x~^ JAN 2>I 1918 A-, A BX 7117 .E28 i 1853 V, ,2 Edwards , B. B. 1802- -1852. Writings of Professor B. B. Edwards tiuu v\ a6liin»(o iSoston. ^,i?-i<^ii^t^ ^s^j- 21 1918 PROFESSOR B. B. EDWARDS, WITH A MEMOIR EDWARDS A. PAR K IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. II. BOSTON: PUBLISHED BY JOHN P. JEWETT AND COMPANY. CLEVELAND, OHIO: JEWETT, PROCTOR, AND WORTHINGTON. LONDON: SAMPSON LOW, SON, & CO. 1853. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by John P. Jewett and Company, in the Clerk's Office of the District Coiu't of the District of Massachusetts. CAMBRIDGE: M E T C A L P AND COMPANY, PRINTERS TO TUB UNIVERSITY. CONTENTS 0¥ VOL. II. ESSAYS: ADDRESSES: LECTURES. I. PAGE THE ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION IN ITALY .... 1 II. SLAVERY IN ANCIENT GREECE 44 III. ROMAN SLAVERY IN THE EARLY CENTURIES OF THE CHRIS- TIAN ERA 79 IV. SLAVERY IN THE JIIDDLE AGES .113 V. CLASSICAL STUDIES 131 VI. FEMALE EDUCATION 148 VII. THE POETRY OF WORDSWORTH 183 VIII. REASONS FOR THE STUDY OF THE HEBREW LANGUAGE . . 206 IV CONTENTS. IX. EARLY ENGLISH VERSIONS OP THE BIBLE .... 234 AUTHENTICITY AND GENUINENESS OF THE PENTATEUCH . 281 1. The Importance of Caution in an Inquiry of this Nature . 288 2. Historical Scepticism less Prevalent now than formerly . 291 3. Credibility of the Jewish Historians 303 4. Early Origin of Alphabetic Writing .... 306 5. The Language and Style of the Pentateuch do not prove its later Origin 327 6. The Command of God in Respect to tlic Destruction of the Canaanites vindicated 342 XI. THE IMPRECATIONS IN THE SCRIPTURES 364 XII. HEBREW POETRY 384 XIII. IMPORTANCE OF A THOROUGH THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION . 414 XIV. CHRISTIANS SHOULD STUDY THE PROFOUNDER MYSTERIES OF THEIR FAITH ' . . . . 435 XV. COLLATERAL SIGNS OF HUMAN DEPRAVITY 454 XVI. INFLUENCE OF EMINENT PIETY ON THE INTELLECTUAL POW- ERS 472 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION IN ITALY. Over the door of the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome are the words : " Sacro sancta Lateranensis Ec- clesia, omnium urbis et orbis Ecclesiarum Mater et Caput." This is no idle boast. The realm over which Augustus Csesar swayed his sceptre was narrow, compared with that of his spiritual successor. The encyclical letter which ema- nates from the Quirinal Palace is addressed to one half the civilized world, and binds the consciences of a fourth of the human race. What is the complexion of this religion at home .'' What are its features when seen on its native soil ? Does the heart of the great system beat with energy, or does it give signs of decay and dissolution ? We are natu- rally interested in visiting the spring of a mighty river, in examining the elements of an influence that has shaped the destiny of the world through one third of its duration. When viewed historically the subject is one of extraordi- * An Address delivered before the Theological Society, Dartmouth College, July 26, the Society for Religious Inquiry, University of Vei*- mont, July 31, and the Knowles Rhetorical Society, Newton Theolog- ical Institution, August 22, 1848. VOL. II. 1 3 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION IN ITALY. nary interest. It is often said that men are never aroused in the highest degree, except on religious grounds ; that to accomplish a great and difficult political object, the con- science must be invoked ; motives that reach beyond the grave must be appealed to. In Italy this complexity of mo- tives, this intermingling of human passions with the awful sanctions of religion, this blending of civil and ecclesiastical interests, have been witnessed as they have been nowhere else. Political conspiracies have been concealed or dis- closed on pain of eternal death. The darkest crimes against the State have been committed on the promise of God's for- giveness. The police have found their readiest coadjutors or their bitterest foes at the confessional. Elsewhere the State has trampled on the Church. In other countries, the Church is the obsequious handmaid of the political power, is chained to the chariot-wheel of kings and cabinets. In Rome an aged priest has united all the offices of the Jewish theocracy. Senators and armies, councils and courts, have done the bidding of a superannuated monk. The extraordinary events which have rapidly followed each other, and which are now occurring, through all South- ern and Western Europe, clothe this topic with especial interest. What effect will these political revolutions exert on the established and dominant religion .'' Will they essen- tially weaken its hold on the affections of the people ? Will they undermine all prescriptive rights ? If ecclesiastical reforms shall follow in the train of those which are muni- cipal or civil, will such reforms endanger the supremacy of the Catholic system ? Should all State patronage be with- drawn, has the Church a recuperative force so that she could adapt herself to the new order of society ? Or, if the Catholic system should be utterly subverted, would any THE ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION IN ITALY. 3 desirable form of Protestantism take its place ? Would the destruction of that old hierarchy put an end to the spirit of bigotry and persecution ? Wherein is a radical and nomi- nal Protestantism better than that ancient church tyranny ? The subject, moreover, vitally concerns us as American scholars and Christians. Papal Europe, even Italy herself, looks to this country vi^ith eager curiosity and hope. Un- counted multitudes constantly find an asylum here. At the present time, in no national legislature except our own would the members of the Company of Jesus find upholders and apologists. With, in some respects, a feeble, negative, hesitating Protestantism, with paralyzing divisions in our own ranks, in the absence of comprehensive plans, and especially of a gentle and Christian spirit in our religious discussions, there may be imminent danger to our insti- tutions. Exact acquaintance with the spirit of those with whom we have to deal, becomes a necessity which cannot well be exaggerated. Our object, in the first place, will be to point out some of the causes of the growth of the Roman Catholic system in Italy, and of its existence through so many ages. It is customary to think of that hierarchy as founded on error exclusively, on childish superstitions, or on stupendous false- hoods. The judgments often passed upon it are indignant and summary, rather than discriminating and just, — the decisions of a heated zeal, not of patient and dispassionate inquiry. Now it is inconceivable that a system could have existed so long, unless it had some sound and vigorous roots. If it had not possessed ingredients of truth and per- manence, it would have been torn up ages ago, utterly pros- trated in some of the rude shocks it has encountered. Its 4 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION IN ITALY. inherent vigor is demonstrated by its existence for fifteen hundred years. The Roman Catholic system is characterized by extra- ordinary contrasts and heterogeneous elements. In one aspect it is so weak that it seems to be tottering to its fall ; in another, its strength is impregnable. Now it should seem that it must yield to the force of irrefragable argument and uncontradicted fact ; now the Protestant advocate feels that he himself needs weapons of the keenest temper and an arm of practised ability. No one who has looked into the Romish system will despise it. No one who has encoun- tered the Romish dialectics can fail to be impressed with their unmatched subtlety. 1. The long duration and flourishing state of the Roman Catholic system in Italy, have been owing in a degree to the physical features of the country and to the historical asso- ciations. Italy is the native region of beauty. The water, the earth, the air, the sunlight, seem to have an inherent and peculiar charm. A distinguished German painter, An- gelica Kaufmann, said that she could not paint away from Rome ; there was an artistic quality in the water. Much of the delightful scenery is admirably fitted to give eflfect to the gorgeous ceremonial of the Romish Church. The volcanic regions of the South, with their constant chemical changes, afford many facilities for a deceptive and imposing superstition. The Papal religion is one that cometh by observation, by pomp and outward circumstance. It needs the open air. In the bleak regions of the North it is robbed of half its impressiveness. Some of the most striking portions of its ritual cannot be displayed within the walls of a church. Its crosses must be consecrated at the road-side. Its torches THE ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION IN ITALY. O and funeral wailing need the darkness and silence of the night heavens. The country, too, is old ; it is full of hoary reminiscences, reaching beyond the time of the Romans ; the line between fable and history is ill defined. The country is most per- fectly fitted to a religion which clings tenaciously to the past, which has an immutable faith, and which, instead of relying on reason, independent judgment, and a thorough private study of the Bible, has appealed to the sentiment, to the fancy and the outward sense. In short, it is a religion which has seized on every advantage furnished by its local- ity, adroitly turning the laws of nature to its own benefit. 2. The Romish system in Italy relies in a measure on its antiquity. It has existed almost from the Apostolic ago. The great sects of Protestantism seem but children of yes- terday. This Church says her masses at altars built or begun before the time of Constantino. It has placed its great symbol in the Flavian amphitheatre, commenced by Vespasian. It has charge of those solemn subterranean chapels, on whose dark walls is carved the palm-branch of the martyrs.* Her litanies were chanted by Ambrose and Augustine. On the stones of her Appian Way, as they now lie. Apostles and Evangelists walked. This appeal to antiquity derives its support from several sources. It has its foundation in the nature of man, in one of his primary and strongest tendencies. We naturally reverence what is old. We cling to by-gone days. Amid the shifting scenes of the present and the uncertainties of * Both the crown and palm-branch are borrowed from Paganism ; but they received additional significance to the Christian from the mention of them in the book of Revelation. — Maitland's Cliurch in the Catacombs, p. 177. 1* b THE ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION IN ITALY. the future, we fondly disentomb the long-buried past. The feeling is not confined to one class of men. The illiterate and the learned ahke share in it. Respect for the aged is the marked characteristic of the whole Oriental world. The removal of ancient landmarks has been guarded by heavy imprecations. An old Bible, the heirloom of several gen- erations, is often the most precious family treasure. Of this vital and universal attribute of man, the Italian Church avails herself to the utmost. Mighty empires have disap- peared ; she remains. The palaces of the Caesars have crumbled long ago ; the Apostolic faith still lives in its pri- meval bloom, attracting fresh veneration, greeted with a more passionate love, as ages pass away. Again, she has adroitly strengthened this sentiment, by appealing to the abuse and perversion of the opposite. In- novation is sometimes followed by bitter fruits, often so at first, when the ultimate effect may be beneficial. A popular revolution ends in despotism, freedom of speech in licen- tiousness, freedom of thinking in heartless infidelity. Re- form is only the cloak under which some discontented spirits hide their ambitious designs. Democracy in Church and State is only another name for anarchy. Every unsuc- cessful experiment of this nature, and history is full of them, has been eagerly seized by this conservative Church, and turned to the utmost practical account. Not a little of her power is traceable to this source. She has selected with a sagacious eye, and with a far-reaching policy, the most dis- astrows events in Protestant history, the most melancholy facts in the annals of perverted reason. How much better, she has proudly asked, is the boasted country of Martin Lu- ther, iron-bound by a godless rationalism, than what men call ignorant and superstitious Italy ? Which is to be pre- THE ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION IN ITALY. 7 ferred, the order-loving and tolerant cantons in Catholic Switzerland, with a few peaceable, Jesuit schoolmasters, or those democratic Protestant districts where a portion of the people at this moment cannot celebrate the Lord's Supper but at the peril of life ? Another source of this influence is the mellowing effect of time. The evil that men do is buried with them ; the good lives, and is evermore hallowed. Errors and weak- nesses disappear behind the dusky veil of time ; good and great actions stand out in the boldest relief. Critically to analyze the character of the men whom we idolize, would be like desecrating the tomb of a father. Hence there pre- vails an idea of the faultless character of the piety of the primitive Church, which has no foundation in reality. Hence the Italian Catholic looks only on the great illumi- nated points in the history of his Church, passing over the valleys covered with darkness, the marshes stagnant and redolent with all corruption. To his eye, his mother Church in her long, bright history seems like the queen of Oriental cities, sitting on the shore of the narrow sea in paradisiacal beauty. We listen to some of the Ambrosian chants or the mediceval hymns, sung in a temple moss-grown through seven hundred years ; the words have an indescribable ten- derness, an unearthly solemnity, as they float among the arches, and linger around the marble columns, and wander along the fretted roof. As the Stahat Mater Dolorosa peals from the organ and from voices without number, we seem to hear those wailing tones and catch the very accents of the holy women who came to see that great sight ; and we forget the fatal theological error which lurks in those awful sounds or in those words which embody the very soul of music. No other church has such treasures, because every other is comparatively modern. 