Valeria, the Martyr of the Catacombs: A Tale of Early Christian Life in Rome

by W. H. Withrow

  CHAPTER XI

  THE SLAVE MARKET.

  In the meantime Isidorus, with well-filled purse, and armed withcredentials under the Imperial seal, had set off upon his difficult anddoubtful quest.

  "However it turn out," he said to himself, "it will be strange if I donot climb a few steps higher on the ladder on which my feet are nowplaced. Being the confidential agent of the Empress is better thanbeing the secretary of the rude soldier, Sertorius, and being snubbed byhim every day, too."

  Mounted on one of the best horses in the Imperial stables, he rode forthupon the famous Salarian Way, which led straight as an arrow over thewide Campagna, and over the rugged Appenines to the distant city ofRavenna, among the marshes of the Adriatic. Now a decayed andgrass-grown city, six miles from the sea, it was then a great and busyport, and had been for two centuries and a half an important see of theChristian Church. Not to the prefect of the city, but to the bishop ofRavenna, Isidorus, with his natural tact and shrewdness, betook himself.The sign manual of the Emperor, which he confidently exhibited, did notcommand that regard which he had anticipated; but a private letter fromAdauctus, commending Isidorus to all Christian bishops and presbyters,procured for him a much more cordial reception. He was hospitablyentertained, and every possible assistance given him in his quest. Thebishop called together the deacons who had the care of the poor of theChurch, but none of them knew anything of Demetrius. The bishop hadransomed many Christian slaves--prisoners taken in war, or captured bypirates. A few years before, when the resources of the Church had beencompletely exhausted by the exercise of this charity,[26] a company ofcaptives had been sold by pirates to a Jewish slave-dealer named Ezra,and conveyed by him to the city of Mediolanum, or as we now call it,Milan, as offering, next to Rome, the best market for his wares. And oneof the deacons remembered among this slave-gang an old man who resembledthe description given of Demetrius.

  To Milan, therefore, crossing again the Appenines, and riding up thebroad, rich valley of the Po, went Isidorus. He was surprised to find acity, almost rivalling in extent Rome itself, and with a historyreaching back to the times of the Etruscans, well-nigh a thousand years.First he sought the Jewish slave-dealer, who kept a regular mart for thesale or hire of human beings, just as one now-a-days keeps alivery-stable for the sale or hire of horses. There was as much fraud,too, in selling slaves then, as has been proverbially connected withhorse-dealing and jockeying in every age. The _ergastulum_, or slave-penof Ezra, was a large prison-like structure, surrounding the four sidesof a hollow square. There were no windows to the street, and only verysmall iron-grated ones to the inner court; with heavy, iron-studdeddoors to the stable-like stalls, where the slaves were chained to astout beam running along the wall.

  A slave-auction was in progress when Isidorus arrived, so he had to waittill it was over before plying his quest. A gang of slaves, unchained,but guarded by keepers, armed with whips and spears, awaited their fate.Stripped nearly naked, they were rudely examined, pinched, handled, andmade to stoop, lift heavy weights, walk, run, and show their paces likehorses for sale. Many had their ears bored--a sign of servitude from thetime of Moses--and others were seamed with scars of the cruel lash.This, however, lessened their market value, as it was evidence of theirintractable and troublesome character.

  Slavery was, at the time of which we write, one of the greatest evils ofthe Roman empire. It was a deadly canker, eating out the national life.It cast a stigma of disgrace on labour, and prevented the formation ofthat intelligent middle class which is the true safeguard of liberty.Never in the history of the world was society so based upon the abjectmisery of vast multitudes of human beings. The slaves outnumbered, manytimes, their masters. They were forbidden to wear a peculiar garb, lestthey should recognize their numbers and their strength, and rise inuniversal revolt. As it was, servile insurrections were of frequentoccurrence. But they were crushed and punished with ruthless severity.In one slave revolt, 60,000 of these wretched beings were slain. Thefirst question about a man's property was, _"Quot pascit servos?"_--"Howmany slaves does he keep?" Ten was considered the least numberconsistent with any degree of respectability. Four hundred slavesdeluged with their blood the funeral pyre of Pedanius Secundus. VidiusPollio fed his lampreys with the bodies of his human chattels. A singlefreed-man left over 4,000 at his death. Some 2,000 men were lords of theRoman world, and the great mass of the rest were slaves. Their conditionwas one of inconceivable wretchedness. They had no rights of marriage,nor any claim to their children. Their food was a pound of bread a day,with a little salt and oil. Flesh they never tasted, and even wine,which flowed like water, almost never. Colossal piles, built by theirblood and sweat, attest to the present day the bitterness of theirbondage. The lash of the taskmaster was heard in the fields, andcrosses, bearing aloft their quivering victims, polluted the wayside.

