ort of lessee obliged to render
up a portion of the produce--over a detached farm.(6) Such relations
no doubt existed at all times--around Comum, for instance, they were
still the rule in the time of the empire--but as exceptional features
in privileged districts and on humanely-managed estates. What we now
refer to is the system of slavery on a great scale, which in the Roman
state, as formerly in the Carthaginian, grew out of the ascendency
of capital. While the captives taken in war and the hereditary
transmission of slavery sufficed to keep up the stock of slaves
during the earlier period, this system of slavery was, just like that
of America, based on the methodically-prosecuted hunting of man; for,
owing to the manner in which slaves were used with little regard to
their life or propagation, the slave population was constantly on
the wane, and even the wars which were always furnishing fresh
masses to the slave-market were not sufficient to cover the deficit.
No country where this species of game could be hunted remained exempt
from visitation; even in Italy it was a thing by no means unheard
of, that the poor freeman was placed by his employer among the slaves.
But the Negroland of that period was western Asia,(7) where the Cretan
and Cilician corsairs, the real professional slave-hunters and slave-
dealers, robbed the coasts of Syria and the Greek islands; and where,
emulating their feats, the Roman revenue-farmers instituted human hunts
in the client states and incorporated those whom they captured among
their slaves. This was done to such an extent, that about 650 the king
of Bithynia declared himself unable to furnish the required contingent,
because all the people capable of labour had been dragged off from his
kingdom by the revenue-farmers. At the great slave-market in Delos,
where the slave-dealers of Asia Minor disposed of their wares to
Italian speculators, on one day as many as 10,000 slaves are said to
have been disembarked in the morning and to have been all sold before
evening--a proof at once how enormous was the number of slaves
delivered, and how, notwithstanding, the demand still exceeded the
supply. It was no wonder. Already in describing the Roman economy
of the sixth century we have explained that it was based, like all
the large undertakings of antiquity generally, on the employment of
slaves.(8) In whatever direction speculation applied itself, its
instrument was without exception ma