Among the Greeks slavery existed from the heroic timea, and the purchase and use of slaves are repeatedly mentioned by Homer. The labours of husbandry were performed in some instances by poor free men for hire, but in most places, especially in the Doric states, by a class of bondmen, the descendants of the older inhabitants of the country, resembling the serfs of the middle ages, who lived upon and cultivated the lands which the conquering race had appropriated to themselves; they paid a rent to the respective proprietors, whom they also attended in war. They could not be put to death without trial, nor be sold out of the country, nor separated from their families; they could acquire property, and were often richer than their masters. Such were the Clarotec of Crete, the Penestie of Thessaly Proper, and the Helots of Sparta, who must not be confounded with the Perked, or country inhabitants of Laconica in general, who were political sub jects of the Doric community of Sparta, without however being bondmen. In the colonies of the Dorians beyond the limits of Greece, the condition of the conquered natives was often more degraded than that of the bondmen of the parent states, because the former were not Greeks, but barbarians, and they were reduced to the condition of slaves. Such was the case of the Kallirioi or Kalli kurioi of Syracuse, and of the native Bithynians at Byzantium. At Hamden in Pontus, the Mariandyni submitted to the Greeks on con dition that they should not be sold beyond the borders, and that they should pay a fixed tribute to the ruling race.
The Done states of Greece had few purchased slaves, but Athens, Corinth, and other commercial states had a large number, who were mostly natives of barbarous countries. The slave population in Attica has been variously estimated as to numbers, and it varied of course considerably at different periods ; but it appears that in Athens, at least in the time of its greatest power, they were much more numerous than the freemen. From a fragment of Hyperides preserved by Suidas :r. artipeoloare), the number of slaves appears to have been at one 150,000, who were employed in the fields and mines of Attica alone. Even the poorer citizens had a slave for their household affair*. The wealthier citizens had as many as fifty slaves to each family, and some had more. We read of philosophers keeping ten alevese There were private slaves belonging to fatuities, and public 'laves belonging to the community or state. The latter were employed on board the fleet in the docks and arsenal, and in the construction of • publie buildings and roads.
Slaves were dealt with like any other property : they worked either on their master's account or on their own, io which latter case they paid a certain sum to their master ; or they were let out on hire as servants or workmen, or sent to serve in the navy of the state, the master receiving payment for their services. Mines were worked by slaves, some of whein belonged to the lessees of the mitt; and the rest were hired from the great slave proprietors, to whom the lessees paid a rent of so much a head, besides providing for the maintenance of the slave, which was no great matter. They worked in chains, and
many of them died from the effect of the unwholesome atmosphere. Nicias the elder had 1000 slaves In the mines of Laurium ; other' bad several hundreds, whom they let to the contractors for an obolus a day each. At one time the mining slaves of Attica murdered their guards, took possessiou of the fortifications of Sunium, and ravaged the surrounding country. (Fragment of Posidonius's Continuation of Polybiva; see Boeckh's ' Public Economy of Athena,' b. i.) The thirty.two or thirty-three iromworkera or sword-cutlers of Demos. thenes annually produced a net profit of thirty mime, their purchase value being 190 mime; whilst his twenty chair.tuakers, whose value was estimated at 40 mime, brought iu a net profit of 12 mime. (Demosthenes' Against Aphobne; L) The ancients were so habituated to the sight of slavery, that none of the Greek philosophers make any ubjection to its existence. Plato, in his' Perfect State, desires only that no Greeks should be made slaves.
The Etruscans and other ancient Italian nations had as is proved by those of Vulsinii revolting againt their mestere, and by tho tradition that the Bruttii were runaway slaves of the Lucanians. The Campanian' had both slaves and gladiators previous to the Roman con quest. But the Romans, by their system of continual war, caused an enormous infirm of slaves into Italy, where the slave population at last nearly superseded the free labourers.
The Roman system of slavery had peculiarities which distinguished it from that of Greece. The Greeks considered slavery to be founded on permanent diversities in the races of men. (Aristotle, Polit.,' i. 5.) The Romans admitted in principle that all men were originally free (` Inatit.,' i., tit. 2) by natural law (jure naturali), and they ascribed the power of masters over their slaves entirely to the will of society, to the " jus geutium." if the slaves were captives taken in war, whom the conquerors, instead of killing them, as they might have done, spared for the purpose of selling them, or to the " pus civile," when a man of full age sold himself. It was a rule of Roman law, that the offspring of a slave woman fullowed the condition of the mother. (' Instit tit. 3.) Emancipation was much more frequent at Rome than in Greece : the emancipated slave became a freedman (libertus), but whether he became a Roman citizen, a Latinus, or a Dediticius, depended on circumstances. If the manumitted slave was above thirty years of age, if he was the Quiritarian property of his mantnittor, and if he was manumitted in due form, he became a Roman citizen. (Gaius, i. 17.) At Athens, on the contrary, emancipation from the dominion of the master was seldom followed by the privileges of citizenship even to a limited extent, and these privileges could only be conferred by public authority. It is true, that at Rome, under the empire, from the enactment of the Lex /Elia Sentia, passed in the time of Augustus, there were restrictions, in point of number, upon the master's power of freeing his bondmen and raising them to the rank of Roman citizens ; still in every age there was a prospect to the slave of being able to obtain his freedom.