8 THE R05IAN CATHOLIC RELIGION IN ITALY. 3. The Italian Church has been sustained in part by per- manent funds, or by a large, fixed capital. We do not refer so much to the religious foundations, monasteries, nunneries, and institutions of the like nature, as to the endowments which support the parish churches, and those which are devoted to the direct extension of Papacy. The former stand on a more precarious tenure, and have often been confiscated or swept away in a revolution. But the capital which has main- tained the parochial clergy has been, whatever may be the case in the future, one of the firmest supports of the system. In Tuscany, which has about two thirds of the population of the State of New York, the permanent funds for the maintenance of the regular clergy amount to several mil- lions of dollars. Whatever is not necessary to the support of the priest is scrupulously distributed to the poor.* This provision places the clergy in a position independent in a measure of the people, while it does not diminish their in- fluence over their flocks. What an efficient instrument for the extension of the Catholic faith has been the Congre- gation de Propaganda Fide at Rome, — an entire street filled with its imposing edifices ! Its presses in num- ber, its types in variety of languages, its pupils gath- ered literally from the four quarters of the earthy are a most striking practical proof that the ubiquity of the Catholic Church is not a mere rhetorical exaggeration. It * Florence, e. g., is divided into parishes ; there is generally in each parish one parish church, besides other churches and chapels ; to each church belong benefices more or less, which are in the hands of patrons, rich families, and others ; these benefices vary in value from fifty to one hundred or two hundred dollars ; there is often great competition for them among the young priests, there being more applicants than places. The candidate must possess a living worth fifty dollars before he can make application. The funds of a church are in the hands of a sacristan. THE ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION IN ITALY. i) is sometimes said, that nothing but ardent love to Christ and true faith in His word will sustain a foreign missionary for a series of years in a barbarous and pagan country. Yet the pupils of the Propaganda, and other adherents of this religion, have exhibited in unnumbered instances and through long centuries the most unshaken zeal and the most heroic courage. Either they have been animated by the true Christian spirit, or else the general proposition just referred to is not founded in fact. No isolated efforts, no merely voluntary contributions, could ever accomplish what that celebrated society has done. The order of Jesuits is not an exception. They have been, as is well known, the founders of the most splendid churches, the authors or pro- moters of the largest permanent foundations belonging to the Catholic hierarchy, themselves in turn supported by these foundations. St. Peter's church itself may be regarded as a permanent fund, whose value for the Papacy arithmetic can hardly compute. It stands as the noblest representative of the unity of the Catholic faith, in unapproached grandeur by any edifice now standing, or that was ever built by Greek or Roman, and which Michael Angelo said he labored upon for the love of God. This church, by its history, by its as- sociations with the earlier edifice which stood on the same spot, by its faultless proportions, by its effects every year on the thousands who behold it, Protestants and Catholics, the guides of taste and public sentiment in their respective countries, becomes a support to the system which words have no power to delineate, is an investment for that Church immeasurably richer than the marble and the gold which so profusely adorn it.* * The ancient basilica had existed above one thousand years. The 10 THE ROBIAN CATHOLIC RELIGION IN ITALY, May it not be a question, whether we have not seriously and unnecessarily weakened the influence of Protestantism by encouraging the tendency which would abandon all aid from permanent endowments, which would teach us to rely exclusively on the spontaneous liberality of the Christian Church ? May we not thereby have reason to apprehend evils of no inconsiderable magnitude ? Have we not, on this subject, anticipated a period which is yet far off, rely- ing on a steady philanthropy, a warm and uniform Christian charity, which does not now exist ? May we not expose an institution of great importance, or, what is of more value, minds of fine accomplishments in the Christian ministry, whose training has been very costly, to the caprice of a fickle and arbitrary majority, or to the persecution of an unrelenting minority, where all independence of mind, all honorable feeling, is sacrificed to the fashions or caprices of an hour, where the only alternative is cowardly compli- ance with what conscience and reason do not approve, or starvation ? By fostering this prejudice, this ill-considered tendency, first stone of the new edifice was laid in 1506 by Julius II. The plan was traced by Bramante, who conceived the idea of the dome from Brunelleschi's effbrt at Florence. His successor, under Leo X., was Giulio di San Gallo; then Raphael with five assistants ; then Antonio di San Gallo ; then Michael Angelo, who erected the greater part of the dome ; he was succeeded bj^ several architects, till 1654, nearly two centuries from the time at which the idea of building it was entertained, when the essential parts were completed, at a cost of 47,000,000 of scudi, about £11,000,000. " Ths gorgeous dome, suspended in mid- air, is a firmament ; the place indeed has an atmosphere of its own, and in this vastest of cathedrals the temperature knows no change ; neither the enervating scirocco, nor the piercing (ramo)itana, nor winter nor summer, intluences the soft air of this mighty temple." — Cooke's Rome, p. 40. THE ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION IN ITALY. 11 we have manifestly put it out of our power to promote cer- tain objects, which urgently need a permanent basis, which cannot from the nature of the case appeal to popular sup- port, and which — such is the hostility that has been excited against every proposition of the kind — cannot receive the aid of those individuals, who might otherwise possess that enlargement of mind which would lead them to become efficient patrons. Because of some minor evils, or of some fancied and groundless fears, we reject that which the wis- dom of ages has approved, and which has been essential to build up both the true and the false systems of learning and of faith. The two ancient universities in England have never been what they ought to have been ; neither are they now what they should be. These great endowments have been the sources of evils both to Church and State. Yet no one could have the hardihood to assert thai the evils have been pre- ponderant, that these foundations have not been the sources of good, great and inestimable. The warmest friend of spontaneous charity, and of an unceasing appeal to popular sympathy, could not wish to see them demolished, or their princely revenues dissipated. 4. Italian Catholicism has one of its main supports in the Fine Arts. Three questions here naturally occur. What is the value of these objects of art ? What connection have they with the Roman Catholic religion ? What will be their proba- ble influence hereafter .'' In answer to the first question, it may be said that no value can be placed upon the principal objects. The price is beyond estimation or conjecture. Perhaps no article of property, movable or fixed, can be compared with them in 12 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION IN ITALY. worth. They could not be exchanged for fine gold. Crown jewels, the regalia of kings, the revenue of diamond mines, would be no temptation to the owners of these objects. Gold can be purchased ; it is a vulgar article of commerce ; diamonds can be dug out of the earth ; but no Promethean art can reillumine the soul of Raphael, or spread before him those visions of superhuman beauty. The wealth of the Indies could not replace the Apollo, were it destroyed. The Sistine Chapel could be painted only by him who hung the dome of St. Peter's. All the capitals of Italy, and most of the principal cities, contain galleries filled with objects which become the more precious as time advances. Years of intelligent and patient and genial study cannot exhaust them, can only help one to begin to understand them, any more than the genius of Homer or of Milton can be comprehended in a day or a year. Two or three of these Italian masters stand on the same unapproachable elevation with those great poets that shine with a never-setting light. These galleries, these im- mortal works are not locked up, are not secluded from the vulgar gaze, like the idols of the East, but they are visited and studied by all Christendom, Catholic and Protestant. They are the goal of pilgrims as fervent as ever wound their way to the shrine of a prophet. They are mould- ing the taste, shaping the sentiments, and determining the character of some of the leading minds of the age, — of all who have any power to appreciate beauty in its deathless forms. The second inquiry is. How are these objects of art con- nected with the Roman Catholic religion .'' Rather we may ask. Wherein are they not interfused and incorporated, made to breathe an influence which is ever insinuating and THE ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION IN ITALY. 13 all but universal ? The religion is addressed, in a pre- eminent degree, especially in its practical workings, to the imagination, the fancy, the feelings, the outward sense. It seeks to take the reason captive by filling the eye with tears, by enchanting the ear, and by stirring all the sensi- bilities of our nature. Admiration is the mother of devo- tion ; God, through the medium of the Virgin, is influenced by tears and passionate outcries and wailing lamentations. To the building up of this stupendous system, kings, patri- archs, popes, councils, theologians, monks, missionaries, have not been the sole, perhaps not the principal, contribu- tors. The gods of Papal Rome were made by the chisel and the pencil of more cunning workmen than these. Craftsmen more honored in life than any of the Gregories or Leos, and since their death canonized with a profounder homage, lent all the charms of their inimitable genius to support and adorn what they could not enough honor. One of them sleeps in the Pantheon, whom, when he was alive, men regarded with religious veneration, as if God had re- vealed Himself through Him, as he did in former days by the prophets. The tomb of another is in the Westminster Abbey of Florence, by the side of those of Machiavelli, Galileo, and Dante. The position of the Holy Virgin in the Romish system is well known. It has been often observed that the degree of reverence paid to the sacred persons is in the following order : the Virgin, her Divine Son, God the Father. Four- teen festivals in the calendar are dedicated especially to her honor. Churches innumerable bear her name. Altars the most sacred and cherished are fragant with incense to her coequal glory. Everywhere and in all possible forms she is adored. Yet the most worthy offering ever presented to VOL. II. 2 14 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION IN ITALY. her was the genius of Raphael. She was the ideal of all heavenly beauty for ever floating before him, the subject of his dreams by night, his toils by day. Nowhere does his genius revel so as upon her form. Never have all the types and symbols and conceptions of beauty been so ethe- real ized as in the touch of his pencil on this entrancing theme. The gems of the richest collections in Europe are Raphael's Madonnas. The same remarks apply substantially to most of the other masters of painting. The great attraction at Parma is Correggio's picture, the most remarkable figures in which are the Madonna and child, Mary Magdalene, and Jerome. " The eminently grand picture " of the academy of Venice is the Assumption of the Virgin by Titian. A Madonna, unlike any other, sweet and beautiful exceedingly, is that by Andrea del Sarto in the Pitti palace at Florence. In the academy at Bologna, the visitor is instantly attracted to the Madonna della Pieta. of Guido ; and so in many other places. The artists have lavished the resources of the highest genius in making the Roman Catholic religion visi- ble, in embodying it in breathing forms, in commending its most objectionable features, through the fascinations of an inimitable coloring, to all men of accomplished minds. To reject a doctrine presented in this form seems to be a re- bellion against the canons of taste, an extinguishing of the lights of learning and civilization. Not to palliate or over- look an anti-Scriptural dogma, or a fatal eiTor, when it is surrounded with all the illusions of genius, is a barbarism which multitudes of Protestants would shrink from being guilty of. Those who would on no account kiss a relic or worship the host, will, yielding up their better judgment, bestow their warmest admiration upon the still more objee- THE ROBIAN CATHOLIC RELIGION IN ITALY. 