Read Ebook: The History of the Manners and Customs of Ancient Greece Volume 3 (of 3) by St John James Augustus

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Herod, vi. 20, 119.

Footnote 20:

Diod. Sicul. xi. Arrian, Anab. i. p. 11. Plut. Symp. ix. 1. Mitf. Hist. of Greece, ii. 176.

But the supply produced by war seldom equalled the demand; and in consequence a race of kidnappers sprung up, who, partly merchants and partly pirates, roamed about the shores of the Mediterranean, as similar miscreants do now about the slave-coasts, picking up solitary and unprotected individuals. Sometimes their boldness rose to the wives or daughters of the chiefs; as in the case of Paris, who robbed the house, and carried away the wife of Menelaus; and of those Phoenicians who having landed at Argos and held, during several days, a fair on the beach, ended by stealing the king's daughter. Mitford's supposition that both Io and her companions may have been allured on board, is founded on the apologetical narrative of the pirates themselves. The practice of kidnapping certainly prevailed widely. Thus Eumaeos was, by the Phoenicians, sold to Laertes, and a similar fate awaited the woman whom the Taphian pirates stole away at the same time. Odysseus himself relates how a Phoenician rogue plotted against his liberty when he was sailing with him towards Libya, and that the Thesprotians had meditated a like design. To enumerate no other instances, Laomedon menaces Apollo and Poseidon with servitude, observing that he will have them bound and shipped to some distant island for sale.

Footnote 21:

Herod, i. 1.

Footnote 22:

History of Greece, i. 32.

Footnote 23:

Odyss. ?. 427. 482.

Footnote 24:

Odyss. ?. 340.

Footnote 25:

Iliad. ?. 453, seq. Feith observes that the Romans afforded no encouragement to those low and sordid villains who stole and sold their fellow-creatures, and kept none as slaves, but such as were lawfully captured in war. Antiq. Hom. ii. 20.

Neither war, however, nor piracy sufficed at length to furnish that vast multitude of slaves, which the growing luxury of the times induced the Greeks to consider necessary. Commerce by degrees conducted them to Caria and other parts of Asia Minor, particularly the southern coasts of the Black Sea, those great nurseries of slaves from that time until now. The first Greeks who engaged in this traffic, which even by the Pagans was supposed to be attended by a curse, are said to have been the Chians, and we shall presently see how ill it prospered with them. They purchased their slaves from the barbarians, among whom the Lydians, the Phrygians, and the natives of Pontos, with many others were accustomed, like the modern Circassians, to carry on a trade in their own people. We find mention made in the Anabasis of a Macronian, who having been a slave at Athens and obtaining his liberty, afterwards became a soldier and served the Ten Thousand as an interpreter at a critical moment during their passage through his native country.

Footnote 26:

Female slaves were obtained from Thrace, Phrygia, and Paphlagonia. Schol. Aristoph. Acharn. 261. Philost. Vit. Apoll. Tyan. viii. 7. 12. Cf. Plut. Sympos. v. 7. 1.

Footnote 27:

Philost. Vit. Apoll. Tyan. viii. 7. 12. The demoralising effects of this traffic were never perhaps better illustrated than by Barbot. This writer, while describing the arts by which men entice their own children, kindred, or neighbours, to the European factories for the purpose of selling them, relates an anecdote exhibiting the ne plus ultra of human depravity: "I was told of one who designed to sell his own son; but he, understanding French, dissembled for a while, and then contrived it so cunningly as to persuade the French that the old man was his slave, and not his father, by which means he delivered him up into captivity; and thus made good the Italian proverb, a furbo furbo e mezzo; amounting to as much as 'set a thief to catch a thief' or 'diamond cuts diamond.'" Descr. of Guinea, i. 4. The son immediately after was relieved of his ill-got gains and himself sold for a slave.

Footnote 28:

Xenoph. Anab. iv. 8. 4.

