LOWLY. A HISTORY OF THE ANCIENT WORKING PEOPLE FKOM THE EARLIEST KNOWN PERIOD TO THE ADOPTION OF CHRISTIANITY BY CONST ANTINE. ? la)J.kv TOO 9eoy robrou tfiaffaJrat. SOCRATES. BY C. OSBORNE WARD, TBANSLATOB AND LIBBABIAN, U. 8. DEP'T. OF LABOB. PRBSS OF THE CRAFTSMAN. WASHINGTON, D.O. 1889. Entered according to Act of Congress In the Yar 1888, by C. OSBORNB WARD, In the Office ol iU Librarian of Coiigiugg, at DEDICATED TO T HB MMOBT Of COURTLA.NDT FALMER. 2066771 PEBFACB. The author of this volume is aware that a strong opposition may set in and perhaps for a time, ob- ject to the thoughts and the facts which it portrays. Much of its contents is new. The ideas that lay at the bottom of the ancient competitive system, though in their day thoroughly understood, have been go systematically attacked and gnawed away during our nearly 2,000 years' trial of the new institution, that men now, no longer comprehend them. The whole may strike the reader as news. Much of it indeed, reads like a revelation from a sealed book; and we may not at first be able to comprehend it a& a natural effect of a cause. The introduction of Christianity was fought, and for a long time resisted by the laboring element it- self; solely on the ground that it seriously interfered with idol, amulet, palladium and temple drapery manufacture. As shown in the chapter on "Image- makers," there were organized trades, whose labor and means of obtaining a living were entirely confined to their skill in producing for the pagan priesthood riii PREFACE. these innumerable images and paraphernalia of wor- ship. Indeed, the ultimate introduction of certain unmistakable forms of idol worship to be found lin- gering in the so-called Christianity to-day, must be considered as having been partly motived by the re- sistance of trades unions against any change which would result in depriving themselves and their babes of bread. This has been a potent hindrance to the ever growing but imperceptible realization of the social revolution. The great strikes and uprisings of the working people of the ancient world are almost unknown to the living age. It matters little how accounts of five immense strike-wars, involving destruction of iprop- erty and mutual slaughter of millions of people have been suppressed, or have otherwise failed to reach us ; the fact remains that people are absolutely ig- norant of those great events. A meagre sketch of Spartacus may be seen in the encyclopedias, but it is always ruined and its interest pinched and blighted by being classed with crime, its heroes with crimi- nals, its theme with desecration. Yet Spartacus was one of the great generals of history ; fully equal to Hannibal and Napoleon, while his. cause was much more just and infinitely nobler, his life a model oi the beautiful and virtuous, his death an episode oi surpassing grandeur. Still more strange is it, that the great ten-years' war of Eunus should be unknown. He martialed at one time, an army of two hundred thousand soldiers. He manoeuvred them and fought for ten full years for liberty, defeating army after army of Rome. Why is the world ignorant of this fierce, epochal rebellion ? PREFACE. is, Almost the whole matter is passed over in silence by our histories of Rome. In these pages it will be read as news ; yet should a similar war rage in our day, against a similar condition of slavery, its canse would not only be considered just, but the combatants would have the sympathy and moral support of the civilized world. The story of this wonderful workman is news. The great system of labor organization explained in these pages must likewise be regarded as a chapter of news. The portentous fact has lain in abeyance cen- tury after century, with the human family in profound ignorance of an organization of trades and other labor unions so powerful that for hundreds of years they un- dertook and successfully conducted the business of manufacture, of distribution, of purveying provisions to armies, of feeding the inhabitants of the largest cities in the world, of inventing, supplying and working the huge engines of war, and of collecting customs and taxes tasks confided to their care by the state. Our civilization has a blushingly poor excuse for its profound ignorance of these facts ; for the evidences have existed from much before the beginning of our era indeed the fragments of the ravaged history were far less broken and the recorded annals much fresher, more numerous and less mutilated than the relics which the author with arduous labor and pains-taking, has had at command in bringing them to the surface. Besides the records that, have corne to us thus broken and distorted by the wreckers who feared the moral blaze of literature, there were, in all probability, thou- sands of inscriptions then, where but dozens remain now to be consulted ; and they are growing fewer and dimmer as their value rises higher in the estimation x PREFACE. of a thinking, appreciative, gradually awakening world. The author is keenly aware that certain critics will complain of his dragging religion so prominently for- ward that the work is spoiled. The defense is, that though our charming histories from a point of view of brilliant events, such as daring deeds of heroes, bat- tles and bloodshed, may be found among the ancients without encountering much of a religious nature, yet such is not the case in the lesser affairs of ancient so- cial and political life. The state, city and family were themselves a part of the ancient religion and were a part of its property. Priests were public officers. Home life of the nobles wag in constant conformity with the ritual. The organizations of labor were so closely watched by the jealous law that they were obliged to assume a religious attitude they did not feel in order to escape being suppressed. A long list of what we in our time consider honorable, business-like doings, was rated as blasphemy against the gods and punished with death. Nearly all of the idolatry, with its attendant super- stition and nympholepsy, its giants and prodigies, its notions of elysium and tartarus^ its quaking genuflex- ions, its bloody sacrifices and its gladiatorial wakes, had their real origin in the torture of the menials who delved, and in the rewards of the favored ones who banqueted on the riches which flowed from unpaid la- bor; and nearly all the iconoclasm of the later soph- ists may perhaps be traced to an organized resistance of the working people of pre-christian days. These seemingly curious, if not extraordinary truths will, we are confident, be made clear to the intelligent, careful reader of these pages ; and in this humble hope, the PREFACE. ri author has set them forth as an indispensable begin- ning to those who would logically and correctly under- stand the great problem of labor as it is to-day. As rightly mentioned by Bancroft and others enga- ged in the collection and study of monumental archfe- ology, there is often a readiness among the degenerate natives to ingeniously imitate and palm off for genu- ine, numbers of fraudulent counterfeit relics upon the unsuspecting and credulous wonder-hunters. This, however, is with us, in our scope of research, placed beyond suspicion. Most of the slabs we mention have already been lying unobserved, on their original sitea or in by-nooks of the museums of their own countries, for hundreds of years ; but they have long since been recorded, catalogued and even numbered in dingy old books and manuscripts, the importance of their grim inscriptions having been little understood by the learn- ed epigraphists themselves. Besides, no interest hav- ing ever been elicited on subjects of which they are so suggestive, there has been no lively demand for them, even as curiosities. They are genuine. The author may sum up these prefatory remarks with a word on the general lesson taught by this volume; it being one of the first histories yet compiled and written exclusively from a standpoint of social science, \ That the "still small voice" meant the ever suppressed yet ever living, struggling, co-operating and mutually support- ing majorities, is made self-suggestive without forsaking history. The phenomenal fact is moreover brought out, that the present movement whose most radical wing loudly disclaims Christianity, is nevertheless building exactly upon the precepts of that faith, as it was told to us and taught us by Jesus Christ; whatever may or may *ii PREFACE. not have been borrowed by His school from the immense social organization of His own and preceding ages. Modern greed with its class hatreds, individualisraa, aristocracy, its struggle for personal wealth, dangerous, defiant in our faith and in our political economy, is not Christianity at all ; it is the ancient evil still lingering in the roots of the gradually decaying paganism that ap- pears to remain for the labor movement to smother and at last uproot and completely annihilate. One thing must be solemnly set forth as a very sug- gestive hint to modern anarchists, however honest their impulses. The historical facts are that the great strikes, rebellions and social wars if we are permitted to except those of Drimakos and the strike of the 20,000 from the the silver mines of I aurium in Attica all turned out disastrously for the general cause. The punishments meted out to the strikers and insurgents of the working class after their overthrow by the Romans, as in the rebellions of Eunus, of Athenion, of Spartacus, of every one we have treated in this book, with but the above ex- ceptions, was bloody, revengeful and exterminatory to the last degree. An ancient author whom we quote, gives the aggregate number crucified at something more than .a million. Crassus and Pompey alone crucified over 6,000 workingmen on the Appian Way as examples of the aw- ful blood- wreaking to be expected from Roman military justice. Twenty thousand were similarly massacred at En- na and Tauromanion. These unscrupulous deeds of re- tribution that went far toward annihilating the ancient civilization by stimulating a blood-thirsting craze in a long succession of Roman emperors, completely extin- guishd all hopes of the workingmen for the achievement of liberty by violent means. PREFACE. xiii In the light then, of these shocking truths which every one should calmly study and consider let us ask ourselves the profoundly relevant, home-thrust question : shall we, a second time be suppressed and our health- inspiring agitation, our aroused and resuscitated move- ment, our hopes of better days, our civilization be stop- ped? And shall labor again succumb to a degenerate military despotism like thatof the Neros, Caligulas and all the Caesars ? Here lies an alarming foreboding, it not a posititve danger ; for so long as labor still obstinately refuses to vote and insists upon rebellion, continues to choose the irascible rather than the diplomatic, how can it be otherwise hoped or expected than that history will repeat itse.f? SOURCES OF INFORMATION. (Claudius), Varia Historia. Lugduni in Batavis, 1709. AMERICAN Cydopcedfa. D. Appleton & Company, U"-. Y. 1867. Anonymous, Seven Essays on Ancient Greece. Oxford, 1832. Antoninus (Fius), Rescript; Petit, in Thesaurus- Antiquitatum, Utrecht & Ley den, 1699. APOCRYPHAL Gospels of the Infancy. Protevangelion, Cowper, London, 1831 and Others. Appian, Rhomaike Hiitoria, *Schweighauser, 3 vois., Leipz. 1785. Apuleius, Metamorphosis, {Golden A*s), Ed. *0udendorp, 1786. German Paraphrase, Sacher-Masoch,. Leipzic, 1877. Aquilius, (M.), Jnscriptio Capuensis, OreUi, No. 3,308. Arabic Gospels of the Infancy. Aristotle, Ethics, Aristotle, Logic, Aristotle. 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Horace, Sermo, ) v Hamilton (William), Researches in Asia Minor, London, n. d. Heer [Oswald], Urwelt der Schweiz, Zurich, 1877. Heeren [A. H.], Peuple de I' Antiquite, French Ed., Paris, 1799. Heinecius, (Johann Michael), Works on Antiquities, Halle, 1722. Henzen (Guiliemus) , Supplement to Orelliana Inscriptionum Col- lectio, Zurich, 1861. INTERNATIONAL Cyclopaedia. *Isocrates, Panerjyricus, Baiter and Sauppe. Zurich, 1850. Ister, Lost Works, Aph. Schol., * Aristophanis Byzantii Fray- menta, Nauck, Lcipzic, 1849. Josephns, (Flavius), Antiquitits and Wars of the Jews, Whis- ton's English Translation, London, 1737. Justin Dial, Cum Try phone. (Certain obscure Passages.) Kitto, Cyclopaedia of Biblical Literature, London, 1850. Laelius, In Orelli's Cicero, Zurich, 1H29. La Rousse, Dictionnaire Universel, Paris, Edition of 1870. Lampridius (^Elius), in Augusta Historic Alexander Severus, From the *Palatine MS. Laveleye (Emile de), Primitive Property, English Trans- lation of Marriott, London, 1878. Le Play (F.), Organization of Labor, English Translation of Emerson, Philadelphia, 1872. Livy (Titus), Annales: Ab Urbe Condita Opera qucc supersunt, Weissenborn, Bibliotheca Teubneriana, Leipzic, 1855. SOURCES OF INFORMATION. rix Lytton-Bulwer, Last Days of Pompeii, London, 1835. Lobeck (Christian August), Aglaophon, Konigsberg, 1824. Lucian (Logographos Saraosatae), Somnium: Vita Luciano,, Ja- cobitz, in Bibliotheca Teubneriana, Leipzic, 1855. Lucretius (Titus Cams), De Rerum Natura, Bernasras, Bib- liotheca Teubneriana, Leipzic, 1854. Ltiflers, (Ottol, Die Dionysischen Kunstler, Berlin, 1873. McCullaprh ( W. Torrens), Industrial History of Free Nations : ' The Greeks, London, 1846. McCulloch (John Ramsey), Life of Ricardo, London, 1870. Mackenzie (Lord), Roman Law, Edinburgh, 1870. Macrobius (Ambrosius Aurelius Theodosius) Saturnaliomm et Somnium Scipionis Libri, Eyssenhardt, Leipzic, 1808. Mafft-i (Franciscq Scipione), Museum Veronese, Verona, 1749. Mann (Henry), History of Ancient and Mediaeval Republics, New York, Barnes & Company, n. d. Mannert (Conrad), History of the Vandals, 1785. Mannert (Conrad), Geschichte der Vandalen, Leipzic, 1790. Marquardt (Becker-Marquardt), Handbuch des Romischen Al- terthums, Dresden, 1843. Maurice (Darthelemy), Histoire Politique et Anecdotique des Prisons de la Seine, Paris, 1340. MEMOIKES Presenies d I' Academie : Livre II., 977. Millar (John), Origin of Rani;*, Basil, 1793. Millraan (Henry Hart), History of the Jews, Oxford, 1829. Millin (Aubin Louis), Voyages, Paris, 1790. MINOKHIRKD, in Zeitschrift der rnorgenldndischen Gesettschaft. Mommen (Theador), De Cottegiis et Sodaliciis Romanorum, KUlise, 1843. Mommsen (Theador), Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, with the assistance of the koniql. Akademie der WissenscTi often. Morgan, (Lewis II.), Ancient Societies, New York, 1878. Mailer (K. O.), Die Dorier, Gottengcn, 1824. 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Xenophon, Conversationes, ~| Xenophon, Memorabilia , Xenophon, (Economicus, f Leipzic, 1859, Xenophon, De RepMica, Xenophon, De Vectigali, J * The Asterisks refer to Works that were c^nsuaea by the author during his researches abroad. COM TEXTS OF THE VOLUME. CHAPTER I. TAINT OF LABOR. TKAITS AXD PECULIARITIES OF KACES. Grievances of the Working Classes The Competitive System among the Ancients Growing Change of Taste in Read- ers of History Inscr iptions and suppressed Fragments more recently becoming Incentives to reflecting Readers who seek Them as a means to secure Facts No true De- mocracy No primeval Middle Class known to the Aryan Family Tiie Taint of Labor an Inheritance through the Pagan Religio-Political Economy. Page 37 CHAPTER II. THE INDOEUROPEANS. THEIR COMPETITIVE SYSTE3L RELIGION AND POLITICS of the Indo-Europeans Identical Reason for Religion mixing with the Movements of Labor The Father the Original Slaveholder His Children the Orig- 5 ril Slaves Both Liw and Religion empowered him to kill them Work or" Conscience in the Labor Problem. 47 xxiv CONTENTS OF CHAPTERS. CHAPTEK III. LOST MSS. ARCHEOLOGY. TRUE HISTOEY OF LABOR FOUND ONLY JN INSCRIPTIONS AND MUTILATED ANNALS. PROTOTYPES OF Industrial Life to be found in the Aryan and Semitic Branches Era of Slavery Dawn of Manumission Patriarchal Form too advanced a Type of Government possible to primitive Man Religious Superstition fatal to Independent Labor Labor, Government and Religion in- dissolubly mixed Concupiscence, Acqisitiveness and Iras- cibility a Consequence of the archaic Bully or Boss, with un- limited Powers Right of the ancient Father to enslave, sell, torture or kill his Children Abundant Proofs quoted Origin of the greater and more humane Impulses Sym- pathy beyond mere Self-preservation, the Result of Ed- ucation Education originated from Discussion Discussion the Result of Grievances against the Outcast "Work-people Too rapid Increase of their Numbers notwithstanding the Sufferings Means Organized by Owners for decimating them by Murder Ample proof The great Amphyctyonic League Glimpses of a once sullen Combination of the Desperate Slaves Incipient Organization of the Nobles Page 86 CHAPTER LV. ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES ANCIENT GRIEVANCES OF THE WORKERS. WORKING PEOPLE destitute of Souls Original popular Beliefs Plato finally gives them half a Soul Modern Ignorance on the true Causes of certain Developments in History Sym- pathy, the Third Great Emotion developed out of growing Ileason, through mutual Commiseration of the Outcasts A new Cult The Unsolved Problem of the great Eleusinian Mysteries Their wonderful Story Grievances of slighted "Workingmen Organization impossible to Slaves except in their Strikes and Rebellions The Aristocrats' Politics and Religion barred the Doors against Work-people Extraor- CONTENTS OF CHAPTERS. xxv dinary Whims and Antics at the Eleusinian Mysteries The Causes of Grievances endured by the Castaway Laborers Their Motives for Secret Organization The Terrible Cryp- tia The horrible Murders of Workingmen for Sport Dark Deeds Unvsiled Story of the Massacre of 2,000 Working- men Evidence The Grievances in Sparta In Athens Free Outcast Builders, Sculptors, Teachers, Priests, Dancers, Musicians, Artizans, Diggers, all more or less Organized Re- turn to the Eleusinian Mysteries Conclusion. Page 83 CHAPTER V. STRIKES AND UPRISINGS. GRIEVANCES CONTINUED. PLANS OF ESCAPE. FIRST KNOWN and First Tried Plan of Salvation was that of Retal- iation The Slaves test the Ordeal of Armed Force Irasci- bility of the Working Classes at length arrayed against their Masters Typical Strikes of the ancient Workingmen Their Inhuman Treatment Famous Strike at the Silver Diggings of Laurium 20,000 Artisans and Laborers quit Work in a Body and go over to the Foes of their own Countrymen The Great Peloponnesian War Decided for the Spart- n*, against the Athenians by this Fatal Strike. Page 13d CHAPTER VL GRIEVANCES. LABOR TROUBLES AMONG THE ROMANS. MORE BLOODY PLANS OF SALVATION TRIED. THE IRASCIBLE PLA\ in Italy Epidemic Uprisings Attempt to Fire the City of Rome and have Things common Conspir- acy of Slaves at the Metropolis Two Traitors Betraya! Deaths on the Roman Gibbet Another Great Uprising at S - tia Expected Capture of the World Land of Wine nud Delight Again the Traitor, the Betrayal and Gibbet The Irascible Plan a Failure Strike of the Agricultural Laborers in Etruria Slave Labor Character of the Etruscans Expe- xxvi CONTENTS OF CHAPTERS. dition of Glabro Fightirg Slaves "Worsted Punishment on the dreadful Cross, the ancient Block for the Low-born Enormous Strike in the Land of Labor Organizations One Glimpse at the Cause and Origin of Italian Brigandage La- borers, Mechanics and Agriculturers Driven to Despair The great Uprising in Apulia Fierce Fighting to the Dag- ger's Hilt The Overthrow, the Dungeon and the Cross. Proof Dug from Fragments of Lost History Page 145 CHAPTER VH DRIMAKOS. A QUEER OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAINS. STRIKE; OF DRIMAKOS, the Chian Slave Co-operation of the Irascible with the Sympathetic A Desperate Greek Bonds- man at Large Labor Grievances of the ancient Scio Tem- perament and Character of Drimakos Vast Number of Tin- fortunate Slaves Revolt and Escape to the Mountains Old Ruler of tbe Mountain Crags Rigid Master and loving Friend Great Successes Price offerei for his Head How he lost it The Reaction Rich and Poor all mourn his Loss as a Calamity The Brigands infest the Island afresh since the Demise of Drimakos The Heroon at his Tomb An Al- tar of Pagan Worship at which this Labor Hero becomes the God, reversing the Order of the ancient Rights Ruins of his Temple still extant Athengeus Nymphodorus Archae- ology Views of modern Philologists. Page l3 CHAPTER YITT. VIRIATHUS. A GREAT REBELLION IN SPAIN. THE Roman Slave System in Spain Tyranny in Lusitania Massacre of the People Condition before the Outbreak Fir.-t Appearance of Viriathus A Shepherd on his Native CONTENTS OF CHAPTERS. xxvii A Giant in Stature and Intellect He takes Com- mand Vetillius Outwitted Captured and Slain Conflict in Tartessus Romans again Beaten Battle of the Hill of Venus Viriathus Slaughters another army and Humiliates Rome Segobria Captured Arrival of JEmilianus He is Out-generaled and at last Beaten by Viriathus More Bat- tles and Victories for the Farmers Arrival of Plautius with Fresh Roman Soldiers Viriathus made King More Victories Treason, Conspiracy and Treachery Lurking in Iris Camps Murdered by his own Perfidious Officers Pomp at His Funeral Relentless Vengeance of the Romans Crucifixion and worse Slavery than before The Cause Lost. Page 178 CHAPTER iX EUNUS. GRIEVANCES. MORE SALVATION ON THE VINDICTIVE PLAN. THK IRASCIBLE IMPULSE in its Highest Development and most enormous Organization Greatest of all Strikes found on Rec ord Gigantic Growth of Sla>ry General View of Sicilian Landlordism and Servitude before the Outbreak Great In- crease of Bondsmen and Women Enna, Home of the God- dess Ceres, becomes the Stronghold of the Great Uprising Eunus; his Pedigree He is made King of the Slaves Sto- ry of his 10 Years' Reign Somebody, ashamed to confess it, has mangled the Histories The Fragments of Diodorus and other Noble Authors Reveal the Facts Cruelties of Damo- philus and Megallis, the immediate Cause of the Grievance Eunus, Slave, Fire-spitter, Leader, Messiah, King Venge- ance The innocent Daughter Sympathy hand-in-hand with Irascibility against Avarice Wise Selection by Eunus, of Achaeus as Lieutenant Council of War Mass-meeting A Plan agreed to Cruelty of the Slaves Their Army The War begun Prisons broken open and 60.000 Convicts work- ing in the Ergastul'i set free Quotations Sweeping Extinc- tion of the Rich Large Numbers of Free Tramps join An- other prodigious Uprising in Southern Sicily Cleon Con- jectures regarding this Obscure Military Genius Union of Eunus, Achseus and Cleon Harmony Victories over the Romans Insurgent Force rises to 200.000 Men Proof-- CONTENTS OF CHAPTERS. Overthrow and Extinction of the Armies of Hypsseus Man- lius Lentulus The Victorious Workingmen give no Quarter Eunus as Mimic, taunts his Enemies by Mock Theatric*!,. Open-Air Plays in the Sieges Cities fall into his Hands His Speeches Moral Aid through the Social Struggle with Gracchus at Borne Arrival of a Roman Army under Piso Beginning of Reverses 1 ucifixions Demoralization Fall of Messana Siege of Enna Inscriptions verifying History Romans Repulsed Arrival of Rupilius Siege of Tauroma- nion Wonderful Death of Comanus Cannibalism Tbe City falls Awful Crucifixions SecondSiege of Enna Its 20,000 People are crucified on the Gibbet Eunus captured and Devoured by Lice in a Roman Dungeon Disastrous End of the Rebellion or so-called Servile War Page 191 CHAPTER X. ARISTONICUS. A BLOODY STRIKE IN ASIA MINOR. BONDSMEN, TEAMPS and Illegitimates Rise against Op- pression Contagion of monster Strikes Again the Irasci- ble Plan of Rescue tried Aristonicus of Pergamus Story of the Murder of Titus Gracchus and of 300 Land Reformers by a Mob of Nobles at Rome Blossius, a Noble, Espouses the Cause of the Workingmen He goes to Pergamus Tbe Heliopohtai The Commander of the Labor Army overpiow- ers all Resistance Battle of Leuca Overthrow of the Rom- ans Death of Orassus Arrival of the Consul Paperna De- feat of the Insurgents Their Punishment Discouragement and Suicide Aristonious strangled, Thousands crucified and the Cause Lost Old Authors Quoted CHAPTER XI. ATHENION. ENORMOUS STRIKE AND UPRISING IN SICILY. SKCOND SICILIAN LABOR-WAR Tryphon and Athenion Greed and Irascibility Again Grapple The War Plan ol Salvation Repeated by Slaves and Tramps Athenion, another remark- able General Steps Forth Castle of the Twins in a Hideous Forest Slaves goaded to Revolt by Treachery and Intrisme CONTENTS OF CHAPTERS. xxix and lit- tle Godsmiths Their Unions object to the New Religion of Christianity because this, originally Repudiating Idolatry, Ruined their Business Compromise which Originated the Idolatry in the Church of to-day The Cabatores Unions of Ivory Workers Of Bisellarii or Deity-Sedan-Makers Of Imagemakers in Plaster The Unguentani or Unions of Per- fumemakers Holy Ointments and the Unions that manu- factured them Etruscan Trinketmakers Bookbinders No Proof yet found of their Organization. Page 428 CHAPTER XX. TRADE UNIONS CONCLUDED. THE TAX-GATHERERS. FINAL REFLECTIONS. UNIONS OF COLLECTORS A Vast Organized System with a Uni- form and Harmoniously Working Business Trade Unions under Government Aid and Security The Ager Publicus of Rome True Golden Age of Organized Labor Government Land A prodigious Slave System their Etiemy Victims of the Slave System Premonitions on the Coming of Jesus Demand by His Teachings for Absolute Equality, Page 437 xxxiv CONTENTS OF CHAPTERS. . CHAPTER XXX ROMANS AND GREEKS. THE COUNTLESS COMMUNES. UNIONS OF ROMANS AND GREEKS compared Miscellaneous Soci- eties of Tradesmen Shipcarpenters Boatmen Vesselmak- ers Millers Organization of the Lupanarii Of the Anci- ent Firemen Description of the G-reek Fraternities The Eranoi and Thiasoi Strange Mixture of Fiety aud Business Trade Unions of Syria and North Palestine Their Offi- cers Membership and Influence of Women Large Num- bers of Communes in the Islands of the Eastern Mediterra- nean Their Organizations Known and Described From^'their Inscriptions . Page 444 CHAPTER XXH. THE ANCIENT BANNER. INCALCULABLY AGED FLAG OF LABOR. " HB OLD, Old Crimson Ensign An Emblem of Peace and Good Will to Man Strange Power of Human Habit Descent of the Rsd Banner through Primitive Culture "White and Azure the Colors of Mythical Angels, Grandees and Aristocrats Colors for the Lowly without Family, Souls or other Seraphic Attributes How the Bed Vexillum was Stolen from Labor Tricks which Compromised Peace Tenets of the Flag The Flag at the Dawn ot Labor's Power Testimony of Polybius Of Livy Of Plutarch Causes of Working People's Affec- tion for Red The Emblem of Health and the Fruits of Toil Ceres and Minerva their Protectresses and Mother-God- desses Wore the Flaming Red Emblem of Strength and Vi- tality Archaeology in Proof Their Color First Borrowed from Crimson Sun-Beams More Light and less Darkness White and Pale Hues for the Priests Origin of the Word " FLAG" It is the Word-Root of " Flame " a Red Color- Proofs Quoted Mediaeval Banner in France and England The Red of All Modern Flags Borrowed from that of the An- cient Unions Disgraceful Ignorance of Modern Prejudice and Censure. Page 465 CONTENTS OF CHAPTERS. Evidence showing that the Early Christians were Members Testimony of Philo Of Eusebius Facts Related by One of the Fathers A Full Rendering Numbers and Ways oi the Secret Orders in and about Canaan at the Time of Christ The Secret Order of Eranists Inscriptions deciphered by Bockh and other Masters Tertulian's Evidence Community of Goods The Eranistes and Thiasotes Great Numbers of Secret Societies in Asia Minor and Syria. Page 276 CHAPTER XXIV. PLANTS OF THE ANCIENT BENEFACTORS. SAVINGS or PLATO; Of ARISTOTLE, Theophrastus, Xenophon, De- mosthenes Their Comparison with those of Jesus Views of Social Life among the Ancients Despotic Conditions More of Concupiscence, Cupidity and Irascibility than Sym- pathy Sympathy the Nursling of the Unions How the Re- nowned Flan of Lycurgus Failed Its Description How it abetted Bondage and. Suffering Plans of Lycurgus and Jesus Compared Plain Talk on Original Meanings Plato's Cele- brated "City of the Blessed" a Land of Masters and Slaves A Labyrinth of worthless Statesmanship Aristotle His Mansion of Beatitudes Political Castle built on the Sands of Aristocracy and Caste Laborers Damned The Stagerite and Jesus compared Important comparative Hope in the Plan of Jesus as a Politico- Economic Basis of a Lasting Gov- ernment Spartan Government. Page 339. CHAPTER XXV. THE TRUE MESSIAH. FOUNDERS OF GREAT INSTITUTIONS COMPARED How THE REAL MESSIAH found Things at His Advent on Earth- Palestine Syria Rhodes and the Islands Suffering Con- dition of Labor Seeds of the Revolution already Sown Further Analysis of the Conditions The Eranoi and Thiasoi Orgeons and Essenes Falsehoods regarding the Bacchante xxxv i CONTENTS OF CHAPTERS. CHAPTER XXIII. PALESTI N E; HER PRE-CHRISTIAN COMMUNES. CRADLE OF A Mighty Reform Acquisitiveness and Concupiscence in open Conflict with Irascibility and Sympathy A new An- alysis of the Origin of the celebrated Movement in Judaea Communes of Palestine Boundaries between the Lowly of Phoenicia, Judaea, Greece and Rome, Unrecognized Num- bers of the Organized About the. Cradle of the Savior Diffi- culty of comprehending the true Import of the Judaic Idea in that Movement Argument and Inscriptions Showing it to have been the Result of a long Line of Culture, Organiz- ation and Experiment. Page 493 THE ANCIENT LOWLY. CHAPTER L TAINT OF LABOR. . TRAITS AND PECULIARITIES OF RACES. GRIEVANCE of the Working Classes The Competitive System among the Ancients Growing Change of Taste in Readers of History Inscriptions and Suppressed Fragments more re- cently becoming Incentives to Reflecting Readers who Seek them as a Means to secure Facts No true Democracy - No primeval Middle Class known to the Aryan Family The Taint of Labor an Inheritance through the Pagan Religio- Political Economy. STUDENTS of history appear to be of three distinct classes: first, those who examine it to enjoy the stir- ring scenes of war and the exhibit that it makes of pop- ular pageant, pomp and military genius ; secondly, those who examine it with an object of gleaning facts regard- ing spiritual, ecclesiastical and other matters of reli- gion; and lastly those who search for reco anted deeds as well as clues to tenets of social movements among man- kind. In this last, there has been an increasing interest since the beginning of the nineteenth century. Among the precious obscurities sought by our genera- tion are historical fragments, obscure hints and allusions and queer palseographs on tablets of bronze, stone, earth- enware and other objects, containing inscriptions, symbols and emblems, even rules showing the existence of labor so- cieties all through the past civilization. Especially is re- search quickened in the hearts of a certain class of anti- quaries who are interested in the search of ijistory, for its social phases. 38 RACE PECULIARITIES. It is evident from all clues obtainable that in the open world there has never existed a social government. Ef- forts have been made to prove that mankind at various intervals and at various points, once enjoyed conditions of life based so radically upon democratic laws as to re- semble those now advocated; but such examples do not bear the test of rigid investigation. Although there havo existed republics and paternal governments they have been so tinged with patrician leadership on the one hand and patriarchal dictatorship on the other, as to render it impossible to compare them with the socialism now advo- cated, where the lowly ascend and the lordly descend, to unite on a common level. The deep aim of these great struggles of our age known as the labor movement is to acquire and to enjoy complete and lasting co-operation^ This co-operation, or brotherhood of life economies is ex- pected to be not only political but economical, changing both the government and the methods of creating and dispensing the means of life, from the competitive into the purely democratic or co-operative. A practical adop- tion of this mutualism by any tribe or branch of the hu- man family has probably never yet occurred and never has such a state of things existed except among those se- cretly organized, of whom we propose to treat. All the evidences combine to prove that the only meth- od societies have ever yet used, either in political or in economic life, is the competitive one; and as the change from the purely competitive into the purely co-operative involves little less than revolution, or to say the least, in- troversion, it becomes a study of gravest importance. In the remote past so meagre was the co-operative and so potent the competitive that there existed no interme- diary classes and conflicts were common in consequence. Roscher thinks that middlemen are an indispensable el- ement to peace; and it seems evident that his opinions are not without grounds, when applied to every stage of the competitive system in all known ages of the world. l t Prinripts ff fccemmnie polilique, Paris, 135T, pp. 175-6. "Tant qu'll existe entre les riches et les pauvres nne clsse interniedlaire considerable, 1 influence morale qu'el.e exerce suflit pour enipeeher une collis.ju '. 7A WNING A B YSS BETWEEN RICH A ND POOR. 39 Glimpses of evidence reward the researchers into the early history of the laboring masses by establishing the fact that there primarily existed no middle class. But we find great numbers of freedmen or plebeians as early as 700 years before Christ. Men were originally divided into lords and servants. There were masters and there were slaves. The chasm between these two was an emp- ty p.i so wide that no leap from one class to the other was considered either practicable or imaginable. As late as the sophists there appears a pronounced aversion to wage taking, especially in all business having for its ob- ject educational results. Plato abhorred a sophist who would work for wages. Public servants in the instruc- tion of philosophy and other branches of what was then an ordinary' education^were despised when they allowed themselves to belittle their manhood and their calling by this ignoble pay. Plato received gifts from the rich but refused pay. He was a patrician or peer. A statesrtrn of to-day who receives gifts and is not content with his salary is regarded with distrust and aversion, almost e- qual to that against wages in ancient times. One can a< - count for this metamorphosis of ethics only in the COIL- parative absence in those days of labor among patricians or managers. Although free mercenary soldiers were common who took wages for their recompense, and free hucksters and other petty dealers were known to exist, yet most labor of cultivation, of building, of housekeep- ing and a considerable amount of the labor of mechanics was performed by slaves. The law of Moses had partly abolished slavery among the Hebrews as early as B. C. 1400, probably on account of the contempt for that degradation which the Hebrews felt, after the deliverance from their protracted slavery in Egypt. It appears that the Hebrews were the chief originators and conservators of what is now known and advocated in the name of socialism; and their weird life, peculiar language, laws, struggles and inextinguishable nationality scintillate through many of the obcurities of history in a manner to command the wonder if not the awe of all lovers of democratic society. Especially does this remark apply when we consider the intensely and 40 ANCIENT GRIEVANCES OF LABOR. bitterly opposite character of every other community or nationality with which the Hebrew race has ever come in contact. The Hebrew people were the Congregation and the place where they assembled was called the Tabernacle. The Pentateuch that records the great Jewish law, quite sufficiently explains that absolute liberty, or relative soci- al equality was a law of Moses. 4 Under no other code of laws have equal rights of man with man been possible among other contemporaneous nations or tribes; because the ethics of the family, the city or state, were grounded upon the competitive rather than the co-operative or mu- tual principle. 3 Nearly all the ancients were fighters. The Hebrew branch of the great Semitic family seems to have been a partial exception. It is true that they had wars and competed with outsiders; but their peace-lov- ing traits within their own ranks, prevailed over warlike ones, probably somewhat as a result of their long captiv- ity in Egypt, but principally from the peaceful and hu- mane code of laws which they received from Moses. But it appears very certain that Jewish monotheism, together with the social or mutually protective habits of this peo- ple and their comparatively mild laws made them the ob- ject of hatred among the more competitive and conse- quently fiercer nations with whom they came in contact. It is not then, from this Semitic branch of the human family that our struggling, warlike and competitive char- acteristics are derived. A close observation of the He- brews discloses that although they were often engaged in strifes it was generally because attacked. The aggress- iveness which characterizes mankind springs not from the Semitic so much as from the Aryan germ. 4 Two dis- tinct ideas have been contended for from the dimmest re- moteness either of the provable or the conjectural history. One is the co-operative, which means the mutually pro- tective or socialistic, the other the competitive or warlike and aggressive. Leviticus, six. Mann's History of Ancient and Mediaeval Republics, pp. Fnstel de Conlanges. Cit6 Antique, Chap. i. Croyances sur 1'ame et sur Is mort. < The Phoenicians are excepte .1 from this remark. A ORE AT POWER UNRECOGNIZED. 41 Through thousands of ages men have vigorously con- tended for these antipodal results, especially in Europe. They have contended for them through religious beliefs, through social inculcation and philosophy, through rig- id scholastic training, and through the most implacable hatreds, bloody persecutions and race-wars ever recorded in the annals of mankind. Until we become better ac- quainted with the history of the poor classes and divest ourselves of clouds that have hitherto obscured tjhe vision of all historians; until we study the past especially the som- ber life and strange career of the Semitic family, from a standpoint of development or evolution, and analyze their strangely tenacious and persistent views unbiased by the views through which we are still taught to regard others; until we can catch the practical advantages of co- operation, mutually one with another and thoroughly see the savage nature of competitive life, must we remain blind to the true object which inspired the greatestad- vent of this world ; the visit and labors at Palestine and the movement whose undying germs there planted the world still loves and cultivates. These words are expressed preliminarily to announcing facts which have perhaps never before been observed and certainly never enough considered : that the Ary- an or Indo-European branch of the human race has al- ways, in private and in public life, in religion, in soci- al conventionalism, in methods of reasoning and in its political economy, been competitive^ whilst the Semitic branch has ever been co-operative. For thousands of years these two great families have lived over against each other, sometimes mixed, sometimes by themselves, have struggled and fought, have built up and torn down, each with its own inexorably fixed notions; and never as we shall prove, did they show anything like a fusion or even a conciliation of the two systems until three hundred years after the death of Christ. They are war- ring still ; and the direct causes of this warfare as well as its direct results are the great labor movements of to- day. We hope in these pages to show that the natural bent of the lowly majority of mankind is toward co-op- 42 RA CE PECULIA RITIES. eration; that race hatreds ran so high that it became necessary to have an Intercessor or mediator to act be- tween the two races and their two ideas, in order to bring about a mutually co-operative system under which the large majorities, including working people could bet- ter subsist. It became necessary to have this Interces- sor not merely to arrange a religion based upon salvation of the soul or immortal principle, but more likely, as our train of evidence goes to prove, to introduce an organiz- ed method for the economic salvation of the downtrod- den and realize practically the promised "Heaven on earth." We mean by this that from the days of Moses, dating- something above fourteen hundred years before Christ, there have existed two distinctly opposite sets of ideas or of thought upon which mankind the arrogant blooded family with its competition on the one hand and the slave with his rebellions, and freedman with his formidable un- ions on the other have been struggling to build up civil- izations. The transition from a completely competitive to a mutually co-operative system involved complete rev- olution. The channels in which human thought has run since man has been a mere animal, occupying as the the- ory of evolution daringly asserts, a hundred thousand or more of years, have, except in the case of the persecuted and sometimes almost exterminated unions, been purely competitive. The competitive is the oldest system known. It is pro- foundly aged. It is the system employed by all living be- ings by which to procure for individuals, each for itself and its species, the means wherewith to subsist. It is, with- out the least saadow of doubt, the original. It consists in methods of the individual, whether a weed, a tree, fox, reptile, hawk or human being, of subsisting, as an isola- ted creature or ego, independently of others. It has recog- nized self as uppermost and taken upon its own respon- sibility for others' sake their care only for gratification of self, as that manifested in preservation of species. Back in the remote past, as reason began to dawn upon creeping cave-dwellers or troglodytes of our race, when TWO ANTAGON1STICAL SYSTEMS. 43 thought was inspired by suspicion and methods of subsist- ence were based upon cunning, nature, in the vagueness of his understanding was full of terrors. As he began to realize the certainty of death, man established the first re- ligion ; but it was purely upon the competitive basis, al- ways with this aristocratical ego uppermost. Not until uncounted ages had passed, nor until this pa- gan religion was inconceivably old did another appear, arising from the mutually protective or co-operative idea. This was at so late a period that by groping back into the misty past, we are enabled to know its founder and trace its history. That it was an innovation, intolerably anti- thetical to this more agi^d, original competition or brute- force underlying and inspiring both business and religion is proved by the hatreds borne against it, which have so stamped themselves, not so much upon the religion as up- on the whole race that kindled its name, spoke its tongue and cherished its ideas. The great struggle going on to-day seems best under- stood by the laborer. 5 Persons brought up under the purely competitive system which governs human affairs, see with difficulty the idea of true socialism ; but the Jews even of our day, grasp it with ease. We are at a loss to comprehend this. Why should the two founders of the labor party in Germany have arrived while young, at the same conception of a method which involves a revolution from the prevailing ideas of political economy? Marx and Lasselle had been born and educated under the Mosaic law. Bicardo, a Jewish speculator in stocks, was brought up in strict obedience to the Jewish law by his father ; but finding the Hebrew doctrine very adverse to his specula- tive tendencies, notions of wages and political economy, he withdrew or seceded from his ancestral religion and join- ed the more numerous ranks of the competitive one." The Mosaic Law, divested of its idiosyncracies such as See Prof. Ely's French and German Socialisms ; Chan. xii. pp. 1S9-20&; Lassalle'8 Allgemeiner Dautscher Arbeiter Vereiu. Ferdinand Lassalle and Karl Marx were Jews; and it is conjectured that their en se in comprehending the true theorUs of the working people eminated from their early training. McCnlloch, Introduction to The Life of Ricardo ; London, 1878. 44 RACE PECULIARITIES. thirty-two hundred years ago, when men were simpler, were suitable enough, condensed into fair English, reads about as follows: It is compulsory upon every man to stand in awe and obedience before father and mother and to keep the sab- bath. Do not turn in favor of idols nor make molten gods for your worship. All sacrifice of a peace offering must be offered of your own free will, and eaten the same day and the next; for if any of it remain until the third, it must be burned as unhallowed and abominable. When you reap the harvests of your land, leave some in the corners of the field and do not gather the glean- ings of the harvest nor glean the vineyards. Leave some- thing for the poor and the stranger. 7 All stealing, false dealing and lying, one to another are forbidden. You must not swear by my name falsely nor profane it. You are forbidden to defraud or rob your neighbor. Pay with- out delay the wages agreed upon, to those whom you en- gage to labor for you. Never ill-treat the deaf nor put a stumbling block before the blind. Be careful and dis- creet in your judgment and your word of honor, treating neighbors with righteous equality. Never go about tale- bearing among the people, nor stir feuds with neighbors. To hate your brother is forbidden and to prevent him from falling into error you should call his attention to his fault. Abstain from revenges and grudges against the people and love your neighbor as yourself. Cultivate your stock after the natural law of selection. Let the seed of your fields be pure. Let your garments be un- mixed; if linen, let them be of pure linen; if wool, let thorn be all wool. Then follow many details minutely describing what constitutes crime and what the punishment. Many of the punishments, while probably in very good keeping with an early and semi-barbarous age, appear to us brut- al and distastful in the extreme. The severe punishment of death 8 visited upon all who denied the peculiar people T?y mixing their blood with Moloch,* has gone far toward preserving the Hebrew stock from admixture with other races of mankind. The purity with which the Jews have 7 Leviticus, xxiii. 22. Lmticut. rr. 2. 7. 9 Leviticus, xxi. 14. RELIGION AND TOIL UNAVOIDABLY MIXED. 45 thus maintained themselves amid vicissitudes, such as would have swallowed up and annihilated any other fam- ily of the human race, is readily pronounced one of the most remarkable phenomena encountered in the study of ethnology. The command is severe against witch, wiz- zard and spirit- worship. 