lows
would, we may hope, have been repugnant to him, if not to his own
soldiers.[312]

War then was the principal source of the supply of slaves, but it was
not the only one. When a slave-trade is in full swing, it will be
fostered in all possible ways. Brigandage and kidnapping were rife
all over the Empire and in the countries beyond its borders in the
disturbed times with which we are dealing. The pirates of Cilicia,
until they were suppressed by Pompeius in 66, swarmed all over the
Mediterranean, and snapped up victims by raids even on the coasts of
Italy, selling them in the market at Delos without hindrance. Cicero,
in his speech in support of the appointment of Pompey, mentions that
well-born children had been carried off from Misenum under the very
eyes of a Roman praetor.[313] Caesar himself was taken by them when a
young man, and only escaped with difficulty. In Italy itself, where
there was no police protection until Augustus took the matter in hand,
kidnapping was by no means unknown; the _grassatores_, as they were
called, often slaves escaped from the prisons of the great estates,
haunted the public roads, and many a traveller disappeared in this
way and passed the rest of his life in a slave-prison.[314] Varro,
in describing the sort of slaves best suited for work on the great
sheep-runs, says that they should be such as are strong enough to
defend the flocks from wild beasts and brigands--the latter doubtless
quite as ready to seize human beings as sheep and cattle. And
slave-merchants seem to have been constantly carrying on their trade
in regions where no war was going on, and where desirable slaves could
be procured; the kingdoms of Asia Minor were ransacked by them, and
when Marius asked Nicomedes king of Bithynia for soldiers during the
struggle with the Cimbri, the answer he got was that there were none
to send--the slave-dealers had been at work there.[315] Every one will
remember the line of Horace in which he calls one of these wretches a
"king of Cappadocia."[316]

There were two other sources of the slave supply of which however
little need be said here, as the contribution they made was
comparatively small. First, slaves were bred from slaves, and on rural
estates this was frequently done as a matter of business.[317] Varro
recommends the practice in the large sheep-farms,[318] under certain
conditions; and some well-known lines of Horace suggest that on
smaller farms, where a better class