Page 145 - Western Civilization A Brief History, Volume I To 1715 9th - Jackson J. Spielvogel

regarded as part of the family household. Only the very rich would have large numbers of slaves.
The Roman conquest of the Mediterranean brought a drastic change in the use of slaves. Large numbers of foreign slaves were brought back to Italy. During the republic, then, the chief source of slaves was from cap- ture in war, followed by piracy. Of course, the children of slaves also became slaves. Although some Roman generals brought back slaves to be sold to benefit the public treasury, ambitious generals of the first century B.C.E., such as Pompey and Caesar, made personal for- tunes by treating slaves captured by their armies as pri- vate property.
Slaves were used in many ways in Roman society. The rich, of course, owned the most and the best. In the late republic, it became a badge of prestige to be attended by many slaves. Greeks were in much demand as tutors, musicians, doctors, and artists, and Roman businessmen would employ them as shop assistants or artisans. Slaves were also used as farm laborers; huge gangs of slaves living in pitiful conditions worked the large landed estates known as latifundia (lat-i-FOON- dee-uh). Cato the Elder argued that it was cheaper to work slaves to death and then replace them than to treat them well. Many slaves of all nationalities were used as menial household workers, such as cooks, val- ets, waiters, cleaners, and gardeners. Contractors used slave labor to build roads, aqueducts, and other public facilities. The total number of slaves is difficult to judge—estimates range from 20 to 30 percent of the population.
It is also difficult to generalize about the treatment of Roman slaves. There are numerous instances of humane treatment by masters and situations where slaves even protected their owners from danger out of gratitude and esteem. But slaves were also subject to severe punishments, torture, abuse, and hard labor that drove some to run away or even revolt against their owners. The republic had stringent laws against aiding a runaway slave. The murder of a master by a slave might mean the execution of all the other house- hold slaves. Near the end of the second century B.C.E., large-scale slave revolts occurred in Sicily, where enor- mous gangs of slaves were subjected to horrible work- ing conditions on large landed estates. Slaves were branded, beaten, inadequately fed, worked in chains, and housed at night in underground prisons. One revolt of 70,000 slaves lasted three years (135–132 B.C.E.) before it was crushed. The most famous revolt on the Italian peninsula occurred in 73 B.C.E. Led by Spartacus, a slave who had been a Thracian gladiator,
the revolt broke out in southern Italy and involved 70,000 slaves. Spartacus managed to defeat several Roman armies before he was finally trapped and killed in southern Italy in 71 B.C.E. Six thousand of his fol- lowers were crucified, the traditional form of execution for slaves.
The Roman Family
At the heart of the Roman social structure stood the family, headed by the paterfamilias—the dominant male. The household also included the wife, sons with their wives and children, unmarried daughters, and slaves. A family was virtually a small state within the state, and the power of the paterfamilias was parallel to that of the state magistrates over citizens. Like the Greeks, Roman males believed that the weakness of the female sex necessitated male guardians (see the box on p. 108). The paterfamilias exercised that authority; on his death, sons or close male relatives assumed the role of guardians. By the late republic, however, although the rights of male guardians remained legally in effect, upper-class women found numerous ways to circum- vent the power of their guardians.
Fathers arranged the marriages of daughters, although there are instances of mothers and daughters having influence on the choice. In the republic, women married cum manu, “with legal control” passing from fa- ther to husband. By the mid-first century B.C.E., the dominant practice had changed to sine manu, “without legal control,” which meant that married daughters officially remained within the father’s legal power. Since the fathers of most married women were dead, not being in the “legal control” of a husband made pos- sible independent property rights that forceful women could translate into considerable power within the household and outside it. Traditionally, Roman mar- riages were intended to be for life, but divorce was introduced in the third century B.C.E. and became rela- tively easy to obtain: either party could initiate it, and no one needed to prove the breakdown of the mar- riage. Divorce became especially prevalent in the first century B.C.E.—a period of political turmoil, when mar- riages were used to cement political alliances.
Some upper-class parents provided education for their daughters. Some girls had private tutors, and others may have gone to primary schools. But at the age when boys were entering secondary schools, girls were pushed into marriage. The legal minimum age for marriage was twelve, although fourteen was a more common age in practice. Although some Roman
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