10 This must be partly accounted for by the fact that the Egyptians, under whose domina- tion the Jews had chafed for 400 years as slaves, were among the most superstitious in their belief in, and wor- ship of ah 1 sorts of prestigiation. Charms, incantations, witchcraft and all the sleights of the w r and were so pop- ular that the art was for ages interwoven with their reli- gion. However much we may desire to ignore all men- tion of religion in this history of the ancient lowly, we find this impossible because of the prevalence of priest- power and dictum in political economy. The Hebrews were the only ancients who worshiped one deity; 11 and as that deity is represented to be the very one who dictated the law of Moses, he would naturally be severe against false gods. "I am a jealous God," is an expression often repeated in the bible; 11 and such a one in giving a code of laws for the government of men would scarcely do otherwise than make idolatry a crime. Immodesty also receives a full share of condemnation from the great He- brew law, which thoroughly defines ls what constitutes unrefined or immodest actions. It is thus seen that a lofty spirit of chastity and of mor- al purity is inculcated into aU the Mosaic law. There is nothing in it that binds the Jews to the practice of any- thing like close community of goods. The law of Moses is not communistical. Competitive methods then as now, were the reigning ones. But the law was mutually pro- tective. The condition of society to-day is toned in a great measure by the practice of the demands of this aged code. Nearly all of the above cited paragraphs are now being obeyed by us; and they act alike, among Jew and 10 Leviticta, TO.. 6. Witch hanging by our fore-fathers originates here. 11 By this is meant one animate, all-powerful being. Ancient Beliotry and other Pagan forms, must of which treated the working class with contempt and cruelty as we shall show, paid homage V inanimate, repretentativt goats. 1 2 Ezvdus. XX. 6. it Leviticus, XX. 1 7. 46 RACE PECULIARITIES. gentile, an effective part in keeping our civilization pure. The command 14 that the people when harvesting their grain and grapes, should not forget those who are less fortunate, but should leave some for them, is a touching rebuke to the niggardly system of these more enlighten- ed times. One remarkable habit, that of buying and sell- ing, owning and profiting upon slaves, even of their own kindred, 16 seems inconsistent and cannot again enter into practice. It also, to our critical understanding, brings into severe reproach and doubt the sacred or divine au- thorship of the law of Moses. Jesus rectified all this. Most of the customs of the Hebrews are fixed. The ame rules established in Palestine thirty-two hundred years ago are still adhered to. It is true that at that time Judaea was a farming or pastoral country; and that the Jews of to-day, having been separated by defeat and per- secution, scattered and distributed to all portions of the world, cannot continue their original pastoral and agricul- tural vocations and so have become merchants and mon- ey lenders and have assumed the various methods of ob- taining a living similarly to other people. It is also true that being thus isolated, having no country, and obliged to exist in the competitive world, under the competitive idea, they act among outsiders competitively. 1 * This they This practice heid good aui'.iiij the Dorians even after Greeks began t acquire the art of making historical records. See Plutarch, Lycurgus, xvi. w Homer, Oil>ixsf>i, lib. XVII. 'i he passage here alluded to refers to a comparatively enlightened puriol. As late as Plato, when emancipations and resistance had created a middle class, it was doubted whether working- people had all of the attributes recognized in true members of the human family. Of. Plato, fop. vi. 9; Ixxi Laws, vi ; Homer, Odyssey, xvii. 332. Plato wanted slaves and believed in the inferiority of all laborers 20 Cicero, Pro Domo ; Tusnilanarum D input itininim Liliri, I. 16; "Sub terra cense 1 ant le'iquiam vitam a^i mortuorum." Kuri. i !es, Alceslis, 163; Hecuba. 54 INDO-EUROPEAN LABOR. The lord of the estate permits of no social or religious mixtures with other people or other estates. There are no tenants, no neighbors, and consequently few sociabilities. Egoism is so severe that little of the kind can be tolerated. It is master and slave; no intermediaries. Communities are unknown. Promiscuity which makes the village, 21 the community, the social gathering, the free sports of chil- dren and general merriment are interdicted by this pro found solemnity based upon an adoration of, and implici- obedience in one central ruler; a man who is the inherit- or; who, by virtue of this inheritance giving him power, and of this egoism giving him will, assumes, as through the countless ages his ancestors assumed, to be the sole owner in life, and the immortal to be worshiped, caressed, entreated, propitiated, glorified, after death ! 22 We have thus described, as if actually existing among us at present, a scene whose stage was once this earth; 23 whose unhappy actors were workingmen and women and whose managers were then as now, the captalists; a scene which mankind, grace to an eternal resistance, in turmoils, servile wars, and innumerable social communes, has largely outgrown. It is a scene which no civilized society could at present tolerate. Yet it was the almost all-prevailing one among mankind of the distant past in Greece and Italy. Lordship, therefore, was the very first condition in the establishment of society ; slavery its antithesis, the sec- ond. Of the middle class occupying the great gap wide- ly separating the lord from the slave there was none. entrance of the house. The Romans had it differently, though essentially the same. The focus remained, ns in Gree< e, in the center of the enclosure, but the build ings were placed around it leaving an inner court ; the walls of the houses rising around it on all sides. The Greeks used to pay that religion taught them- how to build houses. Fustel de Coulanges, Citi Antique, pp. 6285. 22 In Greek the ivria Stvirotva, in Latin the Larfamiliaris, were key-words of the ancient pagan family. Etymologically this is the origin of the term despot. -3 We have not space to make copious quotations from the numerous au- thors who 8 e descriptions and hints we have ransacked in search of the proof of this condition of ancient affairs : but recommend the doubtful to the foll< wing commentators and original writers: Granier de Csssr gnac, Histoire des Classes Ouvritres s , ..//a. 68 TREATMENT OF THE POOR. our groping inquiry through the long night of time which lasted till the dawn of manumissions. Unlike the African slaves of modern times who were the property of a class of masters not of their own race or kindred, the ancient slaves were, in race and consanguinity, the equals of their masters ; and there can be little doubt that the causes ot their emancipation were in many instances, their own resistance to slavery. At present the laboring classes of the same races we are describing the Semitic and Indo- European are organizing in immense numbers and with skill to resist the forces which modern wage servitude in- flicts ; and it is therefore very similar to the great struggle humanity passed through in ancient times, to resist the op- pressive system under which nearly all were born. The difference between the two struggles however, lies in the fact that the ancient one had to deal with the lowest, most debased and cruel species of subjugation which the ancient religion stamped into its tenets. Both these great strug- gles are of long duration. When the first was partly won Christianity came with its doctrine of equality 3 and brought the struggle into the open world. It went hand in hand with the emancipation movement until chattel slavery and its vast, aged system may now be pronounced extinct throughout the civilized world. The struggle has contin- ued ; but from emancipating chnttle slavery it has shifted to the enfranchisement of competitive labor. Notwithstanding the profound learning and research de- voied by M de LavelaveMn proof that the primitive con- dition of mankind was of patriarchal form, we find that the great slave system always prevailed among the Aryans Irom whom we are the immediate descendants ; and indeed he sets out 5 with a confession at least that the earl\ Greeks and Romans never had any institutions of the communal or patriarchal nature. Prof. Denis Fustt-1 de Coulanges makes ' Granier, Hist, des Clasess Ouvrikres, pp. 392-4; Laveleye, Primitive Prop- erty, liitroduc. to 1st ed., pp. xwi., xxvii. xx.\.. xxxi. Here M. de Laveleye again admit? slavery to have be :n earlier than commnnit-m. i Primitive Projjt-rty, ling, trans., pp. 7--3J~>. ihip. ii. > Idem, p 6. "From the earliest limes the ; .rut-Its and Romans recognized private property as applied to the soil and triers of ancient tribal community were already so intlist not as no; to be discoverable without careful study.'' M. de La\elnye might better h:ive s.ai'l such traces are not disco' c/uble at all ; and iudrerl, the most of the ini-iance- he cites a e of a c nuivirnti.'oly recent cr:i, the proi>:i'ul drv< lojuiKMit <>f ivsistane . thousand of wars after the in an n mission of 8ia\es Had set in us a result of their >irii esand npnidngs, of which we get clues. LAW OF ENTAIL AND ITS DANGERS. 69 no hesitation in saying that the Aryan religion, as already described, made the first born son, by the law of entail, the owner of his own children who thus became slaves. 6 Ref- erences to this old custom are very numerous in the an- cient writings. 7 Under Lycurgus 8 the Spartans tried the system of communal proprietorship from the year 825 to 371 B, C. Although every deference was paid to the ten- ets of the Pacran religion that this celebrated code of laws established by the great lawgiver should not interfere with worship, yet worship itself being interwoven with pro- perty was seriously disturbed; because to divide among the people, the rabble, the profane, that which fell to the god who skpt under the sacred hearth, ^or to his living son, sei-med to be a sacrilege too blasphemous to endure. The scheme fell to naught. The probable fact is, that the ancient pater families, perceiving himself robbed of his pa- te nity, united with other patricians in similar trouble and succeeded in working the overthrow of the innovation. We propose to establish that these great innovations, like the laws of Lycurgus and many similar attempts at reform, the detailed causes of whose mighty commotions some- times shook Rome and Greece like the eruption of a vol- cano, were often caused by the multitudes of secret trades and other social organizations existing in those ancient days Historians seldom mention them. The reason for this is quite clear. This disturbing element was made up of the outc ists of society. How did it come about that there were such outcasts? The answer to this involves a detour of discovery into phenomana of evolution. Of a family of say thirty persons there exists abundance of evidence that there were often thirty and more persons born to one patri- cian or lord 9 there is but a single owner or director, the first-born son. The other children and servants by pur- chase or otherwise, are slaves. It was a crime to leave the paternal estate. They might be clubbed to death for dis- 9 La Cite Aiiliqw; Lemticus, U. 4. i Plato, Minux, also Servitw In JSneid, v. 84, vi. 152. Reseller, Iliftnii-f re are two seemingly parallel cases ; the one representing a condition of affairs 350 years before Christ, the other taken from actual conditions before our own eyes, in both cases, given against the stubborn will of the ruling wealthy by two of the profoundest and most dmiiigly honest philosophers the world has produced. At the time' Rodbertus von Yagetzou made this startling pre- diction, Germany under Bismarck, was stifling every ef- fort of press, legislation, trade-unions and socialists, to give the dreaded fact to the world. The freedmen at the time of Aristotle were forming an innumerable phalanx of com- bined strength. It is not hard for students of sociology to understand why in ancient times no mention was made by historians of the wonderful organizations which then existed. But for laws necessarily recorded for the use of government and for the habit which labor unions of those times enter- tained, compulsorily perhaps, of inscribing their name, fes- tivities, the tutelary saint they worshiped and the handi- craft they belonged to, upon slabs of stone, there would be no means of knowing or even conjecturing the history of a transition ppiiod \\hich launched u an'vind, :.f er long cen- turies of struggle, out of a passive submission to abject ser- w Idem, cnap. i. Aniifjues Croyancet. H Later we find cremation ; but only the poor who possessed no ground burned tlioir (lead. These were the outcasts supposed to have no souls. . i. 4. "> itodbertus, Xwmal ArbeiUtag ; Ely, HM. Frtttck an'i German Socialims, pp. 176-7. 72 TREATMENT OF THE POOR. vitude into the true competitive system. We shall farther on have more to say in detail of the hatred and contempt which the ancient slave masters held toward their poor working chattels. There was a taint upon labor. So there is now. Thus far then, there is no progress. We shall attempt to ana- lyze the original cause of this taint upon labor and prove that the progress of to-day consists in its diminution. Admitting the theory of development we go back to man at the dawn of reason, when he was still a beast. We even imagine a group, such as Professor Oswald Hcer has pic- tured in the frontispiece of his masterly scieniific work on the fossils of Switzerland." Prowling around this group of naked human forms some upon trees, others crawling 1 , others walking plantigrade, or gorilla-like we see wild animals, -birds and reptiles, all in search of food. Just as the steer after a desperate encounter with its rival comes out the victor and ever holds the mastery over the rest of a herd, so the most powerful and ferocious of this group of primeval men wins with his club, his fingers or fists the mastery over the rest. These are first impulses. They are entirely'animal in character. Wild geese and ducks seek in conflict the means of knowing which of their flock shall be leader in their flight; and him of the most magnetic or muscular or intellectual powers they follow. The purely animal, then, is the form which primitive, animal m#n as- sumes. This strong master of the group is the prototype of the patrician and inheritor of the estate as thousands of years afterwards we find him lord of the manor with his slaves about him. It would be absurd to suppose that im- mediately at the dawn of reason, this wild animal actually assumed one of the highest types of civilization. The com- munistic or even the patriarchal is one of the h'ghcst forms which human beings have attempted. They havi-, it is true, been attempted but mostly to prove failures; simply be- cause they were of a type even in their crudest state, too far progressed for others to appreciate and apply. The master or as we may better characterize him, the bully has always been too jealous. That Abraham and Moses tried a very low form of it, and isolated themselves so as not to 11 Dr. Oswald Heer, Urwelt der Schweis, EVIDENCE OF INSCRIPTIONS. 73 interfere with others, is true. But it is too well known that the Hebrews were not appreciated in their good work. Their very attempt to institute the patriarchal system even in its imperfect, half competitive form, brought against them the jealousy of the world of heathendom. It was an intol- erable innovation upon the more :mcient, aristocratic, brutal system of masters and slaves. And it was no mere indi- vidual, but this gigantic system which massed its powers to drive the presumptions Hebrews from the face of the earth. The mere animal form of govei'nment must have come first. This reasoning, says the law of evolution, must have borne very brutal forms. Surely enough, so we find it at the dawn of history and at the highest discernible antiquity not only in Greece and Rome but in Egypt. It was the slave system under which the Egyptian monuments were built; and no thinking person can doubt that thousands of years of this slavery mu-t have elapsed before the Egyptians arrived at the art of architecture in which recorded history finds them. Advancing reason had already been of millennial date ere those people could have known how to carve their hiero- glyphs with nice precision upon tlie monuments. Again, we fail to see that these inscriptions mention any mod> of a more ancient communal or patriarchal government. The simplest form of governing the primeval race must have been the one adopted ; and the simplest was the one common among the animals of to-day. There was at the head of every group, or tribe, or family, a master ; and him the rest obeyed, afterwards adored. It next seems natural that surrounded by wild and fierce creatures of the waters, glades and forests, the first rea- sonable thing to protect this master would be to select some place of security some rock or cave or height, whence he might go or send forth into the forests, the swamps and shores in search of fruit, roots, shellfish and game. An- other thing; it is natural for man to settle permanently somewhere. This is peculiarly the case with the Aryan races. It is the form of life almost universally adopted by the In do- European s. They select a seat and conquer and subjugate in all directions. This also corresponds with our proposition that the first idea was to obtain a home. With the growth of experience in the application of reason came egoism which it i.s said the brute does not often man- 74 TREATMENT OF THE POOR. ifest. Now with animal prowess, a little reason and a large egoism, we have what the present labor, movement calls a "boss." He is endowed with the three great attributes which our modern authorities on moral philosophy denom- inate irascibility and concupiscence. Given the right of proprietorship wrung through supe- riority in physical power from his tribe and his children, and he unhesitatingly uses them as slaves. This the true beast cannot do, since it requires reason. The first impulse, that of cupidity, makes him a tyrant and the second, that of irascibility, fills him with cruel ferocity, accounting for the well known fact that the ancient slave-holder could and often did kill his own children. 18 The first impulse, that of concu- piscence and acquisitiveness combined into one, makes him desirous to enjoy and accumulate. So his children are nu- merous. These two nearly allied sources of human desire or greed filled him with a rivalry to accumulate and often to se- quester the stores which the toil of his slaves produced. A third impulse, that of sympathy, being yet mostly want- ing, man reasonably was thus filled with pomp and greed. These whetted his yet unbridled pnssions, making him ambitions to embellish his estate, caused the land to be fruit- * ful, inspired him to build better houses, select and multiply his concubines and otherwise adorn the paternity. But the original parent-aristocrat or paterfamilias never until much later, desisted from the enforcement ot' absolute virtue of the parent-aristocrat mother or materfandlias. Sympathy, it would seem came to him but tardily. Sym- pathy was inspired later; brought into the world through the cult of the organizations of freedmen, after the begin- ning of the era of manumissions. Socrates and Aristotle recognized their powerful school of fraternal coherence and mutual love which it seems almost certain culminated in the wonderful institution known as Chistianity, destroying the old Paganism or, at least, laying the foundation for its final eradication from the world. This picture presents a poor outlook for the slaves, who were obliged to perform the master's drudgery. They how- ever, always had two advantages : being to the family born, is Terentius, Heauton Timm-urnmos, Act III. 5 ; Dionysius of Halicarnessns, Antiquitalts Romano?, lib. II. cap. xxvi. ; (Jodex Justiniani, lib. VII. tit. xlvii. PandecUe, (Digest), lib. XXVIII. log. xi. THE IGNOMINIOUS CREMATION. Ib- they owned a meagre right to some kind of burial; whereas it is known that later, the freed man could only expect cre- mation. To have the remains refused the noble rite ofbur- ial was a disgrace. It was a virtual acknowledgement that the person had no soul. Malefactors, runaways or de- serters and freedmen so lowly as to be without protection, in other words all whom God spurned to recognize as hav- ing an immortal life, were burned or cast out to rot without honors. 19 The other advantage was that their owners were their supporters which freed slaves from the responsibilities of the struggle for bread. Still the whole picture presents a poor outlook for the slaves who were obliged to perform his drudgery. But as if they might be inclined to desert him the religious belief was so riveted upon their benighted minds that for thousands of years they did not doubt that the punishment for desertion would be a species of damna- tion. The slaves were taught that the most hallowed of all places was the central focus or alter of worship of the manes of their master. The holy and awful funeral repast had al- ways to be partaken upon the same spot where the family ancestors lay. Thus for generations families worshiped each other at the same tomb. 20 We have already quoted from Dr. Fustel that the dread of being deprived of sepulture was greater than the fear of death itself. So fearful were the ancients, even the ancient laborers, of arousing the ire of their tutelary deities that they worshiped them by sacri- fices. They even fed 2l these disengaged souls 22 and period- ically furnished them with wine, milk, fruit, honey and other table delicacies which in life they had been known to pre- fer. These strange beliefs which were by no means con- fined to the Indo-European, but as Fustel de Coulanges has made clear, embraced the entire Aryan family, 211 were the js Cicero, De Legibun, 2, 23, "Hominem mortnnm, inqnit lex XII., (mea^.in.; the Twelve Tables, ) in Urbe ne sepelito neve urito Quid? qnl post XII. in Urbe i-epulti, sunt clari viri." 2'i Knripides. Trojans, 381. 21 Virgil, JEneid, III. SCO: Euripides, Jphigenia, 476, "Behold, I pour upon the earth of the tomb milk, honey and wine ; for it is with these that we revivify the dead ;" Of . also, Ovid, Fastus, II. 540. 22 critically, this expression is incorrect: for the ancients believed that the soul was never disengaged, but remained buried with the body in bliss. Con- sult Fnstel de Coulanges, Cite Antique, liv. I. chap. iv. is In substance Dr. Fnstel, Idem. p. 26 says: Ces croyances ne sont paa asurement empruntecs ni par les (Irecs (!es Hindous ni paries Hindons des Grers : mais flies appartenaient a toutes les deux races, de loin reculees et dtt milieu de r Asie. 76 TREATMENT OF THE POOR. prevailing ones and formed the basis of the great Pagan re- ligion. The superstition worked so powerfully upon the benighted conscience of slaves that however severe their lot, they required a higher scale of enlightenment than could be had in these low forms of slavery before they could see their way clear to revolt, This, however came in the course of time. There is no doubt that discussion among the numer- ous organizations of freedmen did much toward bringing this about. The increasing number of slaves also gave them opportunity to meet and interchange opinions. In the deep gloom of abject slavery men seldom revolt. 1 Revolt is es- pecially rare where there is no contact with public opinion adverse to it. It is not probable therefore, that the slaves, however bad their treatment, found themselves in a condi- tion enough advanced in the scale of manhood to organize revolt until thousands of years of their abject servitude had elapsed. But it appears certain that revolts had been going on for a long time before we catch the earliest clues to their history. When language had become perfected and means of mutual comprehension had come into their grasp, so that an intelligent interchange of each others feelings was had, and it became easy to express their grievances and suffer- ings one with another, they began to revolt. If a lord or capitalist in a paroxysm of unbridled rage, ordered one slave for a trivial offense to be strangled by the others,* 4 they were compelled to be the executioners of their comrade. If his majesty raised his hand and dashed out the brains of his own child, the other children, 25 though by no means so keenly sensitive to the horror as we of our own time, would feel a common sympathy and perhaps lay up the in- fanticide for a future day of vengeance. When the right of sepiiiture was taken from them and they found that even the consolation of religion was gone, they went desperate and reckless over the imagined withdrawal, by the God they worshiped, of his blessing. In this state of mind they 4See story of Damophilos in chapter viiL, on the revolt of Eunus. 25 We have, in the ancient records, many allusions to the murder of chil- dren by the lords of the estate. See Dionys^Sus of Ualicarnassus, Arcltiologia Rkomana, lib. II. Cap. XXVi. 'O Se riav 'Pw/uouW vo^o^tT^ ano'.'. 359. 78 TREATMENT OF THE POOR, istence. It is very easy to prove that there were organiza- tions or unions of mercenaries who sold their services to princes and their generals, undertaking to accomplish cer- tain military feats for a recompense. But we are still treating of the workingman as a slave. The father of the family was one individual. But the family itself often consisted of fifty. Now as the only one of all these eligible to the blooded dignity of nobility was the father, what became of the rest? 30 They were not only slaves but they formed, as it were, another race. They were the plebeians, the proletariat ; " hewers of wood and drawers of water." It was impossible under the extremes of this social divergence, for any communication or sympa- thy to be recognized between them, Even though the master was the father and the child legitimate though a slave, by the deadly inheritance of his bondage riveted upon him through immemorial usage, he dared not look up into his parent's face with the sweet, tender love of our modern consanguinity ! It was a sacrilege. Equality was impossi- ble. The number therefore, of the slave race compared with the noble, was as fifty to one. Even as late as the beginning of that powerful reform known as Christianity which may be characterized as an emancipation proclama- tion, the slave system was in full operation and the num- ber of slaves enormous. It is through that long night of slavery for the working people, that humanity received its almost indelible stamp of reproach and contempt which lingers to-day in the *' taint " of labor. During the struggle of strikes and up- risings that set in after the slaves became numerous and colonies of them, either as marauders or adventurers ap- peared, the slave race developed many men and women of extraordinary genius and ability. We shall present an elaborate history of these as landmarks in our biography of the lowly while groping through the barren void which the historians and the literary \\reckers have k-ft us, torn in fragments or quite unchronicied in their short sighted con- tempt and eagerness to set forth only exploits which the ambition of their noble masters inspired. So poor was the food doled out by the masters to their slaves that they may so The Materfamilias or married mother kept herself in severe seclusion 80 *8 to be above suspicion BRANDED AND FED HUSKS AND PODS. 79 be said to have been fed like animals from the crib. Horace, Herodotus, Lucanus, Livy, Pliny and many others give tes- timony of the wretched food these poor slaves received in Greece, Egypt and Rome. Peas," nuts, roots, pods, skimmed milk, very poor bread, and none made of white wheat flour. 32 Great suffering from want is mentioned in Pliny's Natural History, among the slaves of Italy. An epi- demic like the black death twice broke out among them. He also states that this disease did not attack the noble or well-to-do people. 33 These great sufferings and privations caused the death rate to be so high as to decimate the ranks of the slaves thus reducing tl,e danger always feared by the masters, of revolt and of plottings for insurrection. Aside from the curse which their lowly condition stamped upon the slaves, they were treated with igmominy and gen- erally marked with the stiches on their faces. The word stigma among the Greeks was full of reproach, not only because the scars were on the faces and bodies of these poor white men and women 35 doomed to perpetual servitude, but because it was also indelibly stamped upon their social life. Granier who produced a gem in his great work 36 for which the subsequent labor movement acknowledges its in- debtedness, says of this ancient slavery ; " This curse of blood is implacable. Ventidius Bassus was so fortunate as to become a consul. They said to him, you were a boot- black. Gulerius, Diocletian, Probus, Pertinax, Vitellius, even Augustus had the good fortune to become emperors. They said to Galerius: You were a swineherd ; to Diocle- tian : You were a slave ; to Probus : Your father was a gardener; to Pertinax: Your father was a treedman ; to Vitellius : Your father was a cobbler ; and they went so "Horace, Ad Pisortem, v. 249. * Homer, Odessey, lib. VIII. c. v. 221, 222. The earth born multitudes : "Twy 6* oAAcoi' efjLe <>I?/AI iroAu iroo$epiffTepov eu'cu, *Of the holy property was an unpar- donable misdemeanor or even to utter words of conspiracy against that property remaining in the hands of the first born son, was blasphemy. This superstition thus incul- cated was always, in ancient times, the bulwark of pro- tection to the nobles. Lhe Amphictyony existed 2,000 years before Christ, probably even much prior to ibat time, and grew more and more powerful, until about B. C. 700 it had grown in numeric strength and in the sub- tle art of self-protection so th t it assumed the dignity of the Amphictyonic Council, seated itself in the holy tc m- ples of Apollo and Demeter, and had delegates who met there spring and autumn, representing twelve tribes or states of Greece and the Archipelago. Some 600 years before Christ the Amphictyonic Council had misunder- standings with its delegates and wars of extermination began. These troubles were called the holy wars. It is known that for many centuries these corporations pro- tected themselves mutually. If one of the sma 1 neighbor- ss Latin "Gens," whence the "gentry." See Mann's Ancient and Mediaeval Republics, chapter vi. SB Kiske. American J'olitical Ideat. D. 72. 82 TREATMENT OF jHE POOR. hoods represented in and protected by the federation was attacked or threatened, the entire power of all the others was thrown together in its defense. The article of agree- ment between them ran as follows: Not to destroy or al- low to be destroyed or cut off from water, in peace or war, any town in the Amphictyonic brotherhood ; not to plunder 40 the property of the god or treacherously ex- tract valuables from the sanctum. Now in face of the fact that there were by this time great numbers of sup- ermini*^ rary slaves who had, on account of their servitude and the abuses they suffered, become reckless, fierce and ready to enter upon a life of desperate revolt, still we find writers denying that this brotherhood had any other idea than a purely religious one. To the searching sociologist it is quite clear that this organization must have been one of the very first efforts of the Indo-Europeans to form a government for the protection of property, From incipiency this must have been the earliest form of government. But it was an aristocratic government which cast a taint on labor. It perpetuated the holi- ness of property which has ever since upheld the dogma of divine right of the fathers and of kings and is prob- ably the originator of that dogma. Away back in the past, before the country had become thickly peopled and while superstition combined with rigid rules of the masters, kept down all danger of revolt among the slaves, there were no cities. 41 We have not space in this work to explain the phenomenon of the ancient city, but refer the curious to Dr. Fustel, whose work 42 cannot be perused without profit. Modern scholars are making valuable com- pilations of evidence showing that cities, like nearly ev- erything else, were a natural and gradual growth. The great Hesiod, himself a poor freedman if not a slave, may have had the Amphictyonic league and its wars in mind when he wrote : "Men's right arm is law ; for spoils they wait And lay their mutual cities desolate." <* 49 The custom was to bury with the deceased father many precious articles of which he was fond in life. See Funck-Brentano, La Civilisation el ses Lois, on this Fetish custom and his evidence that the favorite wife was often buried alive alone with the other trinkets ; livre II. c. ii. pp. 114-116. 41 Fustel deCoulanges, CM Antique, liv.III. c. ii. et lii. . /<*. III. c. L o Hesiod, 'Ep-ya icai 'Hpcpat, V. 161. CHAPTER IV. ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES ANCIENT GRIEVANCES OF THE WORKERS. WORKING PEOPLE destitute of Souls Original popular Beliefs Plato finally gives them half a Soul- Modern Ignorance on the true Causes of certain Developments in History Sym- pathy, the Third Great Emotion developed out of growing Beason, through mutual Commiseration of the Outcasts A new Cuit The Unsolved Problem of the great Eleusinian My.-teries Their wonderful Story Grievances of slighted Workingmen Organization impossible to Slaves except in their Strikes and Rebellions The Aristocrats' Politics and Religion barred the Doors against Work-people Extraor- dinary Whims and Antics at the Eleusinian -Mysteries The Causes of Grievances endured by the Castaway Laborers Their Motives for Secret Organization The Terrible Cryp- tia The horrible Murders of Workingmen for Sport Dark Deeds Unvsiled Story of the Massacre of 2 V 000 Working- men Evidence The Grievances in Sparta In Athens Free Outcast Builders. Sculptors, Teachers, Priests, Dancers, Musicians, Artisans, Diggers, all more or less Organized Re- tui n to the Eleusinian Mysteries Conclusion. . . . DURING the long period occupying in the case of the Indo-European race from which most of us are derived, several thousand years, there came about a differentia- tion in favor of the slaves. Granier in his bright exposi- tion of this great social subject, declares slavery to have been the natural outcome of the Pagan, or family religion. 1 Fustel de Coulacges in his instructive and extraordinarily lucid wcrk has proved every word written by Granier ' Bitt, dcs C'j-.parpia is a brotherhood, as the term Imports ; and a natural growth from the organization into gentes. It is an or-:mic union or association of two or more gentes of the same tribe for certain common objects. These gentes were usually such as had been formed by the segmenta- tion of an original gens." This author sees some analogy bet'.veen the nnrient Greek and Roman gens and certain tribes of North American Indians ; uotabiy the Iroqtiois. Consult chapters ii. and iii. 1 Plutarch, Lycurgus ; also Lycurgus and Numn a>n>i>nrfi.. THE ORIGINAL CRUSADE. 87 need not trace the Eleusinian band back of that time. It is however, worthy of remark that this organization existed at a much earlier date and that, although the societies of the workmen do not as luminously come to the front on oc- count of this stigma which made them secret and prevented their recognition, it is no proof whatever that they did not also exist. Tne organization known as the Eleusinians, 8 ac- cording to ancient authors was in full force 1,500 years be- fore Christ. Cicero who was an admirer of all the pagan forms that tended to hand down the exclusive splendor and dignity of the aristocratic stock, believed these feasts to have belonged to the remotest antiquity and th.it they lasted the longest of almost any institution. 9 Like the great trade-union movement they transmit unwritten records through an occasional slab, bearing inscriptions. 19 The Eleusinian crusade was a celebrated and exclusively aristocratic religious festival in honor of the goddess Dem- eter or Ceres, 11 held at Eleusis, a large town some ten miles from Athens, in Attic Greece. It was a great outpouring from Athens, every 5 years in the month Boedromion, 1 * last- ing nine days, The great preparations made before the fes- tival began, the extraordinary solemnity of the affair, the manner in which the Athenians attended it in a drome or chanting caravansary, gave it the appearance of a crusade. It was the origin of all well-known crusades. The attend- ance at this crusade was a trial of one's eligibility to the blessings of life eternal. Eleusis means a trysting place ; consequently it is probable that the srreat games suggested the name of the place, and onoe established upon a project- ing rock of the sea, the city afterward grew around it and in course of time held a large population. There are some touching mementoes which may be gleaned from this cele- brated name. Whoever reads the bible in Greek finds fre- quent mention of this word in the signification of the com- ing of the Saviour. It is a symbolic word. Emblems in 8 In later centuries the little Mysteries continued though they were not con- fined to Elensis. ; Cicero. De Legibus, II. can. XVI.; Pamgyricus of Isocrates, 6. Judging from the slab of Puros they began in the fifteenth century before Chr^t, Laroiis.*e, Dicliminaire ITnimrnel. Art Lf fclfusiniens. 11 Ceres, like the Pelas^ic Hermes was the ithiphalic deity, having power over reproduction and the s::ppiu-* of life. Of. Encyc. Brit. vol. XI. p. 670. 'JBoijSpon.iiii', the space of time from ^ej>tc:nDer 15th. to October 15th.; from pojjpoaeio, I chase with a shout Theseus in the battle with the Amazont, chnsc d them with cries It is a word of great antiquity Plutarch. Theseiu, 8 THE MYSTERIES. those days were common ; and much, that is unexplained or that may yet be explained unexplained through ignorance or neglect comes out, by a proper interpretation of em- blems. But the Eleusinian mysteries were too absurdly exclusive to stand the erosions of what is known as progress. In per- fect agreement with what we have said regarding the ex- clusive character of their worship, centering it upon the egoistic household name, forcing a puffed aristocracy by dint of glorifying a human creature and cutting off that glory from the many, especially those who toil, it had made itself odious and intolerable long before the advent of Christ. Yet the antiquity and greatness of the trysting scenes at Eleusis had become renowned in every well-known part of the world. All over Palestine, long afterwards the cradle of another but infinitely more democratic plan of worship, this curious practice was well-known. In Italy and Africa its fame had gone forth. We are not speaking of the Eleusinian mysteries merely to recount a paltry historico-ecclesiastical fact. We are making a point in socio'ogic research. We therefore ask our reader's indulgence in comparing the social life of home- spun work people through a metaphor as opposite as the Eleusiuian emblems. Yet it is no metaphor. It bears with it a bone of contention which raged for centuries, split and divided, founded heresies, sophistries, philosophies, provoked labor unions, involved work-people in communism, drew out discussion and laid the foundation of the religion of Jesus in after years. We now proceed to explain how this was done. In ancient mythology Proserpine, or as some write it, Persephone, WHS the beautiful daughter of Ceres the Derneter, and ot Jupiter. Pluto the god of the infernal regions fell in love with Proserpine and while she was in the act of gathering tiowers in a vale ofEnna in Sicily, stole her from her mother, carrying her off to his nether-world home. 1 * The mother though an immortal and living on the heights of Enna the Sicilian Olympus, was so grieved at the loss of her child that she came down from heaven, betook to her- self i lie garb of mortals, became an old woman, assumed the duties of a nurse and wandered through the country, 13 Infra, chap viii.. containing the story of Eunus and the srreat servile wr THE LOST CHILD FOUND. 89 plying her profession for a subsistance from place to place. She went to Eleusis and there got employment. It was a job of nursini: a child of the king of the place. The child's name was Demophon and under the celestial solicitude of this goddc j ss in disguise, Metauira, the mother, beheld with astonishment and curiosity the marvelous thrift of her boy, Ceres breathed upon him the breath of life, dressed him with ambrosial ointment and at night used to purge the dross of mortality from him by immersing him in a bath of mysterious fire, with an object of making him also immor- tal. But one night the fond and curious mother peeped through the veil screening the immortalizing process of trans-substantiation and seeing the boy pendent in a halo of flame screamed with affright, causing the haggard old nurse to let the youngster drop deep into the consuming pit where he instantly perished. The hag then, to save herself, threw off her disguise became rehabilitated and forced the people of Eleuses to build her a temple to dwell in while still continuing her search for the lost Proserpine. Now the professional business of Jupiter was to watch the interests of mortal men. But Ceres unable to endure the loss of her stolen child and remembering the details of her husband's escape when a babe from the ferocious Saturn, struck the earth with her wand of famine. She rebelled energetically against the shape of things, and at last Jupiter came to the rescue of the innocent denizens of the earth as a profes- sional duty. This led to the discovery of Proserpine. From her temple at Eleusis, Deineter who was the protectress of the products of labor made things uncomfortable for the peo- ple who were in her husband's care. They were stricken with malaria. Contagion spread. The ground ceased to produce and the horrors of famine engult'ed them. Men prayed, sacrificed, and besought their patron god?, etch gens for itself, and urged the further combination of gentile tribes into phratnes to no effect until great Jove at last got Mercury to visit Erebus who went down into the pagan in- ferno where Pluto was enjoying the charms of the beautilul stolen prize. Thus the sly god got found out. This pagan inferno was Hades where Pluto was king. He, like Satan was cunning. He knew that by tempting her, as the devil a time before had tempted Eve, he could induce her to eat the forbidden fruit;- this time a pomegranite seed. Tin- ,90 THE MYSTERIES. warily she was lured into the temptation which cost her a fourth part of each year, for the rest of her immortal exis- tence, in the infernal abode with Pluto. The other three- fourths of the year, however, she was permitted to pass upon earth. Such is the rediculous story which among the ancients, was believed at the point of the poniard or under penalty of the hemlock for at least two thousand years. To cavil with its austere sanctity wasa heresy costing the blasphem- ist his life and every hope of immortality. Some palliation of the absurdity of this sub-terrestrial abode is furnished by the qualification that in ancient belief' the world was flat, not round ; and between the two flat surfaces there flowed a, river with whose murky waters Erebus had something to do. On the other side, once there, the journeying immortals were ushered into view of the indescribable beatitudes of the elysiurn. This gorgeous terra incognita was not to be reached without parsing the terrible cynocephalcus or many-htaded watchdog named Cerberus. But heaven was on the other side. Passage from this to that was the agony. Now Ceres, the wife of the mighty Jupiter and mother of the lovely Proserpine, was the goddess of the harvests. She represented the cereals. She rode on a jagatnatha drawn by dragons. Her brow was coronated with wreaths of wheat. This rape of Proserpine by Pluto on the ragged edge, between our world of mortals and heaven became em- blematic of the agonies of winter; from autumn whn the the wheat was sown, then the cold hyemal gloom of gesta- tion in the dark borderlands, the try sting place, the hyper- borean domain of hades ; thence over the half congelated Styx was ferried the elastic imagination by the money get- ting Charon, and behold, the vernal raptures of heaven and its elysian fields appear, full of springing verdure, the land of exquisite delight! Such was the Mythic origin of the Eleusinian Mysteries. They were weird forms of imagination, assimilating things real with things unreal and working them up into maxims, emblems and creeds, until they assumed a priesthood and became an organization of men and women knit by the tie of secrecy which nothing but the long fluctuations of pro- gress could unbind. THE MYSTERIOUS RITES. 91 What the actual performance was at the penetralia of the Eleusinian mysteries nobody knows. We know that they were, in their prime, symbolic of the procreative ernfrsry of nature. But they were attended with certain extraordinary rites. What were these rites? They were also conducive to the science of eternal bliss. Who secured that bliss ? In answering these two ques- tions we must return to the kernel of our theme the labor element. To the first one of them, the answer is va^ue. This we know, that the rites consisted, of dramatic repre- sentations of the rape of Proserpine, daughter of Ceres, goddess of the vegetable kingdom, of the fields, and labor, who was supposed to preside over the cereals and other alimentation of man. This rape was performed by Pluto ; and in its emblematic mysticisms conveys the idea not only of procreation but also of immortality of the human soul. 14 Whether more may still be contributed by science to these strange and intensely interesting rites is yet to be seen. As late as 1858 an important addition to our knowledge of the Eleusinian mysteries has been contributed in the discovery by Vlastos, at a village named Hagi-Constantios, of a mar- ble slab containing an inscription including rules and regu- lations of the society. The first day of the nine was celebrated perhaps partly in Athens or before the arrival at Eleusis. On the march from Athens to Eleusis the jealous outcasts who were ex- cluded from the raptures of the scene, always ranged thein- seh'Hg in hostile array and belabored the marchers with stones and clubs, until the arrival of the procession at the temple of Megaron. 