ROMAN SLAVERY.
Slave labour was indeed the canker secretly corrupting the republic as it was later to eat the heart out of the empire. The household slave was often a pampered retainer, and freedmen of this type were known to sit in the Senate itself and hold high office. The cultured Greek, especially if he came from Athens, might patronize his less educated master, and bring up his sons. There was, however, an altogether different kind of slavery that, employing plantation methods of whip and chain, brutalized both employer and employed, dragging human labour into degradation.
The desperate obstinacy of the prolonged "Slave War" in Sicily (140 - 132 B.C.) and of the revolt of
Spartacus and his fellow gladiators in southern Italy (73 - 71 B.C) were witness to a misery that preferred to
face death by crucifixion rather than continue existence under conditions allowed by Roman law.