Before proceeding, however, with the history of the slave-trade, it may be proper to describe the power possessed by masters over their domestics during the heroic ages. Every man appears to have been then a king in his own house, and to have exercised his authority most regally. Thus we find the young Telemachos taking pleasure in the idea that he shall be king over his slaves; and Andromache, with a mother's fondness, fears lest her son should become the drudge of an unfeeling lord. Power generally, when unchecked by law, is fierce and inhuman, and over their household, gentlemen, in those ages, exercised the greatest and most awful power, that of life and death, as they afterwards did at Rome. This is illustrated by an example in the Odyssey, where the hero being, while in disguise, insulted grossly by Melanthios, threatens the slave that he will incite Telemachos to cut him in pieces. Afterwards, when he has recovered his authority, the terrible menace is remembered and fulfilled. The culprit is seized and mutilated with savage barbarity, his members, torn from the body, are thrown to the dogs, and even the poet, upon the whole so humane, does not seem to consider the punishment too great for the offence. It has even been supposed that this kind of mutilation was a punishment peculiar to slaves; for Laomedon, while menacing the gods in the manner above described, adds, that he will cut off their ears. When supposed to deserve death they were executed ignominiously by hanging, as in the case of the domestics of Odysseus, whose offences, though grave, would scarcely in any free country be visited with capital punishment. This was regarded as an impure end. To die honourably was to perish by the sword.

Footnote 29:

Odyss. ?. 397.

Footnote 30:

Iliad. ?. 734.

Footnote 31:

See Joach. Hopp. Comment. Succinct. ad Instit. Justin. 1. i. Tit. viii. ? 1. p. 61. Grot. De Jur. Bell. et Pac. ii. 5. 28. iii. 7. 3.

Footnote 32:

Odyss. ?. 369. ?. 475, sqq. In most parts of the ancient world the punishments of slaves were to the last degree disproportionate and unjust: "Cibum enim adurere, mensam evertere, dicto tardius audientem fuisse, cruce, aut flagellis ad minus expiabantur. Dixisses, omnes penitus dominos professos fuisse Stoicam sectam, ade? illis alt? insederat, omnia servorum peccata aequalia esse. Quo factum est, ut servi nuper empti non quaererent an superstitiosum, vel invidum, sed an iracundum herum nacti essent. Seneca; quid est, quare ego servi mei hilarius responsum, et contumaciorem vultum, et non pervenientem usque ad me murmurationem, flagellis et compedibus expiem." Pignor. De Servis, p. 5.

Footnote 33:

Feith. Antiq. Hom. ii. 20.

Footnote 34:

Odyss. ?. 462.

Footnote 35:

Eustath. ad loc. p. 1934. Cf. Virg. xii. 603.

The practice of manumission already in the heroic ages prevailed. Odysseus promises their freedom to his herdsman and swineherd if by their aid he should slaughter the suitors; and, according to Plutarch, Telemachos actually bestowed on Eumaeos and his companions both their liberty and the rights of citizenship, and from them, he adds, the celebrated families of the Koliades and Bukoli were descended.

Footnote 36:

In later times freedmen accused of ingratitude returned, if convicted, to slavery. Etym. Mag. 124. 53, seq. This also was the practice under the Roman law, but among our own ancestors, a bondsman, once disenthralled, could never again be reduced to servitude. Fortescue de Laud. Leg. Angl. cap. 46. p. 108 b. Under certain circumstances, we find Athenian emancipated slaves accounted honourable and permitted to marry free women. Dem. in Steph. i. ? 20. Mention occurs in Demosthenes of a magnificent monument made in honour of the wife of one of these freedmen. ? 22.

Footnote 37:

Plut. Hellen. Problem. 14.

Nor does the illustrious race appear to be yet extinct, Professor Koliades claiming to be a lineal descendant from Eumaeos, which may very well be since he must be descended from somebody; and there is no reason why a descendant of Eumaeos should not be a professor.

Footnote 38:

See Mr. Nelson Coleridge, Introduction to the Study of the Greek Poets. Pt. 1. p. 306.

In addition to the slaves there were likewise free labourers who worked for hire, and were called Thetes. These sometimes seem to have been placed on the extremities of estates, as the guardians of boundaries, a post which Eurymachos offers with good wages to Odysseus. And it is the condition of one of these hinds that Achilles prefers in Hades to the empire of the shades. The gods also in their sojourn upon earth sometimes submitted to the hardships of this condition. Thus Phoebos Apollo kept the flocks of Admetos, king of Thessaly, and the belief in this humble condition of the gods on earth is objected by Lucian and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, as blameworthy to the Greeks. Herodotus, too, relates that the three sons of Temenos--Gavanes, A?ropos, and Perdiccas--fled from Argos into Illyria and thence into Upper Macedonia to the city of Lebaea, where they served the king for hire, the first tending the royal stud, the second the cattle, and the third the sheep and goats.

Footnote 39:

Odyss. ?. 644. Cf. Clavier, Hist. des Prem. Temps de la Gr?ce. ii. 315. Suid. v. ?????. 1322, who says their hire was called ????????.

Footnote 40:

Odyss. ?. 356.

Footnote 41:

Odyss. ?. 488.

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