15 The second day was called alade mustae. It was the 16th of Boedromion. It was the day of the baptism, being a march in phalanx to the sea. The procession here received their baptism and purification. The third was the day of the feasting. On the fourth day the poppey seeds were ad- uUwaroff, Eiisai sur ks mysteres d' fclcusis, 3rd. edition, Paris, 1816; Creu- zer's Symbolik und Milltologie der alien VolJcer ; Preller, Demeter und Persephone Hamburg, 1837. is For a description of the temple of Megaron at Eleusis, see Guhl and Ko- ner. Life of Uie Greeks and Romans, translated by Hueffer, pp. 48-9. The dark crypt where the mysteries were perfor.ned by the Muo-raywyot also the initia- tions, was under ground. Prom Aristophanes (Plato, Bekk. L. ed. Repub. in cap. xvii.). we learn that at the initiations they sacrificed a hog. Aristophanes, Pea, v. 37;; 5, has the passage hinted at. 92 THE MYSTERIES. ministered. This rite represented the stupefying influence of the narcissus under which the maiden Persephone was stolen away. Orpheus was the hierophant or priest whose duty it was to initiate eligible candidates into the mysteries. He was assisted by Erechtheis daughter of Erechtheus the smasher. It is quite likely that this initiating ceremony was some kind of violent struggle. It must have been attended by oaths of fidelity under punishment of death to any one who divulged the secret. The initiation took place in the night or in the dark crypt of the temple, as the dadouchos 01 torch-bearer was in attendance and his torch-procession rep- resented the search for the lost daughter of Ceres. This dadouchos was a priest holding, as Xenophon tells us, the office hereditarily for life ; and at his decease it fell to an- other of the same family, the Callidae. There was also a great sacrificial rite performed, who or what the victim, is not very cloar ; but the herald of the sacrifice, the hiero- ceryx was always there. 16 The new initiates were not per- mitted to eat flesh. Even the hierophant or initiating priest was required to live on low diet that passion might be restrained during the ordeal. 17 He drank a decoction of hemlock which had the effect to benumb the sensibilities, a thing exceedingly appropriate at the moment of this ex- tatic enjoyment, where, if we are to believe Maury, a critic well credited and much quoted on this subject, all around, the voluptuous nobles of both sexes take their turns. The unscrupulus dictionnaire imiversel, 1 * quoting from the above i Creuzer, Symbolik und Mythologie cter alien Volker, 11 Larousse, Dictionnaire Vniversel, Art. Les Eleusiniens. is "On representait dans une sorte de drame hieratique le rapt de la fille Pro- serpine. On passait par le veritable rencontre du sacrament." Art. Mys&.ret Eleusiniens. For an account of this extraordinary symbolism among the abor- iginal Americans see Bancroft's Native Races, III. p. 607. Is it not a possible thing that this symbolism may have come to the Aleuts and Pepiies from custom as anci nt and original as the Eleusini m mysteries ? Ban- croft says: "Tne Pep !es abstained from their w ves *** * previous to sowing, in order to indulge * * * * to the fullest extent on the eve oi that day, evidently with a view to initiate or urge ihe fecundating powi rs of na- ture. It is even said that certain persons were appointed to perform the sexual act at the moment of planting the first seed. During the b tter cold nights of the Hyperborean winter, the Aleuts, both men and women joined panels 'n the opi'n air and whirled periectJy naked round certain idols, lighted only by the pale moon. The spirit was supposed to hallow the dance with hi* presence. Thi-re certninly could have been no licentious element in this ceremony, lor setting aside th<* d. scorn fort of dancing naked with the thermometer at zero, we read that the dancers wen blindfolded, and that decorum was strictly enforced. In Nicaragua, maize sprinkled with blood drawn from the genitals wa< regarded a* sacred food- Addi- tionally to this fact, Bancroft says, (III, p. 606, quoting Palacio, Cm-la, p. 84) WILD SCRAMBLE OF INITIATION. 93 author has no hesitation in hinting that the great secret which in this case was a veritable s>.iin-ti/ut smtctorum, was nothing less than a wild scrambling and voluptuous ero- tomania, such as might happen after a feast of wine. Within these penetralia are thus said to have happened an exuberance of voluptuousness, a struggle to feign escape, an agony and a glory of fullest effulgence emblematically rep- resenting each, in turn, the process of nature from the time seed is sown in autumn, through the gloom and struggle of winter to the genial spring when the new cereals burst from their first verdure, to their harvest for the nourishment of man. At any rate it is ascertained as certain that there were the course errante, the thalamos or pastos, the veil of the epoptai, 19 and all solemnly conducted under the eye of the hierophant and Erechtheis, the priest and priestess of the mysteries. Maim 20 declares that an entrance into the fourth degree of the Eleusinian mysteries not only secured to the initiate a positive guaranty against the dreaded sup- plicium of Tartarus, or the lower bell, but it insured his felicity in this lite also. 21 This sketch of the great Eleusinian erames may appear to the reader an aberration from our theme, the history of the laborers of ancient times. Not so; for it prepares the way to the student of history from a sociologic point of view, to become acquainted with the grievances the poor were forced to submit to. To be born a degraded wretch, a mere in- strument, usable by a master owning one as a thing and handling that thing, its labor, its destiny as an earthy tool, .is to a being possessed of sensibility and reason, a grievance. It is slavery. When this slave grows into the reasoning being he inwardly rebels against the men and the institu- tion by which he is held in bondage. He is wise enough to foresee that his only chances of wriggling out of bond- age and of shearing riddance from its grievances is by some of the aboriginal Inhabitants of Honduras and Mexico : "The frequent occur- rence of the cross, which has sen ed in so many and such widely sej anUe.d parts of the eartn a- the symbol of the fe-gi v ng, creative, and fertlliz'ng principle in nature, is, perhaps one of the most striking evidences of the for- mer recognition 01 the rec procal i rinciplts of nature by the Americans: es- pecially when we remember thut the Mexican name lor the emblem tonaca- quahuitl . sign ties tree of one life or flesh. ' " 19 Plato, Phatdnu, 250, c. ; Bockh, Inscr. 1. Maury, Hittoire det Religv/ns de la. Grece Antique. 11 Plato tells DS of the suffering* of those who fail to obtain purgation at the mysteries. Republic, lib. II. cap. 7. L. edition. *4 THE MYSTERIES. institution of his own; some court of appeal. Political in" stitutions have never given the workingman a court of ap- peals. The workingman has never yet had a hearing;* 3 and his reason and experience both point to the terrible fact that no hearing is possible except before his own court of appeals. The trade union is, per se, a true court of appeals. We have seen that the isolated gens or family of nobles, when threatened by the dangers of a growing population, by pirates, by slave insurrections and feuds, organized them- selves \ntophratries, curias, kingdoms, empires and thus found means of submitting their grievances to courts of jus- tice for settlement. We have also means of knowing that the laboring element had, on the other hand, commenced the organization of their forces. Of the former there is suffi- cient proof; of the latter, as students in the phenomena of ancient social life, we glean here and there fresh proof from inscriptions on tablets of stone which have survived the heedless ages, enabling us to search anew the hitherto vaguely deciphered meanings of expressions of the ancient chroniclers, finding here and there trophies of im s'imable worth ; all going to show that the ancient laborers, although hated and hunted everywhere and very early, also formed unions and other courts of appeal against grievances. We find evidence too, that these organizations commenced very early perhaps coeval with the political organization of the nobles, or even before. But the labor movement of this nineteenth century sur- rounded by an infinitely more luminous moral atmosphere, is little likely to understand what could possibly have been the grievance of the ancient working people arainst the Eleusinian games. What objections, men will say, could working people, ignorant as they were in those times, have had to any means of salvation, soul and body, from suff r- ing. 23 This brings the matter pertinently before, us ! The Eleusinian mysteries were simply a religious rite, founded amid the igiior:inee of an rmcient period of our forefathers' existence. For that era it was enlightened. What then, 22 See Bristed, Resources of Oie United Slates, p. 103, ed. 1818 and his ref- erence to the dismal failure of Lycurgus in sapping the family of its loves and in encouraging cruelty. ; }',ri?td. Mtm. p. 392, declares that all natiotis that have given themselves np to erratic irregularities '-every t-pcck^ of profligacy" have done so as a con- sequence of irrT.-_'ior. CONFLICT OF CLASSES AT THE CRUSADE. 95 could tbe lowly who performed the world's drudgery, have encouraged, in opposition to it? Those who thus interrogate, do so in the absence of an understanding of the question. The laboring classes, though socially degraded, had sensitive feelings. TLey, like their masters, were believers in the common religion and its forms. They cannot be blamed for that. But while they saw their masters favored with what they thought to be glories of religion, they found themselves utterly excluded. No one at Athens who was a slave, or his descendant could secure admittance. In far later times even Christians who were the descendants of slaves and consequently mostly of the laboring element, were denied admittance. The gates, from the remotest era were arbitrarily closed against the workers who labored to produce the means of subsistence for the rich. The gorgeous telesteria, and pilasters of the great temple of Megaron, were, by the outcasts, only to be gazed upon and marveled at from a distance. The Calliades who inherited the priesthood were Ji of noble blood. The common rabble might get into the caravan and through the lust and din march unobserved from Athens to Eleusis. They might, as in the procession of our modern camp- meeting, become inspired with the occasion and imbued with the frenzy of faith, or even dare to picture themselves worthy to participate. But the order of such a man's rank was soon manifestsd by the missiles, hisses, leers and attacks against the throng, himself included, by his own people who gathered on the wayside and threw derision and vented spite in turbulence and often force against all the crusaders alike. On his arrival his case became hopeless, for a rigid examination by officers of the law soon detected his meaner rank and caused his expulsion. None but the darlings of the family constituted gentes were deemed fit for admission to the holy altar. We mean by this that the working man was too low in the estimation of the devotees*of the Pagan temple to be the possessor of an immortal soul. 24 Now let the questioner 24 Plato, laws, vi ; Homer, Odessey. XVII. c. 322, 323 ; Horace, Sermo, I The anc'.ent idea was that those who failed to get through the flat earth from this, the mortal side, to the other which was heaven, Elysium, perished. Plato, the great idealist wrote (Gorgias, 168-73; Phcedo, 77, 139; Rep. c. 13), several intensely interesting; details on the wanderings and groping*" of the soul on whose waxen tablet is indelibly stamped virtues and sins for Khadamanthus and the D6 THE MYSTERIES. consider that these outcasts were human beings of the same natural stock, against whom natural laws of heredity had made no discrimination; that they were as bright, as clear, as conscious, as well developed and intelligent as their mas- ters, were often their masters' children ; that they some- times rose supremely to eminence despite the pitiless con- tempt and mountain-like obstacles they had to contend with let the objecter observe these things in a practical way and ho will be furnished a true key to one cause of the dis- satisfaction and counter organization of laborers of ancient times, for securing a court that might hear their appeals. The world at that period was divided into two classes, the pious and the impious, 25 which means the nobles, born of the gods and entitled to go back to the gods, and the earth- borns, doomed to delve for their masters and at death go back to the earth But although this was recognized as an old belief coming from the institution of slavery in which the most liberal of nun could only acknowledge them to- be more than half furnished with an immortal principle, 26 yet the intelligence of the outcasts rebelled against it. Would not men under such circumstances naturally consider this a great grievance ? In our own times, when all men are admitted to be born equal times compared with those old days being as the dazzle of noonday to the obscurity of morning twilight in our own free civilization the working people combine upon economic issues, their equality of right to heaven unquestioned; but those people imagined thirnselves suffering a humiliating grievance when the haughty disclaimer was flung into their face that they were too mean to expect either a present or a future. If then, they gnashed with anguish, or even vengeance or se- cretly took measures to get even with this oppression, it was but an effort to express a grievance. We make these statements to show why in ancient times the labor movement took different phases from these we see on every hand about us. \^e do this because we are about to bring forward proof that there existed an opposition to other post m Jtem judges to examine. Those, each as slaves supposed to have no souls, were denied even a burial. They were burned. '.:"> Consult chapter 3 of Granier's Hist, da Classes Cmvri'eres, pp. 48-71. The critic should carefully study his magnificent array of notes. 26 Plato, Laws, ix. half a soul ; Tim. xviii. ; Ixxi. Homer, Odessey, lib XVII ; Aristotle declared that the children of the noble masters, who were born slaves could be only animated beings. CLUES OF COMPARATIVE TESTIMONY. 97 the whole philosophy based on the slave code and to the religion that denied the equality of man. The first thing is to produce proof that the working people resented their exclusion from the Eleusinian mysteries. To do this it will be necessary to indulge in a little circum- locution, as the evidence is very vague and indirect. It is in tact, new ground. However much there may lie con- cealed in support of this important fact which we propose to establish, it must be contessed that such evidence lies in- moldering inappreciation and neglect. Did the laboring or outcast element of that ancient era resent and combine against the system that ignored them soul and body? We have proof that they did ; but in adducing this prooi hold claim to the right to draw inferences from the exist- ence and career of as many different forms of labor and socialistic organizations as we can hunt out from the gloom of tyranny and oblivion. With this range of the whole field assumed to be conceded, we shall produce before the critic what we can find of all sorts of organizations bearing upon the point, and where the link of evidence becomes broken in the chain of chronology, shall feel perfectly ex- onerated for drawing upon the plausibly imaginative in order to restore that link. The fact that, as an anthropo- logist we are undertaking to write a history of ethics from a standpoint of sociology, entitles us to a right to scientifi- cally use all the strategy of comparative testimony. By these remarks is meant the trade union, the co-operative so- ciety, the burial society, the society for social amusement among the lowly, the agrarian foment, the social wars, even to some extent the sophist and Pythagorean social- ism, the ascetic Essenianism and finally the grand culmi- nation of all, Christianity. All these strictly belong to the trae social history of the ancient lowly ; for all their membership was originally of freedmen and slave origin. In order to answer the question properly it is necessary to glance a moment at the social history of the Grecian peninsula. As early as 1055 B. C. there had been a hor- rible murder or massacre of the Helots or slaves and their descendants at Sparta. It was in the mythical ages ; but great events even among the poor and ignorant have a certain faculty of transmitting their history through tradi- tion. It has come down to us through poetry and song,, 98 THE MYSTERIES. through hints of ancient history, through honest Plutarch, and we are assured as to the assassinations which were from time to time perpetrated upon the defenseless work- ing people of that time. We also know that these poor crea- tures who were to the body politic of those people what the bones are to the body, had unions for self protection. Still further it is known that they enjoyed the right to organize. It has been ascertained that the slaves them- selves actually possessed protective societies 27 and consid- ering the free and intelligent classes whence they were derived it is quite natural that they should have possessed them. Especially is this possible among the helots or slaves of Lacedsemon. They were, as we have seen, slaves by inheritance, often their wealthy masters' own children. They were prisoners of war, forcibly reduced to that wretched condition by being beaten in the war with Helos ; and later in the great Messenian war, when Sparta became the victor in that conflict, those brave, proud, in- genius Greeks along with all of the two above mentioned classes, were humiliated, subjugated, degraded to the zi It IB known that they did at a later period ; Cf . Lliders, Die Dionysischen ~ jrnztfer, S. 22 & 47. This author mentions a very interesting inscription (Bockh, Corpus Infcriptionum Grcecarum. I. p. 417), that has come to li'jht, at or near Pi-rganiua, which shows that slave belonged to the eranoi or union of mechuni s. On page 4(>, Liiders gays "Bezeichnend fur den Character dea Vereinswesens der spiiteren Zeit ist es, tlafs auch Sclaven nicht allein an einem Eranos slch betheilien, sondern auch unter sich ein religiose- Col- legium mitUnierstutzungsca.'-se bilrlen druiten. Fur den von Sclaven benutz- ten Eranos bieten zahlreiche Be spiele die imlangst in Delphi gefnndenen Freilsssungsurkunden. Das Collegium Khodisctier Sclaven zu Ehreu des Zeus AtabyriOB (Aibc 'ATa/Bvpioorai Ttif ras irdAco? iovAwi'"). Soalsoinj'. 47, Luders further corroborates the facts that slaves belonged to the union*: "Das' ab'-r Vereine von einigi r Bedeutung auch Sclaveu zur Bed enunir batten, ist naturlich; Kraton hatte als Pr.e ter des von ilim ge-tiftetPn Collegium* der Aitiilisten tertamentariscn dem Thiasos nnter anderem Tempel- nrul HMIIS- gerath auch Sclaven vennacht. Anf den Reliefs au< Ni'iia haben w r in den um das Mahl beschaftigten und in den Mi sidrenden Personen Sclaveu er- kannt." On page 22, Luders has already mentione.1 this Kraton, in proof of the membership as slaves: "Kraton, gunstllng der Attalen und hochanire- whnes M'tglied und Priester der grossen Synoiius Diony>ischer Techniten in Teoi, batte nach seiner glazenden Aufnhme an deai Hofe von Pergmnos dort ans ot'm Verbande derKiinstler einen Verein von Thia-oten zu Ehren ui ct- T7) fo/iodca-i'a irpot e/cao-Tuf Siareraxtv). Das Mobiliar des Verein hauses, da G scbjrr zu den Opfern und Mahlzeiten und der feierllchen Pompe, das in dem erhaltenen Theile des Testament aufgezahlt wlrd, hinterUeas erdem Verein nebst einer Anzahl Sclaven zu dauerndem Bt^itz. PROOF THAT SLAVES WERE ORGANIZED. 99 same servile condition. But although the body was bowed down to servitude, the mind remained to play its fancies, to plot and plan, to concoct in secret; and lan- guage was also theirs a facile tongue rich in versatility of idiom ; full of thrilling nuance and touching charm. The powerful physique was there, the love of adventure, the Greek cravings for a better lot, with fortitude, dash and intrepidity which form the gallant characteristics of that grand people all these the workingmen of high an- tiquity possessed. More than this, they had intelligence enough to know that the cruelties they suffered were un- just. If then, we hear through the scintillations of the fragments that there were uprisings, social turmoils and wars, we know them to have been the natural outcome of such a state of things, and nothing to be wondered at. Now we have promised to adduce proof that there were unions of Greeks who resisted the public insult of the great Eleusinian mysteries which denied to the slaves and their descendants, the freedmen, all hope of happiness Jiere and hereafter.** We simply desire, in order to clear up the vagaries, to consider, in our inquiry, the whole of Greece at a time. Scanning the social condition of the slaves from evidence, we find plenty of assurance that they belonged to the state. The state leased them out. The state, from the primitive family, was organized for purposes of defense. 8 * The family first possessed the slave. Slaves became more numerous than families. They did all the labor and were allowed no privileges. So they rebelled. Some ran away, hid in fastnesses, became dangerous brigands. They be- came organized. Then the rich families organized them- selves into fratries and other forms. As the slaves had belonged to the families, so now they belonged to the fra- tries. This means that as the slaves were before private property, so now they, or some of them, became public M Plutarch, Theseus, spenks of the demagogue Menestheus who. about 1180 before Christ rose np airaiiist the tyranny of the aristocrats at Athens, with the claim that the peepte also bad a right to be initiated into the Eleusinian myster- ies. Even at that remote period there must have been between the poor and lowly and the rich and lordly, great struggles regarding thii grievance. 'f> Morgan. Ancient Society, chap, ii ; Drupiann, Arbeittr und C'ommunwten in (triechenland und Rom, IS ii'4; "In Epidamnig gab es keine Hanwerfcerals di* bffentlichen Sklaven."; "Das Handwerk iat daher verrufen und verathtet." S. 26; Arutotle, iWitic, ii. 4, SI 13. 100 THE MYSTERIES. property, This was a political sequence upon the organ- ization of the families into fratries and the consolidation of the fratries into the state. Of course the rich family still kept as many servants as it needed; but large num- bers remained with the public domain. These *tate slaves formed into organizations. 30 From the earliest mythical accounts down to 58 years before Christ we find evidences abundantly proving that the law gave work-people the especial right to organize not only in Rome but also in Greece. The celebrated Law of the Twelve Tables which specified the manner of organization of workingmen, is declared by the commentators to be a translation from the Greek laws of Solon. 81 The Twelve Tables clearly set down the arrangement, ordaining that the trade unions should remain in obedi- ence to the law of the state. The unions fcllowt d the law, and Gains wrote the law thus fixed, so plainly thot Justi- nian incorporated it into the digest. A fragment of the law of Solon *" shows plainly that trades unions were com- mon and tolerated by that lawgiver. A strong cumulative evidence that the slaves belonging to the state were enor- mously organized into protective association, is found in the fact that they succeeded in their insurrections against the masters. An important example of these slave in- surrections is given of the miners. 33 In Attica they once rebelled, and marched upon the town near the silver mines, occupying the castle of Sunion. These people were called " thetes" or "demoes." In Athens the fact of their manumission did not make them anything above mere earth-boras. They could de- velop genius, become teachers, philosophers, poets and business men. Sometimes they rose to positions of wealth, even themselves becoming master-builders, and some of them were the greatest sculptors and painters the world ever produced; but the taint of servility was born in their blood. Phidias the most celebrated sculptor, ancient or modern, was a descendant of the slaves. He was so Ltldere, Dionysdiischen Kimstttr. S. 46; Wesoher-Foucart Inscriptions de Delphes, pp 89, 107, 139, 244, giving abundant evidence -..Gains, Digest, lib XI.VII tit xxii lesr. 4; Plutarch, Numa. MGranier, Hiskrire ilex Ctssnet Ouvrih-es ponne*iaai. liber IV. 80. THE ASSASSINS SPORT. 105 /gymnastics. This was one of them. It was sport ! ** By the exercise of this manly sport the youth's blood flowed stronger, his muscles grew, his body waxed athletic; he digested with a better relish the food his blood-begrimed victim had in the morning prepared for him before his murderous \\eap on slashed and pierced her gentle heart. We quote from Plutarch. No one ever speaks illy of Plu- tarch. His means of knowing facts were better than ours, and his kind nature even in the barbarous age in which he lived, revolted against the consistency of such a democ- racy. He says: 41 " The governors of the youth ordered the shrewdest of them from time to time to disperse themselves in the country, provided only with daggers and some necessary provisions. In the day time they hid themselves and rested in the most private places they could find ; but at night they sallied out into the roads and killed all the Helots they could meet with. Nay, sometimes by day, they fell upon them in the fields and murdered the ablest and strongest of them." ** These are specimens of authentic history of the lowly as they have passed through a transition period of un- numbered centuries, from abject slavery to a Christian democracy which recognizes all men as equal and provides for them precepts for equal enjoyment. But before quit- ting these chambers of cruelty and carnage it remains our sad duty to recount what modern historians well know, but seldom divulge the great assassination. It happened during the Peloponnesian war. This account comes from the trusted and reliable historian Thucydides, who lived at the time and made it his business for many years to keenly observe what transpired, during that long and tedious struggle of seven and twenty years. The story is briefly told by him. Dressed and reflected upon in our own way it appears in substance as follows: During the great Peloponnesian war, one of the most renowned in antiquity, the forces of the army sometimes became decimated and it was necessary to recruit them **K. O. Mtiller in Die Dorter, denies thi-: bnt tfce evidence is too strong mgainst him. Again, Miiller's opinion regarding their "aboriginal descent" has been completely overturned. ** Plutarch s Lycuryus. 44/cton; Cf. tr. of the Langhorne? Vol. I. pp. 03 4, 106 THE MYSTERIES. from whatever source possible. When, therefore, there were no more soldiers to be had from among the Spartans and Periceci or recognized citizens, the military authori- ties were obliged to call out the laboring men who, at the time of the Peloponnesian war, were three to four times more numerous than the non-laboring class. This in an- cient times was always a humiliation. War was the noble occupation, labor the ignoble one. To ask a person in disgrace to assist the nobles out of trouble was equivalent to humiliating confession. If then, the laborer, in a great emergency was marshaled to the rescue, the only way to blot out the stain such a humiliation, entailed was to en- franchize this warrior from social thraldom and thus stanch the blot by elevating him from the fetters of bond- age. If further, the bondsman after performing the ser- vice manfully, redeeming his masters by bravery and valor, earning his liberty by saving their lives and preserving 1 their realm from wreck, could be secretly murdered after such decree of manumission was administered, it would save the proud masters many a disagreeable jeer, painful wince and blush of shame when reminded that their ex- istence and happiness was due to the daring and fidelity of a hated menial who still shocked their pride with his presence. It came to pass that this humiliating expedient was in- dispensible to save the nation from irretrievable ruin and thousands of the enslaved laborers were marshaled and drilled into the army. They were not allowed to bear heavy arms; that would have been a still greater disgrace. So they bore light arms and bore them gallantly. After serving through many a tedious campaign probably of years' duration, after winning victories in many a skirm- ish and in many a field and earning the full measure of their promised reward, after seeing the Lacedaemonian armies victorious at every hand and the great war prosperously advancing toward triumph for the southern Greeks, there were brought before the military tribunal for dismissal over two thousand workingmen who had proved truest in arms and been adjudged worthiest of liberty. Their faithful hands had valiantly borne the standard of an un- grateful country. Their strong hearts had never flinched either before their sullen discipline or the cleaving- blades MURDER OF 2,000 FIELD-HANDS. 10T of the combatants. Their fiery zeal and fearless blows h ad won the victory and earned the liberty which, before this august council, proudly they heard pronounced. Over 2,000 slaves who toiled for masters were thus regularly enfranchised and marched into a temple or other enclo- sure or field no mortal knows or ever will know what to take the oath of freedom. But the anxious wives and children waited and wept long before these brave men came to gladden their hovel homes. For here we come to the recital of one of the darkest pages of history. Still more painful is this page because blotted. Too foully blotted for perusal ; since, aside from a ghastly blood- stain that smirches its story in mysterious gloom, it is written in the almost undecipher- able hieroglyphs of reticent shame. Thucydides blushes for this lurid page ; ** but unlike the unmanly historians of the past who have cringed in the presence of truth which could not port the flattery of lords and masters of high degree, he bravely told us all he knew. And what he- knew is enough to make the blood run cold. 46 Besides, it comes to us subscribed to by Plato, 47 Aristotle 48 and Plutarch, 4 * on whose minds, if we catch aright their words, this massacre we are going to relate made an impression 90 strong as to waver the tone of these great philosophers' belief in slavery *' and seriously color their dialectics. * Thucydides during the PeJoponnesian war for the hegemony of Greece^ commanded a division of the Athenian marine force; but being out-generalea at Amphipolis by Bra-ida.^ went for twenty years into exile and during that time used his wealth and talent writing the celebrated history which ha come down to us. Thucydides, Zte BeUo Pdoponnesiaao. liber IV. cap. 80. "Koi ana ritv EtAuTut/ ^ovAo/uti-oi? TJr ciri irpo^aaei e/c-cfuiai, ^ij n irpb? ra jrapdvra TTJ? IIvAow fXOMe'njs vfiarepitruxrw iirti icat roSt errpaf av, o8oi5fieroi avrwv TTJV VfOTTjTO. icai TO TrATjflo? (act Adp TO. TroAAa Aaxcfatfioiaotf irpbf TOL>? EcAwra? rrj? (JuAaicrjs irt'pi MaAiCTTa icaOearrJKet)' irpotinov av-iav oiai. Kat irpOKpivavres c$ ficrxtAiovf oi p.ev caTC r* Kal TO. ifpoi TT*pifi\8ov -e-Mstoric Palace, p. 368, containing the passage from Homer. This also suggests that the working people, including bouse servants, were secretly In league at Mycenae and that the league reached M far as Phoenicia. q\v6' arr)p TToAinSpis /J.ara Trarpot, Xftvatov opfiov i\05-6, showing that in the remote past of Central America, inscriptions exhibiting the most despotic conditions were produced, probably thousands of years before the discovery of the pr -sent uouiadi races who were found in a semi-communal state. At Pa- lenqiii 1 are inscriptions on the ancient walls showing conditions coeval with the earliest European monarchism. A king garbed in fine military attire, and the everlasting slaves on bended knees and in humble suppliance. They are freely drawn with art superior to Egyptian, being in bas reliefs, in stucco on the walls of the palace. 5* Mommsen, De Collegiis et Sodahctis Romanorum. p. 83 ; "CommnnJa mim- orum Eomanorum et in nomina et in institutis TO. Ko<.va. -riov irpi TO* Aiovvcror Ttvnlav referunt, quce apud (iraacos arnpla et plurima fuertint." M Strabo. Geographira, XIV. 643,28. 60 Corpus Insrnptionum. Orncarum, noe. 349 and 2931. i Mommsen ; De Coll. et Sodal. Romanorum, p. 84. Great numbers of these locieties existed about the Hellespont and among the Ionian Islands. SOLON'S LABOR LAWS. 113 also into the public baths in search of things lost by the grandees while boating or bathing. 62 At Naples, Nice and other places on the sea these divers had unions and no doubt possessed skilled men who succeeded in restoring the valuables after the wrecks of triremes, and other craft. 6a Especially were these unions a benefit to community at Sy- racuse, the Piraeus and Byzantium, where these "and other unions abounded in great numbers. Mommsen on the law of Solon also declares that the re were both sacred and civil communes, 63 and he further states that all such soci- eties were not only permitted, but they possessed at that early period (B. C. 600), the right of perpetual organiza- tion. The probability is that these organizations had ex- isted from a much earlier epoch than that of Solon ; but having never done any harm at Athens and the Athenians being a much more sympathic people than the Spartans, they were never molested. So long as the trade unions of the world, ancient and modern, have restricted them- selves to mere pleasure, religion, and frugality, they do not appear to have been harshly dealt with ; but so soon as they ventured to consider and act upon the subject of politics, which of all others, was most necessary to their welfare, they became objects of hate and of repression. Kspecially was this the case in ancient times ; because pol- itics like war, was a noble calling. Petty frugality, and crude convivial, as well as burial ordeals were too trifling and mean in the eyes of the nobles to attract attention. There was at Athens a class of public servants. 64 They were not real slaves although public property, and treated as menials; never being allowed to participate in the slightest degree in the principle of government and yet they actually performed all the routine labor of the gov- ernment. At the time we hear of them through public records and through inadvertent mention by historians, they seem to resemble freedmen. They received a small salary to keep them alive, and their business was to keep M Orellius, Inscriptionum Latinarum Selertarum Amplissima Collectio, No. 4115 ; "Ti. Olaudio Esquil. Severe Decuriali lictore. sportnlse viritim diviclantur prnesertim cum navigatioscapharum diligentia ejus adqiiisita etcon- ftrmatasit. Ex decreto ordinis corporis piscatorum et urinatorum totius alvei Tiberis quibus ex SC. coire licet." The inscription was found in Rome. 63 "Notabilis est hoc loco lex Solonis, ex qua sacra civiliaque communia non alio jure fuerunt quam quo societates ad ne^otiationem pr;Bditionemve consti- tute. " Mommsen. De Collegtis et Soclaliciis Jtomanorum, p. 39. <>i Consult Dr. Hermann, I'oliHc.al A ntiquitit* of Greecf, paragraph 147. 114 THE MYSTERIES. the books and do the various duties of a public office un- der government. They had their protective unions. Being clerks, and constantly in presence of polite people, they made a gen- teel appearance and were apt in the civilities of court. But like all their class they also had a grievance. They were treated as menials because they were not "blooded;" and consequently could not pit their natural genius and ability against that of their masters who conducted the public offices and who belonged to noble stock. " It was required that Archons and priests should prove the purity of their descent as citizens for three generations." M The business of the Pagan temple was a part of the state af- fairs: and consequently priests in those times were pub- lic officers. Priests were politicians. One of the quali- fications of the Archons or rulers was to have a good rec- ord that they attended to religious ceremonies. Ostracism, banishment and death were among the punishme nts de- signated by the law for neglecting these duties of citizen- ship; and the least whisper against any of the gods or the regulations of the Pagan religion was blasphemy. This explains the causes of that great difference in station which existed without regard to the business qualifications of the men. Smart workingmen without rights, or any claim to rights, were often required on a mean salary to do all the work of both departments of governments with- out being entitled to the least benefit in either, while a tyrant and sensualist held all control and honor like some iDodern sinecurists of our offices. There is evidence that this exclusivism was regarded by the poor workmen as a great grievance; but their exclusion from free participa- tion in religious rights and especially from membership in and access to the Eleusinian mysteries was the greatest one. Against these grievances they were organized in secret. Dionysius of Halicarnassus mentions a society of the Thiasotes or Greek labor unions, the members of which had for their patron deity the goddess Minerva through the noble family of the Nautii, who brought the image of Minerva away from the Trojans to Italy. 66 Here it ap- , . 148. The oKi/u.a Clasta Ouvrieres, pp. 484-493. In his 18th chapter, Granier cites the rescript of An- toninus Pius : "Dominorum quidem potestatem iii servos suos inlibitum essa oportet, nee euiquam hominum jus suum detrahi." Ulpian, De Officiv Pronon- tulis. lib. Vin ; De Drmiinorum SceviHa. This power of the masters over their slaves was thus latoi- transforrnd to the state. 122 THE MYSTERIES. the high-born citizen, eligible to* the Eleusinian mysteries', could be sure of heaven. There could be no peace of mind while such a grievance existed; for it not only goaded the greater part of the people as an insult but distracted them with fears. It is a prominent character- istic of the Aryan race to believe in religion and build up institutions of a religious nature; and it will probably re- main so unless some physical discovery be made throwing positive light against the theory of immortality. At the same time the Indo-Europeans were precisely as they still are an extremely democratic people by nature. A religion, then, based upon the most absurdly aristocratic dogmas could not, without great conflict maintain itself among the equality-loving Indo-Europeans. Jesus Christ during his visit among us established the remarkable idea that Grod was no respecter of persons ; that all men were created equal; that although the elysion and tartaros or the heaven and hell were the same, the eligibility to gain the one and fly the other depended not upon stock, birth, fortune, but behavior. The revolution was then begun- When we understand from a standpoint of scientific so- ciology the phenomena of the past thus connected with the ancient struggles of the lowly, there bursts forth be- fore our vision a glory of light sweeping away hitherto- insurmountable difficulties to the analysis of certain vague and obscure points in history. It is now, after having opened these facts thus far, in order to set down two theorems : The first is, that the greater the organization of the working classes for mutual protection and resistance the higher the standard of en- lightenment in the communities they inhabit. In other words the intensity of enlightenment in civilization may be measured and compared by the numeric proportion of the laboring people arrayed in organized resistance against ignorance, and oppression. The second theorem may be construed to read that the higher the enlightenment, the more complete is the extinction of social ranks. We are also now ready to make an announcement which no person can consistently deny; to wit : that the era covered by the ancient trade unions is that known, sung and celebrated as the "Golden Age." It is not only the era of military, but pre-eminently of social, and in THE ANCIENT SOCIAL STATE. 123 Greece, of intellectual prosperity. The great literary era of the Romans occupies the latter half of the celebrated golden era. It lasted from the days of Numa Pompilius who encouraged the free organization of Roman trade unions which was about 690 years before Christ, until the year 58 B. C. when Csesar ordered the conspiracy laws. 16 In Greece from the time of Solon about 592 years before Christ it continued down to her conquest by the Romans. Thus the economical prosperity of both Greece and Rome is proved to have covered those centuries which were favored with the right of free organization. We shall now proceed to touch upon the actual deeds of these unions and show as we have the evidences that the su- perb architectural works whose august ruins still amaze the beholder were, to some extent at least, the handiwork of those trade unions, backed by that phenomenal, and to the present age, incomprehensible social state which never sold its lands, religion, jurisprudence or ornaments to others, nor allowed them to be overridden by monopolies The labor of land culture which produced and distributed among all people their food of manufacturing arms and equipments for the armies, of provisioning the armies while on the march and at rest, of manufacturing and re- pairing the household furniture, of image-making, which appears to have been a considerable industry and of con- structing architectural works, was largely assigned to the labor unions during the golden age." Numa discouraged warfare, but made specific arrangements governing the artisan class; 78 and at the Saturnalia obliterated the lines of distinction between the nobles and the common born, He distributed the artisans into nine great mechanical fraternities. Flavius Josephus " gives an elaborate and highly interesting account of the building of the temple of Jerusalem by Solomon. Suffice it to say here, that the employer, Hiram, who was engaged by Solomon to come with his skill and skilled force all the way from Tyre a distance of about 100 miles, to design and construct this " Snetonius, Catar, 42 : "Cffisar cuncta collegia prter antiqui tus con- tttuta distrait." "Granier, pp. 284-323, all through. '8 Plutarch, Numa, cap. xvii.; also Lycurgus, and Numa Compared. 79 Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, book XII. cap. ii. ; also Hilt, of the Jew*, book vm. 124 SHE MYSTERIES. magnificent edifice, was, so to speak, a boss or chief over a trade union, which through him, took one of the largest and most imposing contracts known in ancient or modern times; and it is a very interesting example of the intelligence and extraordinary enterprise of the Phoenici- ans. We are not among those eager creduli who jump at conclusions, and ready to suppose that this Hiram was the founder of the celebrated ancient fraternity of " Free Masons." On the contrary, the institution was old when Hiram brought to Solomon the 3,200 foremen and the 40,000 artificers who built this gorgeous temple of which Josephus so glowingly speaks. But this immense work being a religious undertaking, conducted by a political decree and under state control, and furthermore being a Semitic, not an Aryan enterpiise and consequently free from the mean, rank exclusivism characterizing and belit- tling the source-history of all their great works, was able to rise and carry with it some lucid scintillae as to the manner of its erection. The great temple of Solomon furnished posterity a slight glimpse at the order of Free Masons ; being a landmark merely observable in an ob- scure night of time. Its ruins may, therefore, be truth- fully classed, by the student of sociology, as archaeological proof of the ancient trade union movement. By this, the mind of the general reader may better understand the source of that all-pervading cloud which so unfortunately shuts us off from the clues to say nothing of the history regarding the construction of one of the most magnifi- cent works of sculptured masonary ever produced. The religio-political institutions, based on the antithetic origin of birth and its entailments of rank, prevented the work- ingmen from rising into recognition, or transmitting be- yond their own generation any detailed knowledge as to how those structures rose. The powerful archon Pericles, of Athens, furnished us an illustration of this. He wanted to build the Parthenon. Now Pericles, the statesman, building a church, shows that no difference existed be- tween church and state, since belief was compulsory un- der law. The Parthenon was the grandest edifice of either the ancient or modern world. 80 Although Pericles was a o Guhl and Koner, Life of the Greeks and Raman*, pp. 2fi-2S. THE BRILLIA NT LOW-B ORN8. 125 noble, of the family of the Pisistratidae, yet we know that he was the intimate friend of Phidias. So we are informed that Solomon enjoyed the acquaintance of Hiram. This might be, though Phidias and Hiram were both of mean extraction, according to the estimation of ranks. But their superiors admired them for their genius alone. A wonderful contrast projects from a coincidence of the late mediaeval age, consisting in .Raphael's intimacy with Pope Leo X., for at the time of Raphael, Christianity with its inexorable moral erosions had gnawed away much of the ancient ranks, and had begun to invite an absolute equal- ity ; whereas, in the more ancient times, under the domin- ion of the Pagan faith, it could not be more than admira- tion and acquaintance. In the same manner, Pericles, who was the master political genius of his age, could admire and keep an acquaintance with Aspasia, a lady of the lower rank, but he could not raise her by any gift of title to a higher one than that in which she was born. It is almost certain that in the construction of the Par- thenon, Ictinus was to Pericles what Hiram n was to Solo- mon. Ictinus, 82 we are told, was chief architect, and with tlie assistance of Callicrates and Phidias who worked on the chyselephantine statue of Athena, had charge, as chief architect, of the Parthenon It appears " that Phi- dias took the entire control of all the building enterprises of Athens and also, probably of the temple of Eleusis; for Ictinus built the fane of this temple. We are now cen- tering upon the interesting point of our investigation. It took Phidias, Ictinus and Callicrates ten years to design and complete the new Parthenon, the most magnificent and imposing structure of ancient or modern times. More fortunate are we in having Josephus and other authority for the temple of Solomon whereon not only the chief architect, but 3,200 foremen and 40,000 masons of the great " body " or masons' fraternity were engaged. 84 At the Piraeus there existed, at the time of the building of the Parthenon, great numbers of trade unions,* 5 under 81 Care should be taken not to confound Hiram the artificer with his friend Hiram the king. HGuhl and Koner, Idem, p. 26. 3 Pausanias, Hdladog Periegeti*, (Description of Greece). M Josephus, Antiquities of the Jewt, book VII. chap, ii, In latin the "body" corpus, was a legalized workingmen's society, the same as cclleyium. See Orelli, Inter. Vol. III. Henzen, p. 170, oi supplement index. "See Chapter I. oi Liiders Dianysitche KunsUer, pp. 14-18. 