Gracchi Marius and Sulla | Page 6

to be to keep his negro.
[Sidenote: Failure of previous legislation.] On the whole, it is clear that
legislation previous to this period had not diminished agrarian
grievances, and it is clear also why these grievances were so sorely felt.
The general tendency at Rome and throughout Italy was towards a
division of society into two classes--the very rich and the very poor, a

tendency which increased so fast that not many years later it was said
that out of some 400,000 men at Rome only 2,000 could, in spite of the
city being notoriously the centre to which the world's wealth gravitated,
be called really rich men. To any patriot the progressive extinction of
small land-owners must have seemed piteous in itself and menacing to
the life of the State. On the other hand, the poor had always one glaring
act of robbery to cast in the teeth of the rich. A sanguine tribune might
hope permanently to check a growing evil by fresh supplies of free
labour. His poor partisan again had a direct pecuniary interest in getting
the land. Selfish and philanthropic motives therefore went hand in hand,
and in advocating the distribution of land a statesman would be sure of
enlisting the sympathies of needy Italians, even more than those of the
better-provided-for poor of Rome.
[Sidenote: Roman slavery.] Incidental mention has been made of the
condition of the slaves in Italy. It was the sight of the slave-gangs
which partly at least roused Tiberius Gracchus to action, and some
remarks on Roman slavery follow naturally an enquiry into the nature
of the public land. The most terrible characteristic of slavery is that it
blights not only the unhappy slaves themselves, but their owners and
the land where they live. It is an absolutely unmitigated evil. As Roman
conquests multiplied and luxury increased, enormous fortunes became
more common, and the demand for slaves increased also. Ten thousand
are said to have been landed and sold at Delos in one day. What
proportion the slave population of Italy bore to the free at the time of
the Gracchi we cannot say. It has been placed as low as 4 per cent., but
the probability is that it was far greater. [Sidenote: Slave labour
universally employed.] In trades, mining, grazing, levying of revenue,
and every field of speculation, slave-labour was universally employed.
If it is certain that even unenfranchised Italians, however poor, could be
made to serve in the Roman army, it was a proprietor's direct interest
from that point of view to employ slaves, of whose services he could
not be deprived.
[Sidenote: Whence the slaves came. Their treatment.] A vast impetus
had been given to the slave-trade at the time of the conquest of
Macedonia, about thirty-five years before our period. The great

slave-producing countries were those bordering on the
Mediterranean--Africa, Asia, Spain, &c. An organized system of
man-hunting supplied the Roman markets, and slave-dealers were part
of the ordinary retinue of a Roman army. When a batch of slaves
reached its destination they were kept in a pen till bought. Those
bought for domestic service would no doubt be best off, and the
cunning, mischievous rogue, the ally of the young against the old
master of whom we read in Roman comedy, if he does not come up to
our ideal of what a man should be, does not seem to have been
physically very wretched. Even here, however, we see how degraded a
thing a slave was, and the frequent threats of torture prove how utterly
he was at the mercy of a cruel master's caprice. We know, too, that
when a master was arraigned on a criminal charge, the first thing done
to prove his guilt was to torture his slaves. But just as in America the
popular figure of the oily, lazy, jocular negro, brimming over with
grotesque good-humour and screening himself in the weakness of an
indulgent master, merely served to brighten a picture of which the
horrible plantation system was the dark background; so at Rome no
instances of individual indulgence were a set-off against the monstrous
barbarities which in the end brought about their own punishment, and
the ruin of the Republic. [Sidenote: Dread inspired by the prospect of
Roman slavery.] Frequent stories attest the horrors of Roman slavery
felt by conquered nations. We read often of individuals, and sometimes
of whole towns, committing suicide sooner than fall into the
conquerors' hands. Sometimes slaves slew their dealers, sometimes one
another. A boy in Spain killed his three sisters and starved himself to
avoid slavery. Women killed their children with the same object. If, as
it is asserted, the plantation-system was not yet introduced into Italy,
such stories, and the desperate out-breaks, and almost incredibly
merciless suppression of slave revolts, prove that