THE VICES AND VIRTUES OF ROME 97 



that the proletariat of Rome, as well as the rich, 

 profited immensely by slavery. The workers were 

 supplied with food without payment because it was 

 produced by slave-labour far away ; and many other 

 of their extraordinary privileges were made possible 

 only by slave-labour. 



The evolution of slavery is so essential a point in 

 our story that a few further words must be said on it. 

 Every ancient civilization enslaved the prisoners who 

 were taken in war. This was supposed to be a moral 

 improvement, as in barbarous days they had been put 

 to death. Rome, with its centuries of warfare, had 

 a prodigious number of such slaves. They were twice 

 as numerous as free men in Italy, and in a higher 

 proportion still in the whole Empire. At Rome itself 

 they were chiefly domestic, and were not, as a rule, 

 cruelly treated. In the agricultural provinces they 

 were terribly worked, and were housed like cattle ; 

 but in the capital cruelty was not nearly so common 

 as is often represented. The satirist Juvenal, whose 

 stories are not taken seriously by modern historians, 

 is responsible for a good deal of the libel. One has 

 only to reflect for a moment on the story of slaves 

 being thrown to the fishes by angry mistresses. There 

 is no fish in Europe — there never was — that will eat 

 a man ; and the fish in the Roman domestic fish-pond 

 were generally carp. But in the age of demoralization 

 by luxury and parasitism there were masters and 

 mistresses who abused the despotic right which the 

 old law gave. Before the end of the first century B.C. 

 this cruelty was checked by new laws, and the slave 

 was granted the right of appeal to the court. The 

 Stoics, who won great influence in Rome, repeatedly 

 pointed out that the slaves were men and brothers. 