126 THE MYSTERIES. a provision of So'o i engraved on wooden scrolls and kept in the Acropolis ^n 1 the Prytaneum, which were legalized organizations and whose recognized business was to wort .for the state. Now with the multitudes of trade unions, existing all around, at Athens, at the Piraeus, at Eleusis- is it supposable that the three directors built the parthe. non in ten years? Instead of the 3,200 foremen and 40- 000 men as at Jerusalem, there were probably at Athens 4,000 foremen and 50,000 masons, sculptors, draftsmen, hod carriers, laborers and others too numerous to detail. We find that this great public work was finished 438 years before Christ, just at the time when the golden age of labor was at its zenith of glory both in Greece and Rome. It was the golden age of art and economic thrift. It also corresponds exactly with the stretch of time during which the trade unions under the laws of Solon at Athens and of Numa at Rome were in fullest force, granting and encouraging organization of the working people, which was used by them for protection and for resistance to all dangers that might beset them. It is thus shown that while a serious grievance existed among the working people of andlent Greece, in form of an exclusivism denying them the right to save their souls by becoming members on equal footing in the Eleusinian order, there also existed a vast organization or confrater- -nity which, then as now, afforded them opportunities for meeting in secret and discussing this grievance. It is scarcely necessary even to conjecture whether they did or did not use these advantages for such discussion. Human nature is alike in all ages. When the conspiracy law, or law of Elizabeth, was annulled in 1824, 88 permitting the people to organize in England, they immediately took ad- vantage of every opportunity trade unionism afforded, wherewith to discuss their grievances. The growth and intelligence of the ponderous labor movement in the United States is largely due to the discussion which is constantly taking place in their secret unions. We ven- ture that the same thing occurred in the times we are de- scribing; because it could not well have been otherwise. Where the grievance exists and the opportunity to meet MThorold Rogers, Six Centuries of Work and Wages, p. 438 As to the nature of the act of Elizabeth, see idem, pp. 398-9. Cf. Porter's Progress of the Nation. THE LAW OF ORGANIZATION. 127 and discuss it exists, it is not in the order of nature among intelligent beings, to resist it. We are fortunate enough to have found statements upon the subjects of trade unions transmitted to us through great authority. Gaius, who wrote a digest of law on the Twelve Tables, has a passage which has been preserved and so important is it that both Granier and Mommsen refer to it as conclusive evi- dence that the law of the Twelve Tables providing for the right among working people to organize and enjoy trade unions, was to some extent a translation from Greek tables of the code of Solon. 81 In this passage are mentioned many organizations taken from the Greek text inscribed on the scroll of the law of Solon and also on the tablet of the Twelve Tables. The Thiasotai then were precisely in Greek what the Collegia were in Latin. The sailors' unions here mentioned were the same which we speak of elsewhere as existing in large numbers at the Pirseus or sea- port of Athens which was distant from the metropolis only five miles. The organizations of the stone masons, the marble cutters, the carvers, the image makers of wood mineral and ivory, and others, were located within the city. Some of these unions, probably the image makers, pretended more religious piety than others; but the fact is, 88 that all of them were combined for mutual aid and re- sistance against grievances. Under the law, so long as they did Hot corrupt the statutes of the country ( u dum ne quid ex publica lege corrumpant," ) they were not only allowed to career unmolested but were even protected by this provision of the great lawgivers. This brings us face to face with two proven facts: that 87 Digest, lib. XLVII. tit. xxii. leg. 4; "Sodales sunt qiui ejusdein collegil Bunt quam Gravel irapiav vocant." Again: "Sodalibus," ait Gaius, "potestatem facie lex (duodecim Tabularum) pactionem quamvelint sibi ferre. dum ne quid ex publica lege corrumpant." Sed hffic lex yidetur ex lege Solonis translata ease; nam illuc ita est : "E'&vSe Sij/ttos, >j ^parpoes, rj iepwp opyiiav, i) va.vra.ri, avvtriToi, T) O|tidTa(H, 17 iJioffwrai, t) en-t Ai'av Oty 4ft trot, 17 ei? ttiiropiav- O'TI ravrwv Sia&uprac. jrpos aAAijAovs. nvpiov t'ivai, cav ju.i) djrayopevoT; &rj/j.6(ria ypa.fiiJ.ara.' Both Mommsen (De Cotlegiis et Sodahciis Romanorum, p. 35,) and Granier, Hist, des Classes Ouvrieres,p. 291, quote this remarkable passage from the Digest. The unions here mentioned in the Solonic law are the Brotherhood the Priests of the Communes, the Sailors, the Co-operators, the Burial Fraternities; and the reg- ular trade unions or diacriarai such as were organized in the categories of Nunia 88 Mommsen, De Collegiit et Sodaliciis Romanorum, p. 35, " Ut igitur de in- terpretatione verbi a XII. Tabulis adhibiti non constet, Gaii verba ad omnia col- legia pertinere certum est neque ulla ratio reddi videtur posse, cur collegia opi- flcum legum ferendarum jure caruerint sacris sodalitatibus concesso." See also Liiders, Die Dinoysischen Kunstler, passim. These points are overwhelming in proof that the Greek and Roman trade union systems were nearly identical. 128 THE MYSTERIES. during the renowned era of Grecian architecture, belles-let- tres, philosophy, sculp ture, paintings all work of labor- ers there also flourished a great labor movement; just as now in England, in Germany, in France, in the United States and Canada, during the most brilliant period of all human enlightenment, ancient or modern, there flour- ishes an enormous social organization for self-help and for resistance against grievance endured by working peo- ple. It also proves the correctness of our theorems that the greater the organization of the laboring people against grievances the higher the enlightenment, and the higher the enlightenment the more complete the extinction of so- cial rank ; consequently the intensity of human civiliza- tion viewed on the largest scale, is, under the competitive system, to be ascertained by the prevalence or non-pre- valence of these organizations, acting as mutually self-aid- ing forces and as tribunals or courts of appeal from the grievances their members are liable to suffer. How inef- fable, then, the arrogance of a paltry few ! What must have been the character of resistance during the times of which we speak ? Evidently very crude. At the present day there is much system ; a general interlinking of union with union, no matter how wide apart, for a quite clearly expressed common cause. Not so anciently, although we have an inscription at Pompeii to prove that in B. G. 79 there existed an international union. Their grievances were greater than now, because social equality was con- temptously and most openly put down. The Jaw recog- nized them as having no more claim to citizenship than dogs. Now, in Germany, France, almost everywhere, the working people are voting. Whoever, in reading the tt Ancient Assemblies," w for a moment imagines that those celebrated gatherings in- cluded the slaves or freednten, should read more carefully. It is the freemen who are meant, not freedmen. The differ- ence was simply infinite, even in enlightened Attica; for freedmen were descendants of the ancient slaves. They never were citizens, could not vote, could not hope, except in cases of great genius like that of Phidias, to be decently SsSchomann, Hist. AssemblM* of the AOitnlaru, pcusim. This book will clear np any error readers may entertain who doubts whether the working class was all- wed a voice in legislation. NA TURE OF DISCUSSION AMONG TEE L WL 7. 129 spoken to; and even as such they were obliged to obtain gome special decree from the Areopagus in order to detach themselves from this scathing odium of rank. Being so mean, so lowly, while the patricians, the grandees, the free- men were descendants of the nobility in the direct lineage of the gods, it followed that the gods also contemned them. Consequently two-thirds of the population of Greece were without a soul. If they claimed to have souls they knew that the only place for them was Tartarus or hell; certainly not heaven ; for that was the abode of the gods who spurned them on account of their lowly birth. Better cultivate the belief that they had no souls at all! This to them, terrible reflection, was probably the origin of the ancient philosophy of annihilation." The philosophy of extinction of the sou' mast have consumed a share of the discussions of those an- cient mechanics in their secret meetings. They built the magnificent temples which glowed with genial warmth of the solemn and haughty religion, only for the heaven-born, repelling with sullen frowns the earth-born designers and finishers of their collonades, vaults and sculptured images. No merely political institution could possibly separate so widely one class from another as did that arrogant religion which not only instituted slavery of the laboring people but denied them an immortal soul and the beatitudes of heaven. 91 There is now no grievance of this kind iu civil- ized existence although economical and social dissatis- faction remains. The new religion is rapidly extinguishing the dogma of distinctions in birth, as well as the dogma that "the earth-born have no immortal existence."* Narrowing the array of evidence into our leghimate field, we find in Eleusis a target at which millions are peering with a mingling of longing, of envy and of hate. They are so Consult Lucretius, De Renm ffatura ; also Arnobius, who wrote the fa- mous Adversut Gtntti. Arnobius was not fully convinced of Christianity ; and at the same time his mind was evidently so enlarged by it that he could not reconcile it with the older Pagan belief in the nether post-mortem abodes. He was however, religiously inclined and was reluctantly drawn to Christianity which obliterated all lines by declaring the equality of all mankind. \ Between these awful donbts Arnobius seems never to have come to a belief in an immortal existence. Pliny the celebrated naturalist was a believer in the doctrine of Lu- cretius that there is no existence hereafter. Cf. Cuvier in Kbliog. CntttarjielJe. i Granier, Hitt. Whole argument : FusteldeCulanges,Ctfe^in&gi(. XointelD- gent person can read these invaluable works without understanding our meaning. =: Whatever science may or may not develop regarding these debatable theories is not the part of this disquisition to consider. We simply give th facts at command, as to the difference between the grievances discussed bj the organizations of then and now. ISO THE MYSTERIES. the two-thirds of the population of the country the labor- ing ranks. There, upon a lovely range of rock and lawn stands the old Pelasgian city of Eleusis, populous and thick- studded with their own eranoi and thiasoi, labor unions whose members are the strong-muscled men of Greece. It is the eve of autumn, the great quinquennal Boedromion which from traditions brought mystic meanings picturing the fierce amazons in flight before the conquering giants of Theseus. It is the last half of shimmering September whose delicious zephyrs float the gossamers above the sea. All the world knows that on the morrow thousands upon thousands of people are to leave the Athenian metropolis behind them and commence their crusade to the Eleusinian feast. They are the eligibles, the citizens, the freemen. Not a being from among the laboring and lowly class can be permitted hardly to join the great procession. Fond of privilege but barred its enjoyment they gather in their best rags, upon the scene and form iu a standing multitude along the line of march. No care has ever been bestowed upon their education and they are in consequence, rough, per- haps boisterous and insulting. As the procession moves along they pelt the crusaders with sticks and stones." They feel the deep disgrace of their exclusion and are animated with unhappy feelings and hatred and revenge. They turn their eyes toward the magnificent temple of Megaron, built M by their own hands, of marble quarried from the rock near by. 96 It is pre-eminently the most majestic work of their handicraft, standing solemn and alone like a myster- ious winged creature, striking awe by its very presence and as though a ghostly apparation which had surged from the dark pits of the sea. 96 To the left loomed up a view of When, as the fable goes, Ceres left king Celeus and went to the old temple, lambe, her female slave, ridiculed her. Ever afterwards at the ayupftos or day of march at the crusades, the lower or excluded classes met on the wayside with stones, clubs and ridicule. w Consult Rose, Inscriptions Graces Vetustissima, pp. 187-190. ss Idem, p. 187, note ; "E duro quodam marmoris genere (quale prope Eleu- siniem invenitur.") Likewise the description of the great temple, by Guhl and Koner, LAfe of the Greeks and Romans, pp. 47-49. "Prope oleam erat puteus aquae saisar-. (ed\a Ar^otrt^cVci if TTJV SiKcAtap vfiirActy. oi &' 'A#ijf- uoi, v va-repov fiicov, Sttvoovvro avTou? ira\iv oijev rjAtfoi' Qptfxrjv airoitfiJ.ir(iv. TO yap Xt" wpbs TOP etc T^S AKAias iro\(fj.ov auTous iroAuTAef iJ|' yap Tijs TJficpaf icao-TO$ cAa/u.j8avi'. eircijt) yap r) Acxt'Acia TO fiiv TtpiaTOV viro itaa-rfi T^s o-rpaTtas iv Tv ctrtKai^>)^cvwv, xal OTC nlv icat v\toviav iviovTuv, ori &' ef ayayKiji T>jt ZOTJS wpoupas icaTat?eovrotov/ien)5, poo-iAcwt TV irapdrot TOU TUV AunjcUftOfu** *Ayt5os, of OVK ie irapyou TOV TrdAt/iOv CITOKITO, ueyaAa oi 'A^vaiot e/SAajrroi'TO' TTJS T yap ^ujpas aJraorTjs i' n-Af'ot' 17 6uo fj.vpia&fs lyuTOfioAjjKeo'ai', icap TOVTOV TO woAir uepos xeipor^vat, wpoftara ft itavra an-oAuAei Kai iuro^uyia- i'lTTri Te, oo~T)jU.\ovvTO tv yjj aTtOKporif re Ka- fuf(x" J ? ToAaiTrupoui'Tet, oi 6' cTCTpwovcoi'TO. Xenophon, De Vectigal. IV. 26. Granier de Cassagnac, Hlstoire des Clastes Ouvritres, chap. iii. 4 Plutarch, Nwias and Crassus Compared, 1. 4 Drumann. Arbeiter und Communisten in Griechenland und Rom, S. 24; Bbckh, Public Economies of the Athenians, p, 263, lor instances of rr. en own- ins f,'reat numbers of slaves ; See also Bockh's Lauritche Silberbergwerke in At- tika, passim. XO SUXDA7 FOR WOREINGMEN. 135 ous race of enlightenment. Even at that ear'y age the slave's servitude was the source of his own intelligent dis- gust; for covered as he was with the indelible brands and scars of systematic mutilation, and decrepit in premature age through blows and strains of violence and overwork, his mind remained unimpaired, often edged to consciousness of its own incompatibility with this state of degradation. The poor creatures were never allowed to eat white bread.* There were no Sundays for them. Of the 365 days they were forced to delve 360. Sometimes the government owned them and subbed them with the mines themselves to the contractors, following the plan of Xenophon, 7 who some- times thus worked great numbers at a time. Often, how- ever, the rich contractor himself owned laboring men with whom to operate the mines. Thus Nicias owned a thou- sand slaves, 8 Mnason also owned a thousand. 9 The ancients appear to have had a species of passion for seeing acts of brutality and cruelty. Wakes are of great antiquity. Originally they were pub- lic fights on the occasion of the death of an important mem- ber of a gens family, in which the combatants were his slaves so unfortunate as to have survived him. All the fam- ily, its slaves and their children, perhaps also the community not allied by blood, were summond to see what in our re- fined age would not only be repellent cruelties, but intol- erable ones a tight to the death, of slaves of the deceased, with daggers and clubs. 10 The first combat on record of this kind occurred in B. C. 264, arranged by the brothers Brutus. 11 B it authors agree that the practice comes from much more remote antiquity ; and mention of it is made here to prepare the reader to understand some of the causes s Qranier, de Cass. Hist. Ouvrieres, p. 98, who gives references. Biicher Aufgtande der unfreien Arbeitf.r, S. 96 ; Xenoph. Memorab. 111. 6, 12. For 360 days in the year those poor working peou'.e. male and female, had to drucl'/e. Xenophon. 4. 16; Bo kh, Silberbergwerke, S. 125. ' Xenophon, De Vectigal. cap. iv. Bucher, Aufstande, etc. S. 96; Drumann Arbeiler wnd Communisten, . 11-23. B6ckh, Public Economies of the Athenians, p. 263. The celebrated plan of Xenophon for replen^hing the Athenian treasury (De Vectigal. cap. iv. ) was to have the state put 60,000 of its own slaves on the ^tate silver mine:) of La r .T.um, to be leased to contra tors, He even ive< figures on the presim able income from this plan of rel : ef to the state. 10 Frie -.lander, Darslellungen au der SMengescliichte Horns, II. 216. 11 Guhl and Koner, Life of the Greeks and Romans. We ^ive references to modern authors so th'U readers not conversant with the original languages may get them and satisfy thomselve j . 136 STRIKE AT THE SILVER MINES. \ lurking at the bottom of the evil of ancient strikes and up- risings. Gibbon relates the horrible story of the Syracusian, Jj. Pomitius. One of the poor, innocent slaves during his prsetorship, one day while assisting in the chase, killed a wild boar of enormous size and very dangerous. The dar- ing deed got noised about until it reached the ear of Dom- itius who ordered the slave to be brought to him as he de- sired to see so brave a man. The poor creature appeared before this fellow, humbly expecting a trifle of praise so sel- dom the lot of the Syracusian slave. To his horror, how- ever, this monster's first question was, what kind of weapon or means were employed by him in performing the deed. The answer was a javelin. "Are you not aware that the jave- lin is a weapon for gentlemen ; and that for so mean a crea- ture as a slave to use the weapons of men, is death ? " Turn- ing to his soldiers he said, " take this slave away and crucify him." The trembling wretch was actually crucified upon the spot. The heart sickens at the contemplation of our descent from such a type of monsters ! Bucher notes 13 that single contractors often worked 300 to 600 slaves in the silver mines of Laurium and that con- victs who were government property were sometimes sold to the contractors who exploited their labor in their own name." Sometimes intelligent men in those days were half slaves and half free, being enfeoffed by livery of seizin, no doubt, if unambitious of freedom, enjoying thereby some advantages over those entirely out in the competitive world. Sm;h men were paid a per diem, varying from 3 to 7 oboli, or from 10 to 19 cents for their labor. 16 Callias the friend of Cimon, B. C. 460, became wealthy, managing mines. All or nearly all the mines were, with the ancients, the property of the state. The state contracted the working of the mines to enterprising business men who often hired slaves to do the work. These contractors were often men of noble blood. The sense of the social structure being against conducting or managing one's own business. is Gibbon. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. I. p. 48. N. Y., 1850: Boekh, Silberbergrwerke, S. 122-3. adds tetimony to this hardheartedness of the ancients, referring to Plato who, for his perfect state, wanted only Greeks Cie-npt from slavery. Aufstdnde etc., .-. 96. 'tBockh, Abhandlung der Hittorisch-Philologischen Classe der Preussischen Akademie der Wiessenchaften, 1814-16. is Id. Public Ewn. of Athenians, p. 164. STATISTICS OF ANCIENT WAGES. 137 Only the slaves and other workmen, those who actually per- formed the work, were doomed to suffer the odium of labor. Any business man who could get a bond, could take from the state a portion or the whole of a mine; and sometimes even the slaves themselves were to be had of the state. In this case, the complete outfit was contracted for by the in- dividual, who had no further care than to manipulate pro- ducts and gains. Callias and Cimon had either contracts for or ownership in the mines of silver at Lauriura, located to the southeastward of Athens about 30 miles. 18 Their names appear also, but vaguely in connection with the Pangaeus mines in Thrace. It is known that Thucidydes the celebrated historian owned mining property in Mace- donia. He was a rich slave owner and optimate. One Sosias a Thracian contractor hired from Nicias a thousand slaves, at an obolus per day each. 11 Hyponicus rented or hired as many as 600 slaves to these contractors and re- ceived, as Xenophon tells us, a mina daily for their labor. Philemonides for 300 slaves got half a mina. 19 Public servants were not always free. "Wages in the time of Pericles stood about as follows: 19 for a common laborer who carried dirt, 3 oboli, M or 10^ cents per day. A gar- dener got 14 cents; a sawyer of wood, one drachm, or 19 centsj a carpenter received sometimes as high as 17^- cents while millers in the grain mills received 15 to 18 cents. Scribes or copyists no more. The architect of the temple of Minerva got no more than the stone sawyer and others only as much as the common laborer. His name was Polias. Boeckh says he received one drachm or exactly 17^ cents. The hypogrammateus or secretary to the superintendent of public buildings got only 5 oboli or about 15 cents. The fares for traveling conveyances were also very low. In fact, the clerks and public officials of every kind were government subjects who received low salaries and worked long hours. Their life was a constant drudgery. The su- perintendents themselves were officers of family or blood. They were citizens ; but the dignity of their position re- strained them from receiving any recompense. i Plutarch, Cimon. Cornelius Nepos. Cimon; "non tarn generogus qiiam pecuniosus, qui magnas pecunias ex met all is recerat." " Xenophon, De Vectgal. . 4, 14; Plutarch, Nivias, 4. " Xenophon, Id. 1, c. 15. i9B6ckh, Pub. Ecm. Athen. p. 184. so An obolus was 3> eta, a drachma 19. 138 STRIKE AT THE SILVER MINES. Thus in Greece, Rome and everywhere throughout an- tiquity, such were the oppressive conditions that the intelli- gent among the working classes, goaded by their sufferings, were on the alert, sometimes for revenge, sometimes tor objects of amelioration, but oftener from sheer, reckless despair, and ready to strike out in bloody rebellion against their master. With this statement on general causes of strikes we pro- ceed with the story of the greatest of all, belonging purely to this category of human resistance, to be found either in ancient or modern times. 21 It may be plausibly conjectured that this great strike in turning the tables against the Athe- nians and thus deciding the celebrated Peloponnesian war against them and the little democracy that had grown up in the Athenian civilization and refinement, went far toward suppressing the true progress of the human race. 22 The silver mines of Laurium r 30 miles south from the city of Athens, were among the resources of Athenian wealth. They belonged to the government. The methods of ob- taining the precious metal was by arduous labor, without much of the modern machinery. Diodorus describing the Egyptian mines between Captos and Cosseir, pictures the sufferings of the poor convicts and barbarians working there ; M and Biioher says that was also the case with those working the Laurian mines.** According to this, men and women in great numbers who had committed some crime 2 * against the state or otherwise, were dragged into the subter- ranean cavern, stripped entirely of their clothing, their bodies painted, their legs loaded with chains and in this frightful condition, set at work drilling the rock, breaking it in pieces and carrying it to the mouth of the shaft. Out- side the mine were smith eries, machine shops for making stamping mills, water tanks and courses for washing the metal, wagon shops for making and repairing vehicles of conveyance and other conveniences necessary for so great an industry, employing great numbers of slaves and freed- men for carrying on the works. The greater uprisings are known, not as strikes but as servile wars ; al- though we sometime* confound them with strike-, 22 Drumann, Arbeiter und Communisten in Griechenland und Rom, S. 64, 23Diodorus Bibliotheca Historica, V. 38. 2Biicher, Aufsiunde der unfieien Arb. S. 96. ** Compare Plutarch. .Virfo-s and Cragxus Comp. Init. Plutarch here avers that the workmen un .d- Xnia-. were often ma efactors anil convirt,-. BOTH SEXES WORKED NA KED IN THE MINES. 139 These mines of Laurium were in operation when the Pe- loponnesian war broke out, B. C. 432, between the Spartans and Athenians, which lasted 27 years, Thucidydes speaks as though the offer held out to the workmen employed as slaves by the Athenians, of 18 cents per day uniformly, was a very tempting one. 26 They were poor dependents, some slaves, some freedmen, some convicts, subjected to abuse,, thrown pel-mel together, driven to hard work, poorly fed, those within the mines, naked and suffering, and utterly destitute of that feeling known to us as patriotism, although many of them were Athenians." During this obstinate struggle the Lacedaemonian forces, B. C. 413, approached as near to Athens as Decelea, a garrisoned frontier town in Bo3tia held by them, where they established themselves over against the Athenian lines. The distance between Decelea on the borders of Boetia and Athens is only about 20 miles. The Athenian ergasteria or workshops were manned in part by slaves. 28 So, whether in the shops and arsenals at Athens, or in the silver mines of Laurium, both of which, during war time, were indispensable for supply- ing money and arms, the sinews of production were not quickened by that peculiarly inspiriting urgent known to us as patriotism. Labor hated alike home, fatherland and em- ployer. When war broke out the laborer, instead of turn- ing his power and genius to swift production of engines for hurling missiles of destruction among the invaders of his country, sought in the vortex of fierce disturbance, some fissure of retreat from the monstrous cruelties of bondage. Thus in this pivotal contest between the Spartans and Athenians, compared with the Spartans' treatment of the Helots or Lacedemonian slaves, the Athenians with all the horrors that have been pictured, were mild, we find the grievance intensified beyond endurance. Compared with Spartan suavity, philosophy and moral advancement, the Athenians were as civilization to barbarism; for Sparta had never questioned the claims of Pagan aristocracy and Ly- curgus had built upon it in all its austere presumptiveness a ring or community of about one-third the population and damned the remaining two-thirds to a stage of slavery M Thucydides. De Bella Peloponnesiaco, VII. 27, already quoted, p. 107. stBucher. Aufstande d. unfreien Arb. S. 21. w Drumann; Arb. u. Communisten in Griechenland u. Horn, S. 64; "Auch in den F,;briken, fpyacrrepia, sah man nur Sclaven," 140 STRIKE AT THE SILVER MINES. very little better than that of naked convicts described by Diodorus in the gold mines of Egypt. 29 Yet notwithstand- ing the brutal example the poor slaves had just witnessed, of Spartan treachery, in assassinating 2,000 brave helots a few years before, 30 some knowledge of which they must certainly have possessed 31 we find the poor Athenian work- men readily accepting an offer by the Spartans and joining them in great numbers against their own fatherland. Undoubtedly this was a very dangerous exploit of the strikers and could not have succeeded without some organ- ization. But we are left in the dark regarding most of the details. No doubt the near approach of the Lacedaemonian forces and the demoralization of the Athenians as well as their ingratitude, together with the arrogance of Cimon and the revenges of Alcibiades, might have had much to do with it. This great strike must have been plotted by the men themselves. We are, through the two or three brief refer- ences to it, given us by the historians, 32 left to infer that it must have been well concerted, violent and swift. The in- ference is unequivocal that in 413, B. C. 20,000 miners, me- chanics, teamsters and laborers suddenly struck work; and at a moment of Athens' greatest peril, fought themselves loose from their masters and their chains. These 20,000 workmen made a desperate bolt for the Spartan garrison newly established at Decelea on the borders of Boetia. The strike must have been the more desperate on account of the offers held out to them by the enemy. One of the offers was that they should be provided with work which they should perform on their own reckoning; but that they should pay only a part of it to their masters or employers. At this lay, by industry and patience they could not only live better but could lay by a certain sum with which to 29 Diodorus, Bib. Hist. III. 11, V 3S so Thucydides, IV. 80, massacre of the Helots, B. 0. 424, ut supr, p. 106, sq 31 Witness the intimate undercurrent 01 u; ephony during the great up- risings of Eunus, Aristonicus, Athenioii and Spartacus; and the same was rcpetead during the ami-slavery rebellion in the United States, with same mysteriously accurate information. 32 Thucydidej" De Bello Pel. VI. 91. VIII. 4, VII. 27; Xenophon, D Vectigal. 4, 25; Drumann, Ark. u. Comm. S. 64; Bticher, Au/st&nde. vn- freien Aibeiter, S. 21 : -'Im Jahre vor Chr. 413 schlugen sich 20,000 Athen- ische Fabrikarbeiter zu den Lakedaimoniern, ein schwerer Schlag fur den Laurischen Bergbau." Bbckh, LauriscJte Silberbergwerke, S. 90-1, also men- tions it. THE STRIKE A RECOGNIZED SUCCESS. 141 bay themselves free. Unaccustomed to plenty and sud- denly thus provided with enough to eat and drink, they naturally gave themselves up to indulgence to some extent for Dr. Diumann tells us that many of the slaves lived bet- ter than the freedmen themselves, though we have no ac- count of their dissipating. 33 The statement of Dr. Biicher, that this strike of the workmen of Athens was a heavy blow to the mining operations of the Laurian silver diggings, con- firms the importance of this immense uprising in Attica. The sudden loss of 20,000 workmen, inured to the hard- ships of mining life, and drilled to the mechanical nice- ties of the assays for the money supply, of the wagon works, and of the armories at Athens where most of the sabera, slings, daggers, javelins, campaign wagons and other impedimenta of war were constructed, ia known to have been a serious set-back to the progress of the Pe- loponnesian conflict. But while it disheartened the Athen- ians it proportionately encouraged and delighted the Lace- daemonians ; and as the latter were not of the party of pro- gress but engaged in invidious activity against the Athen- ians, at that time the most democratic and advanced peo- ple in the world, it acted directly against the evolution of mankind. No one pretends to deny that the Spartans,, boasting of the hegemony of their youth and their conse- quent warlike prowess, were mad with jealousy against the wondrous work of Athenian philosophy, letters, fine art and polish ; the very adornments, theoretical and mechanical, 34 Drumann. Arbeiter und Communiften in Griechenland und Rom, S. 64. " Der grosste Theil der 20.000, welche im peloponnesischen Kriege in Attica zn der spartanischen }5>-atznnj in Pocelia entliei'eu, kam aus Fabriken. Mitunter wurde'thnen gestattet, fur elgene Eechnung zu arbeiten, und ein Gewisses theil an ihre Herren aozugeben ; so konuten fleissige and sparsame eine Summe erttbrigen nnd sich loskaufen ; manche machten mehr Aufwand als die Freien." Biicher gays, S. 21: " Wo viele Sklaven derselben Nationalitat in einer Stadt zttsammen lebten, sagt Platon, (legg. VI. p. 777), geschahe grosses Dnheil, wasdoch nur auf wirliche Aufstande mit all ihren Graueln zu deuten ist." So also at Home the feeling waa against the poorest class and aggravated by a fear of their mnti- nies. Cato the elder was a hard-hearted slave-driver as Livy, (XXXIX. 40), coolly hints, without seeming to imagine that brutal treatment of a menial was inhumanity. Macrobius, (Saturnaliorum Libri, I, xi. 2, 25-30,) says that in Rome so great was the cruelty of citizens to the laboring class that God himst- 11 protested: "Audi igittir quanta indignatio de serui supplicio caelum pene- trauerit. anno enim post Bomatn conditam quadringentesimo septuagesimo quarto Autranius quiilam Maximue sernum suum ueberatum patibuloque con- strictnm ante spetaculi commissionem per circum egit: ob quam causam indJg- natus luppiter Annio cuidam per quietem imperauit ut senatui nuntiaret non Bibi placuisse plenum crudelitatis admissum." Thus cruelty with other griev- ances caused them to revolt. Of course, those who were already free were still more fortunate. It is curious that the law waa such that the slaves remained slaves even after winning the strike. 142 STRIKE AT THE SILVER MINES. which have in course of subsequent ages succeeded in rid- ding the world of slavery. Yet we find in this great strike 20,000 workingmen revolting and turning their muscle against their own comparatively progressive institutions, thus doing all in their power to aid the Spartans in subdu- ing this growing Athenian intelligence. Of course we can- not blame them for resistance ; for it raised them, although it doomed then; cause. The brilliant Athenians were, after a struggle of 27 years, defeated and the Spartans succeeded in re-establishing the old, jealous, conservative paganism that deadliest enemy of freedom, the nursery of slavery, the home of priestcraft and of aristocracy, ever inculcating belief in divine right of few against many. Not far from Decilea on the Athenian seacoast, about five miles to the southeastward of the Laurian silver mines, was the little mining city of Sunion. There was an old castle at this place, which, like that in the forest of Sicily, 34 was under the aegis of a powerful divinity who recognized the workingman and protected him, whatever his deeds or his guilt, so long as he could hold himself within its walls. It was about the close of the first Labor war of Eunus of Sicily that another enormous and horribly bloody strike oc- curred in the mines of Laurium. 88 The men undertook and carried out the same plan as that of Decelia, and struck work to the number of more than a thousand. 88 It ruust have been a memorable and shockingly sanguinary event. Sun- ion was the stronghold of the silver mines. 37 By the ap- pearance of things as presented to us in the meagre details given, no improvement for the comfort of the miners had ever been introduced since the great strike of Decelea. The poor creatures were still suffering under the lash, delving 860 out of the 365 days in the year, naked, men and women in discriminately tugging under the clubs of heartless foremen and directors, the same as ages before, 88 That these poor * See Second Sicilian Labor War, chap. xi. where it IB related that the strikers were actually shielded by the god of the castle, and no one dared to disturb them nntii they had organized that mighty rebellion. * A full account of this strike-war occurs in chap. x. pp. 201-241 q. v. w Augustin de civ. d. in. 26, tells us also of a great uprising of the miners In Macedonia. w B6ckh, Laurische Silberlergwerk, 8, 90. 38 Athenaeus, Deipnosvphistce, VI. p. 271: quoting E. Poseidonius, the contin- nator of the Histories of Polybius says: " Kai ai TroAAai fie O.VTO.I 'A.TTLKO.I /avpta^es Twv oiKeriav &eS(/j.fi'ai flpydfovro TO. /xrraAAa. Hoaei&tavio^ yovv o' $iA6<7ojj(rlv avrovt /tara^oi'eucrai fjLtv rods ejri riav jneTaAAcov )v. OUTO?, SJjv 6 xatpoc, ore icai ei SiKt/uar; Sevrcpa. TUIV SouAtop airbcrTourcf eyevero. Sea also Bockh, S. 123. 3 See Demosth, Agt. Pant. 966-7. The eranoi mentioned were the veritable trade unions, corresponding with the Roman collegia, the French jurandes and the English trade unions. The thiaaoi, as we persistently explain, were that branch, of the eranoi which had in charge the entertainments and solemnities. We have already shown that slaves often belonged to the onions. Foucart, (Associations Be- lifficusues.Chtz La Grecs. p. 121 and 219, inscription No. 38), mentions an important inscription showing that one Xanthos a Lycian slave belonging to a Roman named Cains Orbius, founded a temple at the mines and consecrated it to the moon god. This moon god in return for the favor protected the slaves. The slab bears eviuence from which we quote the first six lines as follows; Hai-Oo? Avxtof Tat'ov 'Optfiov KaBeiSpvtra. TO iep oinov MTJ^O? Tvpavvov, aipericravTOs rov 6tov, ejr' aya.6r) rv\r^ KalfXTjOcya ix.6i9a.prov irpoerayeiv, Ka9apie0Tw Se airb <7KOp&av caiYOipeii Kai yvfatKOs, Aoucra^ei'ov? Si KaraxeciiaAa avOr)fj.fpbv eio-iropeu- eo-6ai, xai etc rlav yvvaiKtitav 6ta iirra. T\fitp. b. 28. AGAIN THE TRAITOR. 151 tion the slaves of that period enjoyed, this impossible scheme should not seem absurd; since they doubtless bad little knowledge or conception of a world stretching be- yond their vision and experience. Again the traitor. Setia was under the prsetorship of C. Cornelius Lentulus. Just at the outbreak of the strike, but whether during the tumult of a bloody fray we are uninformed, two of the conspirators lost courage and be- trayed the plot. Livy says: "The object was, when Setia was once in their hands, by the combined result of mur- der and sudden tumult to first seize and similarly serve the cities of Norba and Circeji. Information of this ter- rible plot was carried to Rome and laid before the Prse- tor, L. Cornelius Merula, by two slaves who arrived from the scene before daybreak and in systematic order ex- posed the anticipated operations of the insurrectionists." " Instantaneous action was now necessary at Rome. The Senate was in a few minutes convoked. The two Roman consuls for that year, (B. C. 198), Sextus .ZElius Psetus and T. Quinctius Flamininus, were absent with their com- mands in Gaul and elsewhere; so Merula one of the four gediles or tribunes of the people, was called to the task of WLiv. XXXII. 26. "Quern ad modum Gallia proeter gpem quieta eo anno fait, ita circa urbem servilis prope tumultus est excitatus. Obsides Carthagi- niensium Setiae custodiebantur. Cum iis, ut principum liberis, magna vis ser- vorum erat. Augebant eorum numerum, ut ab recent! Africo bello, et ab ipsia Setiiiis captiva aliquot nationis eius empta ex prada mancipia. Cum conjura- tionem fecissent, missis ex eo numoro primum qui in Setino agro, deinde circa Norbam et Circeios servitia sollicitarent, satis iam omnibus praaparatis ludis qui Setiae prope diem futuri erant, spectaculo intentum populum adgredi statuerant, Setia per csedem et repentinum tumultum capta, Norbam et Circeios occupare. Hujus rei tarn feed indicium Roman ad L. Cornelium Merulam praetorem ur- bis delatum est. Serri duo ante lucem ad eum venerunt, atque ordine omnia quae acta futuraque erant exposuerunt. Quibus domi custodiri iussis, praetor senatu vocato edoctoque, quae indices adferrent, proficisci ad earn conjurationem quaerendam atque opprimendam iussus, cum quinque legatis profectug obvios in agris sacramento rogatos arma capere et sequicogebat. Hoc tumultuario de- lectu duobus milibus ferme hominum armatis Setiam, omnibus quo pergeret ignaris, venit. Ibi raptim principibus conjurationis comprehensis fuga servorum X oppido facta est Dimissis deinde per agros qui vestigarent *********. Egregia duorum opera servorum indicum et unius liberi fuit. Ei centum milia gravis aeris dari patres iusserunt, servis vicena quina milia asris et libertatem; pretium eorum ex aerario solutum est dominis. Haud ita mul to post ex eiusdem conjurationis reliquiis nuutiatum est servitia Praeneste occupatura. Eo B. Cor- nelius praetor prot'ectus dn quingentis fere hominibus, qui in ea noxa erant, sup- plicium sumpsit. In timore civitas fuit obsides captivosque Poenorum ea mo- liri. Itaque et Romse vigilix per vicos servatse, iussujue circumire eas minores magistrates; et triumviri carceris lautumiarum iutentiorem custodiam habere iussi; et circa nomen Latinum a prostore litterte misssa, ut et obsides in private servarentur, nequi; in publicum prodeundi lacultas ditretur, et captivi ne minus decem pondo compedibus vincti in nulla alia quam in carceris publici custodia essent." 152 JSARLT MUTINEERS OF ITALY. suppressing the conspiracy. At this impromptu meeting of the Roman Senate it was ordered that Merula should take the field in person. There being at that instant very few regular troops at command, no time was lost in wait- ing orders to mass them, and it appears that he set out immediately with few, gathering militia as he proceeded on his way to Setia ; for it appears that before reaching the scene of the danger the number of his forces reached 2,000 men. No particulars are given regarding the at- tack on the conspirators. We have no information as to whether there occurred a conflict. We are informed that the ring leaders of the conspiracy were arrested; also that the slaves were thrown into great confusion. Livy states that the town of Setia was the place where many hostages from the Carthagenian army were kept. The battle of Zama between Scipio and Hannibal, A. D. 202, had re- sulted disastrously to those old enemies of Rome and these hostages were kept by the conqueror as a pledge against further hostilities. Being penned in together, they also naturally joined the conspiracy and the ring-leaders re- ferred to by Biicher, may have been some of the veritable warriors of the great Hannibal now pining in custody as hostages around the barracks of Setia. But here again, as in the story of Spartacus, the excel- lent history of Livy is broken off and lost. How much of the real story is missing may never be known. But for the epitome or heading of this book we should be left in the dark entirely as to the results; but there is a passage in this which states that 2,000 of the conspirators were arrested and slaughtered. 20 Judging from the usual method of servile executions, it might be inferred that the captured like those of Spartacus, Eunus and Aristonicus, were crucified upon the gibbet. It is more probable how- ever, since some of them were Carthagenian veterans, that part of them were crucified and the remainder butch- ered; because it was against the Roman code of honor to hang veteran soldiers or others than those of the servile race, upon the ignominious cross. Jesus a religio-p oliti- cal offender was crucified by the Romans in a Roman pro- W Aufstande d unfreien Arb. S, 29. soLiv. jib. XXXII. Epitomy. ' Conjuratio servorum, faota de solvendiki Carthageniesium obsidibus opprossa est; duo milia necati sunt. CRUCIFIXION. 153 vince, not because of his offence, which might have re- ceived a nobler or less ignominious punishment, but be- cause he was a workingnian, not a soldier; and conse- quently ranked with the servile class in contradistinction to the noble class of the gens family, of the Pagan religion. The uprising was suppressed after a struggle, the dura- ation and the particulars of which are left for our curiosity to surmise. But the causes of the grievances among the slaves were too profound to be easily stamped out. Mi< ZHonytischen K&nstler, Foncarts, Attodations Iteligieiua for the Greek, and Mommsen. de Collegii et Sodaliciis Romanorum. for the latin unions, passim. w gee Biicher, Aufst. d. unf. Arb. S, 79. 174 DRIMAKOS, ing quantities by weight and measure as agreed upon, and always locking up the storehouses and granaries when they left them. The result was a mercy to the whole island which had been hitherto infested with robbers. It is not stated, but left to be inferred from the sequel, that Dri- makos drove all other robbers from the island; for we know that his armed force, now legalized, acted as a sort of police to the whole personality and property of the peo- ple, slaves included. He adhered with severity to the stip- ulation of the agreement and when runaways appeared to him for protection he instituted a strict investigation of their case ; those not having been maltreated being always sent back to their owners. This of course had the effect to cause masters to treat their slaves with kindness and never to overwork or otherwise abuse them, lest they in- cur the terrible wrath of the god-favored umpire seated on his throne among the crags and eagles-nests of the mountains. On the other hand the would-be runaways were surer to reflect cautiously before making the attempt, being in deadly fear at the just judgment of the despot before whom they were to be arraigned for trial imme- diately after their suit before him for protection. Thus the revolted slave became not only an absolute ruler, king and general-in-chief of the slave population, but also, in some respects, a judge in a court of justice with a stand- ing army at command to enforce his decisions an umpire over the whole population, bond and free. Years rolled by and Drimakos felt old age approaching, yet did not flinch from what he considered the dignity and honor of his plan of justice. He remained at the helm, punishing or rewarding like a czar, until he was old and feeble and weary of a lengthier existence. He had a friend in the person of a young man, also a psomokolo- phos or runaway, who probably deserved this appellative for being pliant and perhaps a little parasitical and given to the recipiency of tit-bits in payment for flatteries in- geniously brought to the old man's ear. He, like many of the other slaves, was a native of a distant land, having when very young been kidnapped or taken a prisoner of war, and as a victim to the vicious slave-trade, sold to the planters of Chios. He was one of those young fugitive slaves who had proved his grievance under the investiga- HIS ASTONISHING DEATH. 