15 tionable forms of pictured or sculptured beauty. An idola- trous attachment to some of the Christian fathers is one of the sins of the Roman Catholic Church. But this is a pec- cadillo, or in a great measure atoned for, if the artist has added his imperishable sanction. The worship of images has been the reproach of the Papal Church for ages ; yet, in the view of many Protestants even, it seems a venial offence, as they gaze on the fresco and mosaic, or the mar- ble standing before them, wrought with cunning skill and almost warm with life. It is a total perversion of the de- sign of a church to crowd it with specimens of art or an- tiquity, to make it, as it often is in Europe, a museum or a picture galleiy. It is said that there are nearly fourteen thousand granite columns in Rome, relics of the times of the empire, and more than six thousand antique columns of marble, many of which are in the churches, and thus be- come to multitudes objects of intenser interest than the wor- ship- of God, or the doctrines of Christ.* The remaining question is. What will be the position and influence of the Fine Arts hereafter ? How far will the Roman Catholic Church rest on them as among its firmest supports ? That they will supply one of the moulding influences of society, even in its best and most Christian state, there can be no doubt. Some of the productions of the great mas- ters, should they be spared in the accidents of time, can never cease to be the teachers of the world, because they are addressed to a primary and imperishable part of our nature, because they furnish correct and most awakening * Burton's Kome, 11. p. 115. 16 THE KOMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION IN ITALY. conceptions of truth, and excite the rehgious feelings in a degree compared with which spoken words have little power. For example, the pictures of the Crucifixion and the Last Judgment by Rubens, and of the Transfiguration by Raphael, are coincident with Scriptural truth, and will haunt the memoiy, and awaken awful fear, or profound ado- ration, or tender love, days and weeks after they are with- drawn from the sight. These works are an index of what the human soul is capable of effecting, and their direct ten- dency is to fill the mind with exalted views of the glory of Him who breathed into man the breath of genius. They present before him who gazes upon them an ideal of excel- lence in the highest degree exciting and influential, what- ever be the nature of his pursuits. In possessing suscepti- bilities that can derive satisfaction from such sources, he is inwardly exalted. By the aid of this almost spiritual pen- cilling, he can grasp some of those conceptions which would be otherwise dim and shadowy. In this world we do not need intellect nor truth, but that power that will excite the soul, and fasten it on the truth and beauty with which its own depths and all objective nature are filled. Now it is in vain to say that this is mere fancy, a mo- mentary impression which produces no practical effect on the heart and life. A man may be educated for heaven by the reflex influence of the thoughts and aspirations of his own soul, as truly as by a precept or an objective motive. The more pure and elevated one's feelings are on any subject, the more laden his mind is with all the symbols of grace and beauty, the more able he will be to resist the allure- ments to evil by which he is beset. No true Protestant would, indeed, undertake to apologize for the creations of taste and art in Italy, so far as they mis- THE ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION IN ITALY. 17 interpret or confound Scriptural truth, or inculcate theo- logical error, or excite unworthy passions and criminal desires. In the reformed and better age which we believe is coming, all such productions will be swept away, or esti- mated as we now estimate the fables of Greek mythology. In that better period, too, these pursuits will not usurp a place which does not belong to them, but will assume their appropriate and subordinate position. But till that purer state of society arrives, the Roman Catholic Church in Italy will continue to rest on the Fine Arts as one of its surest foundations. The growth of ages, what is so incorporated into the habits and feelings, associated with the most affect- ing periods of human life, the most touching offices of the Church, and the holiest recollections of history, will not be easily relinquished. Besides, thei'e are powerful influences in the Protestant world, which are coincident and corroborating. The ritual and the practices of the Lutheran Communion on the conti- nent of Europe are but very partially reformed. Many of their church edifices can with difficulty be distinguished from the Papal. Much of the finest poetry of the present day, the best of the romances, and the most splendid essay- writing, lend all their charms and power in strengthening the very tendency on which the Papal system reposes. The claims of theological truth and the great interests of mankind are made to yield to the charms of diction, to poetic fancy, or to a false liberality. The worshippers of the fine arts in most of the Protestant countries of Europe were never more numerous or enthusiastic than they are at this moment, never more willing to sacrifice truth to out- ward beauty, never more willing to promote by their ex- ample what in profession they would disown. The fasci- 2* 18 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION IN ITALY. nations of genius are in some instances an apology for what is no more nor less than undisguised sensualism. The pious and Protestant king of Prussia has now in his national collection in Berlin two or three productions exquisite in art, but which would not be openly exposed in the States of the Church in Italy. 5. The system has been sustained by means of the truth which it includes in its creeds and formularies. It is owing to the same reason in part that the Mohammedan faith has been able to maintain an independent existence so long. Truth cannot be wholly buried up. It has a certain innate and recuperative energy. It may be darkened and per- verted ; it may be mixed with sophisms, or ingeniously ex- plained away, or caricatured ; during long ages it may seem to have left the world to a dead formalism or to a malignant fanaticism ; yet it secretly operates in some hearts. Like those influences which are at work in the hard, wintry ground, it is silently preparing its forces, and will in due time reveal some little spots of cheerful verdure. The Decrees of the Council of Trent are the authorized standard of the Catholic Church. No fault can be found with a considerable portion of these articles, and of the ex- planations which are subjoined. All Protestant churches would fully accord with important parts of the Confession, Indeed, the creeds of some of the Protestant churches are in a large measure only a translation from the Romish. Unwise explanations, acute and groundless distinctions, the insertion of positive error, the multiplication of unauthorized observances, or even the immoral lives of not a few who administer the system, do not wholly change its nature, can- not entirely exclude its redeeming influence. Not seldom, some individuals, whose hearts have been touched by di- THE ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION IN ITALY. 19 vine grace, have been able to maintain their ground in the Catholic Church, though they have boldly preached some saving truths, and neglected or denounced the pernicious errors by which they were surrounded. Such appear to be some of the principal reasons for the protracted existence and comparatively flourishing state of the Italian Church. Her errors in doctrine, and her anti- Christian practices find, indeed, a vigorous nourishment in the tendencies of depraved human nature. But unmixed error and superstition, or unadulterated depravity, cannot be the sole cause of the long duration of this Church. Her strength lies in the artful commingling of good and evil ele- ments, in having at her command resources for the most adroit management, in being able to appeal to some of the most innocent, as well as powerful, tendencies of our na- ture, in taking advantage of varying events in Providence and of the changing aspects of society, and in being able to point to such men as Bernard and Borromeo, Pascal and Fenelon and the present Bishop of Rome, as undoubted proof of the excellent fruits which the system is fitted to produce. We shall now proceed, in the second place, to adduce some of the causes of the weakness of the Roman Catholic system, especially, though by no means exclusively, as it exists in Italy ; and shall enumerate some of the facts which prove that this system is in conflict with the Bible, with sound reason, and with the advancement of society, and which assure us of its reformation or its ultimate overthrow. One preliminary remark is important. The Italian Cath- olic does not see with our eves. He does not examine his 20 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION IN ITALY. system through a Protestant medium. His principles of in- quiry are not drawn from the inductive philosophy. The priest, educated under a different system of dialectics, is not familiar with that large, round-about, common sense of which Locke writes, and which we are accustomed to apply to a religious system. We are sometimes amazed that a Roman Catholic does not look at a church question as we are taught to examine it. In his religious services, we may continually witness scenes so trivial and contemptible, that we are astonished at the gravity of the principal perform- ers, and at the gullibility of the awe-stricken crowd. But the Romish priest is trained to substitute ingenuity for argu- gument, plausible suppositions for facts, subtle discrimina- tion for solid reasoning. There is indeed little common ground between the Protestant and Catholic theologian. The mind of the latter has been trained for ages in a man- ner so unlike that of an intelligent Protestant, that it seems to be a hopeless task to try to overthrow the Catholic hie- rarchy by argument. So it is with the mass of the devotees. They seem to have lost or never possessed the power to perceive what is ludicrous or utterly trivial. But while we pity their credulity, they are grieved at our infidelity, or shocked at our irreverence, and the frigid unconcern which we exhibit in witnessing the celebration of the most awful mystei'ies of their faith. These considerations should teach us to judge of the Romish practices with all Christian candor and charity ; they may also lead us to moderate our expectations of the very speedy overthrow of the system. It has such a tena- cious hold of the senses and the imagination, the hopes and the fears of the people, that the process of extinguishing it, or of thoroughly reforming it, may be difficult and pro- tracted. THE ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION IN ITALY. 21 1. The Roman Catholic system is not favorable to the industry and physical prosperity of a state. No compari- son is more fair, none can be less easily set aside, than that which is often instituted between the principal Protestant and Catholic countries of Europe. The argument is open, and read of all men ; it cannot be met, nor its force evaded. Protestantism is favorable to the temporal prosperity of na- tions ; Roman Catholicism is not, or in proportion as it is, it departs from its spirit and usages. The reasons of this contrast are perfectly obvious. The general influence of the Papacy in repressing freedom of thought, independence of opinion, the sense of personal re- sponsibility, the motives to individual exertion, is not con- fined to the territory of morals and religion ; it has extend- ed over the entire physical life, all the departments of in- dustry and action. If the members of a community are not allowed to think on questions affecting their spiritual in- terests, they will be apt to be sluggish and thriftless in all which pertains to their temporal well-being. Again, through its innumerable festivals and holiday observances, Romanism essentially interferes with habits of industry and the regular business of life. The command, " Six days shalt thou labor," is interpreted to mean, " Three or four days shalt thou labor ; all the rest shall be fasts or holidays," The number of canonized saints on its calen- dar is eleven hundred and twenty-eight,* the annual festi- vals of multitudes of whom are celebrated by the Church universal, or by large portions of it. The checks upon in- dustry, and the habits of idleness arising from this source, * Catalogue Alphahetique des Saints et Saintes, avec la Date de leiir Mori et de leurs Fttes, Annuaire Historique, Paris, 1847. 