Pliny on slavery 285 



the dalesmen, other than the passages of such writers as Horace and 

 Juvenal, who refer to them as rustic folk a sojourn among whom is a 

 refreshing experience after the noise and bustle of Rome. For it seems 

 certain that in these upland retreats there survived whatever was left 

 of genuine Italian life, and we should like to be able to form some 

 notion of its quantity ; that is, whether the population of freemen on 

 small holdings, living mostly on the produce of their own land, was 

 numerically an important element in the total population of Italy. 

 That great stretches of hill-forest were in regular use simply as summer 

 pastures, and that the bulk of the arable lands were held in great 

 estates, and slaves employed in both departments, we hear in weari- 

 some iteration. But to get a true picture of the country as a whole is, 

 in the absence of statistics, not possible. 



I have not been able to discover in Pliny any definite repugnance 

 to slavery as a system. It is true that he is alive to the evils of the 

 domestic slavery prevalent in his day. The brigades of slaves (man- 

 cipiorum legiones) 1 filling the mansions of the rich, pilfering at every 

 turn, so that nothing is safe unless put under lock and seal, are a 

 nuisance and a demoralizing influence. They are an alien throng (turba 

 externd) in a Roman household; a sad contrast 2 to the olden time, 

 when each family had its one slave, attached to his master's clan, when 

 the whole household lived in common, and nothing had to be locked 

 up. But this is only one of Pliny's moralizing outbreaks, and it is the 

 abuse and overgrowth of slavery, not slavery in itself, that he is de- 

 nouncing. In speaking of agriculture he says 'to have farms cultivated 

 by slave-gangs 3 is a most evil thing, as indeed are all acts performed by 

 those who have no hope.' Here the comparative inefficiency of workers 

 who see no prospect of bettering their condition is plainly recognized ; 

 but it is the economic defect, not the outrage on a common humanity, 

 that inspires the consciously futile protest. And at the very end of 

 his great book, when he breaks out into a farewell panegyric 4 on Italy, 

 and enumerates the various elements of her preeminence among the 

 countries of the world, he includes the supply of slave-labour 6 in the 

 list. Spain perhaps comes next, but here too the organized employ- 

 ment 6 of slaves is one of the facts that are adduced to justify her praise. 

 Now I do not imagine that Pliny was a hard unkindly man. But he 

 evidently accepted slavery as an established institution, one of the 



1 NH xxxin 26-7. 



2 cditer apud antiques singttli Marcipores Luciporesve dominorum gentiles omnem victum 

 in promiscuo habebant. 



3 NHwill 36 coli rura ab ergastulis pessimum est, et quicquid agitur a desperantibus. 



4 NH xxxvn 201-3. 



5 principatum naturae optinet . . .viris feminis ducibus militibus servitiis . . .etc. 



6 servorum exercitio. 