175 tion, been accepted, retained and trusted. Drimakos loved him and confided in bis youthful honesty. Meantime the Chians, unsatisfied with what they re- garded as their burden, offered a large reward in gold to whomsoever should bring them the head of Drimakos. This they did against their true interests; since at that mo- ment while under the eagle-eyed justice of this weird old judge in the mountain cliffs, their true interests were being more reasonably and economically subserved than ever be- fore or afterwards, as the sequel of this story bears record. Perhaps the old man in his peevishness was grieved by their ingratitude in offering a bounty on his head. At any rate, we are told that he grew weary of his hoary hairs and enfeebling senectitude, and resolved that the ungrateful masters should pay the bounty and take the consequences whether of pleasure or of regret. In other words he resolved to send them his head and make it bring its price in gold ! In our own days of comparative sympathies and sensi- bilities a resolution like this could scarcely emanate from any person other than a madman; and our first judgment, shocked at the bare conception, is that no horror so ap- palling could have been devised by anything saner than some icfiocracy of an errant brain. But 2,000 years have softened the human mind which, though yet cruel and sometimes even savage, is so comparatively tender that it pronely misjudges the motives and the drastic will which impelled some acts of our progenitors. Drimakos resolved to shuffle off his mortal coil. Calling to him the friend whose name our informants have not transmitted to us, he spoke to him in the following char- acteristic words: " Boy, I have brought thee up nearest to me, ever with the emotions of confidence and love more than that felt for all others of mankind. Thou art child and son and all that to me is dear. I have lived out my span. I have lived long enough; but thou art still young and hast blood and hope and sprightliness, and there is much before thee. Thou shalt become a good and brave man. Son, the city of the Chians is offering to him that biingeth them my head a sum of money and promising him his freedom. Therefore thy duty is to cut off my head, take 176 DRIMAKOS. it to them, receive thy reward, return home to thy father- land and be happy." The innocent youth at the thought of such an ungrate- ful and sickening atrocity, refused for the first time to obey his benefactor, and struggled hard to change the old man's determination, but in vain. Having resolved, he was inexorable. When the youth found him fixed in his horrible resolution and knew by long acquaintance with him that it was unalterable, he allowed himself to be persuaded. The slave-king laid his head upon the block and the youth cleft it with the axe of the executioner ! Having buried the body of his friend and patron, the youth took the head to the city, received its price, his free- dom and an amnesty and departed for his home with wealth and distinction. The Chians did not long rejoice over their boasted cap- ture of the head of the land-pirate. Soon after he was dead the runaway slaves with whom the rocks and forests of that rugged country were infested, being no longer un- der the restraint of the ever vigilant Drimakos, returned to their wonted habits of pillage by land and piracy by sea. The Chians were poignantly reminded of the error they had committed in their harsh measures against the powerful but just chieftain, who, for many years had held the discontented and warlike freebooters under control. The fugitive slaves re-began their work of robbery and devastation. Readopting their former habits of plunder based on revenge as well as want, they ceased to be an or- ganized body following a stipulated arrangement like that which so long had existed between Drimakos and the Chian people, and became a desperate gang of land pirates and outlaws. The treachery of the Chians in securing the removal of Drimakos thus recoiled upon themselves in shape of a calamity. They remembered the prophetic words of the martyred chieftain, that the gods had espoused the cause of the poor slaves and were angry with their masters. A feeling remembrance, kindling a high degree of respect for him now set in, and both combined to produce a ven- eration which caused them to erect a tomb or mausoleum over his grave, which the Greeks called a heroon, and he be- A MAUSOLEUM TO THE CHIEF. 177 came the object of hero worship. This was no less a struct- ure than a temple dedicated to Drimakos, the now deified hero. Such was the sublimity of the subject that this heroon or temple arose so splendid and enduring that its ruins " remain to this day and have been the object of study by archaeologists and other students from more than a dozen points of view. 18 The superstitions of the times now came in play in the flexible imaginations of these people. They persuaded themselves that they often saw in the gloom of night the ghost of Drimakos, now as before their friend, as, bony-fingered and spectral, it appeared to warn the Chians of some foul plot his fellow runaways and brigands were concocting against their lives and property. And many a time were the lurking filibusters thus checkmated in their manosuvres, ambuscades and sallies, and many a time defeated in their bloody designs by the wan and stalking ghost of Drimakos. Curiously enough this super- stition was mutual between bond and free; for the brig- ands themselves worshipped the manes of Drimakos as their hero also; and always first brought to his mausoleum the richest trophies of their marauding expeditions before dispersing to their caverns with the rest. So weird and romantic does this tale of the wild men of ancient Scio sound that we have hesitated before allowing it to contribute its enriching lessons and charms, lest it prove unable to bear the criticism of our learned but skeptic readers. But when our eye at last caught the smiling assurances of its trustworthiness from savants like Dr. Karl Biicher, and other learned teachers of philology, and from their pen we obtained the bracing words that not the slightest doubt 19 exists as to the credibility of the story, we ventured to bring it forth upon its merits as another instance of labor's hardships and struggles for existence. Consult Stark bei Hermann. S. 40. 16. 18 See ROBS Travels in the islands ; Inscriptinn de Scio, No. 72. . "Biicher Aufgtande for Unfreien Arbeiter, S. 23. "Mag man einzelne Ziise dleser Geschichte romanhaft flnden, es bietet sich anch nicht der leisiste Grund. an ihrr Echtheit zu zweifelp, und selbst wenn die klugen chiischen Kanflante Bie zur Erklarune des Heroons nnd als Abechreckungsmittel flir ihre Sclaven er- fnnden batten, bliebe sie darum weniger ein treues Spiegelblld vorhandener Znstande." CHAPTER VIIL VIR1ATHUS. A GREAT REBELLION IN SPAIN. THK Roman Slave System in Spain Tyranny in Lusitania Massacre of the People Condition before the Outbreak First Appearance of Viriathus A Shepherd on his Native Hills A Giant in Stature and Intellect He takes Com- mand Vetillius Outwitted Captured and Slain Conflict in Tartessus Romans again Beaten Battle of the Hill of Venus Viriathus Slaughters another army and Humiliates Rome Segobria Captured Arrival of ^Emilianus He is Out-generaled and at last Beaten by Viriathus More Bat- tles and Victories for the Farmers Arrival of Plautius with Fresh Roman Soldiers Viriathus made King More Victories Treason, Conspiracy and Treachery Lurking in his Oamps Murdered by his own Perfidious Officers Pomp at His Funeral Relentless Vengeance of the Romans Crucifixion and worse Slavery than before The Cause Lost The successful issue to Home, of the third Punic war by which Carthage, agreeably to the inveterate apothegm of Cato : "delenda est Carthago," the land of the terrible Hannibal was chopped to pieces and its inhabitants butch- ered or sold into slavery, caused an enormous amount of suffering to the human race. Not only did the spirit of greed cause Roman land spec- ulators to press the enforcement of the slave laws which eeized prisoners and consigned them to the most cruel wholesale bondage in Asia-Minor, Italy and Sicily, but it extended this mischief, also into sunny Spain. ENFORCED BONDAGE AND REBELLION. 179 One of the main causes of the rebellion of inner emo- tions of the celebrated Tiberius Gracchus against Rome, goading him to become the champion of a reform in favor of the poor, was the wretchedly enslaved condition of the working people in all countries under Roman domination. Their terrible condition in Etruria was no worse than in Numantia in Spain. He had seen the indescribable suffer- ing at Carthage, when nearly the entire population were either put to the sword or sold in slavery, Spain was on the verge of rebellion everywhere. Roman conquest had but a few years before, stricken Epirus a fruitful land eastward from Italy. Paulus 2Ernilius tore from the farm- ers of this region upwards of 2,000,000 of their savings in gold, and after the battle of Pydna, seized no less than 150,000 people by order of the Roman Senate. These people, nearly all farmers and other workers, were dragged from their homes and sold for slaves. Seventy cities were sacked and destroyed. Towns, villages, cities on every side, as well as farms and small industries, with their unions and communes, were reduced to a desolate waste, and the people, wbo were still alive, whether suffering under the lash of mas- ters in a foreign land, or gasping under tyranny at home, were burning with bitterness, revengefulness, hatred and other lurking passions, and sinking into degeneracy, reck- lessness and poverty. 1 Such was also the miserable status of affairs in Spain in the year B. C. 149, when our story of Viriathus begins. Old Lusitania before the Roman conquests, was a popu- lous and enterprising country. There were associations, of the Lusitanian laboring people, which under some favor- able rules had existed so long that they had become rich. Traces of their enterprise are still to be seen in form of temples, bridges and roads. It appears to have been in their days of highest glory that Rome, with a blackening curse of human slavery, struck this beautiful, sunny clime and its contented, happy and prosperous people. Our story begins with a perfidious piece of treachery of one Servius Sulpicius Galba, who commanded the Roman army of invasion in Spain. Like Verres in Sicily, Galba ' ' lutarch, Paulut j&niUui; Livy, XL. 25-28; Wallace, Numbert of Mankind. 180 VIKIATHUS. seemed to have no moral respect for humanity. He worked his plans to secure the confidence of these people and when the opportunity arrived, perfidiously murdered them in great numbers, seized and dragged others into slavery and robbed their country of its gold with which he afterwards, in spite of old Cato's efforts to have him punished, bought himself free from the sentence of the law at Home. Soon after these outrages of Galba, Rome withdrew many of the soldiers from Spain and the peo- ple rallied with greater determination than ever, to re- trieve their losses. They were mostly farmers and me- chanics, and men of strong, well established principles. Among those who had the fortune to escape from the last massacre of Galba was a young man named Viriathus. He is represented by Diodorus as almost a giant in stat- ure " and a person born to command, He was endowed by nature with the rare faculties of honor and truthful- ness, while at the same time leading the life of a hunter, a shepherd and finally of a border warrior in defense of himself and his kindred. An excellent description of Viriathus is left us by Diodorus in a short fragment of his histories which have been fortunately preserved. This fragment, while it represents him to have been a robber, extols at the same breath his honor for distributing the plunder among his men.* Livy speaks of him as a man of warlike qualifications, having had experience as a moun- taineer. 4 The charge against him, of being a lawless bandit is no longer maintained by authors, since the the circumstances under which he careered, show of themselves, that he did * Diodorns, Bibliotheca Hiftorica, lib. XXXIII. Eclog. V. otfragmenta: " Ow- ptari^o* icvp>jTes, fieyaAo 'Pcofiaiovs 0AaJ Kalian) crvvri&rft, a-vvepybv t\tav jj ftiv oAi'yij, yvui'ao-i'ois Si iroAAoif XP') lca ' vnvto fijiJpoidii Si aAx7)>>, aAAa icai (rrpari)- ytiv tSo^e SiaubcpovTias." * Idem, Excerpt de Virt. et Vit. pag. 591: "'On Ovipt'oTdos o Ap'o-Topxos Avcriravos icat Jixato? Jfv iv rais Siavovals riov \avpiai>, icai KO.T' afiav Ti/JtStv rovt a.v&pa.ya.itriaa.vTa.s cfaiperott Siupott, ri Si ovSiv airAuf en rtaf xoiviav I'oa^x.fofifvo';. Jib icat crvv(fia.ivt TOUS \vcrira.voi>s n-potJv/noTaTa trvyKivSvvtvtiv auroi, Ti/iiivTat olovei TIKI KOIVOV tvtpyerrjv icai aiarr/pa-" * Livy, Epitam, offfiitoriarum, Libri, LII. " Viriathns in Hispania primum ex pastore venator, ex venatpre latro, mox jnsti quoqae exercitus dux factus. totiitn Lusitaniam occupavit." MASSACRES OF GALBA. 181 nothing which any patriot would not be bound to do in defense of home, family and friends. What the ancient authors seem to be prejudiced against him for, is the fact that, like Athenion and Spartacus, he was poor and that he belonged to the lowly and strictly laboring class. But even with the excusable charge against him that he was a robber, we find very few who do not speak highly of him as a great leader and a man of uncommon justice. The only thing Galba and Lucullus seem to have been able to think of, when sent from Rome into Spain, was to plunder at an unlimited cost of suffering and blood. Cheat- ing, deceiving, working deeds of treachery against the people and amassing gold was their single object; and to get the gold from Spain and carry it as their own per- sonal property to Rome, was their bent and determina- tion. 5 Among the few Lusitanians who escaped from the last massacre of Galba, was Viriathus. He adroitly forewarned himself and a few friends, of a treacherous plot, just at the moment of its consummation and with difficulty extri- cated himself, although great numbers of innocent people were murdered or enslaved. His opportunity was now at hand, and he informed the shattered remnant of the band, of which it appears he was at the time, little above the rank and file, that if they would entrust the future command of their forces to him, he would lea*d them out in safety. In a speech he told them that they were too confiding; that the Romans were utterly devoid of all in- stincts of truthfulness or honor, and that the only tactics in future to be pursued must be based upon the idea of treating them as enemies; that whatever the hypocritical pretence of either the Roman senate, or its inhuman emis- saries that Spain was in need of protection, the truth at the bottom was, that Rome wanted the whole of this fair and fruitful land, its productive mines, its waving grain fields, its fisheries, timber forests and gems, for her great 6 Appian, Iberia, 60; Livy, Epitome. XLIX. remarks that Cato was stern enough to have Galba punished but the trial came to naught; the infamous triitor had too much gold at command : " Qjium L. Scribonius tribunus plebis rogatiqnem promnlgHi-set, ut Lusitani, qui, in fldempopuli Komani dediti, a Ser. Galba in Galliam venissent, in libertatem restituerentur, M. Cato acerrime stia- Bii. Exstat oratio in Anualibus fins inclnsa. Q. Fulvius Nobilior, et saepe ab eo in senatu lac*ratus. respondit pro Galba. Ipse quoque Galba, qiinm se dam- uari viderit, complexus duos fllios praetextatos, et Sulpicii Galli filiuin, cuius tutor erat, ita miserabiliter pro Be locctus est, ut ragatio antiqnaretur." 182 VIRIATHUS. lords; and she only wanted these inestimable resources worked for such arrogant darlings of her aristocracy, not by free labor bat by that of slaves, subjugated through plots and systematized perfidy. Give me, said Viriathus, the unlimited command of your brave warriors and I will rid the land of our fathers of these mortal foes. The speech won the distinguished sympathy of the governors. The tall mountaineer received the full com- mand of the army; and now begins one of the most re- markable series of successes, wrought amid difficulties, cruelties and transient triumphs, to be found in the his- tory of Rome. These extraordinary contests lasted, ac- cording to various authors from eight to twenty years. 6 After the departure to Rome of Galba and Lucullus, with their gold, a praetor or governor, named Gaius Vet- ilius was entrusted by the Romans, with the care of the Spanish possessions; and Viriathus thus left the flocks under his care in the mountains and valleys of his home to take permanent charge of the broken and disheartened army which had regained some spirit, however, on account of the evacuation of their territory by Galba, and began, inarching down into the fertile valleys of Turdetania. Vetilius met them promptly, and before the new com- mander could organize his troops, or perhaps before he really got command, gained a victory, driving them back and forced them to agree to, and almost conclude an un- conditional .surrender. This was perhaps the auspicious We here give the several authorities for the duration of these wars, from ' Pw/j.aioi9 xai iucrfpyoTaroi' avroif ytvoiievov, avva.ya.ytLV, afa^eiitvov el Tl rov avrou \povov Trepi 'Iftripiav aAAo fyiyvcro.'' Llvy, Hutoriarum, Liber, LII. Epitom. " C. Vetilium praetorem, fnso eius cxercitu, cepit : post quem C . Plautina praetor nihilo felicius rem gessit : tan- tumque terroris is hostis intulit, ut adversus eum consular! opus esset et duce, et exercitu." This mention is found by a careful study of the different com- mands, to make the iuration to have been about 14 years. Justin, XLIV. 2, says 10 years; while Diordorns makes it to appear about 11 years, and Orosius, Histories Adversus faganot, V. 4, about 8 to 10 years. Eutrope, Bre.vio.rium, Rerum Romanorum. IV. 16, evidently takes his state- ment from Livy ; for aside from putting the wars of Virathus at 14 years, he uses almost the same language in describing the man : "Quo meta Viriathus a. suis interfectus eat, cum quatuordecim annis Hispanias adversum Romanes mo. visset. Pastor primo fuit, mox latronum dux, postremo tantos ad bellum popu- loe concitavit, ut assertor contra Romanes Hispaniae putaretur.' 1 Vallejus Paterculus, Bremarium Historic Romance, lib. II. cap. 90. declares the duration of the wars with Viriathus to have been 20 years and undoubtedly ilouinisen in patting it at 8 with Appian, is entirely wrong. A TRIUMPHANT RETREAT. 183 moment at which Viriathus first showed himself and made his speech, as we have just recounted. This hardy Spaniard, on getting the reins firmly into his hands, introduced a method of tactics little understood or anticipated by the Romans. He made an unexpected revolt against the stipulations of capitulation then being drawn up, accompanying the same with a dash of his troops, and by a series of twists and turns in which the swiftest of the Spanish cavalry were brought into play, succeeded in extricating the little army so entirely from the grasp of Vetilius that he effected a retreat into a rocky woodland, and there safely spent the night in rest and needed refreshment, and the following day in religious purifications according to the Spanish creed. 7 The flight, according to Appian, and others, was accomplished by dividing the army into several parts, each under the com- mand of a trusted leader, with orders to reunite at a given point, and with 1,000 horses under his own command he covered their retreat, first galloping to the rescue of one and then the other. In this manner they all reached Tri- bola in safety, after holding their pursuers in check for two days by means of various expedients of consummate ingenuity in which he took advantage of the wild and rugged shape of the land. 8 All this time he was marching southward toward the strait of Gades, to the ancient Carteia. Vetilius could illy brook the escape of his game which so short a time be- fore he believed to be in his hand. He made a desperate effori to frustrate the splendid retreat of the Spanish army, but Viriathus decoyed him into an ambush at the foot of the Hill of Venus where a celebrated battle was fought, which Appian and others graphically describe. 9 It was a deep gorge, thick-set with briars, rocks, forest trees and other obstructions, which puzzled the best army " Appian, Historia Romana, Hispania, 62 ; Frontin, Stralegematon. lib. HI, xi. 4 ; " Viriathu?, cam tridai iter discedens confecisset, idem illnd nno die remen- BUB secures Se^obrigenses et sacrificio cum maxirne occupatos opp_ressit." 8 Appian, 62, '20-25, of Mendelsohn : '' '{)<; S' el/too-ev acra\ias x"'' T 'i* vyris TOUS trepous, rore VVKT'OS 6pfiij>, 'Pufiat'uf avrvv SiioKeic 6/xotuf ov Swafievtav iia Tf j3apo? oirAuv xai aireipt'ai' b&w KGU 'iirirtvv afO^LOi6r>]Ta'" 9 Consult also Dion Cassins, Sistorue, LXXVJII. p. 33, Wess. ; Frontin. Strategematon, lib. III. cap. 10, refers to this as one of the great strokes of strate- gem : " Viriathus disposito per occulta milite pancos misit, qni abigerent pecora Segobrigensinm : ad quae illi vindicandu cnm'frequeutes procurrUsent simulan- teeque fugam praedatores persequerentur, deducti in insidiaa caesique sunt." 184 VIRIATHUS. unaccustomed to mountain life but which least tormented a man like Viriathus, whose life had been that of a hunter and shepherd among glens and precipices. 10 It was about the time when Viriathus, after his three days retreat, was entering the town of Tribola, that Vetilius and his men made a desperate effort to seize him. Some of the Span- ish detachments were out reconnoitring when they were set upon by a heavy body of Romans in the ledge, and after many hours of severe fighting the Romans lost their general and gave way with a loss in killed of about 5,000 soldiers a half of their entire force. It was soon after- wards discovered that Vetilius had met one of the hardy mountaineers, and in a hand to hand encounter had been taken prisoner by him. 11 Most writers agree that the Roman general was mortally wounded in this encounter. It was a great and bloody victory. Immediately after the triumph of Viriathus at the Hill of Venus, an immense number of slaves and free tramps whose condition was worse than that of slaves, came into the camp from all quarters, to offer themselves as soldiers; and although we do not find much in the fragments of history left us on this rebellion, yet it cannot be doubted that a very large army was called into being; and this was probably the prime secret of the continued train of suc- cesses attending the career of the insurgents. There was another army in Spain, subject to Rome, con- sisting of Spanish militia and mercenaries, or perhaps freedmen who had been impressed into the Roman ser- vice. These, 5,000 strong, on the arrival of the news of the disaster to Vetilius, struck out in a rapid march from their quarters on the river Ebro. The eye of Viriathus was however on the lookout for them. He marched a large force to waylay, and prevent them from joining the enemy who had by this time so far recovered as to show an army of 16,000 men, now marching toward Gades the old Tartesssus. He met them at some convenient place and in a second battle destroyed them so completely that nothing was left of the force 10 Diodorus, Bibliotheca Histarica, XXXIII, Eclog. V. " Zweidiirt Se avrov Tpon iJ.ff oAiyj), yu/iKMTc'ots Se iroAAois xpytrdii, KO.L vwvif fiovov avayxaiov opu}V wve^iat, Ka.1 #T)pi'ois icai Ajjarais is aywi-as i<7Ta|iiei'os, Trfpifioif TOf iyevfro irapa. TOIS irA>j#a'i > Kai rjyefiuiv OVTOIS fl'pei^T), J$poiM untl aiTav f if 'ITVKKTIV rfirfiytro, rrtv afpanav ayui/ xara ASSASSINATED BY HIS OWN MEN. 1ST At length Viriathus, who was watching his opportunity, caught the old Roman at the siege of the town of Erisane, and after a severe contest defeated him. Driven to a rocky ledge in an angle from which it was impossible to escape, the victorious Spaniards bad him completely in their power. Here, at the zenith of a long list of hrilliant successes, virtually closes the glory of Viriathus. He was so foolish as to let his sympathies get the better of his judgment. So complete was this victory over Servilianus that he was glad to treat on any terms; and the surprising sequel is, that the terms offered by Viriathus and accepted at Rome were so mild. The Spaniard was to be acknowledged king over his native country of Lusitania, and henceforward to be re- garded as a brother or ally to the Romans ! Of course this furnished Rome another period of time to recuperate and concoct new schemes of treachery. This she did, by sending the perfidious Csepio to take the place of Servilianus, aud he was not long in bribing the friends of Viriathus to turn against their long trusted master and murder him in his sleep. An enormous, far-sounding wake accompanied by gladia- torial orgies of shocking ferocity, was held over his remains. The date of this great revolt in Spain is fixed at 149 years before Christ. This disgraceful triumph of Caepio was fol- lowed by the enslavement of innumerable peasants, traders and working people, and the end was worse than the be- ginning. If we are to believe Vellejus Paterculus, the great wars of Viriathus against the Roman slave trade for it was nothing less lasted about 20 years ; and taking all things into consideration, it could not have been a shorter time, although belittled by the historians. Mommsen is anx- ious to make it appear but 8 years, agreeing with Appian. In the account of Spartacus, written by Vellejus, we found this historian's statement as to the great numbers of that general's men, to perfectly agree with the circumstances in the case, although it throws a flood of light, clearing up and making perfectly reasonable, the details of that great war ; and showing it to have been one of the most pro- digious conflicts ever known. Yet great efforts seem to- have been made to suppress the history of Spartacus, and modern authors appear surprisingly anxious to perpet- uate the suppression of it. 188 VIRIATHUS. The whole matter of Viriathus bears the appearance of having been caused by a wholesale effort on the part of the Roman gens or lords, to reduce Spain to slavery, to choke her liberty-loving people down to chains, dungeons and unpaid, enforced labor, turn her fruitful lands into slave-worked plantations and stock-farms latifundia, as in Sicily, and thus build up an arrogant landed aristocracy. The immense and long-continued resistance of this hum- ble working man held that powerful race of optimates in check ; and it may be one of the principal reasons of their having never succeeded in brutalizing the Spaniards as they did the people of Sicily. CHAPTER IX. EUNUS. GRIEVANCES. MORE SALVATION ON THE VINDICTIVE PLAN. THE IRASCIBLE IMPULSE in its Highest Development and most enormous Organization Greatest of all Strikes found on Rec- ord Gigantic Growth of Slavery General View of Sicilian Landlordism and Servitude before the Outbreak Great In- crease of Bondsmen and Women Enna, Home of the God- dess Ceres, becomes the Stronghold of the Great Uprising Eunus; his Pedigree He is made King of the Slaves Story of his 10 Years' Reign Somebody, ashamed to confess it, has mangled the Histories The Fragments of Diodorus and other Noble Authors Reveal the Facts Cruelties of Damo- philus and Megallis, the immediate Cause of the Grievance Eunus, Slave, Fire-spitter, Leader, Messiah, King Venge- ance The innocent Daughter Sympathy hand-in-hand with Irascibility against Avarice Wise Selection by Eunus, of Achseus as Lieutenant Council of War Mass-meeting A Plan agreed to Cruelty of the Slaves Their Army The War begun Prisons broken open and 60,000 Convicts work- ing in the Ergastula set free Quotations Sweeping Extinc- tion of the Rich Large Numbers of Free Tramps join An- other prodigious Uprising in Southern Sicily Cleon Con- jectures regarding this Obscure Military Genius Union of Eunus, Achfeus and Cleon Harmony Victories over the Romans Insurgent Force rises to 200,000 Men Proof Overthrow and Extinction of the Armies of Hypsseus Mau- lius Lentulus The Victorious Workingmen give no Quarter Eunus as Mimic, taunts his Enemies by Mock Theatrical, Open- Air Plays in the Sieges Cities fall into his Hands His Speeches Moral Aid through the Social Struggle with 192 EUNUS. Gracchus at Rome Arrival of a Roman Army under Piso Beginning of Reverses Crucifixions Demoralization Fall of Messana Siege of Enna Inscriptions verifying History Romans Repulsed Arrival of Rupilius Siege of Tauroma- m'on Wonderful Death of Comanus Cannibalism The City falls Awful Crucifixions Second Siege of Enna Its 20,000 People are crucified OQ the G-ibbet Eunus captured and Devoured by Lice in a Roman Dungeon Disastrous End of the Rebellion or so-called Servile War. THE enornous growth of slavery just before the begin- ning of the Christian era was the cause of several of the most gigantic and bloody uprisings the world has ever known. Those convulsive episodes invariably arose from, maltreatment of workingmen and women. Dr. Bticher, whose delineations we so often mmortal, Statesman, 46, Timceus, 71, Laws, v - 19; Noth ng healthy n a slave'- soul, says Plato, and quotes the Odyssey, XVH. 832-333 -here <"ar-thun.lerj g. aristocratic Jove deprives ti\e slave- of half his rrrnd, ?oul or upper nature. 194 EUNUS. not possess souls because too mean to be honored by the gods with a thing so noble; and this accounts for their not being enumerated in the census of the city. They ap- pear to have been too lowly to belong to the numbers of mankind. Notwithstanding this fearful condition of despotism we find that the Locrians in south Italy had no slaves, being organized communists. From the first settlement of this rich country by the Pythagoreans no slaves are known to have existed until after the Roman conquests; 10 and con- sequently the culture among them of equal rights when it came to clash against the enormous spread of slavery by the cruel conquests of Rome, no doubt urged the great epidemic of uprisings which form the subject of this and other chapters of the present work. It is somewhat surprising, in the full face of these facts and the agonizing struggles of competitive warfare upon which these brutalities existed, that men still ask in won- der regarding the causes of downfall of the Greek and Rom- an empires! Another veritable renaissance, this time comprising sociologic research and comparative history, is at our threshold, destined to clear up many a point that for want of a true knowledge of the problem of labor has, through the ages, lain obscured midst the shortcomings of scorn and the musty vellum of histories and of laws. In Sicily the condition of affairs was shocking. This fruitful island, which as early as B. 0. 210, had been con- quered by Rome and turned into a Roman province, was an especial offering to that hideously cruel system of slav- ery which Roman character, above all others, seemed by nature most suited to develop with the blind attributes of barbarity. As an instance of their grasping concentra- tion of Sicilian property into few hands we quote author- ities to the effect that Leontini had but 88 landed prop- erty holders; Mutice but 188; Herbita 257; Agyrium 230. The property owners of whole cities could be counted by the dozen. u All Sicily was overrun with slaves by birth sXenophon, De Vectlg. IV. 14; Athenaeus V.; Bockb, Laurische Sll- berb. 122-4, all give accounts of great slave owners. 1 The Locriuns had no slaves which seems to be regarded by Plato as something phenomenal: Timceits, ii. Bekk.; Bockh, Pub. (Eicon. AtAn. also declares that they had no slaves. Not only did the ancients hav vast numbers of slaves (see Encyc, <'. vol. xx. p. 140), but there were many freedraen at a verv early age. See Homer, Odessey, XI. 460. iiBucher, Aufst. d. unf.' Arb. 8. 39. ENORMOUS SLAVE AND FREEDMEN'S WAR. 195 and slaves of the auction shambles. The original inhab- itants were dispossessed and driven from the land or re- mained as slaves. The small farmers had been either an- nihilated or crowded together in little towns to eke out a wretched existence under the terrors of intimidation, or had been dragged down to bondage. " Great numbers of Syrians who from their mountain homes wbre they were inured to brisk physical activities, were brought over by the Romans in chains, to till the lands as slaves. Such was the extent of slavery everywhere. 13 Greece at that time was being conquered and her hardy warriors humbled to slavery, sent in great numbers in chains to Syracuse to be transported to the fruitful lands which in the days of Ver- res were styled the granary of Rome. u The Roman con- quests of the Carthagenians and the victories over Hanni- bal were followed by the greater cruelties for their having been dearly won. Thousands of Africans hardened to ar- my life in the Punic wars, were sent into Sicily as slaves to dig the soil for the proud Roman occupants of that land. lt Only the fattest portions of land were cared for, the new possessors' idea being only gain. Strabo declares that so far as the aesthetic was concerned all was a barren waste. There were many beautiful and fruitful valleys and some plateaus which had long been celebrated for fer- tility and fine landscape. Among the wonderfully fertile and paradisaical plateaus of Sicily was that of Enna, the seat of the greatest prole- tarian strike, insurrection or bond and free labor war of of which history, tradition or inscriptions give an account in any country of the globe. This great strike or labor mutiny of Enna in Sicily took place, according to the conclusions of Dr. Bticher, 16 be- tween the years 143 and 133 before Christ, lasting 10 full years. During a period of three years the Syrian slave- king Eunus, from Apamea near Antioch but a few leagues i*I)'r>dorn9 S ci'lns, XXXIV. fragment i'. 3, 4 and elsewhere, Dinrt. is Drmnann, Arb. u. Komm. S. ^4; "In Epidamnos gab es keine Hand- vreik <;>. I < die otlentl ehen Sklaven." "Diod. i. 1 2; i.27; Cnlumella, De Be Suitica, I. 6, 3, 8,15,16, '5 Sir bo, Grog. VI.; Buch. S. 40. ^ Aufs'Sinded. unf. Arb. S. 121-128, Excrtrs. As to the name, notwith Ft:indu_' Dr. Sie.eit, we lollow the Gixek E'wa, though some Romans wrote "Henna." 196 EUNUS. to the northward of Nazareth, held sway over all of the central districts of Sicily ; and from the most reliable evi- dence he reigned, after bis coalition with Cleon in B. C. 140, for seven more years, over the whole island of Sicily. Introductorily to this extraordinary fact, proving the great power and vigorous leadership of some of the ancient labor agitations, it will be necessary to bring upon the scene a brief description of the place, the prevaling social conditions and an outline of the character of the men. The three leading men who originated and managed this great servile war, were Eunus. Achseus and Cleon. Their two enormous armies, aggregating 200,000 soldiers were united in B. C. 140, when Eunus was proclaimed the monarch over Sicily entire. We thus introduce these three branded, enslaved work- ingmen to the reader. We say branded and mean in the expression by no means a figure. They were not only branded, as at the moment we write, leaders of this labor movement are branded, with obloquy, black-list and stig- ma of men at the helm of public literature. They were lit- erally and indelibly branded with hot irons. " Large num- bers of quotations from the authors most explicitly prove that all slaves were branded ; and the field workers were not only branded on the forehead and limbs, but often on the body ; and since they were obliged, like the helots of Sparta, to go mostly naked, these disfigurations were sum- mer and winter exposed to view and not only was their disgrace stamped upon them forever but their chances of escape from bondage utterly destroyed. Once on the very spot where this great outbreak of the slaves and freedmen occurred, the plateau valley of Euna, there lived a very rich man named Damophilus. He pos- sessed legions of slaves whom he forced under sting of the lash, to work naked upon his farms. His wealth of acre- age, latifundium, consisted in part of stock farms. These teemed with herds of cattle and other animals which in those times throughout Europe were a large source of " Biich. S. 42, "Dass Alle gobrandmarkt, nur die Feldarbeiter anch ge fesselt waren." Consult the following ancient and modern -works : D'O- dorus. XXXIV. Jrapr. ii. 1, 27' 32, 36; Floras, III. 19; Marquardt, V. i. 186; Mom. Ri>m'ische GescMcftte; Mom. G. I. no. 845 ; Siefert, Erst. Sicilifch. Sklavenkrieg, S.12; Plato. THE SA VA GIL SLA V- BOLDER. 197 Roman wealth. One day a few of Ms poor, naked slaves, shivering in the chill winds of the mountain height upon which Enna stood, came to him and beseechingly implored a few rags to cover their bodies and shut out the cold which added to their sufferings. Their daring plea was an- swered by this cold-hearted capitalist with something like the following cutting leer: "Don't wandering tax-gath- erers tramp the country naked and must'nt they give their clothes to those who want them '? Would' nt I be taxed a customs duty on the rags I gave you?" 18 With that Da- mophilus ordered the shivering wretches to be tied to the whipping pust and warmed up with a sound flogging, then sent back naked to their labor of caring for their master' flocks of a thousand animals. Under such intense aggravations what else could be ex- pected than a secret organization of the thus abused and degraded laborers who worked the lands? This question comes the more cogently as we realize that large num- bers of them were as intelligent or more so than their own masters. Just at this epoch, as already shown, 19 all over Greece, Syria, Palestine, Asia Minor and the islands of the Archipelago vast numbers of trade unions and social societies existed among the freedmen and some among the slaves. We also know that when the Romans seized upon newly conquered countries they likewise seized the people, bond and free and sold them into slavery. Large numbers of these unfortunates were organized unionists, accustomed at home to the art and secret of practiced com- bination. 20 Another still more important cause of the ter- rible strike which resulted from such ill-treatment was a similarity of language. All Sicily was Greek. The Greek was the principal tongue spoken in Syria and even Phce- nicia and other portions of Palestine at and before the time of Christ ; although a bad Hebrew was the popular idiom. All the island inhabitants near by spoke the pure Greek. It also was spoken in Magna Graecia or Low r er "Dlod. frag. ii. 38, Bind. "Chaptsr xx. Infra, on trade nntoug citing inscriptions, laws Ac. in evidence. Diodorug, XXXVI. frag. 6 Dind. tells us that not only slave* but many frvedmen were engaged in these mutin es and str.kts causing great tumults and confusions. 80 Compare Liiders, Dionynschc Kftnttler,; Also Foncart, Associations Rtl. throws much light npou the subject of their religious beliefs. 198 HOME OF VEBES, GODDESS OF LABOR. Italy. Thus with intelligence, with a practiced knowledge of social combinations, with a sense of their wrongs made keen by the memory of happier days, with the true blood of the proud Greeks coursing more or less through their veins and finally but most practically, with the powerful Greek tongue uniformly at their command, they under- took that immense strike-rebellion amidst certain advan- tages which must, go far toward clearing away the phe- nomena of its transient success. The slave grievance rapidly grew into a movement for resistance in and around Enna, the little pastoral city, fa- mous for its temple of Ceres whence Plato had carried Proserpine, the daughter of that goddess to whom shep- herds, planters and especially working people had from a high antiquity looked, for her gifts of prosperity. 21 Thus here we find the link completing the chain of curious in- terest connecting the history of the Eleusinian mysteries with that of the ancient labor movement. Those labor- ing people were religious ; but about this time they were bitterly complaining that Ceres their favorite goddess had forsaken them. M Enna was the original, ancient seat and citadel or throne of the great goddess Demeter, called in Latin Ceres. She was the protecting immortal who in the Pagan mythology, seated in her temple on the heights of Enna in the island's center, shielded all Sicily from fam- ine. Her name had spread to foreign lands and she was worshiped in Attica and Syria. Thousands came on an- nual pilgrimages to Enna to worship at the temple of Ceres; and great feasts to her were here regularly celebrated, be- cause she was believed the mother of the world and the fructifying goddess of all nutritious, fruit bearing seeds .of agriculture, especially the cereals. Near that city lay, at the time of our story the meadow and by it the stream and the spring and grottoed rock where her beautiful daughter* 3 Persephone or Proserpitie, whilst gathering flowers, was stolen by Pluto and long hidden from her dis- tracted mother. The meadow was bedecked with a grand carpeting of roses, hyacinths aud violets and the soft zepli- 41 See cbapttr iv. on the mythical legend of Proserpine's abduction, the Eleusinian mysteries and the grie\ance of the proletarian outcasts. MBu.'her, Aufstande, S. 62 2s Consult Encyc. Brit. Art. Ceres ; La Rousse, Diet. Univ. Art. ^rosezptne. Much literature is extant confirming these statements. THE S^AVE KING. 199 yrs of summer were aromatic -with their odors. All the landscape was adorned with nature's tempting vegetation. Many a tiny lake with pure, clear waters peeped from be- tween the hills and hillocks of Enna and rich, well culti- vated lands on every side were, and had for centuries been the pride of Sicily. ** Wheat and other cereals had long prospered with such success that the place had obtained a celebrity. And yet, midst all these magnificent offerings of nature we see this region a scene of the most brutal and greed-cursed slavery to be found in the annals of that in- satiate institution. Antigenes is the name of one of a joint stock company whose business at that time was traffic in human beings. He certainly owned a city residence at Enna and kept his slaves about the house. ** Among these was a man who, born and brought up in Apamea near Antioch, Syria, had more than probably been a leader of an eranos 26 or a thi- asos in his native home. This is made the more probable by bis being a pretentious prophet and Messiah while in a state of bondage at Enna. It was the wonderful Eunus ; the magician, fire-spitter, wonder-worker, prophet and the plotter of the hugest slave insurrection of ancient or mod- ern times; slave-king of Enna, then king of all Sicily and commander in chief at one time of over 200,000 soldiers; the man who, with his sagacious generals, faithful and true, beat army after army of the Romans, sent years in succession to meet his slave and freedmen troops and who in the teeth, as it were, of Syracuse and of prouder Borne, actually reigned in humane splendor, apparently beloved and respected, for a period of ten years ; constituting a veritable epoch of history, though nearly lost and quite unrecognized through the taint of labor. We shall confine ourselves to a relation of all the facts and particulars to be had, based upon the evidence quoted and which per- "Strabo, Geog. VI. : Consult the exquisite picture of the landscape giv- en by Dr. Bucber, Auftlande etc. S. 52. &I)iod. XXXIV frag. ii. 5, Dinrt. K Id. frag. il. I, 5. seq. For fuller description of these trade or labor union? see chapters xiii. xx. Eunus, Cleon and Athenion were all born near the home of Jesus. Buch S. 54 . "Er war eln grosser Magier nnd Wunderthater, der zu den Gottern in nachater Bezieung stand und nicbt nnr im Traume von ihnen die Znknnft erfuhr, sondern aucb in wachendem Zustande sie leibhaft.g vor 8ich sab." 200 EUNUS. haps, no person on thorough criticism, will be able to con- trovert. EUDUS was a prophet. He pretended to work miracles, "' and was one of the ancient Messiahs. But we must not suppose that he was a weak minded man because he knew how to blow fire from his mouth or because he vaunted presages which often came true. He was in all probability an extraordinary man, full of shrewd wisdom, endowed with almost superhuman courage and certainly with great judgment and patience in selecting his generals and in giving and indulging, to keep them in place and power while holding to himself supreme con- trol. 28 When a slave he foretold that although the god- dess Demeter or Ceres had apparently forsaken the poor, yet she was revealing herself in dreams to him and prom- ising her might to their deliverance. 29 So certain was he of theocratic interference that he told of his mediatorial powers not only to his fellow working people but even to his master and to all the lords and ladies, who, to beguile their evening hours, used to invite or more probably, or- der him to recount the results of his nightly interviews with the august goddess. Pretending that as she was also the patron deity of Syria his native land, he maintained that she revealed herself to him with an assurance that he was to become a king and deliverer. Even these super- natural things he told to Antigenes at these banquets amid the laughter and derision of the skeptical guests. His in- genuousness worked upon their curiosity and their invita- tions were apparently made with a purpose of amusement during their orgies of wine and gluttony. Their sport, he however, seems to have overlooked, taking their vei i . of merriment or ridicule in a manner peculiar to himself From what followed, it cannot be imputed to Eanus that he was weak minded. He promised Antigenes to except and spare him on the day of wrath an obligation which he religiously kept and faithfully carried out. The cruelties of Pamophilus, 30 who caused his working hands to be whipped, struck deeply into the sensitive feel- ings of thousands of other men. They were able to come together, secretly or otherwise to discuss their sufferings 2S Biod. Ifltm, fragment ii. 5. 6. Diod. XXXIV. 6, 6 7. and 8 of frng. it. so .Mem, XXXIV. frag. ii. 34, 35. Diud. A CRUSL WOMAN. THE COUP LOT. 201 tind form their plot. Dr. Biicher understands from glean- ings of the Vatican and other fragments that the plot orig- inated with the slaves of Damophilus. 31 It is however, quite certain that what came to pass was spontaneous re- sulting from a combination of grievances and a strong re- ligious belief in Eunus. The other slaves of Antigenes also took part. Damophilas and his yet more cruel wife Megallis, appear to have been models of ferocity. Their young and beau- tiful daughter was the exception. Megallis was in the habit of whipping her female slaves to death with her own hand. It was like a mania people sometimes possess, for delighting in scenes of suffering. Endowed with unlim- ited power through the Roman laws and usages, to do as she pleased, she suited any action to fancy and gloried in tearing the poor life from her helpless victims. Nor was the ferocity of her husband much less. The incident we have recited was probably one of leniency compared with many that remain untold, Certain it is, that his atroci- ties together with those of his wife toward her defence- less female slaves are what decided this great uprising. But we have the extremely pleasing assurance that the feeling which those slaves entertained toward the kind- hearted daughter of this ferocious pair a young maiden whom they all loved proved her palladium ; for with the greatest tenderness they guarded and spa red her through the scenes of blood. sa Plans of a great revolutionary revolt were soon decided upon, and collusion with Eunus secured the sympathy of the city slaves. These arrangements were then commu- nicated to those in the country. The plot was thus completed and the moment set. All had enthusiastically determined to break loose by a desper- ate struggle, from their unendurable tortures and daunt- lessly brave the storm with all the consequences this per- ilous action entailed. They had worked themselves up to believe that their goddess would be propitious. By preconcerted arrangement, four hundred slaves as- sembled at the setting in of night, in a field near the cita- BUclier Anfstdnde ?ji> TOW Aafi;,|' -poj Tifas oixfiovt." 