22 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION IN ITALY. where the fasts and festivals are observed with any degree of strictness, are innumerable. Besides, the number of ecclesiastics, who pursue no use- ful occupation, and who are not needed for any spiritual purpose, is enormously great. The city of Rome, with a population of 175,000, has more than three hundred church- es and one ecclesiastic to every thirty of its population.* The kingdom of Naples, not including Sicily, with a popu- lation of about six millions, has nearly one hundred thou- sand priests and persons belonging to the religious orders. The barren island of Sardinia is furnished with one hun- dred and seventeen convents. Idleness, rather than positive immorality, is the charge which is most commonly laid at the door of the priesthood in the city of Rome. They are promenading the streets, lounging at the museums and picture galleries, and are not occupied in their appropriate calling. The Roman Catholic Church is the mother of idleness as well as of ignorance. The great mass of the population in many parts of Italy are indescribably poor ; the property is in the hands of the bankers and of a few other rich men. The vast Campagna near Rome, the immense Pontine marshes lining the Ap- pian Way towards Naples, impregnated with disease and death, would become within two years, in the hands of an Englishman or New-Englander, the garden of the world. t * The city of Rome, according to the official census, reported in the Augsburg AUgem. Zeit., 1847, had 54 parishes, 27,532 families, 39 bisliops, 1,514 priests, 2,471 monks, 1,754 nuns, 521 seminaries, and a popuhition of 175,883. Naples, with a population of 360,000, has 300 churches. t In 1797, when the Papal government was overturned by the French, the Board of Public Subsistence exhibited a deficit of 3,293,000 crowns, incurred in retailing bread to the people. THE ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION IN ITALY. 23 So far as industry and the true principles of political econ- omy take root in a Roman Catholic country, it is by a de- parture, and only by a departure, from the spirit of the system.* 2. The Catholic system is preeminently a materializing system. It measures spiritual truth, to a great extent, ac- cording to a gross and earthly standard. It clothes pure and elevated ideas in a garb foreign to their nature, or con- nects with them mean and repulsive associations. Instead of raising mortals to the skies, it robs angels of their spirit- ual glory. The sublime and dreadful mysteries of the in- visible world, into which the seraphim would fear to intrude, are opened to the vulgar gaze, and are made so definite and mensurable and earthlike, as to lose their legitimate influ- ence and become nearly transformed into material sub- stances. Proofs and illustrations of these remarks might be ac- cumulated almost without end. After the communicant * We learned the following facts at Naples, in 1847, on the best authority. The government at that time had a complete monopoly of tobacco, salt, playing-cards, and snow. The last article is considered indispensable. Salt was $ 2.50 a bushel. The land-tax was sometimes enormously high, amounting to one fourth of a man's income. But it was very unequal, as a small bribe would induce the assessors to lay a light tax on one, while that laid upon another who happened to be ab- sent, or who would not pay the bribe, was ruinous. The country en- joys one of the finest climates and has a most fertile soil, yet there is little general prosperity and little foreign commerce. The state of morals in the city is deplorably low. Pimps abound in the streets, who solicit passengers and strangers to criminal indulgence. According to the testimony of Dr. Cox, an English physician, one fourth of the dis- eases of males at Naples are either dependent on or complicated with diseases caused by dissipation. Contentions and quarrels frequently occur among different priests and parishes. 24 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION IN ITALY. makes the sign of the cross at the sacrament, he says, " May the body of our Lord Jesus Christ preserve my soul to eternal life," * — his body really, truly, and substantially. When the last notes of the Sanctus have died upon the ear, a small bell tinkles, and our Lord is physically present on the altar, under the emblems, — his literal body and blood are partaken of, — a physical, materializing interpretation of Scripture, which is only a specimen of a system which is applied to a large part of the entire volume. Some of the numerous rules laid down in the Roman Missal for the taking of the sacrament, are disgustingly mi- nute, surrounding a spiritual truth with the most familiar and degrading images. Some of the articles are not fit for quotation. "If any one does not fast after midnight," the rubric prescribes, " even after the taking of water only, or of any other drink or food, even in the shape of medicine, and in whatsoever minute quantity, he cannot communicate or celebrate. If the residue of the food remaining in the mouth be swallowed, the residuary particles do not prevent communion, since they are not swallowed after the manner of food. The same is to be said, if, in washing the face, a drop of water should be swallowed, contrary to the inten- tion." So the doctrines of repentance and the forgiveness of sins are miserably degraded by the penances and indul- gences of the Romish system, even if we admit the most plausible explanations of the Catholic theologians. The intercourse of the soul of man with its Maker, in its most solemn moments, in the deciding crises of its destiny, is tampered with by the arts of a mercenary traffic. Temporal * Bishop England's Explanation of the Construction, etc. of a Church, Rome, 1845, p. 144. THE ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION IN ITALY. 25 rewards and punishments, if not eternal, are made a marketable commodity. Over the gateway of many churches in Rome is to be seen posted up the words : " Indulgentia plenaria, perpetua et quotidiana, pro vivis et defunctis." Sometimes the sen- tence is on a marble slab in the church ; sometimes it is a written, framed tablet of parchment, hanging upon a column ; sometimes it is in gilt letters on a metal plate ; at others, on a loose printed paper. On the inner wall of the church of St. Sebastian, which stands without the walls on the Appian Way, is a marble inscription which declares that " whosoever shall have entered it [i. e. the catacomb] shall obtain plenary remission of all his sins, through the merits of the one hundred and seventy-four thousand holy mar- tyrs, and of forty-six high pontiffs, likewise martyrs," who were interred there. "So many are the indulgences of the Lateran church," it is declared, "that they cannot in any wise be numbei'ed but by God alone." * * The following are taken from various churches in Rome. In St. Luigi dei Francesci, " Whoever prays for the king of France has ten days of indulgence," by Pope Innocent IV. In St. Pietro in Carcere, " S- Sylvester granted every day to those who visited it 1,200 years of indulgence, doubled on Sundays and commanded festivals, and besides, every day the remission of a third part of sins." In St. Cosmo and Damian, " Gregory I. granted to all and each one visiting this church of St. Cosmo and Damian 1,000 years of indulgence, and on the day of the station of the same church, the same Gregory granted 10,000 years of indulgence.'' On a marble slab near the door of the church of St. Saviour di Thermis is the following : " Indulgences conceded in per- petuity by high pontiffs in this church. Every day of the year there are 1,230 years of indulgence ; for all Lent there is plenary indul- gence ; for the pilgrims there is every day plenary indulgence." — Ro- manism as it exists in Rome, by the Hon. J. W. Percy, pp. 48 - 53. VOL. II, 3 26 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION IN ITALY. The great facts of our futui'e, spiritual existence, so sim- ple and sublime, so incapable of being symbolized by the gross -objects of sense, are robbed, in the sermons of the Italian preachers, of their true efficiency, and made to as- sume the most grotesque, or repulsive, material forms. The Paradise and Gehenna of the Moslems, the Elysium and the Hades of Virgil, might find exact counterparts in the discourses of many professed Christian preachers. Three or four years ago an eloquent Italian friar preached in Rome. His subject was the Last Judgment. And he handled it in a manner to terrify the poor audience to the utmost degree, using every art his imagination could sug- gest. Sometimes he threw a veil over the Madonna's face, or turned her round, for she moved on a pivot, and exhib- ited her back to his audience in token of alienation of feel- ing ; sometimes he shook her garments, which were black, allusive to the train of thought in which he was indulging ; he then produced an iron chain and scourged himself vio- lently with it, the harsh clank of which against the panels of the pulpit, united with the heavy sounds of the ropes with which some of his hearers were lacerating themselves, together with the sobs and shrieks of the females, were ter- rifying to the firmest nerves. On the following evening, his subject was Hell. It might have been Omniscience itself that was speaking, so intimate was the knowledge displayed of the secrets of that un- known world. Towards the end of the discourse, he called for a lighted pitch torch, which was in waiting, and, deliber- ately rolling up his sleeve, held his wrist immediately over the flame. Such was the torment, he said, to which every member of the sinner's body would be subjected through ail eternity. There was no flinching on the part of the THE ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION IN ITALY. 27 friar, so strongly were his nerves strung ; nor was there any deception.* Now this method of exhibiting truth was extraordinary only in degree. It habitually appeals to the inferior part of our nature. It seeks to reduce every proposition to sensible proof. It likes to trust in nothing which cannot be seen and weighed and measured. In short, its tendency is to supersede the use of the reason by reducing the highest and most Spiritual truths to the level of the outward sense. 3. One of the most striking forms under which Italian Catholicism appears is that of a baptized Paganism. It is an extraordinary mixture of Roman polytheism and Chris- tianity. The stranger at Rome can at times with difficulty recollect whether he is walking in the streets of Augustus's Rome or in those of Pius the Ninth. He turns a corner and passes out of Jesus Street and enters Minerva Street. He gazes upon Vespasian's amphitheatre, and then listens to a friar preaching in the centre of it. Looking at the inscrip- tions on the churches, he reads, " Santa Maria sopra Mi- nerva, Santa Maria in Lucina, Santo Apollinare, Santo Martino." The saints Cosmo and Damiano are worshipped where there was a temple of Romulus and Remus. A noble building, at this moment nearly perfect, dedicated to Anto- ninus and his wife Faustina, is now the church of St. Lo- renzo. One descends out of a church into the Mammertine prison where Catiline's fellow-conspirators were confined. The ancient Romans had a great number of local gods, who presided over particular places or occupations. St. Martin is now the protector of the millers. St. Luke is the patron of sculptors, painters, and architects. A likeness of the Madonna, painted by him, says the Roman almanac, ex- Ilome Pagan and Papal, 1846, yt. 244. 28 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION IN ITALY. ists in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore. St. Eras- mus is the advocate against spasmodic sufferings, St. Rocco against plagues, St. Bonosa against the small-pox, and St. Martha against epidemic diseases.* People take their feeble children to the church of St. Theodore, at the foot of the Palatine hill, where the Roman matrons formerly dedicated their children to Romulus. On a certain day the cardinals are seen sweeping up the nave of St. Peter's, in their scarlet robes, in order to kiss the bronze statue of the Apostle, which, it is said, was once dedicated to the worship of Jupiter Capitolinus. No Roman Catholic will pass it without going through the ceremony. Three of the toe-nails of the right foot are worn away. Cicero, describing a statue, says that its mouth and chin were some- what worn, because the people in their prayers and thanks- givings were accustomed, not only to worship it, but to kiss it. On the left side of the church of St. Mary, on the Capitoline hill, are exposed, at Christmas, two images of Augustus and the Cumaean Sibyl, respectively, in memory of the popular tradition, that the Sibyl predicted the birth of our Saviour, and that Augustus therefore erected an altar to her memory. Particular churches in Rome are filled with votive offerings, from penitent criminals, or from those who have escaped various dangers. The ancient mariner vowed to Castor and Pollux, or to Neptune ; the shepherd dedicated his pipe to Pan ; the poet vowed to Apollo ; and the successful general to Jupiter Feretrius. Nothing is more striking than a Roman Catholic funeral, especially when it occurs about midnight. The body, placed on a bier, is borne on men's shoulders, with the face ex- posed. Two files of hooded monks chant the offices for * Rome Pagan and Papal, 1846, p. 24. THE ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION IN ITALY, 29 the dead in a low and melancholy tone, each bearing a gleaming torch. The exact counterpart of this might have been witnessed in Rome two thousand years ago. The Pagan brought an animal or the fruits of the earth as an offering on the altar. He performed a lustration with water and incense. He supplicated Vesta and Janus with grain and wine. The Christian brings a composition, which to the senses appears to be nothing but flour and water, but which, as he asserts, is the very body of the Lord Jesus. Christmas is the Saturnalia of the Romans ; New Year's day too was a day of great account in ancient Rome, and it is equally so in modern Rome. The Carnival is a repre- sentation, in innumerable particulars, of the Saturnalia and the Bacchanalian Lupercalia of the ancients.