The canker of slavery ignored 323 



the influence of Pliny, who made him a present of money when he set 

 out, apparently for Rome, to take up his office. Nothing more was 

 ever heard of him. But Pliny adds that in this case, as in the one just 

 reported, the slaves escorting their master also disappeared. Therefore 

 he leaves it an open question, whether 1 the slaves murdered their 

 master and escaped undetected, or whether the whole party on either 

 occasion were murdered by a robber band. The lack of a regular con- 

 stabulary in Italy had been, and still was, a grave defect in Roman 

 administration. To account for this neglect we must remember that 

 rich men always relied on their slave-escort for protection. If the poor 

 man travelled, he was not worth 3 robbing ; his danger was the chance 

 of being kidnapped and sold for a slave, and we have seen that some 

 of the early emperors tried to put down this abuse. The danger to a 

 traveller from his own slaves was perhaps greater on a journey than 

 at home ; but it was of the same kind, inseparable from slavery, and 

 was most cruelly dealt with by the law. Meanwhile brigandage seems 

 never to have been thoroughly extinguished in Italy or the Provinces 3 . 

 In spite of these drawbacks to life and movement in a great slave- 

 holding community, there is nothing that strikes a reader more in 

 Pliny's letters than the easy acceptance of present conditions. Under 

 Trajan the empire seemed so secure and strong, that unpleasant oc- 

 currences could be regarded as only of local importance. That the 

 free population of Italy could no longer defend in arms what their 

 forefathers had won, was manifest. But custom was making it seem 

 natural to rely on armies raised in the Provinces; all the more so per- 

 haps as emperors were being supplied by Spain. That slavery itself 

 was one of the cankers that were eating out the vitality of the Roman 

 empire, does not seem to have occurred to Pliny or other writers of 

 the day. Philosophers had got so far as to protest against its worst 

 abuses and vindicate the claims of a common humanity. Christian 

 apostles, in the circles reached by them, preached also obedience 4 and 

 an honesty above eye-service as the virtues of a slave. But in both of 

 these contrasted doctrines the teachers were mainly if not exclusively 

 thinking of domestics, not of farm-hands. There was however one 

 imperial department in which the distinction between slave and free 

 still rigidly followed old traditional rules; and it was one much more 

 likely to have to deal with cases of rustic slaves than of domestics. 

 This was the army. The immemorial rule, that no slave could be a 

 soldier, had never been broken save under the pressure of a few great 



1 interceptusne sit a suis an cunt suis dubium. * Cf Juvenal X 19-22. 



3 Pronto, when appointed to govern Asia, one of the most peaceful Provinces, at once 

 looked out for a military officer to deal with latrones. Fronto p 169 Naber. 



4 Paul Ephes 6 5 foil, Coloss 3 22 foil, I Pet 2 18 foil. 



21 2 



