112 EMPLOYERS AND WORKMEN 



it seems as though there always had been that 

 line of division between those truly powerful 

 and those confessedly weak, the powerful 

 taking from the weak all they could squeeze 

 out of them, and shirking no savagery in the 

 process. 



It is, of course, a wide leap from the world 

 of ancient savages to the world of the Roman 

 Empire ; but it serves here to make it. The 

 physical remains of that empire show that, in 

 many respects, a high level of civilisation, in its 

 luxurious aspect, had then been reached. There 

 are signs, still to be seen in unearthed Pompeii, 

 of life rivalling in comfort the life of to-day : the 

 private bath, for instance, with its system of hot- 

 and cold-water pipes, is almost the same as our 

 own. But there are quite other signs. Over his 

 wife and family the Roman of the Empire had 

 the power of life and death. He could, and often 

 did, sell his wife to another man for money. It 

 is recorded of one well-known Roman that he 

 not only sold his wife for money, but afterwards 

 tried to buy her back again. But it was not 

 chiefly in his domestic affairs that the Roman 

 showed his native barbarity : that he showed in 

 his relations with his slaves. For Rome was a 

 slave-holding empire ; and that is here the moral 

 fact of prime importance. Not that the Romans 

 were the first to institute slavery : savage races 

 deal now largely in slaves, and probably always 

 did so. The Roman Empire was the first world- 

 wide power holding slaves, of which we know a 

 good deal historically. 



