into the hands of a few territorial magnates, who, unfortunately (for it
tended to aggravate the mischief), were enabled by another cause to turn
their vast possessions to advantage. The conquest of the world had turned
the flower of the defeated nations into slaves. The prisoners taken either
after a battle or when cities surrendered unconditionally were bought up
steadily by contractors who followed in the rear of the Roman armies. They
were not ignorant like the negroes, but trained, useful, and often
educated men, Asiatics, Greeks, Thracians, Gauls, and Spaniards, able at
once to turn their hands to some form of skilled labor, either as clerks,
mechanics, or farm-servants. The great landowners might have paused in
their purchases had the alternative lain before them of letting their
lands lie idle or of having freemen to cultivate them. It was otherwise
when a resource so convenient and so abundant was opened at their feet.
The wealthy Romans bought slaves by thousands. Some they employed in their
workshops in the capital. Some they spread over their plantations,
covering the country, it might be, with olive gardens and vineyards,
swelling further the plethoric figures of their owners' incomes. It was
convenient for the few, but less convenient for the Commonwealth. The
strength of Rome was in her free citizens. Where a family of slaves was
settled down, a village of freemen had disappeared; the material for the
legions diminished; the dregs of the free population which remained behind
crowded into Rome, without occupation except in politics, and with no
property save in their votes, of course to become the clients of the
millionaires, and to sell themselves to the highest bidders. With all his
wealth there were but two things which the Roman noble could buy,
political power and luxury; and in these directions his whole resources
were expended. The elections, once pure, became matters of annual bargain
between himself and his supporters. The once hardy, abstemious mode of
living degenerated into grossness and sensuality.