Slavery essentially domestic 137 



slavery was unknown in the age and country of which they speak. 

 And the contrary is the case. The dawn of Roman history shews us a 

 people already advanced in civilization to the stage of family and clan 

 organization, and the tradition allows for the presence of the slave in 

 the familia from the first. True, he does not appear as the despised 

 human chattel of later times, but as a man whom misfortune has placed 

 in bondage. His master is aware that fortune may turn, and that his 

 bondman is quite capable of resuming his former position if restored 

 in freedom to his native home. The slave seems to be normally an 

 Italian 1 , a captive in some war; he may have passed by sale from one 

 owner to another. But he is not a mere foreign animal, good bad or 

 indifferent, a doubtful purchase from a roguish dealer. He bears a 

 name 2 that connects him with his master, Publipor Lucipor Marcipor 

 Olipor and so on, formed by adding the suffix por to the forename of 

 Publius Lucius Marcus or Aulus. But, granting that all households 

 might include a slave or two, and that many so did, also that agriculture 

 was a common and honourable pursuit, is it likely that a farming 

 owner would himself plough or dig and leave his slave 3 to look on? 

 I conclude therefore that the age was one in which agriculture prevailed 

 and that the ordinary farmer worked himself and employed slave- 

 labour side by side with his own so far as his means allowed. All was 

 on a small scale. Passages of Livy or Dionysius that imply the presence 

 of great slave-gangs, and desertions on a large scale in time of war are 

 falsely coloured by 'anticipation' of phenomena well known from the 

 experience of more recent times. But, on however small a scale, slavery 

 was there. Until there came an impulse of an 'industrial' kind, 

 prompting men to engage in wholesale production for a large market, 

 the slave remained essentially a domestic, bearing a considerable share 

 of the family labours, whatever the nature of those labours might be. 

 As there is no difficulty in believing that Cincinnatus and others of 

 his type in the fifth century BC worked with slaves beside them, so it 

 is evident that Curius and Fabricius in the first half of the third century 

 are meant to illustrate the same frugal life and solid patriotism. In 

 both cases the story lays particular stress on the hero's incorruptibility 

 and cheerful endurance of poverty. A well-known scene 4 represents 

 Curius at his rustic villa eating a dinner of herbs and refusing a gift of 

 gold from Samnite ambassadors. He is an honest farmer-citizen of the 

 good old sort. Fabricius is another, famed especially for his calm 



1 Liv ii 22 5-7. 



2 Varro sat Men fr 59 and title of his satire Marcipor. Quintilian I 4 26, Festus p 306 

 L = 257 M Marcipor Oppii in title of Plaut Stichus. Sallust hist fr ill 99 Maurenbrecher. 

 Inscriptions CIL I 1076, 1034, 1386, Dessau 7822-3. For Pliny see below. 



8 Argument as in Luke's gospel 1 7 7-9. 

 4 Cic Cato mat 55-6, etc. 



