[Sidenote: Slavery brings labor into disrepute.]
Quite naturally, freemen came to scorn all manual labor and even trade, for these occupations were associated in their minds with the despised slave. Seneca, the philosopher, angrily rejects the suggestion that the practical arts were invented by a philosopher; they were, he declares, "thought out by the meanest bondman."
[Sidenote: Competition of slaves fatal to the freeman.]
Slavery did more than bring manual labor into disrepute; it largely monopolized the market. Each great household where articles of luxury were in demand relied upon its own host of dexterous and efficient slaves to produce them. Moreover, the owners of slaves frequently hired them out to those who needed workmen, or permitted them to work for wages, and in this way brought them into a competition with the free workman which was fatal to him.
[Sidenote: Improved condition of the slaves and their emancipation.]
It cannot be denied that a notable improvement in the condition of the slaves took place during the centuries immediately preceding the barbarian invasions. Their owners abandoned the horrible subterranean prisons in which the farm hands were once miserably huddled at night. The law, moreover, protected the slave from some of the worst forms of abuse; first and foremost, it deprived his master of the right to kill him. Slaves began to decrease in numbers before the German invasions. In the first place, the supply had been cut off after the Roman armies ceased to conquer new territory. In the second place, masters had for various reasons begun to emancipate their slaves on a large scale.
The freed slave was called a _freedman_, and was by no means in the position of one who was born free. It is true that he was no longer a chattel, a mere thing, but he had still to serve his former master,--who had now become his patron,--for a certain number of days in the year. He was obliged to pay him a part of his earnings and could not marry without his patron's consent.
[Sidenote: Resemblance between the coloni and the later serfs.]
Yet, as the condition of the slaves improved, and many of them became freedmen, the state of the poor freeman only became worse. In the towns, if he tried to earn his living, he was forced to mingle with those slaves who were permitted to work for wages and with the freedmen, and he naturally tended to sink to their level. In the country the free agricultural laborers became _coloni_, a curious intermediate class, neither slave nor really free. They were bound to the particular bit of land which some great proprietor permitted them to cultivate and were sold with it if it changed hands. Like the mediæval _serf_, they could not be deprived of their fields so long as they paid the owner a certain part of their crop and worked for him during a period fixed by the customs of the domain upon which they lived. This system made it impossible for the farmer to become independent, or for his son to be better off than he. The coloni and the more fortunate slaves tended to fuse into a single class; for the law provided that, like the coloni, certain classes of country slaves were not to be taken from the field which they had been accustomed to cultivate but were to go with it if it was sold.[1]