* * The Carnival commences on Saturday and continues eleven days, excepting the two Sabbaths and Friday. A long and straight street — the Corso — is filled with masked persons, soldiers, horses and car- riages, slowly passing in two lines and then returning. The maskers are decked in all kinds of fantastic garments, women's clothes, horns on their heads, tails sticking out of their bodies, occasionally pre- tending to drink out of empty bottles in their hands, reeling as if intox- icated, etc. In each of the carriages are from two to eight or ten per- sons, largely provided with flowers tied together in knots, and with little balls made of lime in the form of sugar-plums. These flowers and balls are thrown with great vigor into the balconies and windows of the houses, or into the faces of those who are in the streets, and are returned in large measure from every direction. In some cases, half- pints or pints of these plums are poured down in rapid succession upon the heads and faces of persons passing. This most grotesque scene, in which the wliole population of the Eternal City seems to be engaged, is finally closed by the racing through the street of five or six poor horses, without riders, urged on by the shouts of the people, and by little goads or nails, fastened to tin plates which they wear. 3* 30 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION IN ITALY. In defence of this identification of the customs and usages of Pagan and Christian Rome, the Catholic maintains that the demon has been exorcised, the polytheistic rite has been sanctified, and that the vicegerent of the Almighty has laid his holy hands on the heathenish symbol and converted it into an instrument of God's glory. Christianity has thus obtained a visible and tangible victory over the ancient faith, more impressive than if the objects of this idolatry had been all extirpated. But this confident advocate forgets that a law of the human mind is stronger than a decree of the Pope ; that none of his blessings or imprecations can annul or disturb the asso- ciation of ideas. The imperial statue, the pagan rite, how many times soever the holy chrism has been poured upon them, will suggest the forbidden idolatry, may invite to a repetition of the unholy act. This perpetuation of the old polytheism, this amalgama- tion of the rites of idolatry and of the Christian faith, consti- tutes one of the weakest points of the Romish system. It is a crude mixture, a heterogeneous conglomeration of parti- cles which have no affinity. Pure Christianity indignantly spurns the compromise, disclaims all this attempted fusion of contrary elements, and will stand, if at all, on its inde- pendent simplicity. 4. Again, the Roman Catholic system, in some of its aspects, is preeminently childish and unreasonable. If its most earnest eflx)rts had been directed to dissociate the un- derstanding and faith, to separate belief from common sense, it could hardly have succeeded more perfectly. The tax which it practically lays on the credulity of human nature is almost incredible. This childish superstition would not be extraordinary if it were confined to the unreasoning and THE ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION IN ITALY. 31 illiterate multitude, or if it were exclusively seen in retired villages or secluded country churches. Our commiseration w^ould in that case be excited for the dupes of these wretched delusions. But when the most renowned churches of the metropolis of the world are the selected scenes of this jug- glery, — when the Holy Father himself and his most enlight- ened servants give the sanction of their authority and pres- ence, in the nineteenth century, to fables, to alleged mira- cles of the most ludicrous and lying character, — the pity ends in astonishment that a system with such elements could have survived a thousand years, in a country that claims to be the great source of civilization, and the central seat of the Christian faith. On one of the days in January, 1847, the church of St. Andrea delle Fratte, near the College of the Propaganda, was filled repeatedly ; every individual of the throng, appar- ently, except a few foreigners, went up to the priest, suc- cessively, and kissed a bone, said once to have belonged to the patron saint of the church. Not a few of the elite of the city, as well as the poor peasantry, were there. Chil- dren of a few months old were brought in to touch the myste- rious relic. Those who were particularly devout had the privilege of kissing the fragment twice or thrice. On the Coelian hill, just inside of the southern wall of Rome, stand two of the seven Basil ican churches of Rome, St. John Lateran and the Holy Cross in Jerusalem. The view from the top of St. John Lateran has no equal in Rome, perhaps not on earth. There are but few modern buildings in the vicinity to mar the prospect. The ruins of old Rome rear their ivy-crowned summits, or crumble all around with a most melancholy impressiveness. On the west, beyond the Coliseum, the arch of Titus, and the Palatine, the Tiber 32 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION IN ITALY. flows into the blue Mediterranean, both river and sea per- fectly distinct. On the northwest is the Roman forum, bounded by the Tarpeian rock and the Capitoline. On the north and northeast is the modern city, crowned by that one imperial dome. Far beyond, the prospect is limited by the single mountain, — still in the winter, " alta stet nive can- didum," the lyric poet's Soracte. On the east and south- east, bright in the sun's setting rays, are the Sabine hills, Tusculum, Prseneste, and other objects so famous in Latin story. On the south stretches away the undulating Cam- pagna, traversed by the old aqueducts with their vast arches, and dotted by the mouldering fragments of a buried world. Here, if anywhere, it would seem, the churches should be built in all purity and simplicity, — the chosen seats of a worship befitting the locality, lifting the soul to Him who, while he sees mighty empires decaying beneath, is himself from everlasting to everlasting. Yet these two churches are the selected receptacles of superstition and impious fraud ; of relics which are an insult to the human under- standing, and which pour contempt on the great doctrine of the resurrection of the body. On a tablet hanging to one of the columns of the taber- nacle over the high altar in St. John Lateran, is a list of the relics which are there preserved. Some of them are as follows : Part of the arm of St. Helen, mother of Constan- tine ; part of the bones of Salome, mother of John ; a fin8T]s. J Aristoph. Vesp. 443. § KarcovaKas (Popovirras- Aristoph. Lysis. 1153. II Aristoph. Acharn. 507. Also Thucyd. Lib. L 60 SLAVERY IN ANCIENT GREECE. were neither permitted to plead for themselves, nor to be witnesses in any cause.* Yet it was customary to extort confession from them by torture ; but, because this was often so violent as to occasion the death of the slave, or to disable him from being serviceable to his master, any per- son, who demanded a slave for this purpose, was obliged to give his master a sufficient security to answer the loss of his slave. The various modes of torturing slaves are men- tioned by Aristophanes,t and other writers. The common way of correcting them for any offence was to scourge them with whips, sometimes made of hog's bristles. A villain, who had been guilty of any crime which deserved punish- ment, was said fiaartyiav, to Stand in need of, and as it were to itch for, the scourge. Sometimes, to prevent their shrink- ing, or running away, they were tied fast to a pillar. Those convicted of any notorious offence were condemned to grind at the mill, a labor very fatiguing in those days, when it was the custom to beat the grain into meal ; our mills being the invention of later ages. When people wished to ex- press the difficulty of any labor, it was usual to compare it to grinding in a mill.| They were also beaten with rods and scourges, sometimes, if their offence was very great, to death. The mills were in general called fivXaves, which word Julius Pollux says was unlucky, because of the cru- * " Servum hominem causam orare leges non sinunt ; Neque testimoni dictio est." — Terence, Phorm. Act I. Scene 4. t " eV KXl/iOKt Arjfras, Kpefiaaas, varpiyihi paariyav, htpav, SrejSXaJi', eVtVe ray plvas o^os iyxfcov, nXiVSouy e7^lT^^e^'s." — Ran. Act II. Scene 6. ; " Tibi raecum erit, Crasse, in eodem pistrino vivendum." — Cicero de Oral. SLAVERY IN ANCIENT GREECE. 61 elty inflicted upon the slaves in mills. It was usual there to examine upon the rack. It was likewise customary to stigmatize slaves, which was usually done in the forehead, as being most visible. Sometimes other parts were thus used, it being not uncommon to punish the member which had ofTended. Thus the tongue of a tattler was cut out. The usual way of stigmatizing was, by burning the part with a red-hot iron marked with certain letters, till a fair im- pression was made, and then pouring ink into the furrows, that the inscription might be more conspicuous. Persons thus used were called o-Tty/xariat. Pliny calls them inscrip- ti ; Plautus, literati. This punishment was seldom or never inflicted upon any but slaves ; and with them it was so frequent, that the Samians, when they gave a great number of slaves their liberty, and admitted them to offices in the State, were branded with the infamous name of literati. Among some nations, as the Thracians, Scythians, and Britons, the stigma was accounted a mark of honor. The slaves were branded with stigmata not only as a punishment for their offences, but to distinguish them in case they should run away. Soldiers were branded in the hand, but slaves on the forehead. In the same manner it was cus- tomary to stigmatize the votaries of some of the gods.* Sometimes in war the slaves deserted to the enemy, which, excepting theft, a crime almost peculiar to them, was the most common offence they committed, being in many places the only way which they had to deliver them- selves ; but if they were taken, they were bound fast to a wheel, and unmercifully beaten with whips. The same See Galatians vi. 17, ra ariy^ara tov KVpiov 'irja-ov iv rw crcofxari fiov ^aa-rd^o}, i. e. the scars of wounds which show that I belong to the Lord Jesus. See also Rev. xiv. 9. 2 Cor. xi. 23, 25. VOL. 11. 6 62 SLAVERY IN ANCIENT GREECE. punishment was inflicted on them for theft.* They were occasionally racked on the wheel, a cruelty never practised upon a free-born person, to extort a confession from them, when they were suspected to have been accessory to any villanous design. Tvunava or rinrava were cudgels or sticks of wood, with which criminals, particularly slaves, were beaten to death. The culprit was suspended to a stake, and beaten till he died. The Greeks thought it lessened the dignity of free-born citizens to call slaves by any name that was in use among them. If any man presumed to give his slave the name of an honorable person, it was thought to be an intolerable offence. The Roman Emperor Domitian is said to have punished Metius Pomposianus, for calling his slaves by the illustrious names of Hannibal and Mago. The Athenians enacted a law, that no man should presume to call any of his servants by the names of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, renowned defenders of liberty, who opposed the misrule of the two sons of Pisistratus. The Athenians were also for- bidden to derive the names of their slaves from any of the solemn games. For the most part, according to Strabo, they were called after the names of their native countries, as Av86s or 2vpos, if they were born in Lydia or Syria ; or by the names which are most used in those nations, as Manes or Midas in Phrygia ; Tibias in Paphlagonia. The most common names in Athens were Geta and Davus, being taken from the Getes and Daci. They seldom con- sisted of above two syllables, and therefore Demosthenes, having objected to ^schines that his father was a slave, * " Non furtum feci, nee fugi, si mihi dicat Servus, habes pretium, loris non ureris, aio." Sor. Epist. I. SLAVERY IN ANCIENT GREECE. 63 tells him further, as a proof of what he affirms, that he had falsified his name, calling it Atrometus, when in fact it was Tromes. The reason seems to have been the same as in the case of dogs ; a short name being more easy of pronun- ciation. It was common for slaves who had recovered their freedom, to change their names for those of more syl- lables. Above all things, especial care was taken that slaves should not wear arms, which, since their number was in general altogether greater than that of the citizens, might have been dangerous to the public. On this account it was not usual for them to serve in wars.