498 



SLAVE-COAST 



SLAVERY 



towns, however, have secure*! the authority liy local 

 hills. Building for this purpose should ! removed 

 inini the vicinity of habitations and should be 

 substantially built. The walls should lie tiled or 

 cemented, or otherwise rendered impervious to 

 moisture, for a height of at least 6 feet. wood- work 

 should be avoided as much as possible consistent 

 with convenience, and what there is should be well 

 painted and frequently washed. To prevent 

 absorption of the fluids nnd sulmequent decom- 

 position, the floor should lie composed of roughened 

 cement sloping to a channel. In large slaughter- 

 houses the blood is usually contracted for, and is 

 collected in metal pails ami afterwards treated for 

 the manufacture of blood albumen, the residue 

 being dried for manure. Offal should be at once 

 removed from the actual slaughtering-house, and a 

 separate building provided for the washing and 

 preparing of tripe. 



Slave-coast, a division of the coast of Upper 

 Guinea, Africa, extending eastwards from the Gold 

 Coast ( q. v. ) as far as the river Benin, is divided 

 between Germanv, Dahomey, France, and Great 

 Britain. The British portion is treated of under 

 Lagos (q.v.), the (Jerman under Togo (q.v.), and 

 the French under Senegambia (q.v.). 



Slavery, in the fullest sense of the term, 

 implies that the slave is the property or at the dis- 

 posal of another, who has a right to employ or 

 treat him as he pleases ; but the system has been 

 subjected to innumerable limitations and modifica- 

 tions. Slavery probably arose at an early period 

 of the world's history out of the accident of capture 

 in war. Savages, in place of massacring their 

 captives, found it more profitable to keep tnem in 

 servitude. All the ancient oriental nations of 

 whom we have any records, including the Jews, 

 had their slaves. T*he Hebrews were authorised by 

 their law to possess slaves, not only of other races, 

 but of their own nation. The latter were generally 

 insolvent debtors who had sold themselves through 

 poverty or thieves who lacked the means of making 

 restitution ; and the law dealt with them far more 

 leniently than with stranger slaves. They might 

 be redeemed, ami if not redeemed became free in 

 the space of seven years from the beginning of 

 their servitude ; lienides which there was every 

 fiftieth year a general emancipation of native 

 slaves. 



Greek Slaver;/. In the Homeric poems slavery 

 is the ordinary destiny of prisoners of war ; and the 

 practice of kidnapping slaves is also recognised 

 Ulysses himself narrowly escaping a fate of this 

 kind. None of the Greek philosophers considered 

 the condition of slavery objectionable on the score 

 of morals. Aristotle defends its justice on the 

 ground of a diversity of race, dividing man- 

 kind into the free and the slaves by nature : 

 while Plato only desires that no Greeks should 

 be made slaves. One class of Greek slaves were 

 the descendants of an earlier and conquered race 

 of inhabitants, who cultivated the land which their 

 masters had appropriated, paid rent for it, ami 

 attended their masters in war. Such were the 

 Helots in Sparta, the Penestic in Thessaly, the 

 Bithynians at Byzantium, \-e. , who were more 

 favourably dealt with than other slaves, their con- 

 dition somewhat resembling that of the serfs of the 

 middle ages. They could not be sold out of the 

 country or separate! from their families, and were 

 even capable of acquiring property. Slaves obtained 

 by purchase were the unrestricted property of their 

 owners, who could dispose of them at pleasure. In 

 Athens, Corinth, and the other commercial states 

 they were very numerons, and were mostly bar- 

 barians. They were employed partly in domestic 

 ervice (some being ptedagogi, employed to accom- 



pany the lioys to school, &c.), but more as bakers, 

 cooks, tailors, or in other trades, in mines anil 

 manufactories, as labourers on country estates, and 

 as seamen and oarsmen: and their lal>our was the 

 means by which the owner obtained profit for his 

 outlay in their purchase. These slaves were for 

 the most part purchased ; but many were born in 

 their master's family. The Athenian state em- 

 ployed public slaves as police, as soldiers, public 

 criers, gaolers, &c. An exten-ixe tnitlic in slaves 

 was carried on by the (lieek colonists in Asia 

 Minor witli the interior of Asia; another source 

 of supjily arose from the practice common among 

 Thracian parents of selling their children. In 

 Greece in general, and especially at Athens, slaves 

 were mildly treated, and enjoyed a large share of 

 legal protection. According to Demosthenes, a 

 slave at Athens was l>etter off than a free citizen 

 in many other countries. Manumission- xvere fre- 

 quent. A master could obtain damages if a slave 

 was maltreated. The slave was not allowed to 

 wear his hair long, was prevented from entering 

 the gymnasia and public assemblies, but bad access 

 to temples and festivals. In the palmy days of the 

 Athenian state there were, according to \Vallon, 

 200,000 slax-ea in Attica; about three times the 

 number of freemen ! 



Roman Slurcry differed in some particulars from 

 that of Greece. All men were considered by the 

 lloman jurists to be free by natural laxv ; while 

 slavery was regarded as a state contrary to natural 

 law, but agreeable to the law of nations, when a 

 captive was preserved, instead of being slain ( the 

 name was believed on doubtful etymological 

 grounds to be ' servus, quasi Mnwftif')! or agree- 

 able to the civil law, when a free man sold himself. 

 In earlier times there was no restriction on the/ 

 master's poxver of punishing or putting to death 

 his slave, which xvas generally carried out by cruci- 

 fixion ; and even at a later period, when the law 

 on this head was much modified, slaves xvere used 

 with great rigour. The estimation in which their 

 lives xvere held is illustrated by the gladiatorial 

 combats. OKI and useless slaves xvere often exposed 

 to starve in an island of the TiUer. I'lnler Sparta- 

 cus (q.v.) a rebellion of slax-es attained alarming 

 dimensions. In the time of the empire the cruelty 

 of masters was in some degree restrained IPX laxv. 

 It was enacted that a man who put to death 

 his own slave without cause should lie e!> 

 with as if the slave had been the property of 

 another; and that if the cruelty of the master 

 was intolerable he might be compelled to sell 

 the slave. Slaves could contract a kind of marri- 

 age called Cunt iiliiriiiinii ; and ultimately this 

 relation was regarded as indissoluble. The chil- 

 dren of a female slave folloxved the status of 

 their mother. There were various ways in which 

 a slave might 1x3 manumitted, but the poxvcr of 

 manumission was restricted by laxv. The har- 

 liouring of a runaxvay slave was illegal. The 

 number of slaves in Koine, originally small, was 

 increased much by war and commerce ; and the 

 cultivation of the soil came in the course of time 

 to be entirely given up to them. During the later 

 republic and empire jwrsons in good circumstances 

 kept an immense numl>er of slaves as personal 

 :ini-nilaiiis; ami the possession of a numerous 

 ret in ui- of domestic slaves xvas matter of ostentation 

 200 Iwing no uncommon number for one person. 

 A multitude of slaves xvere also occupied in the 

 mechanical arts and the games of the amphitheatre. 

 Originally a slave was incapable of acquiring 

 property, all his acquisitions belonging to his 

 master ; bnt when slaves came to be employed in 

 trade this condition was mitigated, and it became 

 the practice to alloxv a slave to consider part of his 

 gains, called \\wjieculium, as his own, a stipulation 



