dangerous to show them their numbers. Male slaves were not allowed to wear the toga or bulla, nor females the stola, but otherwise they were dressed nearly in the same way as poor people, in clothes of a dark color and slippers.
Gibbon estimates the population of the Roman empire in the time of Claudius at one hundred and twenty millions: sixty millions of freemen and sixty millions of slaves. The proportion of slaves was much larger in Italy than in the provinces, according to Milman. Robertson states that there were twice as many slaves as free citizens, and Blair estimates three slaves to one freeman, between the conquest of Greece, B. C. 146, and the reign of Alexander Severus, A. D. 222, 235. Milman is inclined to "adopt the more cautious suggestions of Gibbon."
As the Romans regarded slavery as an institution of society, death was considered to put an end to the distinction between slaves and freemen. Slaves were sometimes even buried with their masters, and we find funeral inscriptions addressed to the Dii Manes of slaves. In 1726 the burial vaults of the slaves belonging to Augustus and Livia were discovered near the Appian Way, where numerous inscriptions were found, which give us considerable information respecting the different classes of slaves and their various occupations. Other sepulchres of the same time have been discovered in the neighborhood of Rome.
We have already referred to the immense number of slaves trained for gladiators. A more particular description of this class will be interesting to the general reader, and will serve to elucidate the manners, customs and morals of their masters. The gladiators, however, were not all slaves. The term is applied to the combatants who fought in the amphitheatre and other places, for the amusement of the Roman people. They are said to have been first exhibited by the Etruscans, and to have had their origin in the custom of killing slaves and captives at the funeral pyres of the deceased. A show of gladiators was called munus, and the person who exhibited it, editor, or munerator, who was honored during the day of exhibition, if a private person, with the insignia of a magistrate.
Gladiators were first exhibited at Rome in B. C. 264, in the Forum Boarium, by Marcus and Decimus Brutus, at the funeral of their father. They were at first confined to public funerals, but afterwards fought at the funerals of most persons of consequence, and even at those of women. Private persons sometimes left a sum of money in their will to pay the expenses of such an exhibition at their funerals. Combats of gladiators were also exhibited at entertainments, and especially at public festivals by the ædiles and other magistrates, who sometimes exhibited immense numbers with a view of pleasing the people. Under the empire the passions of the Romans for this amusement rose to its greatest height, and the number of gladiators who fought on some occasions appears almost incredible. After Trajan's triumph over the Dacians, there were more than 10,000 exhibited.[1]
- ↑ Dion Cass. lxviii,15.