* Yet in case of ex- treme danger it was allowed, and sometimes when there was no such emergency. For the maintenance of security and order at Athens there was a city guard, composed of public slaves.f These persons, though of low rank, en- joyed a certain consideration, as the state employed them in the capacity of constables. These public slaves were also appointed for the trade-police ; and subordinate places, such as those of heralds and checking clerks, together with other offices in the assemblies and courts of justice, were filled by persons of the same description. The public slaves composed the body-guard of the Athenians. They are generally called bowmen, or, from the native country of the majority, Scythians, or Speusinians. They lived un- der tents in the market-place, and afterwards on the Are- opagus. Among their number were many Thracians and * " Vix unus Helenor, Et Lycus elapsi, quorum primEevus Helenor; Mseonio regi quern serva Licymnia furtim Sustulerat, vetitisque ad Trojain miserat armis." Virg. uEn. IX. 545. 64 SLAVERY IN ANCIENT GREECE. Other barbarians. Their officers had the name of toxarchs. In the first instance, 300 were purchased soon after the battle of Salamis. The number soon rose to 1,000 or 1,200. These troops might, if necessary, be used in the field. As they were able-bodied men, they probably cost three or four minas apiece, and, to keep the number good, thirty or forty must have been purchased yearly, costing in all from one to two talents. Their pay was perhaps three oboli a day.* A large number of the rowers on board the fleets were slaves. This will not be considered strange, if it be borne in mind that the Spartans brought their Helots with them into the field ; that the Thessalian mounted Penestce were bondmen ; that a considerable number of slaves were always employed in war as attendants on the army, who were sometimes even manumitted ; that slaves were said to have fought as early as at the battle of Marathon, and afterwards at Chseronea, when the Athenians granted them their liberty. It is re- marked as an unusual circumstance, that the seamen of the Paralos were all freemen. t At the successful sea-fight of Arginusaj, there were many slaves in the Athenian fleet ; | and it equally redounds to the honor of both parties, on the one hand, that victory was chiefly owing to the slaves, and, on the other, that the Athenians immediately emancipated them, and made them Platsean citizens. § A large number of slaves were considered, not as useful only, but as neces- sary, to a State which possessed a naval force. It was only on some pressing emergency that citizens were employed as rowers. * An obolus was about IJ cents of our money ; a drachma, 8 cents ; a mina, about $ 8 ; and a talent, about $ 480. t Thucyd. VIII. 73. t Xenophon, Hell. 1. 6. 17. § Aristoph. Ean. 706. SLAVERY IN ANCIENT GREECE. 65 In mining, as in every thing where labor was necessary, the actual work was performed by slaves. It does not ap- pear that in Greece free citizens ever labored in the mines or founderies under the compulsion of tyrants. The Romans condemned the offenders who had been enslaved by public ordinance, to work in the mines, in the same manner that criminals of this description are now sent by the Emperor of Russia to the mines of Siberia. This method of punish- ment cannot, however, have existed at Athens, as the com- munity did not carry on any mining at the public expense ; nor did it let mines for a term of years together with the laborers, which was only done by pi'ivate individuals. The master, however, could probably punish his slaves, by forcing them to labor in the mines as well as in the mills ; and, in general, none but inferior slaves were employed in them, such as barbarians and criminals. Their condition was not, indeed, so miserable as that of the slaves in the Egyptian mines, where the condemned laborers worked without intermission until they were so exhausted as to fall senseless ; but notwithstanding that in Attica the spirit of freedom had a mild and benevolent influence even on the treatment of slaves, yet myriads of slaves are said to have languished in chains in the unwholesome atmosphere of the mines.* As was the case in Italy and Sicily, and as it has frequently been in modern times, the insurrection of these hordes of slaves was in Greece neither unfrequent, nor un- accompanied with danger. In a fragment of Posidonius, the continuer of the history of Polybius, it is related that the mine-slaves in Attica murdered their guards, took forcible possession of the fortifications of Sunium, and from this point ravaged the country for a considerable time ; an oc- * Athen. VII. Plutarch comp. Nicias and Crassus init. 6* 66 SLAVERY IN ANCIENT GREECE. currence which probably belongs to the end of the 91st Olympiad, about which time, during the war of Decelea, more than 20,000 slaves, of whom the greater proportion were manual laborers, escaped from the Athenians.* Of the slaves who worked in the mines, some belonged to the lessees, and for some a rent was paid to the proprietor, the maintenance being provided by the person who hired them. The price of slaves varied, according to their bodily and mental qualities, from half a mina to five and ten minas. A common mining slave, however, did not cost at Athens more than from three to six minas, and, in the age of De- mosthenes, not more than from 125 to 150 drachmas. When Nicias, the son of Niceratus, gave a talent for an overseer of his mines, we are to understand a person in whom he might repose entire confidence. For the most part, compulsion was the only incentive to labor, and little favor was ever shown to the slaves. By the hiring of slaves, the profit was distributed into various channels, and by this means persons who would have otherwise been unable to advance capital for so expensive an undertaking, were enabled to engage in the business.! Slaves were generally treated at Athens with more hu- manity than in any other place. Under grievous oppression, they were allowed to flee to the temple of Theseus, whence to force them was an act of sacrilege. Those who had been barbarously treated by their masters, were allowed the privilege of commencing a suit at law against them. If it appeared that the complaint was reasonable, the master was obliged to sell his slave. Also, if any other citizen did them * Thucyd. VII. 27. t See the Dissertation of Bocckh on the silver mines of Laurion in Attica, originally inserted in the Berlin Transactions. SLAVERY IN ANCIENT GREECE. 67 an injury, they were allowed to vindicate themselves by a course of law. It appears also, from the comedies of Plau- tus, Terence, and Aristophanes, that they enjoyed great freedom of discourse, and had many pleasures which were denied them elsewhere. Demosthenes informs us, that the condition of a slave in Athens was preferable to that of a free citizen in some other cities ; which remark, allowing for the antithesis of the orator, must have contained some truth. They were sometimes permitted to acquire estates for themselves, and to take shares in the mines on their own account. If they could procure enough to pay for their liberty, no one had any power to hinder them. Sometimes their masters dismissed them, if faithful, of their own accord. On the performance of any remarkable service for the pub- lic, the State generally took care to reward them with liberty. Yet they were not advanced to the rank of citizens without great difficulty and opposition. Slaves, as long as they were under the government of a master, were called ot/ceVat, but, after their freedom was granted them, they were named 8011X01, not being, like the former, a part of their master's estate, but only required to render some small services, such as were required of the imstoikoi, to whom in some re- spects they were inferior.* Before closing this subject, it will be interesting to inquire respecting the sentiments of some of the philosophers and authors of Greece, on the right and expediency of the insti- tution of slavery. Alcidamas, the scholar of Gorgias of Leontium, has this remark : "All come free from the hands of God ; nature has made no man a slave." t Phile- * Potter's Antiquities, Vol. I. p. 68. t Scholiast on Aristotle's Khetoric, Gillies's Greece, Vol. II. p. 337. 68 SLAVERY IN ANCIENT GREECE. mon says, " Though he is a slave, yet he has the same nature with ourselves. No one was ever born a slave, though his body by misfortune may be brought into subjec- tion." * Menander remarks that slaves ought not to be treated unjustly. t Aristotle, in his Politics, has taken up the subject with his usual scientific nicety. " By some writers," says Aristotle, " that part of economy, employed in the management of slaves, has been dignified with the name of science ; by others, slavery is considered as an institution altogether unnatural, resulting from the cruel maxims of war. Liberty, they assert, is the great law of nature, which acknowledges not any difference between the slave and the master ; slavery is therefore unjust, being founded on violence. But property at large is merely an accumulation of instruments, to be moved and employed for the comfortable subsistence of a family ; and even a slave is in this view a movable instrument, endowed with life, which, impelled by the will of another, communicates motion to other instruments less excellent than himself. Among the instruments subservient to the comfort of human life, there is this material distinction, that the work per- formed by one class consists in production, and the work performed by another is totally consumed in use. A do- mestic slave is relative to use ; his labor is totally consumed in promoting the ease of his master. He is merely the possession and property, or, as it were, the separable part of that master ; and every part, whether separable or insep- arable, is to be employed, not according to its own caprice or humor, but in subserviency to the general good, and suit- ably to reason. It is to be regarded simply in relation to that whole or system to which it appertains. A slave is * Fragmenta of Menander and Philemon, p. 226. t Ibid. 40. SLAVERY IN ANCIENT GREECE. 69 simply the property of his master ; but the master stands in many other relations besides that of proprietor to his slaves. Such is the nature of servitude. We proceed to examine whether the institution be wise and just. " To determine this question, it will be sufficient to con- template the ordinary course of nature, and to deduce from our observations clear inferences of reason. Government and subjection, then, are things useful and necessary ; they prevail everywhere, in animated, as well as in brute matter. From their first origin, some natures are formed to com- mand, and others to obey ; the kinds of government and subjection varying with the differences of their objects, but all equally useful for their respective ends ; and those kinds the most excellent, from which the most excellent conse- quences ensue. In compositions endowed with life, it is the province of mind to command, and of matter to obey. Man consists of soul and body, and, in all men rightly con- stituted, the soul commands the body ; though some men are so grossly depraved, that in them the body seems to command the soul. But here the order of nature is per- verted.* Those men, therefore, whose powers are chiefly confined to the body, and whose principal excellence con- sists in affording bodily service ; those, I say, are naturally slaves, because it is their interest to be so. They can obey reason, though they are unable to exercise it ; and though different from tame animals, who are disciplined by means merely of their sensations and appetites, they perform nearly the same tasks, and become the property of other men be- cause their own safety requires it.f In this passage, Aristotle's better reason seems to go beyond his theoi-y, and the prejudices of the age in which he lived. t But who or what shall determine the degree of servility which 70 SLAVERY IN ANCIENT GREECE. " In conformity with these observations, nature, we see, has variously moulded the human frame. Some men are strongly built and firmly compacted ; others erect and graceful, unfit for toil and drudgery, but capable of sustain- ing honorably the offices of war and peace. This, however, holds not universally ; for a servile mind is often lodged in a graceful person ; and we have often found bodies formed for servitude, animated by the souls of freemen. Yet the distinction itself is not frivolous ; for were part of the human race to be arrayed in that splendor of beauty which beams from the statues of the gods, universal consent would ac- knowledge the rest of mankind naturally formed to be their slaves. The difference of minds, though less obvious, is far more characteristic and important ; whence we may conclude that slavery is founded both on utility and justice. " This decision, however, has been arraigned with con- siderable plausibility ; for slavery may be taken in two senses, in one of which he is a slave who submits to the laws of war, commanding the vanquished to become the property of the victoi*s. This is acknowledged to be law; shall reduce one to the condition of slavery 1 Who has the power or intelligence to go round with his inkhorn, and brand the subject of free- dom and slavery respectively ? By the adoption of the rule proposed, many of us would be called to grind in the mill. The 20,000 free Athenians might have been sadly diminished. Plato, Aristotle, Socra- tes, and a few of similar stamp, might have escaped. Besides, actual slavery never made such a separation as Aristotle indicates. The fact is wholly the reverse- There were noble men in great numbers, who were toiling on the farms of Laconia, chained to the oars of the fleets, or delving into the mines of Laurion. It was jEsop, Alcman, Epictetus, Terence, who were slaves, while many a brainless free dema- gogue was haranguing in the forum, or squandering the hard-earned produce of the poor slave in the house of some fair Milesian. SLAVERY IN ANCIENT GREECE. 