her dependants. To it now flocked as well the _metoeci_, the
resident aliens from the conquered states, and the poorer citizens,
landless and unable for social reasons to turn to trade. There was thus
in Rome a growing multitude of aliens, dispossessed yeomen and dependent
clients. Simultaneously slavery increased very largely after the second
Punic War (202 B.C.). Every conquest brought slaves into the market, for
whom ready purchasers were found. The slaves took the place of the
freemen upon the old family estates, and the free country people became
extinct. Husbandry gave place to shepherding. The estates were thrown
into large domains (_latifundia_), managed by bailiffs and worked by
slaves, often fettered or bound by chains, lodged in cells in houses of
labour (_ergastula_), and sometimes cared for when ill in infirmaries
(_valetudinaria_). In Crete and Sparta the slaves toiled that the mass
of citizens might have means and leisure. In Rome the slave class was
organized for private and not for common ends. In Athens the citizens
were paid for their services; at Rome no offices were paid. Thus the
citizen at Rome was, one might almost say, forced into a dependence on
the public corn, for as the large properties swallowed up the smaller,
and the slave dispossessed the citizen, a population grew up unfit for
rural toil, disinclined to live by methods that pride considered sordid,
unstable and pleasure-loving, and yet a serious political factor, as
dependent on the rich for their enjoyments as they were on their patrons
or the prefect of the corn in the city for their food.

It is estimated, from extremely difficult and uncertain data, that the
population of Rome in the time of Augustus was about 1,200,000 or
1,500,000. At that time the_ plebs urbana_ numbered 320,000. If this
be multiplied by three, to give a low average of dependants, wives and
children, this section of the population would number 960,000. The
remainder of the 1,500,000, 540,000, would consist of (a) slaves, and
(b) those, the comparatively few, who would be members of the great
clan-families (_gentes_). Proportionately to Attica this seems to
allow too small a population of slaves. But however this be, we may
picture the population of Rome as consisting chiefly of a few
patrician families ministered to by a very large number of slaves, and
a populace of needy citizens, in whose ranks it was profitable for an
outsider to find