202 HUM US. del of Enna. They qiiickly organized a meeting. They then each took a sacred oath to persevere in their enter- prise and hold fast together. The little multitude came armed. Their weapons each had obtained as best he could. All were armed with courage and with anger ; and each determined to defend his new liberty to the death. They marched up to the Enna heights under a leader who used all his prodigious arts of legerdemain, gesture, and fire- spitting, to encourage them and prevent a panic. With- out meeting resistance they gained admission through the gates, into the city. There were the millionaires with their ladies, the tem- ple of the goddess, the theatre, the place of entertainment. The insurgents instantly took possession of the streets and as they marched, singled out their well known victims. Rich men and women who long had held unbridled power over hitherto helpless slaves, now saw the danger as they felt their guilt. Pitiless was the retributive reaction of the enraged and surging mass. They brained their own- ers ; and those who had made sport of their leader Eunus, likewise bit the dust. All slaves and prisoners found in dungeons and in irons were set free. M A terrible scene followed. Children were torn from their mothers' arms, and women ravished in presence of their husbands, who, bound in cords, could make no resistance to this fiendish- ness. Scenes of death were everywhere enacted; for from the onset of this bloody work, the slaves, stinging with a keen memory of their sufferings, M enjoyed with a peculiar glee which fills the savage, the opportunity, each with cuts and gashes to cross out his ghastly account. To a thus quickened lust of vengeance, there rushed a remembrance of the cruelties of Damophilus who gloated on the bruises of his clubs and the sting of his whips, and of Megallis, his wife, who had whipped to death her female servants. It was an hour of vengeance. All centered upon this sweet- est morsel to the savage; summary retribution. Blood of the now helpless rich flowed freely amid the yells of the naked slaves whose brands and scars gleamed hideously by the fires of the burning houses of their fallen masters. Great numbers of slave-holders paid their former acts of indi scretion with their lives. s>Diod. XXXIV. frag. ii. 12. Id. . 49 A TERRIBLE SCENE OF CARNAGE. 203 Large numbers of slaves who were kept in service within the city and who had previously been prepared for the cri- sis, now joined the insurgents, swelling their forces and making the capture of the city complete. We have in other pages 3S shown that in nearly all trade unions, especially the branch of them known as the thiasoi, they seem to have had an officer whose duty it was to fore- tell, work miracles and do other sage things, such as in those early ages of the world were not only common, but were thought necessary. The idea of a Messiah or deliv- erer sent from heaven to ransom the lowly from their ev- erywhere prevailing misery permeated all their organiza- tions, M Eunus therefore, in his pretentions, but copied from thousands. The hours of grateful vengeance sped on the breezes of that truculent lullaby. Object after object of their de- testation and hatred was dragged forth and amid screams for mercy, relentlessly silenced with knife, flames and blud- geon until before the fury waned the pitiful wails of the slaughtered grew faint through sheer extermination. But one there was who yet remained uncaptured and unpunished. This was Damophilus. On consultation it was ascertained that he was cowering in his pavillion, a little distance from the city. The insurgents sent thither a detachment with orders to bring him in alive. By this time the rage of the slaves had begun to assuage. They brought their great abuser before Eunus in the auditori- um of the theatre, whither they adjourned to hold a trial of his case, Damophilus, covered with wounds and bleed- ing, his arms pinioned, his fine dress torn and soiled, was dragged before the still maddened crowd, his wife Meg- allis with him, both trembling in fateful expectancy of their doom. The rich man was granted an opportunity to answer and spar the scathing accusations that were heaped npon him bitter reminders of his mercilelssness to them when the power was his to- abuse them. But Damophilus coyly and cunningly met each accusation with words clothed in ambiguity and dazzle and parried off their bitter bluntness by his affected utterances of honeyed words. He was "Chapter xvlil. and elsewhere. Foucart, AttoeiaKont Bel. 204 EUNUS. making inroads upon their sympathies when Zeuxes and Hermias, two powerful Greek slaves, who had themselves, in other days been victims of his cruelty, rushed between him and hope, one with a dagger and the other an axe. These men were keenly sensible to the progress Damo- philus was making on the susceptibilities of his tatterde- malion jury; and fearing lest his mellifluous explanations should overcome them and that they might thus commit the absurdity of punishing thousands less stamped with cruelties and turn loose the deep-dyed monsters whose atrocities were the immediate cause of the revolt, 37 they crashed down the aisle of the theatre, advanced upon him weapons drawn and put a violent end to this mock trial of their foe by beating out his brains upon the spot. Di- odorus relates that one of them stabbed him with a knife in the side and the other chopped off his head with the axe. Nor was this all. The terrified Megallis, who must have seen the reeking knife and the merciless guillotine by which her husband had fallen, heard his pleadings for an extension of life and with horror beheld his ghastly pun- ishment, was delivered up, bound hand and foot, to the tender mercies of her female slaves little less instinctively savage than their male companions frenzied with woman's hatred and still goaded by memory's spectres of their own mothers and daughters perishing under the lash once wielded by this most pitiless enemy, the now supplicating Megallis' own hand. Little could be hoped for under such circumstances. Mercy was impossible. The horrified and shrieking lady was, like Damophilus, arraigned for mock trial before a horde of nude and blood-grimed women, taunted until each imbittered one requited herself with cen- sure and derision, with dallying flings and a satiety of jeers such as only wild women avenging a wounded love, pos- sess the genius to consummate. When all these prelim- inaries were ended, Megallis was seized by a dozen mus- cular females, stripped of her finery and undoubtedly her clothes, dragged to the pinacle of a lofty crag in which tLe mountain city of Enna abounds. All effort of the shriek- ing, fainting woman to writhe out of their clutching fin- gers fast fixed upon her throat and body were unavailii,,:;' 'Diod. frag, ii 14, D ndori. THE FRIGHTFUL EXECUTION. 205 and fruitless. They drew her out upon the projecting prominence yawning over the abyss well known to the shuddering unfortunate as the Golgotha of miscreants and recalcitrant slaves. From these frowning crags eagles and ominous night-birds were wont to startle the listener with their screams. Legends of horrors of this fatal rock were told by mothers as early inculcations to their babes. This wretched victim may have also more than once contributed her ingenuity descanting upon its boding gloom and ter- rors as she lavished it on the torture of her now avenging chattels. But all this sentimentalism suffices nothing in presence of so ghastly a reality as the death that now frowned, and stared this quivering mother in the face. The unimpress- ible avengers were not to be frustrated by the moans and sobs which lYrmed a part of the solace of their grievances. When they had dragged her to the very brink they no doubt made her undergo some of the prevailing formulas of death and then plunged her headlong down the preci- pice where she was battered to a jelly upon the sharp flints of the dell below. Such, according to Diodorns, Strabo, the modern critics and some tale-telling inscriptions, was the fate of an ancient millionaire and his wife whom great 1 r sperity had rendered void of all the amenities and lovliness of civilized life. There yet remained one member of that fate-stricken family the daughter already alluded to ; a young lady of both tender age and heart. M This damsel had from her babyhood shown exceeding sympathy and kindness to- ward the female slaves in their misfortunes. Never had she taken part in her mother's cruelties. She had, on the contrary, shown them the tenderest commiseration ; and her many little offerings during their sufferings, had often gone far in the direction of healing a breach between fate and despair. Those whom the master's love of vengeance had left bound and often chained in dungeons of the er- gfi$titlnm, with wl>irh ancient slave farms were cursed, she had comforted and administered to. Could such lindness be now forgott;- l . Con d the remem:;i ce of this chi.d- benef actress, even in that awful vortex o: ^> iolence, be over- looked? Could conscience be stifled even midst butch cries I) > d. fra-. 39. 206 EUNUS. whose mocking carnival made death a saiire upon empty ideas of right and wrong? Or could such a pretty thing as sympathy wedge itself in amongst the howls and tur- bulence that shook this scene of oblivion and of death ? Yes. A love which was stamped into their fierce, rough natures still lived and warmed them like a sunbeam, for- cing itself foremost, even into this terrible qualm reacting against morality. Not a ruthless hand was laid upon her trembling form. Speechless unanimity prevailed on the question of sparing her life. All would spare and protect a faithful friend. On consultation Hermias, one of her father's executioners, was chosen leader of a picked band -who soon after performed the perilous task of escorting her safely to the distant city of Catana, the home of some relatives near the sea. We have in this episode another instance substantiat- ing the opinion heretofore expressed, that the emotion of sympathy has been a growth in the breast of the crushed and humiliated classes, fledged from their schools of mu- tual love or commiseration and common support. Poor people are themselves the makers of most of the sympa- thies which they enjoy. Even the daughter of Damoph- ilus grew in sympathy at the sight of misery. However rude the crust screening from view our inner nature, that nature never had, under Pagan control, much sympathy allowed it. Sympathy seems clearly to have been a growth out of a vast association in many parts of ancient Greek and Roman states and did not thrive among the opulent. Concupiscence with its cupidity and irascibility were the pillars on which rested the ancient paganism and its aged competitive system ; and though the majorities who were of the working class possessed enough of the latter in its crudest form, yet they had little greed or avarice. They in fact, developed sentiments of a reverse nature. They longed for a socialism that would breed sympathy with its mutual love and care. Diodorus, one of our informants on this subject of the slaves of Enna, in referring to their treatment of the daughter of Damophilus and Megallis, says : "These slaves on strike demonstrated, in showing no sympathy or mercy to those who had been their mas- ters and in delivering themselves up to their own violence and wrath, that what they did was not the mean prompt- THE ORDEAL OF VENGEANCE ABATES. 207 ings of barbarity, but a just retribution or punishment for the injustice which had been done to them ;" 39 bold words indeed, but just and true ; and the student of sociology may now divine the reasons why that brave publicist has lain for 2,000 years in obloquy, with his wonderful tales and descriptions in tatters among the rubbish of the vaults, or later, in the literary sepulchres of the Vatican. It appears that this theatre which had been the scene of the fury we have described became the focus of delib- eration after the frenzy of their vengeance had subsided and the more serious matters connected with the future began to force themselves upon their reflection. They saw that as soon as the news of their action reached Rome, the scornful power which for ages had thrived by con- quest and its booty of lands and slaves, there would spring up an immense army to suppress them. They had the sa- gacity to foresee that their only hope was in a strong army well equipped and disciplined, powerful enough to cope, even with the forces of Rome. It further appears from the evidence that so deep had been the foresight and so long the communings on this matter, so secretly had the whole uprising been concocted, that all things necessary to this resistance were well-nigh prepared beforehand; and the general appearance with its sequel demonstrate that the central idea of a tumultuous feast of blood and dissipation and of subsequent demoralization and gluttony was far from them. But it cannot be denied that they had already determined to throw down the slave system of which they were victims and upon its ruins build up a social fabric which should deal equitably and humanely by all. To one acquainted with the vast and inexhaustabie power of Rome, this dream of the poor slave socialists would have seemed an absurd machination of the fancy. But on the other hand they were on an island with whose rocky cliffs, caverns, forests and by-paths they were well acquainted. They wanted to build up a kingdom of men and women emancipated from slavery and economic want with their leader Eunus, on the throne. They held good to this resolution. Eunus was elected king. 40 It does not appear that their Dlod. XXXIV. fragment u. 39. ^ Idem. frag. ii. 14. 208 EUNUS. choice of him was on account of any military tact which he had shown as their leader nor on account of his supe- rior capacities of any kind, unless it was that of working wonders. This however, was extremely necessary in the mind of superstitious men, as were most of the ancients,, especially the laboring class who, in their unions among the freedmen, often kept a sorcerer who knew how to spit fire, dawdle with the little oracles and pronounce proph- ecies. Even the rich had their magi or fortune-tellers and their haruspices, as well as higher priests who often de- cided the turn of conquests by the simple consultation of an oracle. Eunus could blow fire, tell wonders, pretend and prophecy ; and Eunus was elected king. Again, the name Eunous, the benificent, was considered a harbinger of deeds certain to bring forth good. King Eunus, on receiving his crown, rose equal to the majesty of his new estate. He assumed all the oriental bearing of kingly dignity. He established the offices of state with such splendors as he could command. There was given him for a queen a female slave who like him- self, hailed from Apamea in Syria probably old play- mates. Such was the happy one to be raised to the queen- ship. To crown himself in still more royal imitation of the dignities of his fatherland he named himself Antiocb. From the moment Eunus began his reign he appears to have been successful. Full details are wanting. From Cicero we have hints 41 that the temple of Ceres or Dem- eter was preserved with scrupulous care, as well as all the property belonging to it. No doubt however, he changed the officers of the temple from high priests to vestal vir- gins, supplanting the old by a choice of his own people. Biicher thinks" that his administration from first to last, considering all circumstances peculiarly connected with the character and notions of the Semitic and Aryan races with whom he had to deal, showed more than usual fit- ness. He understood the theory of government. It is certain that at Enna there was one of those cavern pris- ons, such as had been dug by Dionysius the tyrant at Syr- acuse. We know that those pestilential subterranean ' Cicero. Verrez. fv. 60, 112 J- Au/st. S. 59: -'Metir als jjewohnl che Befahigun^." Si 'fort. S. 18; "Man wiihlte iha zum kuaig ....well er den A ui stand fcegonncu hatte." EUXUS PROVES TRUE TO HJS WORD. 209 dungeons existed in great numbers, called by the Romans ergastula, in many parts of Italy and bicily. They were often underground workshops like the quarries the hor- ror of the ancient slave. Florus and Piodorus combine in the statement that more than 60,000 fighting soldiers of the great rebel army were convicts turned loose from these prisons 43 during the war. Eunus incarcerated a large number of the rich in the holes at Enna and it may be presumed that the old prisoners were first discharged to give room for the new. A council of war was held and it was decided to put all these many prisoners to death. This was the result of a mass meeting of the faithful and unfaltering to Eunus, as a forewarning of the certain re- sult of taking part in any effort to escape, or of mixing and intriguing to restore the old government. Few of the old rule people were left alive except the free mechan- ics who could make arms ; and even they were compelled to work in fetters. To those who had invited Eunus to a seat of mock honor on account of his pretended powers in legerdemain and gifts of divination at their sympo- siums and for the amusement of guests, and whom he had promised their lives in case he realized his heaven-offered kingdom, he held good his word. He also saved them their fortunes. " They were spared by a royal decree and the mandate was Bent them in true regal form. He also saved the temples and other holy property. ** At length Eunus called a council of permanent govern- ment, First of all was chosen Achseus. "He was, in a formal manner made consiliarius of the faithful" The ancient author who leaves us these choice fragments of history 48 suffixes his opinion that Eunus in making choice of him as lieutenant and counselor general, showed won- derful ability and prudence. This man understood and deeply sympathized with the Syrian element of which the slave population of Enna by conquest was largely com- posed. But he was moreover endowed with extraordi- 43 Floras, Epit. Hist Rom. III. 19, 6 ; "Hoc miraculum prirunin dao millia ex obviig. mox jure belli refract. a erga-tulis, sexaglnta amplins luillia nc.t Kxeroitom '' M Diod. XXXIV. frag, li . 42 ; "Tuv oiiav Sf TOIJ an-oo-TaTais KOTaora* dpio?."; Bucher, AufsU S 59; Siefert, Sklavenk. 8. 17. C:o. Verr, iv. 60, 112. Diod. Id. frajr. ii. 42. , 210 EUNUS. nary wisdom and unscrupulous will-power in expedients, where emergencies required it. He was capable of fear- lessly organizing, on the inspection of a circumstance, a resistance powerful enough to shatter the peril whatever it might be ; and he had the judgment and force of char- acter to push it to its immediate and successful results. He was bold enough to plainly tell to Eunus his misgiv- ings and impart to him the truth ; and that dignitary had wisdom and a sufficient amount of common sense to. hear him with composure and acquiesce in his views. A perfect agreement was the result. Dr. Bucher gives it as his opinion that Achseus was one of the thousands of unfortunates who had been reduced to slavery through the Roman conquest of Achaia, B. C.146, or about 3 years before. 47 Achaia being in the heart of the Greek Peninsula, on the gulf of Corinth, near and includ- ing the great city of that name, was of purest Greek; and Greeks in those days were mighty men. But the brutal fiat of Roman conquest had recently swept over the whole Grecian territory and buzzard-like, swallowed up her fa- mous provinces and cities and sold her braves into slav- ery. We thus find circumstantial evidence that Achaeus had the sagacity, acumen and intrepidity of his race. So well pleased was the slave-king with Achseus that he made him a present of one of the fine houses of his former millionaire masters. The success of the great insurrection from henceforth is to be attributed in great measure to Achseus, general- in-chief. In three days he had armed and equipped no less than 6,000 soldiers and had them ready for the ex- pected armies from Rome which all well knew would soon arrive by fbrced marches to put down the rebellion. As all these slaves knew the awful consequences of defeat, we may imagine the incentives which prompted their activity in making ready for coming conflicts. The outside agricultural places soon began to be heard from. They consisted of heterogeneous ranks a motly mass, who, rushing from their work on hearing the news of the revolt, straggled into the new head-quarters from far and near. They streamed into the town, each with a d. unf. Arb. S. 60. ORGANIZING THE SOCIALIST ARMY. 211 T)utcher-knife, an axe, a sickle, a pitchfork of iron or wood. Slings were weapons with widen the numerous shepherds were best practiced ; and they knew their use with fatal effect. Inspired with a hope of liberty at any price or ag- ony of effort, they were ready to stake their lives under perilous odds for a chance at winning it. There were at that moment no troops of the Roman le- gions in Sicily. The only immediate forces to be feared by the workingmen were the militia from the different cities. There had occurred no dangerous strikes among the slaves for many years here, and in consequence, Rome had not, as in Etruria, on the Tarantine gulf and else- where, provided a standing army kept stationary under a praetor for the express purpose of suppressing the ever- recurring rebellions of labor ** which were not only in this nation troublesome but had proved themselves at Sparta and Athens a great source of danger. Besides this, Koine was busy quellieg similar disorders nearer home. The only available force at hand was the militia. Meanwhile the insurgents were recruiting a powerful force by tapping every resource that offered a promise of strength. Among others, as already noticed, the great cavern jails were full. *' All through the country these workhouses whether underground, in towns or out on the farms, were broken into and emptied, the prisoners ran- somed and those able to bear arms welcomed to the army of resistance. 50 Our principal resource whence we extract these facts is Diodorus Siculus, who wrote elaborately on the subject, often giving minute details; but being an hon- est man and writing of his own native country, committed what in his times seems to have been the error though no fault of his conscience of telling the truth. We in conse- quence, as students of sociology must charge against that slave-holding aristocrcy, " all mutilation of his history, especially those paragraphs delineating the Roman disaster Liv. XXIX. 17, 41, XXXH. 26 XXXIII. 36 ^D'od. XXXIV. frag. ii. 36: "Kai rovriav rods ft.fv n-eSais Jeer/uevW eis ras a-vi/ep-yaerias eve'/3aAA." Dairiophilus had also made them work in the fields while chained. 6"Diod. frag. li. 25 26. 61 A .-imilar outrage has been committed upon LH-y's history ofSpar- tacuR t rovtd l>y the i>itomies or bap er headings XCV. XCVI. & XCVJI wh ch have survi ed the wreck We give further details 01 th s disaster together with that of Sallust, fartheron. 212 EUNUS. which followed: for although som a clauses are left com- plete others are bereft of their treasures of priceless infor- mation. A large portion of the details, amounting in all, to chapters, has apparently been sequestered through the van- dalism of contemporaneous censorship and the inestimable manuscripts disrupted from their historical chain covering at least ten years of this eventful rebellion which went far toward shaping the notions of men and preparing the world for the advent of a different culture. At any rate we have a statement that not less than 60,000 prisoners were delivered from the ergastula 62 and we know that these also joined the rebellion. Everywhere were the slave-holders murdered, and in proportion as the more desperate ones were delivered from bondage and fetters, the search all over the island to find and exterminate them be- came more industrious. On the eastern side of Sicily were magnificent fields of wheat and different grains and a large amount of pasture lands stocked with cattle and sheep and bearing prodigious quantities of wine and olive oil. The slave hordes now free, swept over this country, murdering and dpstroying all before them, notwithstanding the efforts of Acliseus at restraint. The story of Cambalus, a wealthy citizc-n of Morgantion in the upper districts of Symgethus, is told M as an exception to the usual prudence of this com- mander : This nobleman while on a hunting excursion came across a band of these prowlers. Alarmed at his close prox- imity to the dangerous men he turned and ran toward the city, following the high road. When near his own home he met his father on horseback going toward the danger, who immediately dismounted and begged the son to mount and save himself by flight. While thus in filial and pater- nal love, tarrying, neither deciding to take to flight, the free- booters came up and killed them both. M But Achseus gen- eral \y forbade such strong measures. Wherever he heard . Epit. III. 16. els' where quoted. s t the uprising was general; for ev- erywhere the slaves ran away from their masters and Lur- ried to join the Ennian aria j. Achseus in a short time found himself master of a well equipped army of 10,000 men. He devoted his energies to drilling these raw troops and teaching them their new business. We are wanting details for showing the exact dates, but the events of which we speak, according to the close examination of all material by Dr. Biicher, make it between B. C. 143 and 140. 57 Repeated skirmishing took place between Achseus and the advance guards of the Ro- man praetors but as often the latter were totally overthrown. Undoubtedly many great and terribly bloody battles were fougVit. M Certainly the results were disastrous to the Ro- mans; for tne territory of Eunus' kingdom gradually en- larged stretching over upper Symsethus and eastward down to the sea. It also struck northward and extended for a considerable distance to the west. But we hear of noth- ing having occurred in the south, up to this point. 69 There was however, a great uprising there, soon to be heard of. The signal successes of Achaeus had become noised abroad. Slaves everywhere were waiting for a leader. A new and almost distinct strike was preparing to burst forth south- ward near the coast, among the prod active. fields and pas- tures long celebrated-for stock-breeding, especially that of draft animals and fine horses. Along this seaboard no harbors appear. The land lies in plateaus, with precip- itous steeps overhanging the Mediterranean; but the levels above and the occasional valleys, are exceedingly fruitful. "* It was the celebrated Agrigentum. Along the southern coast of Sicily at that time few inhabitants ex- isted. The old places which had once been occupied by the colonists from Megara and Rhodes had been long de- populated. Acragus, well remembered by the Romans as having 5" Idem, Excurz, "ttber die Chronologic dts s.cilischen Sflavenkriege und Verwimdtes " S 121-129. Here Biieher gives data (which we follow,) show- inii that it must h*ve been B C 143-140 or the, first two years before the trmy of Acbaeus amounud to 10,000 men. 8D ; od. XXXIV, trae. ii. Dind. > Biicher, Aufst S 62. WV mostly follow Biicher's a mirable tracings of th" ' ar i'rom this po'nt. ouStrabo, Gtog. VI.; Cicero. V*rr II. i.'2d; D'Oroille, Sicula, p. 289 Plin. // A". VIII. 64 CLEON. 215 withstood, during the Punic wars all those terrible vicissi- tudes and had long been inured to hardships, still main- tained itself and a good share of its population. It was a rich portion of the island and large numbers of the land owners possessed and exploited slaves who became so nu- merous that they performed all the labor leaving none for the freedmen who were thus reduced to the condition of roaming tramps and beggars. Some men owned 500 61 in the earlier days and there still existed very rich men in the city, holding large portions of land and many human crea- tures as chattels. Here was the seat of a recorded instance of the prevailing cruelties : One Polias, having invited to dinner an equally heartless slaveholder, who was unwill- ing to allow his slaves rest long enough to sleep, called to- gether his own, especially the women and children, and like the animals, fed them nuts and dried figs the only nour- ishment they were allowed for supper. 62 It is not to be wondered at then, if the slaves whenever opportunity offered, ran away from such masters and some- times became cunning and dangerous brigands. Another desperate character of this war was Cleon, called in Livy, "Gleon," a Cilician by birth, 63 from the town of Comana in the Taurian region of southern Asia Minor. It appenrs that he and his brother, called "Coma" by Valerius Maximus in his Memorabilia, were runaway slaves who, having betaken themselves to the mountains drove a maraud- ing business in the general interest of their fellows still in bonds. Here thev plied the arts of the latrocinia or high- way robbery, and stood ready to espouse the rebellion ol Eunus which was now creeping toward their confines. An- other theory of Cleon is that like Spartacus, he had else- where learned to be a robber but had been seized by a Sicil- i Siefert, Sir-ilische Sklavenkriege. S. 38. Stobaeu9, Floril. LX1I. 48; Cf. Bii-her. 64, Tu his note 2. S. 64. Dr. Biicher reiera to Cleon's birthplace, as follows : " DiO. 216 EUNUS. ian coreair and brought over to this place where he was sold in slavery and set to work herding horses in the pastures, whence he escaped and made himself the terror of the re- gion, playing his old pranks with success. But this theory fails to account for his brother. By some means C'eon, who had a strong band ever on the alert, heard of the great movement of Eunus at Enna. The distance was certainly not so great bat that they could have held correspondence ; especially after the forces of Achseijs had, by victory after victory over the praetorian militia, cleared the obstacles away. Cleon on hearing the particulars of the insurrection, ran up the flag of open rebellion and offered freedom to all slaves who should espouse his cause. The mighty name he had already won went far toward deciding in- numerable slaves. Everywhere these Agrigentine bonds- men responded to the shrill bugles of Cleon. As fast as they came into camp he armed and drilled them for ser- vice. Battles must have followed for we find him in pos- session of the city. The two most powerful captains of the rebellion now stood over-against each other, both hav- ing won battles, undoubtedly important ones; for as our details are missing and the leading points preserved, we are left to our imagination in making up the links in the chain of history. It was now the hope of the rich own- ers that these rough commanders would, though at first victorious, soon have a falling out ; that jealousy would prove a quicker means of ridding them of their now ter- rible enemy than their own opposition ; for such were the proportions of this uprising that Cleon soon counted up- wards of 70,000 men. 66 With such an army it was reason- ably conjectured that he would not long submit to a sub- ordinate position under Eunus. Biicher in assuring us that the reverse was the case, ** suggests that the cause of the perfect harmony known to have existed may have been Cleon's superstitious faith in the infalibilty of Eunus as a mediator for poor humanity between God and man ; 6 L1vy, LVI. >: C. Ful -'o Consuli mandatnm est, hnjus belli inttinm fuit EunvH servu.-', natione Syru<; qui contracts agre.-tiuin servorum manu e,t solutis ergastulis justi exerctus nun.ei-um implevit. Gleon qnoque, alter eervus, ad septuaginta miliia tcn'orum contraxit : tcopiis junctis adver- BUS populi RomanI exereitum Lelluni sffipe gtsserunt." Buclier, Aufst, S. 65. CLEON'S SEVENTY THOUSAND. COALITION. 217 it being fully believed that he was a Messiah. 6T This might have done much, but the fact that they knew that in the absence of perfect harmony their own lives would certainly be speedily lost, together with their cause, is the more probable solution to this problem. Cleon accepted a position of what, in our military terms, may be called a brigadier general, of the grand army under Eunus, or ra- ther under Achseus, lieutenant-general to Eunus ; and the force assigned him was only 5,000 men. The two armies of the great mutiny against capital be- came thus consolidated into one. It is stated by Livy that in Agrigentuin alone there were 70,000 men under arms ; ** and we have seen that Achseus already had a large, victorious force. Thus the combined armies stead- ily grew in numbers and discipline. This immense force was divided up between many leaders ; Eunus being the Commander-in-chief with Achgeus and soon afterwards Cle- on, the two principal lieutenants. The armies stretched from Enna to Agrigentum and a wing extended south and eastward to the sea perhaps as far eastward as Syracuse. Soon after these arrangements were accomplished the new prsetor arrived in Sicily with an army of well equipped Roman soldiers consisting of 8,000 men. How many stragglers of those demoralized forces whom Achgeus had often punished and dispersed, came to swell the freshly landed army of this prsetor, L. Plautius Hypsseus, 69 does not appear. But Dr. Siefert, on the strength of a statement of a fragment, says that no regular troops accompanied Hypsseus from Rome. Hostilities south now became general. The Roman did not have long to wait A force of 20,000 slaves probably of both Achseus and Cleon met him, fully inspired with the supernatural powei's of their fire-spitting king, as well as burning with old hatred and a desire to settle accounts with their enemies. A great battle was fought. Hyp- sseus was utterly routed and ruined; and the rebels were left masters of the field. ^Floras, III. 19, 4: "Syru3 quirtam nomine Eunus fanatico furore eimulatu duin S3'riae deae comas jactat, ad libertatem et arraas sei vos, quasi numerum raper-urn concita.it; idque ut divinitu? fieri probaret, in ore abclita nuce, quam sulphure et igne stipaverat, ieniter inspiraus, fl.uumam fmidebat." *'Liv. L.VI. Epil. ad ftn. ; See quotation in note (55. ^Dioct. frag, ii . 18. Tfii;- 13 probal/ly arcmi:ant of a full statement tow mostly lost. 218 EUNUS. The news of this additional victory spread rapidly and those slaves who had hitherto hesitated, now flocked to the insurgent army, soon swelling it to the almost incredible magnitude of 200,000 men. The language of our infor- mation is, however, too assuring to warant us in dallying over doubts ; for not only do the ancient authorities give these figures but we also find the strong reinforcement of the modern philological critics who make no hesitation in pronouncing it to be true. 70 The people at Rome enter- tained hopes that the force under Hypsseus would be of sufficient strength to put down the rebellion ; but as time wore by, straggling remnants of the shattered army ver- ified a dismal fear that great disasters had befallen them ; otherwise the gloomy news of the expedition was lost. Other expeditions soon followed the sad one just men- tioned. As we know that in a similar rebellion by Sparta- ens some 70 years later, the armies of Rome were large, so in reason, we cannot imagine them to have been small in Sicily. Time and other despoilers have deprived us, it is true, of many details, in histories we know to have been written. But enough remains to attest the enormous pro- portions of the Sicilian labor rebellion and the success that everywhere attended the arms of the workingmen. C, Fulvius Flaccus, consul, appears next to have come to the scene ; his colleague Scipio Africanus going to Numantia. This commander was however, preceded by a certain Man- lius, mentioned in the fragments of Diodorus referred to. He, like his predecessors was annihilated. There can be no doubt that this word applies here in its literal sense. So complete was the extinction that scarcely a human be- ing ever returned to convey intelligence of the disaster to Rome. Then followed Lentulus, afterwards Piso and Ru- pillius. Whenever the Romans gained an advantage by dint of superior military skill they lost it through the over- whelming and ever increasing numbers of the slaves, who in addition to their own manufacture of arms and muni- tions of war which they forced the freedmen-mechanics " of Sicily to accomplish for them, turned all the splen- "o Bii?h S. 65: "Bald betrug sib srer/en 200,000 Lente;" also S. 126: "Nichr lange nachher beliiuft ich die Zahl der Anfstandischen inssepammt, Soldaten, ^ensenmiinner, und Dnnerustoto, auf 200.000, "unrt in vieien Krie- gen kampfen sie cliicklich, neltener crleiden sic N THE FEROCIOUS NECESSITY. 219 did weapons wrested from the defeated warriors of the Roman nobility to their own uses and grew invincible. ** No prisoners were spared. Eunus had undoubtedly re- solved upon this plan from the first. He killed Antigenes his owner, also Python, with his own hand, both of whom he had promised a "cheap deal," and spared the friends of the festivities as we have related, only as a matter of faith vith his word. He had opened all the dungeons of the ergastula which confined many who labored in those grot- toes. What more could they want of those disgusting holes ? No. With them there was no lingering prisoner To be taken prisoner was to die a ferocious necessity ! Besides these barbarous economies, they possessed the remarkable negligence of the Romans which had struck into Sicily at the time of the defeat and final evacuation of the island by the Carthagenians, in B. C. 210. Every- where the walls of cities and other fortified places were battered down, and left mouldering in disuse and every- where was found unhindered admission to the cities, the storehouses and the citadels. 7S Much of the success of their phenomenal marches was attributed to the super- natural powers of king Eunus. They believed themselves invincible ; and as time wore on, year after year of undiminished prosperity apparently fortified this belief. Eunus once led his victorious forcea before one of the few fortified places that attempted to withstand him and to the besieged inhabitants spoke with bitter irony, denying that he was even the cause of the trouble, or his men in rebellion. On the contrary, they themselves by their former atrocities, had driven them to a compulsory step which they little desired to take. In full consciousness of their enemy's helplessness and the stinging remembrance of their former sufferings, they made a great show of their triumphs, parading the now emancipated revolutionists in pompous formality and for- 71 This fact mast bs considered as applying to a certain number of freed- men denominated by the modern labor organization** Scabs, who had made themselves obnoxious by an obsequious catering to masters ; for we find that a few years later (see Athenion, chapter y.) there were great numbers. O! free artisans who espoused the cause of the slaves and took up arms tcladly in the defense of a common cause. *Bucher, Aufsi. S. 66"Wuideanch elnen kleinen Erfols? errungen, im niiclisten Augenhllcke rafl'te sicli der Auf stand nut doppeltpr Wutli zu- earn men and drang unauthaltsam u; u {.ruueaui, wie alle iocialeu Kric-ge, weiier." > Consult Diod. XXXIV. frag. ii. 45. 220 EUNUS. eing the reluctant to hear the history of the causes of it, M 'through mock theatrical representations in mimic compo- sition, as was practiced in Syria the fatherland of Eunus. This practice referred to by Diodorus, 75 no doubt has ref- erence to the great labor unions called the eranoi, or bet- ter, their branch, the thiasoi, 76 a part of whose duty was to provide entertainment for the members. It is known that mimic entertainments of a histrionic character were frequently among the programs of amusement. "There was" says Dr. Biicher, "more than one bitter drop spilled into the bowl of misery at such seiges; since overturned riches, unbridled rapine, purposless power, appeared to gentlemen to be the cause of their destruction ; it was in fact, a practical lesson against the will of these compul- sory listeners to mimic tragedies, which, like every other lesson where the spirit is against its learning, is fruitless and unheeded." " The bitter and bloody conflict of this great mutiny of the working people of Sicily had now been raging about 6 years with the prophet of Antioch at its head. The mil- itary force of Rome such as she could spare, had been ex- hausted again and again in efforts to regain her foothold in Sicily, but in vain. The slaves were at last masters of the island. Here, by a most fortunate circumstance, the lacerated history of Diodorus remains so unbroken in this particular link as to explicitly transmit this truth ; and in words which cannot well be misunderstood. 78 Diodorus, though his veracity has long lain in abeyance, has outlived his calumniators, and great savants, having proved the truth of statements by his pen which for many centuries lay in ridicule, are now searching for them as being those most valuable in critical use. Besides the cities mentioned, there were many on the east coast of the island which also, one by one, joined the army of the revolutionists. Some of them, it is known, were taken by force. Others offered themselves to the conquerors, partly through their own wish, partly from a ttTd. fracr. 11. it Id. 84. tf> See Luders, Die Dionys. Ktinstler, Tafeln I-II. Also Infra, chap. xvii. H Aaf.it. d. UTtfoeien Jii belter, S. 67. ' 8 Diod. XXXIV. frag. ii. 25. "Oufien-ore trracrts eyeVero njAtKavn; Sov\re in gvnnathv w.tli thf> mfircenarv r y_.V avfidiopals 7reoi6pdA7O TO c -oA^t/)

