The slaves defeated three Roman armies sent in succession against them.

Their chief Spartacus wished to traverse the whole peninsula of Italy in order to return to Thrace, from which country he had been brought as a prisoner of war to serve as a gladiator.  But at last these ill-disciplined bands were shattered by the army of Crassus.  The revolutionists were all put to death.  Rome now prohibited the slaves from carrying arms thereafter, and it is reported that a shepherd was once executed for having killed a boar with a spear.

=Admission to Citizenship.=—­Rome treated its subjects and its slaves brutally, but it did not drive them out, as the Greek cities did.

The alien could become a Roman citizen by the will of the Roman people, and the people often accorded this favor, sometimes they even bestowed it upon a whole people at once.  They created the Latins citizens at one stroke; in 89 it was the turn of the Italians; in 46 the people of Cisalpine Gaul entered the body of citizens.  All the inhabitants of Italy thus became the equals of the Romans.

The slave could be manumitted by his master and soon became a citizen.

This is the reason why the Roman people, gradually exhausting themselves, were renewed by accessions from the subjects and the slaves.  The number of the citizens was increased at every census; it rose from 250,000 to 700,000.  The Roman city, far from emptying itself as did Sparta, replenished itself little by little from all those whom it had conquered.

FOOTNOTES: 

[126] In the smallest provinces the title of the governor was propraetor.

[127] In the oriental countries Rome left certain little kings (like King Herod in Judaea), but they paid tribute and obeyed the governor.

[128] This estimate of the character of Scaurus is too favorable.—­ED.

[129] Cicero speaks of the temples which were raised to him by the people of Cilicia, of which county he was governor.

[130] Every important town had its market for slaves as for cattle and horses.  The slave to be sold was exhibited on a platform with a label about his neck indicating his age, his better qualities and his defects.

[131] In the Casina of Plautus.

[132] Athenaeus, who makes this statement, is probably guilty of exaggeration.—­ED.

CHAPTER XXII

TRANSFORMATION OF LIFE IN ROME

=Greek and Oriental Influence.=—­Conquest gave the Romans a clearer view of the Greeks and Orientals.  Thousands of foreigners brought to Rome as slaves, or coming thither to make their fortune, established themselves in the city as physicians, professors, diviners, or actors.  Generals, officers and soldiers lived in the midst of Asia, and thus the Romans came to know the customs and the new beliefs and gradually adopted them.  This transformation had its beginning with the first Macedonian war (about 200 B.C.), and continued until the end of the empire.