=Defencelessness of the Provincials.=—­The provincials had no redress against all these tyrants.  The governor sustained the publicans, and the Roman army and people sustained the governor.  Admit that a Roman citizen could enter suit against the plunderers of the provinces:  a governor was inviolable and could not be accused until he had given up his office; while he held his office there was nothing to do but to watch him plunder.  If he were accused on his return to Rome, he appeared before a tribunal of nobles and of publicans who were more interested to support him than to render justice to the provincials.  If, perchance, the tribunal condemned him, exile exempted him from all further penalty and he betook himself to a city of Italy to enjoy his plunder.  This punishment was nothing to him and was not even a loss to him.  And so the provincials preferred to appease their governor by submission.  They treated him like a king, flattered him, sent presents, and raised statues to him.  Often, indeed, in Asia they raised altars to him,[129] built temples to him, and adored him as a god.

SLAVERY

=The Sale of Slaves.=—­Every prisoner of war, every inhabitant of a captured city belonged to the victor.  If they were not killed, they were enslaved.  Such was the ancient custom and the Romans exercised the right to the full.  Captives were treated as a part of the booty and were therefore either sold to slave-merchants who followed the army or, if taken to Rome, were put up at auction.[130] After every war thousands of captives, men and women, were sold as slaves.  Children born of slave mothers would themselves be slaves.  Thus it was the conquered peoples who furnished the slave-supply for the Romans.

=Condition of the Slave.=—­The slave belonged to a master, and so was regarded not as a person but as a piece of property.  He had, then, no rights; he could not be a citizen or a proprietor; he could be neither husband nor father.  “Slave marriages!” says a character in a Roman comedy;[131] “A slave takes a wife; it is contrary to the custom of every people.”  The master has full right over his slave; he sends him where he pleases, makes him work according to his will, even beyond his strength, ill feeds him, beats him, tortures him, kills him without accounting to anybody for it.  The slave must submit to all the whims of his master; the Romans declare, even, that he is to have no conscience, his only duty is blind obedience.  If he resists, if he flees, the state assists the master to subdue or recover him; the man who gives refuge to a fugitive slave renders himself liable to the charge of theft, as if he had taken an ox or a horse belonging to another.

=Number of Slaves.=—­Slaves were far more numerous than free men.  Rich citizens owned 10,000 to 20,000 of them,[132] some having enough of them to constitute a real army.  We read of Caecilius Claudius Isidorius who had once been a slave and came to possess more than 4,000 slaves.  Horace, who had seven slaves, speaks of his modest patrimony.  Having but three was in Rome a mark of poverty.