71 but the law itself is accused of iniquity. On this subject, wise men hold different opinions. Some consider superi- ority as the proof of virtue ; while others deny the force of this argument, maintaining that nothing can be truly just, which is inconsistent with humanity. Unjust wars are often successful, by which persons of illustrious merit are reduced to slavery. To avoid this conclusion, the other party pro- pose to limit this law to the case of barbarians vanquished by Greeks ; for the nobility of barbarians is confined to their respective countries, but the nobility of Greece is as exten- sive as the world. But in so doing, they abandon their own principle, and acknowledge the principles which we have established, that slavery adheres to the character itself, and is independent of accident. There are thus two kinds of slavery, the one founded on nature, the other established by law, or rather produced by violence. The first kind can take place only when the master is as fit to command as the slave to obey.* It is then profitable both to the slave and master; whose interests, rightly understood, become as inseparable as the interests of soul and body." It will thus be seen, that the peculiarity of the relation be- tween master and slave results, according to Aristotle, on the superiority of character in one man over another. The sole condition seems to be, that one man knows how to com- mand, and another knows how to obey. The author shows the mildness of his nature, in his advice to masters to secure the fidelity of slaves by the pledges of wives and children, and to indulge them with the enjoyment of festivals and * This kind of slavery would be extremely rare. It has always been found unsafe to trust men with such power as a master exercises over a slave. It almost inevitably exerts a bad effect on the master. Be- sides, who is to determine what men are fit to command 1 t^ SLAVERY IN ANCIENT GREECE. diversions, of which their condition stands more in need than that of freemen. In the treatment of slaves and peas.- ants, he considers it to be exceedingly difficult to hit the middle point between the extremes of indulgence and harsh- ness ; that indulgence which is productive of insolence, and that harshness that will be repaid with hatred. Xenophon, following the example of his master, Socrates, raises no objection against the institution of slavery. Plato, in his Republic, only desires that no Greeks may be re- duced to slavery. In the sixth book of his treatise De Legi- bus, he adverts to the question of the expediency of slavery. He says that many slaves have been found superior, in their kindness towards masters, to the brothers and sons of the family, practising all fidelity both in respect to persons and property. On the other hand, he says, that there seems to be nothing in the soul of a slave, which can be a foundation for trustworthiness ; verifying the assertion of Homer, that in the day when Jupiter makes slaves of men, he deprives them of half their reason. Alluding to the instances of the Messenians and some of the Italian cities, he remarks that the slaves have caused all manner of disturbances, so that an observer considering such facts would be disposed to denounce the whole system as inexpedient and worthless. He agrees with Aristotle, that it is of the first importance, though very difficult, to preserve, in the treatment of slaves, the due medium between severity on the one hand, and indulgence on the other. How a thinking and philosophic mind could have failed to see the utter incongruity between the boasted freedom of the Greek republics and the iron slavery which they tolerated, seems to us an exceedingly difficult problem. At the time when Demosthenes was uttering his words of fire SLAVERY IN ANCIENT GREECE. 73 to the few thousands of free Athenians, stimulating them to rise up against the aggressions of the Northern tyrant, as he called Philip, there were 400,000 human heings, whose life and liberty were at the mercy of a most despotic democracy. We shall, however, cease to wonder, when we reflect on the inconsistencies of human nature. In all ages of the world, the men who have been most jealous of liberty in their own persons, have been most willing to take it from others. The boon is too sweet to be distributed. The highest zest is given to the enjoyment by contrast. The liberty coveted is that resulting from instant obedience to every species of authority ; in other words, it is the liberty of despotism. If an ancient traveller had wished to see the greatest amount of solid happiness, enjoyed by all ranks, he must have left republican Sparta and Athens, and visited the monarchy of Macedon. We ought, however, to consider that the civil polity of Greece was in general so arranged as, perhaps, to render slavery indispensable. The institu- tions of Minos, Lycurgus, and Solon, derived, doubtless, in a great measure from Egypt or from some other Oriental source, were in many respects fundamentally wrong. They made agriculture, manufactures, mercantile pursuits, and all the useful arts, unpopular. The free citizens were intended either for soldiers or politicians ; the latter oftentimes fur- nishing employment for the former. Sparta, as has been remarked, was saved by war and ruined by peace. The theory of Lycurgus, in more than one respect, was at war with the human race. He instilled a stoical fortitude into the bosoms of the Spartans, which found no opportunity for exercise, except in enduring the chances of war, or wit- nessing the anguish of the Helots. In the numerous wars which desolated, and, finally, in VOL. II. 7 74 SLAVERY IN ANCIENT GKEECE, conjunction with other causes, I'uined the Grecian States, there was one signal alleviation. In the twenty-seven years of the Peloponnesian war, along with the various niiseries which it occasioned, it brought very important benefits to the slaves. When all the neighboring republics were friendly, the slave looked around in vain for refuge from the cruelty of an inhuman master ; but if they were hostile, it behooved equally the wealthy despot of many slaves, and the poor tyrant of one, to beware how he set the wretch upon com- paring the risk of desertion with the hope of a better service. Even at Athens, where, in general, slaves were better treat- ed than elsewhere, war produced regulations to soften their condition. In the comedy of Aristophanes called the Clouds (v. 7), we find an old country gentleman of Attica ludi- crously execrating the war, because he was no longer al- lowed to beat his slaves. The Grecian States suffered one of the most common and pernicious evils of slavery, the absence of an enhghtened and virtuous middle class, — that part in society, which constitutes its true glory and defence. In Athens, this class of men could not be intrusted with any public office, give their votes in the assemblies, or have any share in the gov- ernment. They were obliged patiently to submit to all the laws enacted by the citizens. Aristophanes compares them to chaff, as being an unprofitable and useless part of the commonwealth. The women were obliged to carry vessels of water, and also umbrellas to defend the free women from the weather. The men were taxed twelve drachmas an- nually, and the women six. Upon non-payment of this tax, they were liable to be sold into slavery. Diogenes Laertius was actually sold, because he had not wherewithal to pay this tribute. This was a natural effect of the institution of «» SLAVEKY IN ANCIENT GREECE. 75 slavery. Almost every species of manual labor was consid- ered degrading, because performed by slaves. Emigrants, foreigners, and all those w^ho were not citizens, were in general compelled to resort to personal labor in order to obtain a subsistence. Consequently, in the view of public opinion, they were fit subjects for oppression and insult. They stood between the slaves and freemen, and felt little sympathy for either, and in case of an insurrection took part with the stronger. It was a grand defect in the Gre- cian forms of government, that they did not adequately provide for all the classes in the community. A large part of the population was cut off from all sympathy with the country. Where slaves abound, rich men can dispense with the labor of the poor, while the poor profit in no way from the prosperity of the rich. The consequences of this state of things form one of the most prominent features of Grecian history. Greece was at length absorbed in the Roman Empire. Subsequently, the Roman slave-trade, in that part of the world, seems to have been mainly carried on at Delos. That island rose into importance, as a commercial place, after the fall of Corinth, and grew an entrepot for trade of every sort, between the East and West, but principally for that in slaves. It was resorted to by the Romans more than by any other people, and the slave-trade which they en- couraged was so brisk, that the port became proverbial for such traffic, and was capable, says Strabo, of importing and reexporfing 10,000 slaves in a single day. The Cilician pirates made Delos the great staple for the sale of their captives, which was a very gainful part of their occupation. Delos ceased to be the great mart, after the Mithridatic^war ; and it seems probable, that, afterwards, the slave-trade was 76 SLAVERY IN ANCIENT GREECE. transferred to the various ports nearest those countries whence the slaves came ; and therefore, perhaps, to the cities upon the Euxine, to which the Romans might not have made direct voyages at an earlier time. Corinth was long the chief slave-mart of Greece, and, from its situation, was likely to have much communication with the ports on the eastern side of Italy ; but we meet with no authority for be- lieving, that the Romans resorted much thither for slaves, or other commodities, before their conquest of Greece. In the epistles of Paul to the Grecian churches, there are a few allusions to slavery. Many of the poor chccnix-meas- urers of Corinth, weary and heavy laden, doubtless wel- comed with great eagerness the doctrines of the Gospel. Though among the foolish and weak and despised things of that luxurious metropolis, yet God chose them to be the freemen of the heavenly city. The instructions which Paul gave to them were of this tenor: "Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called. Art thou called being a servant (boi^os) } care not for it ; but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather. For he that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord's freeman ; likewise also he that is called, being free, is Christ's servant. Ye are bought with a price ; be not ye the servants of men. Breth- ren, let every man, wherein he is called, therein abide with God." * The exhortation, wliich Paul gives to the Thes- salonians respecting manual labor, shows what class of the community he was addressing t The same Apostle directs Titus, who had been left in Crete, where peasants and slaves, bearing the name of Periseci, ClarotiB, and Mnoitse, had ex- isted from the earliest times, to " exhort servants to be obe- * 1 Cor. vii. 20-24. t 1 Thess. iv. 11 ; 2 Thess. iii. 10-12. SLAVERY IN ANCIENT GREECE. 77 dient unto their own masters, and to please them well in all things ; not answering again, but showing all good fidelity ; that they may adorn the doctrine of God their Saviour in all things." * The Apostle here adverts to those vices, to which slaves in all ages have been peculiarly addicted, — pilfering and petulance. The maid at Philippi, who had the spirit of divination, or of a soothsaying demon, and who was very profitable to her masters, was doubtless a slave. t There does not seem to have been any material difference, on the whole, between the treatment experienced by the slaves under the Grecian and the Roman governments. The Helots might have enjoyed some advantages from the fact that they were the property of the State, and lived away from the immediate control of masters, in a condition some- what similar to that of the serfs of modern Russia ; yet they were liable to the horrible cryptia. Previously to the reign of Antoninus Pius, the slave at Rome was much less pro- tected by law and public feeling than the slave at Athens. At Sparta, slaves seem to have had hardly any hope of ever being admitted amongst freemen. At Athens, eman- cipation was frequent ; but the privileges of citizens rarely followed, even to a limited extent, and were conferred by public authority only. At Rome, the lowest slave could always look forward to manumission, and to obtaining the rank of a citizen, through the sole will of his master. Still, the Romans, like the Greeks, never came so far from the original view, of slaves being the absolute property of their owner, as to consider the master's rights limited to the unpaid services of the slave, and his powers restricted to those of a domestic magistrate, for correction of slight Titus ii. 9, 10 ; also Aristotle's Politics, Book II. t Acts xvi. 16. 