of the Republic. [Sidenote: Dread inspired by the prospect of Roman
slavery.] Frequent stories attest the horrors of Roman slavery felt
by conquered nations. We read often of individuals, and sometimes of
whole towns, committing suicide sooner than fall into the conquerors'
hands. Sometimes slaves slew their dealers, sometimes one another. A
boy in Spain killed his three sisters and starved himself to avoid
slavery. Women killed their children with the same object. If, as it
is asserted, the plantation-system was not yet introduced into Italy,
such stories, and the desperate out-breaks, and almost incredibly
merciless suppression of slave revolts, prove that the condition of
the Roman slave was sufficiently miserable. [Sidenote: The horrors of
slavery culminated in Sicily.] But doubtless misery reached its climax
in Sicily, where that system was in full swing. Slaves not sold for
domestic service were there branded and often made to work in chains,
the strongest serving as shepherds. Badly fed and clothed, these
shepherds plundered whenever they found the chance. Such brigandage
was winked at, and sometimes positively encouraged, by the owners,
while the governors shrank from punishing the brigands for fear of
offending their masters. As the demand for slaves grew, slave-breeding
as well as slave-importation was practised. No doubt there were as
various theories as to the most profitable management of slaves then
as in America lately. Damophilus had the instincts of a Legree: a
Haley and a Cato would have held much the same sentiments as to the
rearing of infants. Some masters would breed and rear, and try to get
more work from the slave by kindness than harshness. Others would work
them off and buy afresh; and as this would be probably the cheapest
policy, no doubt it was the prevalent one. And what an appalling vista
of dumb suffering do such considerations open to us! Cold, hunger,
nakedness, torture, infamy, a foreign country, a strange climate, a
life so hard that it made the early death which was almost inevitable