B.C. in quest of
revolutionary and warlike bands. These roughs could even be used as
galley-slaves; more than once in the Commentaries on the Civil War
Caesar tells us that his opponents drafted them into the vessels which
were sent to relieve the siege of Massilia[347]. It was here too, in
the neighbourhood of Thurii, that a bloody fight took place between
the slaves of two adjoining estates, strong men of courage, as Cicero
describes them, of which we learn from the fragments of his lost
speech _pro Tullio_. They were of course armed, and as we may
guess from Varro's remarks on the kind of slaves suitable for
shepherding,[348] this was usually the practice, in order to defend
the flocks from wild beasts and robbers, particularly when they were
driven up to summer pasture (as they still are) in the saltus of
the Apennines. The needs of these shepherds would be small, and the
latifundia of this kind were probably almost self-sufficing, no free
labour being required. After their day's work the slaves were fed and
locked up for the night, and kept in fetters if necessary;[349] they
were in fact simply living tools, to use the expression of Aristotle,
and the economy of such estates was as simple as that of a workshop.
The exclusion of free labour is here complete: on the agricultural
estates it was approaching a completion which it fortunately never
reached. Had it reached that completion, the economic influence of
slavery would have been altogether bad; as it was, the introduction
of slave-labour on a large scale did valuable service to Italian
agriculture in the last century B.C. by contributing the material for
its revival at a time when the necessary free labour could not have
been found. However lamentable its results may have been in other
ways, especially on the great pastures, the economic history of Italy,
when it comes to be written, will have to give it credit for an
appreciable amount of benefit.

2. The legal and political aspect of slavery. A slave was in the eye
of the law not a _persona_, but a _res_, i.e. he had no rights as a
human being, could not marry or hold property, but was himself simply
a piece of property which could be conveyed (res mancipi)[350]. During
the Republican period the law left him absolutely at the disposal of
his master, who had the power of life and death (jus vitae necisque)
over him, and could punish him with chastisement and bonds, and use
him for any purpose he pleased, witho