448 No anti-slavery movement 



was found that in many districts grazing paid better than tillage, and 

 the two could be worked together remuneratively on a large scale. The 

 charge of flocks and herds, shifting their pasture according to seasons, 

 led to employment of able-bodied slaves in a duty responsible and at 

 the same time removed from immediate control for months together. 

 These slave herdsmen, hardy and used to a free life in wild uplands, 

 had to face wolves and robbers, and therefore to bear arms. We need 

 not dwell on the danger from such a class menacing the peace of 

 a country unprotected by rural police. It was real enough. Being 

 slaves, they had nothing but their lives to lose, and their lives it was 

 their owners' interest to protect Meanwhile the unescorted traveller 

 was at their mercy, and any peasants within reach would pay black- 

 mail to escape their raids. Yet nothing was done to get rid of the 

 nuisance and peril of this state of things. Servile risings were clumsily 

 put down with appalling bloodshed, and left to recur. Meanwhile the 

 free population of the countryside diminished, and prosperity could 

 not be restored by new slave-gangs. Such was notoriously the condition 

 of a great part of rural Italy under the later Republic, and contemporary 

 evidence clearly shews that the improvement effected under the Empire 

 was slight. 



Now, when experience had proved the blighting influence of slavery, 

 why was there no movement to do away with the system altogether ? 

 Truth is, there was at present no basis to start from. The moral en- 

 thusiasm, often sincere, that has inspired such movements in modern 

 times, had no effective existence. Moral considerations were almost 

 entirely confined to a section of rich or cultivated society. It was not 

 expected that the common herd should rise above the meanest motives 

 of crude self-interest. The artisan, who either employed, or hoped soon 

 to employ, a slave or two, was not likely to condemn slavery: the 

 parasitic loafer was not likely to welcome a mass of new competitors 

 for the doles and bribes that he undeservedly enjoyed. During the last 

 century of the Roman Republic no opposition to slavery as an institu- 

 tion could have arisen from the urban populace. And the wealthier 

 classes were interested in slavery. Religion did not touch the question. 

 A few scrupulous and thoughtful men might have supported an anti- 

 slavery movement, had there been one ; but we have not the smallest 

 reason to think that any individual ever dreamt of starting humanitarian 

 propaganda on his own account and at his own risk. There was no 

 place in the ancient world for the reformer of this type. Even those 

 leaders whose policy offered advantages to the free masses, such as the 

 Gracchi or some Spartan kings, did not so fare in their enterprises as 

 to encourage imitation. As for appealing to the slaves themselves, it 

 was only desperate adventurers who did so, and that only to use their 



