true genius of the Christian religion in particular. The prejudice which has gone forth into the world upon this subject, pregnant as it may be with danger to the well-being of society, and like many other of the fashionable, but erroneous, dogmas of the day, unfounded as it is in reason or Scripture, is too deeply rooted to be eradicated; and as it has wrought much mischief, and led to many lamentable consequences already, so it must continue to work its effects in the same way, as long as the Supreme Disposer of sublunary events, (who can turn passion and prejudice, error and evil, to the furtherance of his purposes, as well as reason and soberness, truth and good,) shall think proper to permit. The object of my present remarks is merely to illustrate a question of fact, with which we are properly concerned in the explanation of the Gospel parables; viz. the true nature and constitution of that relation of private life in ancient times, which we should understand to be meant by the domestic one of the head of a family and its inferior members. This relation we are accustomed to speak of at present as that of master and servant; but it was really in former times, that of despot and slave. And I think I shall best effect the object which I have in view, not by any general abstract reasonings on the subject of slavery, but by the simple collection of a number of well-authenticated facts, which will shew the real state of the relation in question, in the times immediately before, and after the birth of Christ; by giving the reader an idea of the numbers of the slave population, among the Greeks or Romans; the multitudes of such domestic servants possessed by particular owners; the uses made of their services; and the general principles of their estimation and treatment, whether good or bad; for to the illustration of these points, more especially, do I propose to confine myself. First, then, as to the numbers of the slave population; and the amount of slaves, possessed by particular owners. In many parts of Greece, the slaves gave name to the principal portion of the inhabitants of the country; as the Helots in Laconia; the Penestæ in Thessaly; the Claroti in Cretea; or, as Aristotle calls them, the Perioci b. Eustathius adds, the Therapontes in Chius; the Corynophori in Sicyon; the Gymnesii at Argos; the Dmoëtæ in Crete; and the Pelasgi among the Italiot Greeks ". The Arcadians, according to Theopompus, possessed a population of serfs, analogous to the Helots, called Prospelatæ, amounting to three hundred thousand d. According to Timæus, the city of Corinth once possessed four hundred and sixty thousand slaves according to Aristotle, the Æginetæ, four hundred and seventy thousand: according to Ctesicles, the Athenians, in the time of Demetrius Phalereus, Ol. 115, about B. C. 318, four hundred thousand; when the free population consisted of twenty one thousand, and the Metocs, of ten thousand only e. Smindyrides the Sybarite was attended to the court of Clisthenes, tyrant of Sicyon, about B. C. 520, by a train of one thousand slaves. a Athenæus vi. 84. Perieg. 535. b Politica ii. vii. 3. Nicias, a single c Ad Dionysium f Herod. d Athen. vi. 101. e Ibid. vi. 103. vi. 127. Athen. vi. 105. citizen of Athens, possessed, before the expedition into Sicily, B. C. 415. one thousand slaves, trained to work on the silver mines: Hipponicus, a contemporary of his, 600: and Philemonides, another, 300 g. The occupation of Deceleia, by the Lacedæmonians, in the Peloponnesian war, B. C. 415, was soon followed by the desertion and loss to the Athenians, of twenty thousand slaves, and upwards h. The people of Chius are said to have had more slaves, B. C. 412, in proportion to the numbers of the free population, than any of their contemporaries except the Lacedæmonians i. Lysias, the orator, had one hundred and twenty slaves, when his property was confiscated by the thirty, B. C. 402 k. Demosthenes' father left him at his death, fifty valuable slaves at least1. Meno the Thessalian could furnish a body of three hundred cavalry, from his own Penesta m. Mnaso of Phocis, a contemporary and friend of Aristotle's, had one thousand slaves of his own": and Agatharchides mentioned, in his Europiaca, that the citizens of Dardanum had most of them as many as that number each; and some more". Philostratus represents the king of India as telling Apollonius of Tyana, who visited India in the reign of Claudius or Nero, in answer to a question of his, whether he had many slaves; that he had twenty thousand, and all born in his house P. g Xenoph. De Vectigalibus, iv. 14. i Ibid. viii. 40. h Thucyd. vii. 27. k Oratio, xii. 20.Contra Eratosthenem. m Dem. Or. n Athenæus, vi. 86. 103. 1 Oratio, xxvii. 11. sqq. Contra Aphobum, 1. P Vita Apoll. iii. 9. 138. B. We read of some cities and nations as founded originally by slaves; for instance, Ephesus; the nation of the Bruttii, in Italy, Ol. 106r: and as it is said, the Locri also. Stephanus Byzantinus mentions a city of Africa, called Aouλwv ómis, of which none but slaves could be freemen: and Strabo, speaks of a variety of iepodovλos, or slaves dedicated to the service of particular gods or goddesses, both males and females; many thousands in number, and in various parts both of Greece and Asia ". In the time of Polybius, (about B. C. 146.) the Roman government had forty thousand slaves, who wrought in the silver mines, near New Carthage in Spain. Diodorus Siculus records, that very soon after the breaking out of the Bellum Servile in Sicily, B. C. 135. the numbers of the revolted slaves amounted to two hundred thousand. Four hundred of these, at least, belonged to one master, Damophilus of Enna ". At the time of the next outbreak, B. C. 103-100, Titus Minucius, a Roman knight, had four hundred slaves fit to bear arms; and Publius Clonius, another, had eighty: and the army of the slaves soon amounted to forty thousand, and upwards. About the same time with this second insurrection of the slaves in Sicily, various risings took place among the slave population elsewhere; in which, on the whole, a million of souls and upwards, are said to have perished". Sylla, B. C. 81. draughted ten thousand persons, from the slaves belonging to the different masters, who had perished in the civil wars, or in the Proscriptions, and made them Roman citizens. Augustus recaptured thirty thousand slaves, U. C. 718. who had deserted from their masters, and were serving in the fleet of Sextus Pompeius a. On one occasion he manned his own fleet with manumitted slaves, to the number of twenty thousand b. Demetrius, a favourite freedman of Pompey the Great, is said to have had the numbers, or musterroll, of his slaves called over daily, as a general that of his armyd. Clodius had a thousand slaves, at least, all ablebodied men, living upon the estate, near which he was killed by Milo, U. C. 702. It appears also from the preface of Asconius to the Oratio pro Milone, that Milo himself had three hundred servants in his train at the time of this rencontre; though principally ancilla, who waited on his wife. Marcus Crassus had more than five hundred slaves, who practised the trade of bricklayers, masons, and carpenters, merely f. Before the suppression of the Ayoral, or pirates, in the Mediterranean, by Pompey the Great, as many as ten or twenty thousand slaves, used to be disposed of by them in one day, at Delus; which was their mart for the sale of slaves g. The Roman government levied a tax on the sale or transfer of slaves; which under Augustus amounted to the Ꮓ z Appian. De Bellis Civilibus, i. 100. Marmor Ancyr. apud Tac. tom. ii. pars 2da, 846. a Dio, xlix. 12. b Suet. Aug. d Seneca e Cicero, Pro Milone, 20. g Strabo, xiv. 4, 2. 676. |