deipfi>. Oi 4' t>X OUTO) voniov' cavruc TTOV t> (tcparei, )evyovT& eirl TTJK i^aAaacraf vv Kartxaie, ai rov irovov oiiTOts Svaepyov enoiei. Aixnd\u>T6v rt 'Pu/uatov expe'iuaaei' ev Tv irti eiri TT]V ) TO icAejiov yevoiTO ITo/u-Tr^tou, nivra. Tpoirov cTreiydjUcpo; eirev/t'pei Terta cum clamore procurrit. XXXV milia armatorunt eo proflio inierfecta cum ipsis dncibus Livins tradit, receptas quinque Komanaa aquilas, sisua-se.x et XX, multaspolia, inter quae quinque fasces cum securibua." BATTLE OF PETELIA. RUINED BY SUCCESS. 321 ing the river Strongoli, or Nesethus of the ancients, and in the very ancient town of Petelia, the Roman forces tin- der the command of L. Quintius, one of the officers of Crassus and the quaestor, TremeUius Scrofa, came up with the intention only of harassing him in rear and flank, according to the express orders of Crassus who adhered to the Fabian tactics. Spartacus on being attacked by a few skirmishers in the rear, suddenly wheeled a large de- tachment upon the Romans who were not prepared, and succeeded in routing them so completely that the quaestor who was wouded, barely escaped with his life. It was another great victory. But Crassus, who was a good judge of effects, soon per- ceived that it was the cause of reviving among the slaves the malignant spiiit of insubordination. They were again so inflated with success that they threatened to rebel; and their miserable conduct forced Spartacus to take an op- posite direction from that which he chose to march, caus- ing a disaster by hurrying them onward to final downfall. Plutarch declares that the insurgents after this victorj became so arrogant and mutinous that they drew swords and insisted upon being led against Crassus' army in open field. They demanded to be marched through Campania to Rome ; and Spartacus was not long afterwards forced to give orders to march toward the now trembling capital Yet notwithstanding this insubordination he could but admire their bravery and knew their impetuosity when led to battle. Plutarch in speaking of their valor at the bat- tle of the seceders where, according to Livy, no less than 35,000 of the rebels were slain, says that they died man- fully, only two of the killed being found wounded in the back. " The rest had died in the ranks, after the grand- est exhibit of bravery." Spartacus, aware of the ap- proach of Pompey from the direction of Rome, on the one hand, and of the expected landing of Lucullus at Brundu- sium, on the other, and knowing the folly of hope against these three great veteran armies combined, struck a forced march for Brundusium, thinking still to secure the co- operation of the privateers in transporting him to Sicily, before Lucullus hove in view. Though he could rely upon his soldiers' bravery he foresaw that a general engagement must be fatal. 322 SPARTACUS Thus we begin to comprehend the strange reticence of the historians regarding the fresh allies of Crassus, now actually centering together. The old stigma upon the touch of a creature of lowly condition by an optiniate of Rome is apparently the cause of the suppression of all histories which gave the details. There is one authority, however, which brings some of these marvels to light. This is Vellejus Paterculus whose History of Rome was early mutilated in all the manuscripts except one, which survived until it was printed late in the Middle Ages. Armed with this, we see better to follow the thread of this great rebellion to its close, and can thus correct some very misleading errors of modern writers. The whole army of the proletaries moved to the sea- port of Brundusium, where it was hoped to obtain ships and sail to Sicily. But here Spartacus was met and as- sailed by Lucullus at that moment in the act of landing his whole army, recalled by the senate of Rome to help Crassus. Whether much fighting took place we are not in- formed; but foiled again in his designs by sea, he turned northward harrassed and goaded by the veteran army from Asia in full force. In these returning legions of Lucullus, was a man who was soon afterwards destined to play an extraordinary role, in favor of the proletaries, and to lose his life in their defense. It was Clodius, a brother-in-law of Lucul- 1ns, general-in-chief . Wealthy, of noble blood, educated, and one of the most eloquent lawyers of those days a man who restored to the poor workingmen their right of organization, and who in doing this, crippled the mighty Cicero and brought him to disgrace, exile and final death. But we leave his extraordinary story for other pages of our history to recount. Suffice it here to say that the in- describable scenes of suffering and of horror which he was eye witness to in this campaign shaped his life-course ever afterwards, in favor of the lowly. 120 i2<>Publius Clodius was of patrician blood. See Lippincott's Biographical Dictionary, Vol. I, art. Clodius. "Demagogue of a very profligate character of the patrician house of Appius Claudius Pulcher; served in Asia under Lucullus his brother-in-law; became a violent enemy of Cicero who had appeared in evidence against him ; raised several bloody riots against the friends of Cicero when they proposed and passed a decree for his rsstoration B. C. 57'' (see Cicero, Pro Milone); Drnmann, Geschichte Boms. The Encyclopaedia Britannica, refusing to mention him under a special article-beading, calls Clodius "a worthless demagogue," LAST EFFORT TO ESCAPE. 323 Lucullus, according to good authority, drove the gladi- ator from the shipping and dogged him in the rear at every step. 131 Pompey was present with the whole of the large army which he had successfully commanded in Spain. These facts we know; for if we do not find men- tion of actual participation of these two freshly-arrived Roman generals and their veteran legions, as being en- gaged in the great and final battle of Silarus, we certainly find them engaged in the man-hunt which was instituted on the same day. Plutarch also hints at the fact. In apparent deference to Crassus,who was the real com- mander of the three combined armies, the history-man- glers have evidently seen fit to trifle with the truth in leaving no mention of Pompey or of Lucullus in the last great conflict. And especially pointed does this sugges- tion become when we take into consideration that neither of these two generals was desirous of having his name mixed up with so disgraceful a thing as a victory over what went current under the name of a mob of gladiators. It is thus made certain that the workingmen were hemmed in between these three experienced consular and veteran armies of Rome, in a mountain pass at the head while acknowledging that he " assailed Cicero with a formal charge of patting citizens to death summarily without appeal to the people," obtaining a decree from the people for his banishment 400 miles from the city. Under the title " Milo," the Pugilist and murderer of Clodius, the Encyclopaedia Britanica says: "P. Clodius, the leader of the ruffians who professed the democratic cause waa his personal enemy, and their brawls in the streets and their mutual accusations in the law courts lasted for several years " Thus Clodius, the champion of trade unions and organized labor is called "leader of the ruffians " who were the work- ing people of Rome. The Lippencott Biographical Dictionary, Art, Cicero, says ot Cicero: "His enemy, Clodius, who became tribune of the people in B. C. 58, and who was supported by Caesar and Pompey, now manifested his viudictiye malice against Cicero by alaw which he proposed: that whoever has put to death a Roman citizen without form of trial shall be interdicted from fire and water." The fact that Cicero had committed such murders is proved by the actual pas- sage of this law and his being sent into exile and his house on the Palitinate Hill publicly burned, thus consummating his terrible disgrace. We fail to see in these stern measures of Clodius in punishing murder, and in upholding the aged and respectable law permitting the organization of the working people. anything that would not be considered humane and respectable in the highest degree, if repeated right in our own blazing civilization. 121 Appian, 120, of book I. says: .... " nojtiTrrjiou, naLvra. rpoirov iirtiyofievof fire\eipft r)s { rijs fta^Tjs /xaxpa; re cai xaprcpa; cot ev anoyvtafffi ToaiovSe nvpiaStav, TiTptutrxeTai es rov firfpbv 6 Sirap- Taxos opariiii, cat 0-u-yKajj.iia; TO yow (tai rrpo8a\iav TTJI' atririSa irpos TOU5 eiriofTaf oiro in' O.VTOV KVic\os aju.$' aurbi/ /cuicAa>i>ei>Te$ eiretrov." IK Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography, Art. Spartacut. iso Plutarch, Crassus, 12. 328 SPARTACUS. peror." m His forces appear to have fought manfully un- til the death of their leader, when the lines gave way and a hideous carnage followed. The Romans gave no quarter. Sixty thousand workingmen fell in this glorious defeat glorious in the appreciation of all who admire feats of sublimest valor ; but alas, a defeat which for cen- turies riveted the chains of the servile race. We paraphrase Appian for the following, on the close and consequence of this terrible scene: The butchery by the Romans surpassed the power of counting, for it cov- ered many thousands. The body of Spartacus lay dead on the field. Great numbers fled to the mountains after the battle, and Crassus pursued them. They, however, reorganizing themselves into four divisions fought back, until all were destroyed except 6,000 who were crucified upon the high-road from Capua to Rome. These " many thousands " slaves who escaped to the mountains as here reported by Appian were the 40,000 of Vallejus, in his editio princeps which we have used on the assurance of Dr. Schambach. 13 * This would make the num- ber of men who fell in the battle after and before the death of their leader and including the carnage of the route, when no man was spared and no quarter given, to foot up 260,000 an immense number but when we re- flect that there raged an internecine spirit breathing only vengeance and void of feeling throughout the great Roman army, and contemplate the possible strokes of such swords- men, under orders to exterminate their now defenseless victims, these numbers are not surprising. A few more words and the tragedy is told. Such were the numbers of the brave veterans of this great revolt who fell in the gigantic contest on the banks of the river Si- larus. 133 In the mountains, during the pursuit great num- isi " Spartacus ipse in prime agmine fortissime dimicans, quasi Imperator. occisus est." (Florus, liber III. cap. 20). 132 Heinsius distinctly says that Vellejus put the number of the army of Spartacus at 800,000, from which total 40.000 escaped. " qua editio prinrept habet XL. e CCC. nnllia hominum." So Schambach in Der Italische Sklavenauf stand, S. 11, Quellen ear Geschichte, says: "Wirerfahren von Vellejus dass von 300,000 Sklaven in dem letzten Kampfe noch 40,000 tibrig gewesen seien." The two ac- counts of Appian and Vellejus Paterculus do not at all disagree. Appian, I. idem: "*O rt Aoiirdf avToO orparbs a/cocr^icos rjfiij KareicoTrTovTo Kara. 77X^^04, S' evapi'ifyiTjTOi' 'Punaiiav 6e es j((.Ai'ov apSpat, ical TOV ZSirapraxou vtKW oi>x fvpedrjvai. TTO\V S' en. irArjdos jjv fv TOIS opeJS Sia^uyof <' O&9 o Kpa(7(7O5 avefianvev- " i^ For a description of the Silarus and the surrounding region see Strabo, Geographic a, V. cap. 4. BATTLE OF SILARU8. THE MAN-HUNT. "here more fell, and 6,000 were taken prisoners of war. The remainder of the great army who after the defeat, and the death of their beloved and faithful leader, en- deavored to escape, was indeed small. According to Appian, the pursuit was made by Pompey who must have participated in the battle. This grasping egotist easily finished the massacre and then vaunted that he had been the principle in putting down the rebellion; thus adding to the proof that all the three Roman armies were massed. Great numbers of the fugitives were over- taken and crucified. Every one of the 6,000 who fell pris- oners at the battle of Silarus and in the mountains was hung on the cross along the Appian way ; and for months their bodies dangled there to delight the vengeance-lov- ing gentry who, on their drives to and from the cities of Rome and Capua, rejoiced to behold such sights as in our time would provoke the shame and contempt of the world. Slavery from the downfall of Spartacus, the last eman- cipator, had an unhindered sweep in Rome and her prov- inces until Jesus, 100 years later, founded or brought into the open world the culture of the communes hitherto compulsorily secret, that mankind at birth are naturally free and equal a culture which is based upon peace and submission; the antithesis of the plans of Eunus, Athe- nion, Spartacus and all revolters. This plan was original in Jesus, and it has prevailed; for chattel ownership of man by man has, under his open culture, disappeared from the earth. Rome became " a model of rapacity, dishonesty and fraud; having in her period almost a thousand years, produced scarcely a dozen men whose names have descended to posterity with an untarnished fame." 1 ** But if Spartacus, whose acts were in Italy, might be called a Roman, he certainly may be included in the Hat of names of the untarnished famous ; for his nature was gentle though his character was marked and equal to the dignity of grander victories than came into the list of the Scipios or the Caesars since he fought entirely for a prin- ciple, dying as his wife had predicted of him, happy in the enthusiasm of an exuberant, manly swoop of nerve and muscle, grand, if not gigantic, amid the dismaying fury of enemies of liberty and of law. 134 Carey, Principles of Political Economy, Vol. L p. W7. 330 SPARTACUS. Immediately after the destruction of Spartacus and his army, another great man-hunt was instituted, similai- to those we have described in the chapters on Viriathus, Eunus and Athenion. It lasted six months, raged with merciless atrocities and was followed by another exter- minatory man-hunt against the pirates who, if we are to believe the histories which have been permitted to survive, were the true friends of the Romans, because they treach- erously refused to assist the insurgent army to cross into Sicily. But as we have already stated, this story looks ex- tremely flimsy and must be considered with caution ; as the fact remains well vouched for that Rome fell upon the pirates and privateers with a powerful fleet commanded by Pompey himself and succeeded in less than a year, in anni- hilating them so completely that ever afterwards the Med- iterranean was cleared of these maritime desperadoes. 1 * 5 No fewer than 1,000,000 slaves are reported by Csecilius Calactenus to have been crucified and otherwise slain in the combined wars of the slaves who rebelled against the huge and inhuman slave system of the Romans. This es- timate, repeated with reserve by Dr. Schambach, 1 ' 6 comes to us not from Calactenus direct, for his valuable histor- ies are, like the others, lost; but it is transmitted indirectly by Athenaeus, whose quotations from the lost books are more and more highly prized. But alas ! Of what utility were all these outbreaks of human irascibility with their awful details of blood and extermination? True, one comfort clings: To die in the desperate attempt for freedom was better than to live in the griping coils of slavery. But " an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth " brought no relief for downtrodden- humanity. It never has, it never can, it never will. The still lingering idea of a semi-belligerent force organized on the strike plan, so long as it does not choose the weapons i For the law commissioning Pompey to the work of exterminating the pi. rates, see Vellejus, Historia Ramana, liber II. cap. xxxi.: and for a description of th work itself, Appian, I. 121 ; Pliny, Histvna Naturalis, VII. 25 ; Tacitus, Aimales, XII. 62; XV. 25, Bellum Piraticum. 184 Schambach, Italischer Sklavenauf stand. S. 5. " Die Zahl aller in diesen und anderen minder bedeutenden oder uns zufallig nicht uberlieferten Aufsta'nden getoclteten Sklaven giebt Athen., wahrscheinlich nach der ilbertriebenen Berech- nung des Cacilius von Kalakteauf etwa eine Million an." These doubts regard- ing the number would have been dispelled had thfi learned doctor reflected that the number of lives lost in the war of Spartacug alone exceeded half that sum. A quarter of a million of slaves were killed in the last battle and in the man-hunt which followed. No doubt several millions were killed in all. TEE LESSON TO HUMANITY. 331 of overt war, and sedulously abstains from military or other violent means of resistance and self-defense, may be in conformity with the reasonable methods of relief; it is unquestionably consistent with the modern age and yields the rough polemic and the intellectual jar which surges and jostles men into a conception of arbitration and poli- tical unanimity. But humanity in the awful and relent- less conflicts we have described, of which this revolt of Spartacus was the last and the typical example, has had enough of the destructive, enough of the irascible, enough of extermination. Let us profit by these examples, and no longer remain regardless of the better and more promis- ing plan of another master, and the next to succeed. This great preceptor constantly taught the working peo- ple " that they resist not evil;" and his are the precepts prevailing all through the civilizing inculcation of " good for evil," until, after a bi-millennial trial of the brutal in- stincts, the oppressor now perceives and is being con- strained to acknowledge that "an injury to one is the concern of all." Whoever has the curiosity to observe the results of these defeats upon the Roman people will find that all the blood that was shed had no influence whatever toward refining human feelings. About this time the amphithe- atre began in earnest to supersede the older games of the Roman circus. The revolts had kindled up a fresh spirit of vengeance, and popular conversation inflamed the hid- eous passion for sights in the gladiatorial ring. These revolts had moreover taught the Roman politio- ians and all those who catered to power, that the slave system which made bondsmen of prisoners of war taken by tens of thousands in the great conquests of the past hun- dred years, were a desperate and dangerous element in the land. But a people filled with grudges as were the Romans, after this terrible succession of revolts which have been described, could think of no mild, humane methods of getting rid of the dangerous slaves. To see them thrown to the wild beasts and eaten alive or to train them for the ghastly habit of cutting each others' throats upon the sands of an amphitheatre, was to their truly ferocious character the natural way of get- ting rid of them. This in part answers the inquirer's 533 SPARTACUS. question as to the cause of the rapid and phenomenal de- cline of morals at Home. The comparatively innocent circus waned in favor of the arena. Vast amphitheatres were constructed in towns and cities everywhere. At Borne, where before it had cost the contractors great sums of money for men to fight in the games, the immense influx of slaves had cheapened the price, and this redoubled their activity until it soon became an absorbing business bringing with it a loath- some pest-hole of horror and corruption. Surely the new plant which, in an obscure corner of the earth fell among such tares and thorns, must have had a prodigious work to do, in bringing into the world the wonderful spirit of sympathy and of moral sweetness which it is our great fortune to enjoy in this enlightened, slaveless century 1 CHAPTER XIIL ORGANIZATION. ROME'S ORGANIZED WORKINGMEN AND WOMEN. ORGANIZATION OP THE FBEEDMEN The Jus Coeundi Roman Unions The Collegium Its Power and Influence What the Poor did with their Dead Cremation Burial a Divine Rig^t which they were too Lowly to Practice Worship of bor- rowed Gods Incineration or Burial and Trade Unions com- bined Proofs Glance at the Inner social Life of the ancient Brotherhoods State Ownership and Management Nation- alized Lands Number and Variety of Trade Unions Strug- gles Numa Pompilius First to Recognize and Uphold Trade- Unions Law of the 12 Tables taken from Solon Harmony, Peace, Ease, steady Work, Prosperity and Plenty Lasting with little Interruption for 500 Years Bondmen fared worse. W have spoken of certain organizations among the work- ing people of ancient times. That these existed is no longer denied. In Rome they were mostly freedmen. But what inspired their combination into secret orders does not ap- pear plain to those who study the past for the sake of grati- fying a taste for great events. Neither do those who study it for purposes of gleaning points in philosophy and religion as commonly understood, obtain any correct idea of them. The ancient contempt rooted in the taint of labor whii-h slavery inspired is yet too strong ; and there still lingers too much of the old spirit of paganism to allow of interest, or hardly of curiosity. This must answer the astonished student of sociology who asks why so much ignorance on. the subject of those ancient societies. Again, we have alluded, in a previous chapter, to the fact that writers and speakers of those days were extremely S34 ORGANIZA TION. chary of information regarding them. The cause of this was identical with that which inspires the same thing here amongst us now disdain. From 1870 until 1886, a pe- riod of sixteen years, little was known to the masses of society of the vast organization amidst us, down in society's core, except that now and then a strike, like a volcanic eruption, shook the moral and financial surface. Yet in that period the most splendid vehicles of knowledge ever before known, existed. There was an organized policy, mixed with con- tempt, silently preventing even a wayside mention of these phenomena. When in 1886, a decided stand taken by Mr. Powderly, pleasing the press which may have expected to see defeat and disaster of the great collectivity, flung the door of the mighty dungeon ajar, and a knowledge of their numbers and power burst out, the people were overwhelmed with surprise. How much easier then, was it, in that bar- baric age, without mechanical means of transmitting truth, even had historians, poets and philosophers been inclined to do so, to close the doors against curiosity and the love of \ learning. 1 We begin by the broad statement that from the earliest times at wnich anything is known of them, although they were sunk in ineffable contumacy, they yet enjoyed one boon the right of combination. Strange to say, no conspiracy laws are to be found ; at any rate among the Romans,* un- til about the time of the emperors." These rights of organ- ization in very ancient times, extended all over Europe so far as is known. 4 Some of the first gleamings of this may be gotten from the authors. As early as Numa Pompilius* i Mommsen, De Collegiis et SodaHeiis Romanorum, p. 31. "81 qurorimus de loco collegiis opificum in rebus pubiicis apud Romanes concesso. Sed id ipsum quroritur, an quaerere liceat: eat enim altissirnum de hac re apud auctores silen- fcium." Here Mommsen admits that the profoundest silence reigns among authors, in regard to these unions, and refers for his proof to a stone (vide Orell. Inter. 4,105) bearing an insription of a union. This was a union of musicians that existed at Rome. 'The inscription runs thus: " M. Julius Victor, ex collegio Liticinum Cornicinum." Mommsen alludes to this find in proof of the fact that working people had organized Unions of musicians. * In page 52 of the Consular report of Mr. James T. Dubois, U. S. Consul at Ijeipzig, published by the State Department in 1885, at Washington, there is s reference to the attempted suppression by Tullius Hostilius of the Collegia Opt- fixum; but that they continued to thrive he acknowleges in the next paragraph. A close inspection shows that they were by no means suppressed. * Mommsen, De Col. et Sodal. Ramanorum, cap, iv. 10, p. 73. 4 Grnter, Insrriplwnes Antiques Totius Orltis Rnmarwrum, 399, 4. 431, 1. " Om- nia corpora Lugduni licite coeuntia." Cicero, Pro Sexto, 14, 32, says: "There was no town in Italy, no colony . no prefecture, no board of tax collectors at Rome, no trade union, not holding common cause with one another." This was during bis struggle to suppress them. NUMA'S TRADE UNION CATEGORIES. 335 time, perhaps 700 years before Christ, they are known to have existed in great numbers. This king tolerated them; and there exist some curious data respecting the system which he invented for their regulation. 6 He ordered that the entire people including the working classes, be distri- buted into eleven guilds This statement of Plutarch is however regarded by Mommsen as incorrect. The latter, after investigating the data given anterior to Plutarch, con- cludes that it must have been eight classes instead of eleven. At that time there were distinct trades, embracing all the arts of remote antiquity. While this may be true that eight was the number of categories there certainly is agreement among authors as to about that number. 6 It would appear by their complete privilege of combination and their ap- parently perfect recognition by this wise king who reigned probably 700 years before Christ, that at time" there must have been a great deal of skill among the artisans. Skilled mechanics were needed to make all the armor of those war- like times. During the reign of Numa Pompilius which lasted thirty-nine years the trade unions must have made grt-at advancement. 1 Indeed, considering the harsh treat- ment they afterwards received at the hands of the Roman emperors in later years, beginning B. C. 58, we are left to in- fer that for nearly 700 years of the best life of Rome these labor organizations flourished uninterruptedly. 8 According to Plutarch, this ancient king so favored the idea of labor organizations that he made their particular case the very basis of a great reform. Plutarch tells ns that he closed the temple of Janus tor forty-three years, 9 and all this time there was perpetual peace. The working people are known 5 Mommsen, De Coll. et Sodal. Rum,, p. 78, says: Tho relics of innumerable communal associations of ancient times, are seen scattered all through Italy, as found among the inscriptions of the Italian towns. See also Plutarch's Life of Kuma, much quoted by writers. 6 Pliny, Naturalis Historia, XXXIV. 1. ".Eqnalem TTrbi auctoritatem ejus declarat, a rege Numa Collegio tertio aerariorum fabmm institute. '' Again XXXV. 12. " Numa rex septimum collegium flgnlomm insfatuit." " Dirksen, Zwolf Tafeki, says; ' Der romische Staat yergonnte ursprling- lich lediglich den Gewerben, die den Bediirfnissen des Krieges nnd des gottes- dienstes zunachst frohnten, seinen unmittelbaren Schutz und eine selbstandige Communalverfassnng.'' 3 Mommsen, De Coll. et Sodal. Rom p. 33. "Jos coeundi fuit antiquis tem- poribus omnibus concessum." 9 Pint., Numa. and Lycurgus compared. " The primary view of Numa's gov- ernment which was to settle the Romans in lasting peace and tranquility, im- mediately vanished with him ; for alter his death, the temple of Janus, which he had kept shut as if it had really held war in prison and subjection, was set wide open, and Italy was filled with blood." 336 ORGANIZA TJON. to have had their golden era during the reign of this great lawgiver. 10 If for no other reason than this, the reign of Numa Pompilius must ever be regarded as one of the most valuable, and fraught with richest lessons to the human race. It is true that this is not so considered fo v students of history from a standpoint of great historic events, or of religion and philosophy as ordinarily understood , but the student of history from the purely sociological basis may justly regard this reign as one of the marvels of the world. We are at a loss to understand how Plutarch, with his clear mind and honest motives, could have compared Numa with Lycurgus. But Plutarch was not a socialist. He did not understand the immense world of meaning rolled up in the mystic deeds of Numa, whose reign, had it proved a failure, he himself would not have praised. But Numa's reign was by no means a failure. It was a decided departure from the customs of those ancient days, because it completely discountenanced the warlike ambi- tions of other rulers and cultivated the arts of peace. Ta carry out fuch a policy it was necessary to have industry made respectable and stand boldly to the front, and be in every way protected. But the trades were already organized. He did not or- ganize them that we know of, but simply accorded them free privileges to organize themselves. He classed his peo- ple of all grades by a method of his own and in that classi- fication made a place for the workers whom he was wise and manly enough to recognize. Before the time of Numa the working people had never been recognized that we are aware of. His distribution of the entire industrial class into eight or nine grand divisions or trades, 11 does not prob- ably imply that there was no greater variety than this, but it was probably merely for the sake of convenience. We are not to suppose, because the free right of combi- nation was given the working people by king Numa, that " Ef W TI Si.afOfj.ri Kara Tas rtxva-S, a.v\.ifrav (flute players'), .. -, .. , (gold workers), TCKTOVUV (carpenters), /3o4eW (dyers), aicvroroniav (shoemakers), iritvToie^uiv (tanners and curriers), \a\Kiruans, pp. 378-9, figs 401, 402 and o'hers with descriptions. These represent the celebrated Comlumbaria Of which Gorius wrote n elaborate work, illustrated with engravings. Fig. 402 snows not only the niches in which stand to this day the cinerary nrn, bnt also I he urns themselves. One col'imbarium, th i Viyna Codina. has 425 such r.'.ches in nine rows, p 479 A smal! marble over each urn gives the name . These are .he burial places (see p. 377 ) of the slaves and frecdmen. 346 ORGANIZATION. of the same original stock and consequently of religious tendency, were in the habit of borrowing i'rom the yens families some tutelary deity in whose name to worship. This, it appears, they had always maintained the right to do. When Christianity came a few years afterwards, with its new and absolutely democratic religion and its mutual co-operation more nearly fitted to their case, they em- braced it in great numbers. Mommsen mentions some regulations in the laws gov- erning the burial societies; among others is one against suicide. 36 It was a law for preventing suicide by appeal- ing to their pride in a decent burial ; and prohibited any money being taken from the communal fund wherewith to defray the funeral expenses of the suicide. After the passage of the conspiracy laws, B. C. 58, the unions continued to exercise their wonted habits in defi- ance of the laws of suppression. Two causes lie at the base of this fact; there were by this time wealthy business men in the organizations who controlled social and polit- ical influence, although themselves of plebeian stock. This is one cause. Another is, that the organizations, when they felt the knife of persecution, withdrew them- selves from public view and became intensely secret. Where the organizations were for religious purposes they were not suppressed; but there was a special regulation fixing it so that they could simulate, or use religion as a cloak. 86 It is very unfortunate that the ancient laws of the Twelve Tables were not preserved so as to have come down to us as engraved. They are known to have been placed in the most conspicuous part of the Roman forum. It was the oldest of the three written systems of Roman Law" having been established B. C. 452. It is, moreover, now supposed to have been almost identical with the Greek law; the provisions, so far as the labor communes are concerned, being alike for the Greeks and Romans. It appeared to Gams to be a translation, and seems to have ss Item placnit, quiequls ex quacnmque causa mortem sibi adsciverit, ejns ratio funeris non habebitur." (De Coll, and Sodal. Rom. p. 100.) 36 Mommsen, Idem, p. 87; "Ipsa ilia simulata religio senatum promovit ut jus coeundi tollerat." The clause of the law appears to except or exempt those aged associations known to be beyond suspicion : " Sub prsetextu rdigionis veJ sub specie solvendi voti coatus illicitos nee a veteranis tentari oporlet." (Lev '^, Dig, de extr. erim. xlvii, ii. "" Mackenzie, Roman Laws, p. 5-7 . ' BURIAL ASSOCIATIONS. 347 been the identical law of Solon who is known to have given the free right of organization to the proletaries of Athens. 38 Our opinion is that these Tables of laws favor- ing the laboring classes, had become so obnoxious to the Roman gentes that they determined to rid the forum of its presence, thus virtually annulling the laws. Large numbers of burial associations existed and it is repeatedly acknowledged that they often acted as a shield to the real trade unions under the garb of religion, not- withstanding the law. Mommsen describes a burial soci- ety at Alburnum in Lucania the notice of which was found inscribed on a libeUus with some words spelled wrongly : "Artimidorus Apollonii, magistercollegii lovis Cernani et Valerius Niconis et Oflas Menofili, quaestores collegii ejus- dem, posito hoc libello publice testantur." Then follow the laws of the society prescribing the use of the common fund. Mommsen, however remarks : ** " It is clear that this mutual relief society of Ceruanus, although bearing or holding up the name of a god, was nevertheless insti- tuted, in order to give the funeral benefit, collected within a certain time and under the law, to the heirs of the de- ceased." This means that under the semblance of the burial society, they substantially met as a mutual aid com- mune perhaps a trade organization. Again, aside from the opinion of Mommsen, always reliable, we have Ascon- ius for positive testimony that frequently the sacred soci- ties, of which the burial societies were a part, were sup- pressed on suspicion that they were discovered by the police to be engaged in carrying out the business of those trade or other organizations on which the conspiracy law had laid its hand. 49 38 Cf. Granier. Histoire des Classes Ouvr&res, p. 325. "Nona avon? fait voir d' ailleare qne la loi romaine des Donze-T&bles snr lea corporaa'ons contenait lea menu 8 dispositions que la loi grecque, u ce point qti' elles ont para a Gains etre la tradnction I' unede 1* autre." The words of Gaiua (vide fHgest, lib. XL VII, tit. xxii. \&4. 4. will be found quoted in o ir note 87, page 1^7, On page 2'JO, note 1, Granier bpeaks of the intimate relations between Athenian and ioman trade unions as follows: "Du reste, Bi le texte de flutarque pouvait laisser quelque doute sur le fait desjurandes nihemennes, un fragment de iiaius*-ur les Uouzes Tables, conserve par le IJigeste, ditque la loi sur leg corps des metiers parait avoir ete enipruntee aux lois de Solon sur ia meme manure ; et la-deosus Gai;'s cite le tcxte menie de Ja loi de Solon, dans lequel 11 eat statue que lea membres de metiers peuvent s eriger eux-niemes en corporations en respectaut lee lois de I'Eiat." 3 .Mommsen, De ColUgiis et Seda.lia.is Romanorum, p. 94. 40 Frequenter turn etiam ccetus factiosorum hom;nnm, sine publics ancto- ritate, malo publico nebant ... propter qnod postea collegia gaucta ct pluri- bus legibus, eaut sublata." (Ascon. in Cornel, p. 75 ) 318 ORGANIZATION. By far the most numerous and powerful of the organiz- zations of proletaries or outcasts among the ancients were the genuine trade unions. 41 Had it not been for the an- cient habit, probably established by the lost law of the Twelve Tables, of inscribing 42 more or less of the objects, dates, names of leaders or organizers, and name of the tutelary deity under which they chose to worship being proscribed from the privilege of worship of their own we should be altogether without data regarding the vast trade societies which from immemorial times existed in Greece and Rome and in the provinces over which those nations ruled. We have sufficiently explained the causes of this organization. It may be well, however to sum them up in this manner: First in ancient times all lands not belonging to the gens estates but achieved by conquest, were common pro- perty of the state. The people relied npon the products of these lands for their subsistence. This was true of people of all ranks, whether the haughty gentes or the degraded slaves. Many subsisted upon the fruits of the common lands. King Numa, admitting this, was wise enough to create, or rather recognize an already existing system of trade or business-unions, the special function of which was to till the lands and divide and distribute the products. Nothing could be more sensible and noth- ing more practical than to give the soil-tillers their or- ' ganizations under protection of the state and this means under a species of subvention or common guarantee. It must not be forgotten that by a law of ancient religion there were two distinct classes workers and non-workers or the privileged and the non-privileged classes. They were so distinct that Dionysius of Halicarnassus declares that th e latter were not even counted with the people or enu- merated in the census as human beings; a fact which has caused much astonishment to the writers on ancient pop- ulousness; some counting them in and some not; thus producing figures so ridiculously at variance and contra- dictory that nobody pretends except approximately, even to conjecture what the ancient population was! 4 * i The more numerous slaves are here excepted. We are, as yet, without the words of the law rendering It binding upon the communes to set up and inscribe a marble, or other stone slab. It was probably lost with th* Twelve Tables. Also the similar law of Solon. Cf. Wallace on the "Numbers of Mankind." Edsiburg, 1753, p. 287 GOVERNMENT OWNED THE LAND. 34 S> Thus for many centuries, the lands of the ancient Rom- ans, called ager publicus was common or public property, tilled by the proletaries, many of whom were organized into unions legalized by the arrangements of the Twelve Tables which was merely a literal ratification of the plan of Numa Pompilius, dividing the wotkers into nine spe- cies of craft and allowing each the autonomy of an organ- ization. This shifted from the shoulders of the state or land-owner the care and responsibility of cultivation, while it elevated the proletaries to the practical dignity of that work. It was not the plan of small holdings by isolated families but of small holdings by isolated communes, which in turn, were amenable to, and under the general direction of the state, or common proprietor. It cannot be said that this really great and wise system ever attained to a wide extent. The idea seems to have been clear to the workingmen and they carried it into force to some extent, but were always met with fierce opposition. The manner in which the state obtained its share of the proceeds or usufruct, of these lands was by the Vec- tigalarii, the celebrated union of tax collectors who, in- stead of using money, took the tax tt in kind ; " which means that they went to the farmers, agricolse, after the harvests and with wagons, brought to the Miinicipium or town in whichever district they were stationed, the share of the proceeds of the common land due the city people grain, wool, fruits, pease, beans and whatever the land produced. The grain thus collected was turned over to the organization of the united pistores or millers, to be ground; thence to the united bakers, panifices to be made into bread. So with regard to everything. The almost phenomenal simplicity and universality of this great plan of the ancients is accounted for only by the fact that there were two classes so widely separated that the very touch of a proletary was supposed to pollute. In consequence of this wide distinction the merchant, who was also a work- ingman, could not become a monopolist because he waa obliged to be a unionist which naturally recognized him at a par with his peers. This was a direct result of the crude communism which legalized trade unionism had " Slaves who were of so little account under the ancient governments." " Free citizens who alone had a voice in the public councils." 350 OR GA NIZA TION. created and upheld for many centuries not only at Rome but all over Italy and in many parts of Greece. Very gradually however, some merchants succeeded in becoming rich. 44 On the other hand, as we prove in our sketch of Spartacus, the older slave system which still continued under the law of Lycurgus in Sparta, un- derwent a revival in Italy. By the plan of Numa Pompil- ious, which was the true ancient trade union system, there was no way for an aristocrat to conduct business of any kind without polluting himself by contract with the proletaries. He could, by owning the slaves, job them to managers of genius, themselves of the laboring class, some to a boss f armer, some to a miller, some to a wagoner, some to a manufacturer, and thus, without himself touching his own property, gratify his desire of profit, indirectly, through the labor of his slaves. We are told that Cras- sus bought up as great a number as 500 slaves at a time; that Nicias owned 1,000; that Claudius owned as many as 4,116 and Athens owned and hired out no less th.in 100- 000 slaves ! 45 But these things did not occur in Italy until the decline through Roman hostility, of the seven centur- ies of trade unionism, which began in high antiquity, and which had been acknowledged and incorporated as an in- dustrial system of the state under Numa, nearly 700 years before Christ . and did not give up its foothold without one of the most terrible and protected agrarian and servile struggles recorded or unrecorded in the vicissitudes of the world. Nor must the remark be forgotten that dur- ing all the centuries through which this trade unionism existed the golden era of prosperity and general happiness was at its highest so far as labor was concerned. But this prosperity and happiness will be better under- stood as we enumerate, one by one, the links of trade unions which formed the great chain of industrial weaL While we are doing this it may be well to keep constantly in mind the suggestion, together with its proofs, that la- bor organization for protection, co-operation, resistance and mutual improvement is always the best standard by ** Consult Drumann, Arbelter vnd Communixtet^ in Griechenland und Rom, p. 81: " Ee verminderte die geringschatzunK nicht mit'welcher man auf die Arbeiter sab., dass mehrere beriilimte Manner durch ihre Geburt oder durch ihre iriihere Beschaftigung diesem Stande angehorten.'' 43 For those giatistics, see Bucher. S. 35-9. Schambach, Ilalisdie. Sdaven- aufstand, 3. 1-3. Siefert, Siciluche Sklavenkriege, S. 10-16. THE OTHER SIDE? 361 which to measure the intensity of true civilization. When the law forbidding these organizations struck the prole- taries, one-half a century before Christ, their decline be- gan ; and this decline was a powerful cause of the fall of the Roman empire. The old system of abject slavery pre-existing in the higher antiquity, gradually reappeared with the great Roman Conquests and usurped the foundations of the happier unions with its malignant concomitants of de- graded labor under the lash of an overseer on the one hand, and with its millionare politicians, schemers and voluptuaries on the other. Corruption followed. Hope fled with liberty. Thrift disintegrated into pestilential reservoirs of vice. Kome fell into a mass of corruption. It is not at all strange, nor to be wondered at that the poor who constituted the laboring class, should keenly feel their degrading exclusion from the Eleusinian Mys- teries. Nor is it at all to be wondered at if we find Plu- tarch reciting to us his account of what must have been a gigantic uprising of these people 1,180 years before Christ, under Menestheus, as under Aristonicus in Asia Minor, 1,047 years afterward they rose against similar so- cial degradations. Heaven to those poor people was a boon much nearer and more visible than at the present day. They imagined the earth to be flat. On this side all were mortal ; on the other immortal. Some of the im- mortal happy had power to come from the other side to this. Here from Mount Olympus they assumed charge of the welfare of mortals. Many believed the flat earth so thin that rivers meandered from one to the other. Be- t\veen the two surfaces there were surging floods of hor- rid smoke and steaming, lurid waters or pits of fiery as- piialtum for the wicked, as well as bright, purling streams sparkling and cool for the just, leaving the banks and plains that were covered with verdure and peopled with enchanting birds and game. Let the mover of the modern labor agitation who treats \\ith scorn the author who mixes religion with a history of the ancient, reconsider. He must go back to them as they really were, poor down-trodden, superstitious, cred- ulous and ignorant of facts while misled by priests. They "believed heaven was so near by lineal measure that they 352 ORGANIZATION. often imagined they coi 1 1 hear the melodious voices of tlie blessed on the other sides ; yet while they had nothing on this side to live for and their grasping imagination over- heard and dwelt upon a future world beyond this " vuie of tears,'' they found themselve shut out from all hope. The workman in the modern field of labor agitation certainly has but a gloomy foretaste in anything further than his future natural life. His predecessors have gone before with the axe and sickle of reason and past experience, tools of the thus intellectual pioneer. Their incomput- able toil has, with investigation and experiment, with re- peated millions of practical works, cleared away the mythic film of priestcraft and superstitious belief. The earth is now a globe. The miner knows this; for the deeper he descends the more unendurable the heat. Who wants now to descend to heaven ? Who wishes to go to the other side, to China a race groveling, mortal and inferior, rather than that of the ancients, beautiful seraphic, melodious, immortal. Who now wants to visit the ouranus of old Plato in the vaulted dome of heaven ? Who wants to rise when everybody knows that instead of a region of the im- mortal happy the farther one mounts the more uninhabit- able, more frigid more stifling the ethers of space ? La- bor's own skillful hand has caused all this metamorphosis in the human mind and forced it and is still forcing it out of its ignorant soarings and credence-ravings down to a cognizance of the earthly things that are. No, we must picture the life of the ancient lowly as it really was in all its cushioned imagination, in all its yearn- ings to get there by the beautiful river, its green carpets on the other side where the wicked ceased from troubling and the weary were at rest ; and those otherwise incom- prehensible, religio-practical associations can be under- stood and their full function appreciated only by our throwing off our own prejudice and contemplating them as they really were. This we propose to epyiav JI The word epulantur conveying the idea of entertainment, shows that these schools of the workingmen sometimes used their organization as a means of mutual enjoyment. Especially was this the case among the Greek fraternities which we describe in their place. After the great strug- gle with Spartacus, the right of organization was severely restricted by the Roman law; and it became necessary for the unions, in order to exist at all, to assume two forms of dissimulation by which to parry the attacks of enemies who had recourse to these conspiracy laws in order to gratify their whims of revenge, or to fortify their own schemes of making money through the cheap labor of the slave system which Rome in the later days had revived, and which such enemies of organized labor as Cicero or Crassus, were pushing with an almost fierce determination, on pretense of restoring the ancient purity of religion, family and vested rights. We have noted that certain kinds of organizations were permitted. 11 Among these were collegia sancta, or those unions and fraternities given to holy or pious purposes. So some of these were shrewd enough to combine business with holiness and thus shield themselves from their pursuers. 14 Mommsen speaks of them in clearest terms which leave no doubt whatever re- garding the mysterious procedure " of those old Roman lawyers who were determined to suppress the trade unions, root and branch, in order to reinstitute slavery, the most ancient form of labor known to their religion, which had 10 We quote the Latin as given by Orell., No, 4,088 " Ex S. C . Schola Aug. Collegii Fabrorum Tignariorum impendiis ipsorum ab inchoate exstructo, solo dato ab T. Furio prhnogenio qni et ded.c. ejus US. X. N. ded. ex cujns summ. redit, omnibus annis Xil. K. August die natalis sui, epulantur." Gruter, 169, 6 11 Dion. XXXVIII. 13, Antiquitates, says : " To. eratpua avr* fj.ev f* rov apxaiov KaTa\vdevTo. Se \povov rivd." Asconius 1. C. Comment, says: " Co[- legia sunt sublata praeter pauca atque certa quae utilitas ciyitatis deinderassit quffi sint fabrorum flctorumque." These saved were Pagan image makers who wrought the religious devices, q, v. l!i Complures autem ob finei ejusmodi instituebantur collegia: religionis ante omn-ia causa, ut, qui idem vitae genus essent amplexi, iisdem quoque sacris uter- nnter," etc., etc. Orell. VII. p, 244- Inter. Latin Collectia. 13 Mommsen, De Coll. et Sodal. Rom., pp. 87-88, says: " Ipsa ilia simulata (referring to lex. 3, Digest, de extr. crim. XLVII, 11. ) religio Beuatuni promovit tu jus coeundi tolleret Explicanda sunt ilia verba de coitionibus in templis ad rem divinam faciendam, qnae etsi neutiquam contra SUtum erant, facile tamen in fraudem SCti usurpari poterant. ' CONFLICT AGAINST CHEAP LABOR. 363 founded their patrimony, their law of entailment through primogeniture and their system of grandees and of slaves. Nurna and Solon had been these fellows' enemies; Lycur- gus their friend. Trade unionism the child of wills and manumissions, had first come among them, a spontaneous growth. It cradled and matured human sympathy. It had proved itself innocent, enterprising and good. It had succeeded in becoming legalized by those two powerful princes a mighty stride. But it had, as the gens families fancied, usurped the ancient and holy system of slavery and tli us interfered by substituting communism with their vested indhidual rights. 14 On account, probably, of their superstition, Cicero, Caesar and the rest, after they had put down Clodius the intrepid orator and tribune who had restored the old and created new, 15 excepted such of the carpenters and joiners or cabinet-makers' unions as confined their labor to manufacturing all sorts of wooden idols, which in those days, were sometimes very large, and built for the temples, the fanes and the family alters. It it also quite likely that a few unions devoted to the car- penter work on the temples and the aedes sanctae, were saved. But we ascend from these cruel days of moribund Rome to an earlier and brighter age. 14 We have repeatedly mentioned the impossibility, among the Indo-Euro- pean Greeks arid Italians, of there ever ha\ ing existed in those peninsulas a com- munistic, or even patriarchal form of government. The bent of labor communes was towards it but they never succeeded in breaking down the power of the com- petitive system : and it rules to this day. The oldest records of any kind shedding light, confirm the idea that originally the despotic form of govern im nt prevailed ; the father paterfamilies a# king, with his sons and daughters and others as sla^ es around his fixed abiding place, mnst have been the primitive government behind which there is neither record nor philosophy no philosophy without overturn- ing the theory of development. Man has grown into refinement through reason and experience and it is altogether inconsistent with reason to suppose that he ever tried so high a form of government as the cummunistic one, or that he ever had in those tinier otht-r than selfish, cruel, beast-government in which all re- search into antiquity finds him. Mommsen, History of Rome, Vol I, p. 44. In cor- roboration says : ' But there can be no doubt that, with the Graeco-Italians a with all other nations, agriculture became, and in the mind of the people re- mained the germ and core of their national and of their private life. The house and the fixed he.irth, which the husbandman constructs instead of the light hut and shifting fireplace of the shepherd and represented in the spiritual domain and idealized in the goddess Vesta or "Evria., almost the only divin:ty not indn- Germanic yet from the first common to both nations." So again (p. 48). " Tl'6 Hellenic character, which sacrificed the whole to its individual elements, the nation to the township and the township to the citizen." This exactly expresses our idea, viz: that everything from the first, was subordinate to the unlimited, despotic control of the "father." For valuable information. See Funck Bren- tano Ln Civilisation et set Lois, IV, 1, p. 311 , i quoting Plutarch Tsuma, VII) " 11 en fut de mSme c'ans les cites de la Grece : ce fut une condition de leur progres." 15 Ascon, Ad h. L. " Diximus, L Pisone et A. Gabieno consulibus 1'. Clo- dinm tribunum piebis tulisse de collegiU restituendis, novisque instituendi*, quas ait es servitiorum faece constituta." 364 CATEGORIES OF TRADE FEDERATIONS. Fabretti gives us another union of carpenters and join- ers whose inscription svas found at Leprignani. It reads very plainly and shows that they had a federation of the trades. 1 ' Another collegium fabrorum tignariorum or car- penters' trade union is reported by Muratori. 