7* 78 SLAVERY IN ANCIENT GREECE. misconduct, and for enforcement of obedience and exer- tion. * The effect of Christianity, in meliorating the usage of slaves, though not sudden, was important. The various Christian Emperors issued decrees, abridging the power of masters, and raising slaves above the level of insentient creatures. The C'lurch openly condemned the barbarous treatment of slaves. Clemens Alexandrinus, in the close of the second century, forbade the bishop to accept the obla- tions of cruel and sanguinary masters. At last Justinian did most to encourage improvement in the condition of bond- men, and to promote the ultimate extinction of slavery.t * See "William Blair's Inquiry into the State of Slavery among the Romans, London, 1833. Also Dunlop's History of Eoman Literature, t Gibbon's Hist. Decline and Fall, Chap. XLIV. KOMAN SLAVERY IN THE EARLY CENTURIES OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA.* Various definitions are given by the Roman and otlier writers of the word servus. Scaliger derives it from ser- vando, because the slave preserves or guards the property of his master. Slaves are denominated servi, says the Code of Justinian, from the verb servare, to preserve ; for it is the practice of our generals to sell their captives ; being accustomed to preserve and not to destroy them. Slaves are also called Mancipia, a manu capere, in that they are taken by the hand of the enemy. Just. Lib. I. Tit. 3. The origin of the word servus, says Augustine, De Civit. Lib. XIX. Cap. 15, is understood to be derived from the fact, that prisoners, who by the laws of war might have been put to death, were preserved by the victors, and made slaves. " Servus est nomen," says Seneca, " ex injuria natum." f Servi, servitia, and mancipia are frequently used as con- vertible terms. The term for a slave born and bred in the family was verna. * This Essay was published in the Biblical Repository for October, 1835, and was subsequently republished in Great Britain. t Aristotle's definition of a slave was applicable to Italy, Polit. I. 6 : KTTJfxa Ka\ opyavov roii fiecTrdrov (ixy\rv)(ov. 80 ROMAN SLAVERY. In respect to the comparative number of the slaves and the free citizens of Rome, we have not sufficient data on which to found a correct judgment. We may agree with Niebuhr in doubting the accuracy of the older censuses, which were taken at Rome. The Romans, in the early periods of their history, rarely or never acted as menial ser- vants in the city. Niebuhr thinks that mechanical occupa- tions were not lawful for plebeians. Yet in the country they willingly performed agricultural labor. Lipsius admits the probability of there being as many slaves as freemen, or rather more, within Rome in its most populous times. After the influx of wealth, which followed the foreign con- quests, the number of slaves must have been greatly en- larged. Polybius, Hist. ch. II., estimates the forces which the Romans and their allies could bring into the field, be- tween the first and second Punic wars, at 770,000 men. This enumeration, however, implying a total free class of 3,080,000, and an equal amount of slave population, is much larger than seems consistent with the state of Italy at that time. The number of citizens returned to Augustus at the 72d lustrum, A. U. C. 745, as appears from the monu- ment of Ancyra, was 4,163,000. At the 73d lustrum, the number was over 4,000,000. In the 74th lustrum, in the reign of Claudius, A. D. 48, the citizens amounted to 6,944,000, of whom, probably, but a small proportion consist- ed of persons out of Italy. If we allow two slaves to each Roman, an average below that of some Grecian cities, we should not in that case take into the account those slaves who were the property of the various orders of freemen, or those who belonged to other slaves. Rich citizens were very extensive owners of slaves, kept both for luxury and profit, as domestics or artisans in town, and as laborers on ROMAN SLAVERY. 81 the vast estates in the provinces.* Some rich individuals are said to have possessed 10,000, and even 20,000, of their fellow-creatures. Seneca says, De Tran. Animi. ch. VIII,, that Demetrius, the freedman of Pompey, was richer than his master. " Numerus illi quotidie servorum, velut impera- tori exercitus, referebatur." The slaves of Crassus formed a large part of his fortune. His architects and masons alone exceeded 500. Scaurus possessed above 4,000 domestic, and as many rural slaves. In the reign of Augustus, a freedman, who had sustained great losses during the civil wars, left 4,116 slaves, besides other property. On one occasion, the family of Pedanius Secundus, prefect of Rome under Nero, was found to consist of 400 slaves : Tac. Ann. XIV. 43, " Quem numerus servorum tuebitur, cum .... quadringenti," etc. When the wife of Apuleius gave up the lesser part of her estate to her son, 400 slaves formed one of the items surrendered. Slaves always composed a great part of the movable property of individuals, and formed a chief article of ladies' dowries. A law passed by Augustus against the excessive manumission of slaves by testament, forbidding any one to bequeathe liberty to more than one fifth of all his slaves, contains the following words : " Plu- res autem quam centum ex majori numero servorum manu- mitti non licet." t We may hence infer that 500 was not an extraordinary number of slaves to be held by one owner. It was fashionable to go abroad attended by a large number of slaves. Horace, Sat. Lib. I. iii. 11, says, " Habebat ssepe ducentos, ssepe decem servos." Augustus prohibited exiles * Pignorius has enumerated 48 classes of rustic slaves, 40 of rustic or urban, 60 of urban, 66 of personal attendants, 15 of upper servants, 13 of nursery slaves, 130 of slaves of luxury, and 5 oi military slaves, in all three hundred and twenty-Jive classes. f Hugo, Jus Civile Antejustinianeum, Voll. p. 157. 82 ROMAN SLAVERY. from carrying with them more than 20 slaves.* Besides the domestic and agricultural slaves, were the gladiators, who were chiefly slaves, and who were extremely numerous at different periods. We may have some idea of the fre- quency and ferociousness with which these were exhibited, from a restriction imposed by Augustus, who forbade magis- trates to give shows of gladiators above twice in one year, or of more than 60 pairs at one time. Julius Caesar exhibited at once 320 pairs. Trajan exhibited them for 123 days, in the course of which 10,000 gladiators fought. The State and corporate bodies possessed very many slaves. For ex- ample, 600 were employed in guarding against fires in Rome.t Chiysostom says, that under Theodosius the Great, and Arcadius, some persons had 2,000 or 3,000 slaves. S;^nesius complains, that every family of tolerable means kept Scythian slaves of luxury ; and Ammianus Marcellinus informs us, that luxurious ladies and great men used to have 400 or 500 servile attendants. From the time of Augustus to Justinian, we may allow three slaves to one freeman ; we shall thus have a free population in Italy of 6,944,000, and of slaves 20,832,000, — total 27,776,000. "After weigh- ing every circumstance which could influence the balance," says Gibbon, " it seems probable, that there existed in the time of Claudius about twice as many provincials as there were citizens, of either sex, and of every age ; and that the slaves were at least equal in number to the free inhabitants of the Roman world. The total amount of this imperfect calculation would rise to about 120,000,000 of persons." J: * See Pliii. Nat. Hist. XXXIII. 47, 52; also XXXIV. 6, and XXXV. .58. t " Publicos servos." Liv. IX. 29. I The present population of Italy is between 16,000,000 and ROMAN SLAVERY. 83 The different methods in which men became slaves were by war, commerce, the operation of law in certain cases, and by their birth. 1. Slaves acquired hy war. In general, prisoners of war were sold immediately, or as soon as possible, after their capture. If a subsequent treaty provided for their release, it would appear that a special law was passed, ordering the buyers of such slaves to give them up, on receiving from the treasury repayment of the original purchase money. Livy, XLII. 8, says in relation to the Ligurians, 10,000 of whom had surrendered themselves as prisoners, "At ille [consul] arma omnibus ademit, oppidum diruit, ipsos bonaque eorum vendidit." As the Senate were at the time deliberat- ing about the treatment of them, " res visa atrox " ; and a decree was issued, annulling the previous sales, and com- pelling the respective purchasers to set the Ligurians free, but with restitution by the public of the prices which had been paid. Prisoners belonging to a revolted nation were, without exception in favor of voluntary surrender, sold into servitude ; and, sometimes, as a more severe punishment, or for greater precaution, it was stipulated at their sale, that they should be carried to distant places, and should not be manumitted within twenty or thirty years.* After the fall of the Samnites at Aquilonia, 2,033,000 pieces of brass were realized by the sale of prisoners, who amounted to about 36,000. t Lucretius brought from the Volscian war 1,250 17,000,000. See the Essay of Hume on the Populousness of Ancient Nations ; Gibbon, Hist. Dec. and Fall, Ch. II. ; Blair's Inquiry into the State of Roman Slavery, Ch. I. * " Ne in vicina regione servirent, neve intra tricesimum annum liberarentur." — Sueton. Octav. XXI. t " Id ses redactum ex captivis dicebatur." — Livy, X. 46. 84 ROMAN SLAVERY. captives; and, by the capture of one inconsiderable town, no less than 4,000 slaves were obtained. On the descent of the Romans upon Africa, in the first Punic war, 20,000 prisoners were taken. Gelon, praetor of Syracuse, having routed a Carthaginian army, took such a number of captives, that he gave 500 of them to each of the several citizens of Agrigentum. On the great victory of Marius and Catulus over the Cimbri, 60,000 were captured. When Pindenissus was taken by Cicero, the inhabitants were sold for more than £ 100,000. Augustus, having overcome the Salassi, sold as slaves 36,000, of whom 8,000 were capable of bearing arms. Csesar, in his Gallic wars, according to the moderate estimate of Velleius Paterculus, took more than 400,000 prisoners. The rule, which forbade prisoners taken in civil wars to be dealt with as slaves, was sometimes dis- regarded. On the taking of Cremona by the forces of Vitellius, his genei'al Antonius ordered that none of the captives should be detained ; and the soldiers could find no purchasers for them.* A slave, carried off from the Roman territories by the enemy, fell again under his master's authority, if he came back or was retaken. Roman citizens, who had been made prisoners, recovered their former rank, with all the rights and privileges belonging to it, upon their escape or recapture from the enemy's hands. 2. Slaves acquired by commerce. The slave-trade in Africa is as old as history reaches back. Among the rul- ing nations of the North coast, — the Egyptians, Cyrenians, and Carthaginians, — slavery was not only established, but * The language of Tacitus, Hist. Lib. Ill , is, "Irritamque praedam militibus effecerat consensus Italife, emptionem talium mancipiorum adspernantis. Occidi coepere : quod ubi enotuit, a propinquis adfinibus- que occulta redemptebantur." ROMAN SLAVERY. • 85 they imported whole armies of slaves, partly for home use, and partly, at least among the Carthaginians, to be shipped for foreign markets. They were chiefly drawn from the interior, where kidnapping was just as much carried on then as it is now. Black male and female slaves were even an article of luxury, not only among the above-mentioned na- tions, but in Greece and Italy. The Troglodyte Ethiopians seem to have been a wild negro race, dwelling in caves in the neighboring mountains, who were kidnapped by the Garamantes to be sold for slaves.* The slave-trade in Africa was directed mainly to females, who, in the Balearian Islands, were sold for three times as much as the men.t For the building of public works at Rome, vast numbers of slaves were procured. The piers, porticos, aqueducts, and roads, whose magnificent ruins are now an object of admi- ration, were constructed by the sweat and blood of slaves. In raising such a structure as the mausoleum of Adrian, thousands of wretched men, torn from their own firesides, toiled unto death. The island of Delos became an extensive mart for slaves. In that opulent emporium 10,000 could be bought and sold in a single day. Predatory excursions were made into Cilicia, Pamphylia, and Syria, and great numbers were carried off to the market-places of Sidon, or Delos. For a long period, great numbers of slaves (" maxi- * Heeren's Hist. Researches, Vol. I , Oxford edit., pp. 181, 22.3, 239. *' Cum obsidibus Cai'thaginiensium, ut principum liberis, magna vis servorum erat. Augebant eorum numerum, ut ab recenti Africo belle, et ab ipsis Setinis captiva aliquot nationis ejus ex praeda empta man- cipia." — Livy, XXXII. 26. t " Tibi pocula cursor Gsetulus dabit, aut nigri manus ossea Mauri, Et cui per mediam nolis occurrere noctem, Clivoste veheris dum per monumenta Latina." — Juv. V. 51. VOT.. II. 8 86 • ROMAN SLAVERY. mus mancipiorum fuit proventus") were drawn from the in- terior of Asia Minor, particularly from Phrygia and Cap- padocia.