been four Roman bushels, "modii," of corn, mostly " far," per month for country slaves, and one Roman libra or pound daily for those in town. Salt and oil were occasionally allowed, as well as weak wine. Neither meat nor vegetables formed part of their regular allowance ; but they got, accord ing to seasons, fruit, such as figs, olives, apples, pears, &c. (Cato, Columella, and Varro.) Labourers and artizans in the country were shut up at night in a house ("ergastulum"), in which each slave ap pears to have had a separate cell. Males were kept apart from females, excepting those whom the master allowed to form temporary connections. Columella ad verts to some distinction between the ergastulum for ordinary labourers and that for ill-behaved slaves, which latter was in fact a prison, often under ground ; but generally speaking the ergastuls in the later times of the republic and under the empire appear to have been no better than prisons in which freemen were sometimes confined after being kidnapped.
The men often worked in chains. The overseers of farms and herdsmen had separate cabins allotted to them. Slaves enjoyed relaxation from toil on certain festivities, such as the Saturnalia.
The number of slaves possessed by the wealthy Romans was enormous. Some individuals are said to have possessed 10,000 slaves. Scaurus possessed above 4000 domestic and as many rustic slaves. In the reign of Augustus, a freedman who had sustained great losses during the civil wars left 4116 slaves, besides other Property A master had, as a general rale, the power of manumitting his slave, and this he could effect in several forms, by yin dicta, Census, or by Testamentum. The Lex Aelia Sentia, as already mentioned, laid various restrictions on manumission. Among other things it prevented persons under twenty years of age from manu mitting a slave except by the Vindicta, and with the approbation of the Con silium, which at Rome consisted of five senators and five Roman equites of legal age (puberes), and in the provinces con sisted of twenty recuperatores, who were Roman citizens. (Galas), i. 20, 38.) The Lex Aelia Sentia also made all manumis sions void which were effected to cheat cre ditors or defraud patrons of their rights. The Lex Furia Caninia, which was passed about A.D. 7, limited the whole number of slaves who could be manumitted by testament to 100, and when a man had fewer than 500 slaves, it determined by a scale the number that he could manumit. This Lex only applied to manumission by testament (Gaius, i. 42, &c.) In the earlier ages of the Republic, slaves were not very numerous, and were chiefly employed in household offices or as mechanics in the towns. But after the con quests of Rome spread beyond the limits of Italy the influx of captives was so great, and their price fell so low, that they were looked upon as a cheap and easily renewed commodity, and treated as such. The condition of the Roman slave, generally speaking, became worse in the later ages of the republic ; and many of the em perors, even some of the worst of them, interfered on behalf of the slave. Au gustus established courts for the trial of slaves who were charged with serious offences, intending thus to supersede arbitrary punishment by the masters, but the law was not made obligatory upon the masters to bring their slaves before the courts, and it was often evaded. By a law passed in the time of Claudius, a master who exposed his sick or infirm slaves forfeited all right over them in the event of their recovery. The Lex Petronia, probably passed in the time of Augustus, or in the reign of Nero, prohibited masters from compelling their slaves to fight with wild beasts, except with the consent of the judicial authorities, and on a sufficient case being made out against the slave.