  This dumb, weltering mass of humanity, crushed by power, and led bytheir lusts, became a hot-bed of vice, in which every evil passion grewapace. To these wretched beings came the gospel of liberty, with astrange, a thrilling power. The oppressed slave, in the intervals oftoil or torture, caught with joy the emancipating message, and sprang upenfranchised by an immortalizing hope. He exulted in a new-found freedomin Christ, which no wealth could purchase, no chains of slavery fetter,nor even death itself destroy. In the Christian Church the distinctionsof worldly rank were abolished.[27] The highest spiritual privilegeswere opened to the lowliest slave. In the ecclesiastical hierarchy wereno rights of birth, and no privileges of blood. In the inscriptions ofthe Catacombs, no badges of servitude, no titles of honour appear. Thewealthy noble, the lord of many acres, recognized in his lowly servant afellow heir of glory. They bowed together at the same table of the Lord,saluted each other with the mutual kiss of charity, and side by side intheir narrow graves, at length returned to indistinguishable dust. Thestory of Onesimus was often repeated, and the patrician master receivedhis returning slave, "not now as a servant, but above a servant--abrother beloved." Nay, he may even have bowed to him as hisecclesiastical superior, and received from his plebeian hands theemblems of their common Lord.

  We return from this digression to the slave-market of Milan. Very few ofEzra's stock were black--not more than half a dozen, from Nubia andLibya. Most of them were as white as himself, or whiter still. Therewere Dalmatians, Illyrians, Iberians, Gauls, Greeks, Syrians, and manyother nationalities. Ezra was engaged in busy converse, in a brokenmixture of Latin and Greek, with the wealthy patrician, Vitellius, thelord of wide corn lands on the fertile banks of the Po.

  "Field hands your Excellency wants? I have some splendid ones," he said,eagerly. "Here, you fellows, step out there and show your muscles;" andhe struck with his whip-lash two brawny white-skinned, blue-eyed,yellow-haired British slaves.

  "Sullen dogs these British often are," he said, "but they are as good asgold. They never run away like the Germans, nor steal like the Greeks,nor kill themselves like the Gauls."[28]

  "Glad of that," said Vitellius. "I have had a perfect epidemic ofsuicide among my slaves. I had to kill several of them to keep them fromkilling themselves"--a sad but frequent comment on the utterwretchedness of their condition, from which death itself was the onlyrefuge.

  "Does your Excellency want anything of a higher grade?" asked Ezra."Some skilled workmen to finish your elegant villa, for instance. I havea splendid Greek sculptor, almost another Phidias, and another a secondZeuxis with the brush. Then if you want a steward, or bookkeeper, orsecretary, or reader, or a skilled physician, I have them all; or ahand-maid for your Excellency's wife. I have a beautiful Greek girlhere, highly accomplished; can embroider, play the zither, sing in twolanguages. I sold her sister last week for 100,000 sesterces[29]--niecesof an ex-archon. I felt really sorry for them, but what wouldyou?--trade is trade. Times are bad. Poor Ezra has had bad luck. Severalof his slaves kill themselves. Market glutted; price falls. I sell themvery cheap--very cheap."

  Vitellius made his purchases, had them chained together
in a gang, anddriven by his steward, like cattle, to his farm. The account of Ezra'sinterview with Isidorus we must defer to another chapter.

  FOOTNOTES:

  [26] This might easily happen, for after successful raids or slavehunts, the victims were sold by their pirate captors by the thousand.The fact is on record, that at Delos, a famous slave market, 60,000 weresold by Celician pirates in a single day.

  [27] Apud nos inter pauperes et divites, servos et dominos, interestnihil. Lactant. _Div. Inst._ v. 14, 15.

  [28] These were the most common faults of slaves, for attempting whichthey were often branded on cheek or brow.

  [29] Over $4,000 of our money. Very beautiful or accomplished slavessometimes brought twice that amount.