17 The tab- let was found at Ravelli in the province of Naples, show- ing that the unions of those days were not confined to Home or any of the other large cities but were as fre- quent proportionately to population in any small town. An inscription is reported by Gruter, 18 bearing evidence of another interesting school, schola, of the bona fide car- penters' unions, found in the Tolentine temple of Cathar- ina religious, of course, and of a later date. Orelli 18 quotes the learned Muratori of Modena as the authority if not the finder of an inscription which describes a colleg- ium together with a sodalicium another Roman name for trade union, in which the president or Magister, and the secretary are mentioned. It is a union of the skilled wood- workers. It was found in the town of Falaria, and ap- pears to be very old. It is not unusual for the inscrip- tions engraved in the time of the emperors, to state an ap- proximate of their date by noting the names of the con- suls, or of the monarch who then occupied the throne. Unfortunately for the more ancient ones this is not so strictly done; probably owing more to the fact that, as the law at earlier dates fully protected them, they were not forced to inscribe the dates by little points or con- structions such as characterized the laws after the restrict- ive acts were promulgated. No less than eighteen of the genuine carpenters and joiners' unions are found in the work of Orelli. 20 As these working people used their unions as means whereby to parry off the many dangers that beset them on every hand, such as slavery, starvation, slurs of contempt and in later times conscription, we cannot too well understand Low keenly alive they must have been to their welfare. i Fabretti, C. IV, 529, of Inscripllones Antiques. Explicatio. 17 Muratorius, Thesaurus Velerum Incriptlonum, 521. 18 Gruter, Inscriptiones Antiques Tolius Orbis Romanorum, 169. 6 i Orell., No. 4,056, Mur.itorl, Thesaur. Vet. Inscr. 523. We give It with the abbreviations: '' D. M. T. Sillio T. Lib. Prisco mag, colleg. Fabr. et q mag. et q. sodal. fullonum Clavidte lib. uxori ejus matri sortali. C. Tullon, T Sillius Karus et TJ. Claudius Phillippus inag. etQ. Colleg. fabr. fllilparentib. piissimis." 20 Scholia Arlificum et Opiflcum, Vol. II, pp. 227-240, and Artei et Opijicia, idem, pp. 247.266, of Orelli's great work on the Latin Inscriptions. GOVERNMENT EMPLOY. 365 On the other hand, the power of organization which kept them in a position to supply the orders given them by the state, was ever a great encouragement. Among the many interesting monuments or schools of ancient trade unionism, where mutual love and care were taught and the noble element of sympathy was grafted upon the selfish, competitive body of irascible and acquis- itive paganism which animated the Lycurgan rule at Sparta and the purely archaic slave code everywhere, are those to be found in the Order of masons, stonecutters and brick- layers. These with the painters, glaziers, roofers and plumbers, were indispensable to complete the building trades. They too, felt the necessity of organization, es- pecially in the later time of Ceesar and the emperors, on account of the awful treatment of slaves by their ferocious masters. There existed no law by which the slave mas- ters could be brought to account for savage acts of bar- barity toward their slaves. This distressing state of things was not !1 relieved until the emperor Adrian withdrew the slaves from the domes- tic tribunals and transferred them to the tribunal of the magistrates; in other words gave them government pro- tection. But this was 200 years after the war of Sparta- cus. The fear of being relegated back to slavery was a constant urgent to ancient trade unionism ; and this ex- plains one reason at least, why they so tenaciously hugged their fraternities notwithstanding the conspiracy laws against trade and other organizations of the working peo- ple. It must not be forgotten that according to the law of B. C. 58, w all the new unions were suppressed. Conse- quently, we are to infer that those we find in the inscrip- tions are those belonging to the ancient plan of Xuma and Solon which were spared on account of their veteran age and respectability. 23 Another thing requiring the nicest discrimination is the fact that it will not do to mention all the examples set down in the works of the archaelogists. We only mention those where the labor organization is clearly defined. Many of these queer inscriptions appear n See Granier, Hisloire des Clastet Ouvrilres, pp. 491-487. K See Mommseii, L>e Collegiis et SocUUiciis Ramanonim, cap. IV, pp. 73-78. De Ltytbut Contra Collegia Lot is. 21 Suetonius, Cces. 42. Caesar cuncta collegia pra-tcr antiqnitns coi.;;ti:ta ili:-traxit. ' 366 CATEGORIES OF TRADE FElsAttJlTIONS. to us to be only private signs and hav. nothing to do with our theme. Slavery was everywhert prevalent and many of the slaves were as ingenious as th* freedmen. We are told by Drumann and others that it was customary for masters to keep their slaves at work and obtain profit from their labor by letting it out to enterprising foreigners who contracted building repairs and other work on private houses and grounds. But the government was the true employer of the unions because they, possessing of them- selves as it were, in a unit, all the men in organization, always ready, money, tools, raw material, skill and even the designs requisite to turning out a good job promptly, were dangerous competitors of slavery on large works. 20 Prom the time of Nurna the government of Rome had al- ways patronized the trade unions. Thus it would appear that some of the inscriptions may have been private signs used by slave employers who carried on private work upon a small scale, hiring their laboring force of the rich slave owning patricians; and it will not do to count the arch- aeologists' lists of artes et opificia ; while it is almost always safe to enumerate their specimens of the Corpora, Sodal- icia or Collegia 25 in our list of trade unions and communes. Trade unionism in its highest form is the reverse of slavery. The true trade union of all ages takes care of its mem- bers who are co-owners of equal shares, on equal foot- ing. Slavery then, is the exact antithesis of trade union- ism in principle ; but although it is certain that the prin- ciple on which slavery is based was, especially among the Spartans and Romans, carried out with all its repugnant and appalling brutalities, 26 yet it is, as a recognized sys- tem in the religio-social economy of the world, incom- putably the oldest of the two. Trade unionism was a deadly rival to the slave system all through the antiquity of the Indo-European stock ; and since slavery was a graft of the ancfent religion the natural child of its law of ** Granier. Hist, des Classes Ouwibres, p. 303, speaking of the insignificance of individuals when compared with the immense force of organized trades, says : " Ici les noinbreuT ouvrieres de Caton (slaves), les 500 ouvriers (slaves) de Cras- Biis H' auraient pu rien faire ; il fallait des corporations, (trade unions) des col- ei/esl de travailleurs." 2S cf. Orell. lib. II. pp. 227-246, Collegia Corpora et Sodalicia. ScholcB ArUficum et Opificum. See also lib. Ill, Sup Henzen Index to Collegia, init. -* Granier, Hist des Classes Ouvrieres, chap. Ill and IV,, also Plut. Lycurgus and Nurna compared. ORGANIZATION A FOE TO SLAVERY. 367 primogeniture and the fostered fruit of entailment in tho social, political and economic development of those semi- barbarous families, phratries, curies and tribes which came to be nations and empires, it must not be wondered at that this hideous fledgling, before giving up the ghost, made a terrific struggle to regain what it had lost through the mild but determined enterprise of its great competitor trade unionism. It was this that constituted the mighty struggle of the revolution in the social economy of the lowly and it so re- mains to this day; although in this comparatively gorgeous and brilliant hour the spirit of human slavery, resting upon absolute, merchantable ownership of man by man, seems to have forever fled. Nothing now remains of slavery but its skeleton individual competism hanging betwixt peace and war over the vortex of revolution and swinging to and fro at every fresh attack from the same trade unionism which, although of prehistoric longevity grows more youthful, enterprising and belligerent with every invention and discovery and every stride of litera- ture, of science and of Christianity. The unions of the masons at Rome do not appeal 1 so numerous as those of the framers among the building trades. Still we find tablets whose inscriptions show their existence. 21 We have already mentioned the fact that among the true workmen's organizations the slabs which appear to have been inscribed independently by themselves and without the correctional inspection of masters, often puzzle the experts on account of the sometimes ludicrously bad spelling and misplacement of words. Sometimes also there appear words belonging to the peculiar slang or patois monenclature, their trade's vernacular. But while this is somewhat troublesome to archaeologists it is ex- ceedingly interesting to students of ethnology and soci- ology; since it shows otherwise unrecorded proof that the freedmen, only one step above the slaves, were utterly neglected in all matters of education. The presumption must be that the reason they executed their inscriptions so well is that they had, in their mutual federation a trade *? Orell. Arta et Opificia, Vol. II, p. 258 of Inter. Lot. Select Colle>-tto, No. 4.239. It is a broken fragment. " Qnadratariorum opus Angurius Catullinug Uraar." We rt-ad : " Qaadratariorum Corpus." He thus ranks it as a union. 368 CATEGORIES OF TRADE FEDERATIONS. union of carvers and gravers cselatores whose business was to work in letters. It was consequently a part of their trade to study sufficiently the Roman and Greek literature to do their work well. Gruter mentions several of them. 28 Orelli tells us oi' the sculptor, signarius artifex, who worked in signs. 20 Any of these could make their signs or their monuments and tombstones by being called upon at any time; but we are reminded that then as now, economy was everything and that consequently they themselves might often have depended upon their own inexperienced self- confidence and thus have committed these literary faults which as amateurs they were too unlettered to rectify. The quadratarii were the true stone cutters' unions and the probable reason why they are not numerous is that most of the work of the stone cutters was done by the marmorarii, marble cutters or marble masons. Of these we find inscriptions of genuine trade unions in consider- able numbers. Now this paucity of hard stone-cutters and abundance of marble cutters is easily accounted for. The Geological formation of the Italian, Hellenic and Spanish peninsulas is largely of carbonates of lime. A great share of the Appenine range is composed of fine white marble. Many of the springs and even mountain rivers of Italy, Greece and the Archipeligo deposit pure marble. Paros in the 2Egian Sea was long a rival in pure white marbles of Pentelicus; and Mount Marpessa the seat of its quar- ries, may be considered an isolated spur of the Illj-rian Alps, Mt. Olympus and the Cambunian range. All through these regions exist the characteristic marbles used in an- tiquity before the superior powers of duration of sand- stone and granites were known. The splendid marble quarries of Luna in Etruria were near at hand and others as celebrated in history were always available to the mar- ble cutters' unions who made the wonderful temples of Ceres at Eleusis, of the Parthenon at Athens and many of the great public structures at Rome. It is therefore, very natural that the marble cutters' unions predominated over the sandstone and granite-cutters in point of num- 28 Grut. Insfr. Ant. Tot. Orb. Rom., 583, 5. This, Gruter mentions as a sign' of some emancipated slave Mibertus qu: post manumissionem vel argentarii vel caelatoris artem exercnerit." But it often happened that a trade union was tascribed under the name of its mayister or director. as Orcll. Insiv. Lat. Select, >io. 4,282. LIST OF THE THIRTY-FIVE TRADE UNIONS. 369 bers ; and this explanation we accept for the fewness of trade unions found among the inscriptions under the name quadratarii or stone-cutters. At Rome, even though perhaps many worked in stone harder than mar- ble, the name quadrat at ius was merged; because even the marble workers hewed and shaped large square blocks. We have, even as it is, enough evidence to as- sure us that the quadratnrii existed and that they were organized into unions ; for this is distinctly stated in the law of Constantine of the year 337. These, with the struct ores and other builders, were enumerated in the list of 35 trade unions recognized at that time. These 35 unions are permitted by this law to exist; although we have found inscriptions and other references giving evi- dence that at one time more than 50 trade unions existed in Italy, representing as many organized trades, and mem- bers innumerable. These will be exhibited as we proceed with the subject. The law of Constantine gives the 35 trade unions existing at one time as follows: 1. Albarii, plasterers; 2. Architecti, architects; 3. Auri- fices, goldsmiths; 4. Blatiarii, workers in mosaic; 5. Car- pen tarii, wagon-makers; 6. JErarii, brass and copper- smiths ; 7. Argentarii, silversmiths ; 8. Barbaricarii, gold gilders; 9. Diatritarii, pearl and filigree-workers; 10. Aquce Ubratores, waterers; 11. Deauratores, auratores or bracttarii, gold gilders, beaters ; 12. Eburarii, ivory work- ers; 13. Figuli, potters; 14. Fullones, fullers; 15. Fer- rarii, blacksmiths; 16. Fusores, founders; 17. Intestina- rii, joiners; 18. Lapidarii, lapidaries; 19. Laquearii, plas- terers ; 20. Medici, doctors ; 21. Mvlo medici, horse doc- tors, veternary surgeons; 22. Musivarii, decorators; 23. Marmorarii, marble-cutters; 24. Pelliones, furriers; 25. Pictores, painters; 26. Plumbarii, plumbers; 27. Quad- ratarii, stone-cutters ; 28. Specularii, looking-glass makers; 29. Statuarii, staturies; 30. Scasores or Pavinientarii, pav- ers: 31. S'-ulptores, sculptors; 32. Struct ores, masons ; 33. Te-isellarii, pavers in mosaic; 34. Tignarii, carpenters; 35. Vitriarii, glaziers. 31 Here we have the building trades represented in Con- so Codex Jtiftiniarii, 10, 64. 1. ^ Mentioned once in Orell Infer, 4 277 ; whereas the more correctly Latin term IF jr.vn l>y bin; as an organized union. Idem 4,112. 370 CATEGORIES OF TRADE UNIONS. stantine's more human law for the post-Christian organi- zation. It is well here to state that Constantine " became a Christian, being the first who threw off the yoke of pag- anism. He evidently did not understand its true ideas and was far from being a Christian at heart; but he was a politician, and Christian enough to be unbiased by the old Pagan belief in the divine aristocracy of the gens fam- ily, in which ratiocination Cicero had believingly fought the unions of working people on the ground of their un- fitness to aspire to freedom and manhood. This stereo- typed logic of the Pagan faith based on the divinity of the slave code, had been overthrown and completely annihil- ated by the new doctrine of Jesus, which did not war against slavery but subverted it by a new idea of equality a plan which, at the time of Constantine, was already 300 years old. Of the artizans in the building trades we find sufficient mention in history; but very little reference to their or- ganization into trade unions. Plutarch 33 and others state most clearly that the builders were all ranked into a class by themselves under the wise distribution of King Numa and he applies for them the Greek term technitai. So in Latin, artifices. They held this organization uninterrupt- edly for 600 years at Rome and under the much praised laws of Solon, nearly as many years in Aktica and other parts of Greece. In the year 58 before Christ the con- spiracy laws struck them a hard blow, which like an earth- quake severely shook them as far as the Greek provinces, their primitive cradle; but they became more secret and political, rallied and outlived their persecutors. Among the other builders' unions were the architects. These interlinked with the masons, carpenters, joiners and others whenever a building was ordered by the govern- ment; and contracted to do the work at prices agreed upon. The intestinarii" or as we call them, the joiners, or inside finishers of buildings, had also their trade or- See De Excsalionibut. Artificum, in Codex Theodosii, lib. 13, tit, 4, lex. 2. 88 Plutarch Life of Numa. Numa and Lycurpus Compared. 84 Mnratori, Thesaurus Veterum Inscriptionum, 937, 7, mentions a fine incrip- tion found at Capua which is interesting, as it shows the plausibility of our con- jecture, in the ske_tch of Spartatus, as to the causes of the immense multitude of freedmen who joined his army "Fabri intestinarii secundum Budeeum, ex ligno opera confeciebant minutioris artificii, quibus tan turn locus est intra des.' : Seij-i. Mur. 929, 6. UNIONS USED AS PEACE-MAKERS. 371 ganizations and appear to have been in the federation in undertaking contracts to erect and finish temples or other public edifices. An organization of plasterers is also recognized in the law of Justianian and exempted from persecution, by the code of Theodosius. These unions are not mentioned in Plutarch's list of Numa's trades because the latter consol- idated the building trades into one general fraternity with an object, as Plutarch explicitly recounts, of conciliating the jealousies of nationality well-known to have been a cause of contention and turmoil between the Albans and Sabines. By " breaking them up into powder," to use his own words, Numa taught them to mix and the contact of the particles produced a perfectly conciliatory effect. In other words, throw off the question of boundary lines which disturb workingmen and they instantly see that "an injury to one is the concern of all" CHAPTER XV. THE ARMY SUPPLIES. ORGANIZED ARMOR-MAKERS OF ANTIQUITY. TRADE UNIONS TURNED to the Manufacture of Arms and Muni- tions of War How it came about The Iron and Metal Workers Artists in the Alloys How Belligerent Rome was Furnished with Weapons, Shoes and Other Necessa- ries for Her Warriors The Shieldmakers, Arrowsmiths, Daggermakers, War-Grun and Slingmakers, Battering-Ram- makers etc. Bootmakers who Cobbled for the Roman Troops Wine Men, Bakers aud Sutlers All Organized Unions of Oil Grinders; of Pork Butchers; even of Cattle Fodderers The Haymakers Organized Fishermen Ancient Labor brought charmingly near by Inscriptions. OF the nine regular trade unions authorized by Numa Pompilius, one was that of the metal workers. They were all incorporated into a community, as workers of hard metals, before iron came to be much in use. 1 Writers who lived in ancient times often treat the subject of use- ful metals in the light that iron and steel did not come into xise until after the foundation of Rome, or 758 years anterior to the Christian era. At that early time how- ever, the asrarii or metal workers melted copper with the ores of zink and knew how to sprinkle the zink with pow- dered charcoal during the process of its fusion with cop- per to prevent it from escaping in fumes of the oxide. It may also be stated that little improvement has ever been made in the manufacture of brass ; and even the ancient process of using zink ore instead of the refined article did not come into use until A. D. 1781. It would not be sur- i Lucretius, speaking of brass, says : " Et prior erat seris quam ferri cognitus nsuB." TRADE UNIONS BUILT SOLOMON'S TEMPLE. 373 prising if further investigations should lead to the dis- covery that it was the enterprise of trade unions which led to this and other inventions and discoveries in the arts; for the purely slave system did little or nothing for art or science and the earliest forms of industry outside of slavery seems to have been those of workmen combined for mutual aid. Flavius Josephus in his history of the Jews makes elaborate mention of Solomon's temple, as hav- ing been built in a large degree by the trade unions un- der Hiram a man of extraordinary skill in the building crafts. Not willing to accept our own interpretation of Josephus, we refer the reader to the remarks of Granier upon this subject ; 2 as he seems to have settled it that they were organized trades. Little doubt can be entertained that iron, at the time of Numa, was also in use at Rome. 3 Yet there is no men- tion made in proof that Numa organized the /errant or iron workers of whom Orelli furnishes two inscriptions, 4 one of which represents a genuine trade union, which proves beyond any counter evidence that the iron work- ers were organized. But abundant evidence exists in the later laws restricting organization, and these clubs stand among the excused, in the list of 35 unions of the code of Theodosius. If any further doubt can possibly remain as to the use of iron by blacksmiths, forgers and finishers at the time of Numa, we have only to refer the critic to Homer, and the celebrated historic inscription called the Arundelian slab, also to the bible. 5 2 Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, book VII, chap, ii, noticed by Granier. Hittore de* dlasset Ouvrieres, p. 289, note : " Ce que Flavins Joseph raconte ties travaux qui furent, a plusiers reprises, executes a Jerusalem, soil pour batir le temple, soil pour le relever on le reparer, ne permet pas de douter que les cur- riers, tant jnifs que sidoniens, qu'on y employa, ne fnssent organises en corpo - ations, D'ailleurs toute eepece de doute est leve par le passage suivant, ou il est clairement parle de la hierarchic qui regnait parmi ces ouvriers, et des trois mille deux ceuts MAITBES qn'avaient les quatre-vingt mille magons occupes aux mu- railles du temple: Kirav &' -" Sam. Pettifs Studies of the Arundelian Inscription; Bible, Genftii, chap. IV. Job, chap, XXVII. 374 HOME'S ARMY SUPPLIES. The silver and gold workers did not confederate with these metal workers. We reserve mention of them for a place farther on. Orelli, among his inscriptions gives sufficient specimens carved upon marble and other slabs, pome of which have stood the grim erosions of the ages of time that have seen all things else crumble into dust since they were fresh from the chisel of the caslatores. 6 After the death of Numa the doors of the temple of Tanus were again flung open, which meant that Rome was again ready for war. This king had closed them as was customary in time of peace. He desired peace with the ' vorld in order that the nation might develop upon its own resources, and by its own labor. The 43 years of his peaceful reign gave the artisans time to organize, forget iUeir petty disagreements and settle down upon a basis of Maternity and thrift. And they not only developed their okill but organized it so that after the king's death, when war again broke out, the nation found these metal workers ready to turn their skilled labor to manufacturing swords, shields and all the arms and munitions of the contests "vhich followed. Thus labor at Rome did not suffer by war, because the Roman arms were successful through a long period of *>00 years. During this time the Romans conquered the with arms manufactured to some extent and we are to think, to a very great extent, by the iron and netal workers organized by Numa. They loved their trade unions and remained organized, working in fraternal bond, in common enjoyment of the fruits of their united labor in spite of several attempts on the part of the senate to put them down. The system, as we have already shown, was to manufacture arms and other munitions of war directly for the government out of raw material which be- 'onged to and was produced from, the mines of the gov- 'rnment. We have seen that the land belonged to the Roman state ; that it was farmed by the proletaries on shares and that these shares were collected mostly " in kind," by an organization of unions. These customs-collectors distri- buted the products of the land each year among the citi- 6 Orell. in his Latin Inscriptions, numbers the ceelatores as follows: Nos- 4 133, 4.060. 4.066, 4,140, 4,061, 1,239. 361 and 946. Each of these numbers chronicles a genuine trade union. IRON . AND METAL WORKERS. 375 zen class who virtually possessed and comprised the govern- ment. So also with regard to the mines which produced raw material for the iron and other metal workers to con- vert into lances, darts, swords and all sorts of armor for the Roman army. With the land, the mines also belonged to the government. There consequently had to be a trade union of miners whom the Romans called ferrariarii? if miners of iron, and ser.fodinarii, if miners of copper. These miners of Copper and iron were naturally feder- ated together. Neither the union of forgers and smiths nor of the copper and brass or bronze workers could buy and exploit their own mining works in order to supply the workmen and fulfill their contracts with the government, because they did not own the mines. Nor could the work- men at the mines accomplish such an end. The govern- ment possessed the mines and in many cases let them to contractors. It remained, therefore, for the workmen whose managers were often the contractors, to preserve a close federation of their trades, no matter how distant they were located apart. We are told 8 that at the winter quarters of the rebel army of Spartacus at Thuria, he es- tablished an armory of large proportions. It was near the mountains and probably near mines of iron and cop- per ; and as his army was composed of workingmen, many of whom were skilful artisans they co-operated as by com- mon consent, and practically used their federation at both the mines and the forge. The iron and metal workers, who were thus confederated or " distributed " by Numa into unions for the purpose of harmony in the arts of peace, were, after his death, thus kept in the same bond of union many hundred years, helping Rome to practice her arts of war. The plan of Government employment directly, without middlemen was a happy one and the long vista of time from the trade union laws of Numa to the conspiracy laws of Cicero and Csesar was the true golden age of Rome. Immediately after the death of Numa Pompillius, that wisest of monarcbs, perhaps, of whom the world's history makes mention, the doors of the celebrated temple of Janus were thrown open and Mars, the bellicose myth ' Mnratori. Thesaurus Veterum Inscriptionum^ 972, 1O, also idem. 963, 2. 8 Plutarch, Crassus, VIII, XII. See also Floras, III. 20, 6, speaking of impro- vising weapons. " E ferro egastulornm recocto gladios ac tela facetnnt-" 376 ROME'S ARMY SUPPLIES. war-god rushed out with trumpets, javelins and the clangor of contention. We are going to recount one seemingly phenomenal instance in human history where labor and war existed harmoniously and thrived together. The king in instructing his people in the arts of peace had actually laid the foundation for the most gigantic successes ever before known in the arts of war! He had taught the state to employ the labor of trade unions direct. He had taught how to do this without the complications, individual emulations, avaricious ambitions and failures which, in wars often break up great schemes through the jealousy and incompetence of individual rule. He had simplified th*e labor of production, distribution, consumption by himself employing all the artisans of his realm and direct- ing them to husband the resources of the state which was then the owner of the lands, mines and the waters. The workers being themselves exempt from serving in war by reason of their supposed ignoble origin and rank, had no fear of the tedious campaign nor dread of the carnage of battle. They knew how to make the steel that was to pierce the bodies of those they loved not, and whom when they were enslaved, their ancestors had hated as mortal foes. They were happy'. Rome was turned into a vast armory. The members of the well organized unions were the first to receive employment from the government which was not theirs and for 500 years were the last to be maltreated or discharged. Had it been possible for king Numa to live and reign with his peace measures during those 500 years we know not what would have been the consequence but it would have probably resulted in a far different destiny for the human race. His scheme was to cultivate the elements of peace and he was wise enough to understand that la- bor was a respectable factor. Under him it was indeed becoming a cult; and could he have lived long enough to engraft his peace system, with all its civilizing and sooth- ing effects, until the people far and near had endorsed it as a second nature, the irascible and grasping as well as the concupiscent ingredients of our nature which domi- nate warlike tribes must have absorbed enough of the great refining gem of sympathy, to have started the Indo- Enropeans in quite a different direction from the murder- TRADE UNIONS MADE THE WEAPONS. 377 ous warpath of conquest which they actually took, leading to ignorance and brutality. It might have been better for the trade unions to contine manufacturing the implements of peace as Nutna ordered. But so long as the Roman arms prevailed, Roman trade organizations under the war system were safe; and the workmen doubtless cared little for the refinements of peace, although the neutral posi- tion they assumed as workingmen and their educational discussions among themselves certainly developed more of sympathy and far less of cupidity and irascibility than was possessed by the optimates who managed and fought out the brutal orgies of warfare. From the foregoing we know that no great amount of work was done by the iron and metal workers in the line of armor manufacture during the lifetime of J\ r uma. Af- ter his death, when the warring spirit of the patrician class was aroused to anticipations of the ancient scenes of valor and blood, it was found that Rome was without arms and munitions of war. The helmets and shields, the sa- bres and javelins had been forged into mattocks, spades and cutlery of domestic use. It was necessary to make a new beginning. That the ferrarii or iron workers pos- sessed a federation with the sword cutlers is certain, al- though the exact date of that co-operation is difficult to ascertain. It must have been old, however. A number of inscriptions bearing evidence of this are recorded by Orfclli ; ' and we have distinct mention in the digest 10 showing that these unions or fraternities of workmen were fixed by law. The trade unions had then in their federa- tion the gladiarii or sword cutlers, the sagitarii or arrow- smiths, the scutarii or elliptical shield makers who, how- ever, made this armor of wood and sometimes covered it with thick rawhide, sometimes with plate metal ; and the clipearii or round shield makers who made them of copper or bronze; the telarii or manufacturers of darts and jave- lins ; the scalperii, knife makers, and the hastarii or spear makers. There was another trade union, the collegium ballistariorum, n mentioned also in the digest, 13 the special Orell., Inter. Lai. Select. Coll Nos. 4,197, 4,247, Artes el Opificia. 10 Tarrunt 50, 6, 6, dig. "gladiarii, gagittarii, Carpentaria, aquflces, scandu- larii, etc." 11 Orell.. idem. No. 4.066, Donati, 2, p. 225. >* Tarrunt, dig. 50, 6, 6. This was a genuine trade union which had a con 373 ROME'S ARMY SUPPLIES. business of whose numbers was to manufacture the cele- brated ballista, a kind of mitrailleuse, or stone thrower, which with great force and deadly effect flung large peb- bles or small stones and other projectiles into the ranks of an enemy. Much engineering skill was required to operate this engine of war. Doubtless the unions were obliged to send their own mechanics to adjust and manip- ulate these huge engines. But it is more probable * 3 that they were federated with the great trade union now known by numerous very interesting and unmistakable inscriptions as the collegium mensorum machinariorum 141 or trade union of machine adjusters and setters, -whose business was to oversee the work of transporting any finished machinery to the place of its destination and supervise or perform the work of setting it in operation. The body or union 15 which is referred to in the inscrip- tion given in the foot-note below evidently combined the two functions of trade union and burial society. Furius and Lollius were officers, being both members of the society of machinists; and were buried at the expense of the funeral branch and out of the funeral fund. The amount of 25 denarii 16 was mentioned for the funeral expenses. Roses costing 5 more were to be put upon the coffin. For the funeral expenses of their aged par- ents one-half this amount wag- to be appropriated. In case these requirements were not conformed to, there would be a forfeiture on the part of the trade union of double this sum annually, which forfeiture should be covered into the treasury of the funeral branch. siderable membership, as the construction of these huge engines required much labor and skill. 13 Mommsen constantly bemoans the silence of historians on these extremely interesting subjects We render for our readers some of his own lamentations: "The deep silence of the stones containing the inscribed constitutioric and re- strictions, prevents us from determinii g which (meaning the trade unions were under the law and which adverse to the privileges granted by the senate)." De Coll. et Sodal. Romanorum, p. 80.) 14 Gruterins. Inscriptions Antiques Totius Orbis Romanorum, 91, 1. Murator- ius, Thesaurus Veterum Inscriptirmum, 523, 3. Orellius, Inscriptionum Latinarum CoUectio, No. 4,107. The inscription reads: "D, M. C. Turius, C T. Lollius quitquit ex corpore mensorum machinariornm funeraticii nomine sequetur, re- liqnm penes Rempubllcam super scriptam remanere volo ex cujus ueiiris peto a vobis college uti suscipere dignemini VI difbus solemnibus sacriticium mihr faciatis. Id est III1 id. mart, die natalis mei ugque ad XXV , denario? , Paren- talis XII semis. FlosrosnV. Si factanon fnerins, tune, fcsco stacionis anmonsa duplum fnneraticium dare debebetis " 1* See Orel!., /wer Lot.Coll.,\o\ TIT, p. 170. Varia collceiorum nomlna 16 A Roman denarius of the period of Cicero was wonh 16J4 cents. Bi'^kb. ANCIENT BATTERING RAMS. 379- This strange, progressive co-operation of the lowly,, industrious, ingenious but despised moiety of the anci- ent people may justly be regarded as a lost lesson. Un- til now it has rested in prof oundest darkness. So utterly ignored was labor by the ancient historians 1T that even the nominal terminations affixed to nouns and particles in the Latin tongue, giving the technical forms that were in commonest use for artizans of every kind, do not ap- pear, if we except a very few in Pliny and one or two- other writers on art. On account of this extraordinary neglect our lexicographers are obliged to have constant recourse to modern archaeologists in whose works ap- pear inscriptions verbatim, from the time-crumbled stones ! From no other source can they with classic authority complete the vocabularies of the language ! But this authority is justly considered good. These stones tell tales which the prevaricating, mellifluous sy- cophants at the court of the Caesars dared not smirch their parchment with. The arietarii or battering ram makers do not appear as belonging to a union by themselves. If this was ever the case we have not been able to discover any inscrip- tion bearing record of the fact. But they existed. Livy repeatedly speaks of the aries- or battering ram ; and it is known to have been at first a simple device, consisting of a huge beam sometimes 150 feet long which a large force of men held on their shoulders and by repeated back- ward and forward runs, the bronze-plated ram or head, striking against the wall of an enemy's town, broke or rammed down the masonry so that the soldiers rushed through the breaches and sacked the place. It is quite probable that these ram makers were merged into the membership of the catapultarii or balistarii 1 * who manu- factured these huge machines, in connection with the catapults or stone slings. However this may have been, it was certainly due to the ingenuity and industry of the machinists that the battering ram developed from this simple form until, in its state of perfection, it was hung by chains to the boom of a tripod fastened by guys ; and 17 Drummann, Arb. u. Comn., p, 155. " Bef ricdigende Xachrichten sncht man verL'abens." Orel). No. 4,066, Balistariorum Collegium 330 ROME^S ARMY SUPPLIES thus swayed forward and backward by human or mule power so as to beat down the strongest walls. Then among others of the armor maters were the jac- ulatorii or slingers. Darts, jacula, were in common use with the ancients. They were easily broken, were of short duration and consequently had to be manufactured in large quantities ; and we are told they were manufac- tured along with other armaments in Kome and other industrial centers, by the unions who found in the gov- ernment a reliable employer that paid well for the work. 19 The Collegium Caligariorum (soldiers' boot makers or cobblers), was a trade union of shoemakers who manu- factured and supplied shoes for the army.*' During the warlike ages which intervened between the reign of Numa Pompilius and the first emperors, a large army was almost constantly employed by the Roman govern- ment. These had to be supplied with food, clothing, barracks, tents and impedimenta and all the parapherna- lia of war. In those times, to be a soldier was a grace ; to be a cobbler a disgrace ; and as the membership of the collegia was always composed of freedmen or emanci- pated slaves, with their children and their children's children who constituted the great proletariat of Rome, the labor which their fore fathers performed as slaves, came down with them in disgrace. This is the real origin of the taint of labor the social degradation of the poor who performed it. It is the blackened obloquy, flinging its attendant odium and fastening its stain alike on him who performs and on his performance. These corvine liaters of those who fed them, painted social rank festooned in contumacy which fastened upon and clung tight to the heart and soul of both rich and poor, cowing the work- men into the unmanly belief that both labor and the la- borer were as mean as they were believed to be. Thus contempt for labor had descended from generation to generation with an ignoble belief in the lowliness of so- 19 Granier, Histoirt ctes Classes Ouvrib-es, chap, xii, pp. 302-304. "Dans son C3te, le gouvernement avait beaoin de trouver tonjours nn nombre et une vari- 4te cl'ouoriers sufflsants pour execnter see ouvroges: et quels ouvr;iges que ceux qu' a fait ex^uter le gonvernemetit Koinain I Que de temples et quels temples! VJue d' aquerluoa et quels arjueclucs I Que de pouts et quels pouts! " 20 Gruter, Irucr. Ant. Rom., 649, 1. See also Drumaun. Arbeiier und Commv- ItisUn, in, Rom, who, quotinpt Cicirp, Pro F,'acc. 7, says: "Eben so die Schuster trt'ores, welche Cicero mit d^n Gurtlern, zonariif, als verachtliche Volksklasse u,.nnt. bildeten eine besondere Zuntt nacii Xuraas Einrichtung.'' STATE EMPLOY OF TRADE UNIONS. 381 cial grade. But the work of the soldier was honorable. At first, only the patrician and his sons, the grandees of the realm,Jcould enjoy the honor of a soldier's life. But times had changed. The slave who became a freedman had organized himself into the union of resistance against oppression and we find him now a member of the soldier's shoemaking union, by far the happier man of the two, pur- veying boots and shoes to the comparatively useless ranks, of the Roman army whose trade, like that of the brigands, was to rob and destroy, not to produce. Especially must this great truth have gladdened him, since by reason of his organization which at that time there was no law to forbid, he realized easier times. There were then no or- ganized, competing industries, monopolizing his busi- ness. In the certitude of employment and its remuner- ation, though there was little hope of affluance, he wa s content. 31 This was certainly the Golden era. The in- scriptions bear witness that the society became the in- strument of much social pleasure and probably instruc- tion. Indeed, this could not have been otherwise as all the testimony of experience in the scale of social pleas- ures and means of advancement were similar to those of exactly similar unions of our own times. Working peo- ple were not honored by any of the noble or heroic pro- fessions ; such as the pursuits of war, which were not considered ignoble', or of writing the history of war. 8 * 21 The whole truth is, government patronized, employed and protected the trade unions for more than 500 years. Gramer in correctly denying that either the very rich or the indignant individuals upheld the unions, says: "Restait ennn le gouvernmeut. C' etait la le vrai client des jurandes, et lea travaux en- trepris par lui 1'ormait le seul atelier permanent ou les ouvriers pussent gagner. chaque jour leur salaire." Granier, Hulnre des Classes OuvriZrs, p. 303. Again* idem, pp. 303-4, Granier says: "De eon cote, le gouvernement avait bespin de trouver toujours un nombre et une variete d'ouvriers sufflsants pour executer ses ouvrages; et quels ouvrages que ceux qu'a fait executer le gouvernement remain! Que de temples et quels temples I Que d'aqueducs, et quels aque- ducs! Que y Connegietur, Nom. Rat. p. 219. A third by Cardinal!, Iscriz. Velet, p. 44, lound *t Veletri. A fourth, that at Beaufort and a fifth, prob. at Pisa by Marini, XIII. Gwrn. di Pisi, p. 25. 23 Orell., Inscr. Lat. Collectio, No. 4,09.3. Momm. De Coll.et Sodal.Rom. p. 97, Gran, de Cassagn., Hist, des Classes Ouvrikres. p. 610, Grut, 462, 3. Orell.. CM. l*ublica. et Private., No. 7,194. 2> Idem No. 7,206, coll. mulionuin et asinariorum. UNIONS CHAMPIONED BY CLOD! US. 397 understood that anything like all the work of any kind,, was a great length of time, ever performed by the unions, alone. The competition between the unions and the spec- ulators must have raged with activity for at least 200 years, and finally the hatred of the speculating oligarchy- went into legislation. After endless turmoils, among which the unions, cham- pioned by Clodius, not only restored their old rights of organizations but gained many more, the struggle culmi- nated in Caesar suppressing nearly all of them. But the- unionists were strong and influential and in course of time, after the death of Cicero, Caesar and other enemies, they reassumed most of their fallen power. Nothing was able- to grind them out entirely. History gives us little in regard to the methods by which the armies of the ever victorious Romans were sup- plied with provisions. If there is any mention by histor- ians of a union or association of sutlers who made it their business to supply th armies stationed upon Roman ter- ritory, we have failed to find it. There are inscriptions, however, which are beginning to reveal a subject pregnant of importance in solving misty queries regarding the phe- nomenal successes of Roman arms. We have already- shown that from the end of Numa's reign the Roman arm- ies were supplied with arms in a great degree by the unions of armorers. It is here relevant to prove, if possible, that they were also supplied by them with provisions. For at least 500 years the armies used union made wagons, union made swords, union made javelins, bows and arrows, helmets and shields, wore union made shoes, trowsers, hats and coats, and tore down the walls and battlements of their enemies with union made catapults and battering ranis. Did they not eat union made bread, union cured meat and drink the delicious wines and beverages prepared by the organized victualers ? True, when far away in their for- eign conquests the Roman soldiers depended much upon the pillage and plunder of their unfortunate victims; but at home, when the armies were at quarters this question sharply applies. The student of sociology is particularly interested in this subject, because this matter of union labor in supply ing the legions goes far in settling the lung 398 ROME'S VICTUALING SYSTEM. mooted problem hanging over the decline and fall of Rome. Rome prospered in peace and in arms, until the glut of conquest changed her statesmen from the wise tolerance of Numa and Servius Tullius to the rapacious slave-hold- ing policy which sought to destroy the unions that made possible her unparalleled success. But when gorged with enormous wealth, she lost her manhood and swine-like fell upon and devoured her own nurslings and friends. The sin struck back upon herself like the fangs of the tortured crotalus and poisoned her own blood with a reacting plague of ingratitude and pollution. The stones have already revealed to us that there existed unions of victualers who made a business of supplying the armies. They were called collegia castrensiariorum, 26 sut- lers. We are not informed of the exact relation they had with the armies; whether like our sutlers they hung around the flanks and peddled with the soldiers, or whether they supplied the armies by contract with the senate or consular generals. In addition to the unions already mentioned we find that the cooks and waiters also had their organization of self-help. They may all be classed as one family or com- mune, although in some cases at least, the cooks and the waiters were apart. In the inscriptions there are three unions of cooks; one a collegium coctonim" who took charge of the stately business of cookery in the palace of Augustus Caesar, at Rome. Another is mentioned on the lab as cocus, a cook which was found at Rome and is cited by Marini, 29 and the third also speaks of a man who was an Alban cook, evidently president of the society. It was found on the cite of the ancient city of Alba. Mommsen cites the collegium praegustatorum mentioned "by Gruter as a genuine trade union of waiters, who, as this designation implies, were foretasters as well as wait- ers. The rich in Rome were ever beset with fears of be- ing poisoned. They were obliged to have their food tasted 26 See BUcher, Aufstande der Unfreian Arbeiter, pp. 3-16. Geldoligarkie, Pan- perismus, Sklaventhum. 27 Orell., Nos. 7,189, 6,344 and elsewhere. Also Gruter, Inscriptiones Antiques Totius Orbis Romanorum, 649, 5, and several others. 28 Cardinal!, Dipl. 410. 20 Marini, Atti, 1, p. 610. Z9 Romanelli, Topog. I, 3, p. 213. Grut., Inscr. Antiqu., 581, 13, so Momm., De. Coll. et Sodal. Rom., p. 78, note 25. SPLENDID WORK OF THE UNIONS. 399 of by the waiter in their presence. If the waiter ate it with impunity they need have no fears. The waiters be- ing in constant communication with the cooks were sup- posed to know all the dangerous designs that might origi- nate among the kitchen people, to be consummated in the dining rooms ; and were thus held responsible for the honesty of both themselves and the cooks. They were required to taste the milk they served to the gentry direct from the jugs or pots, ampullae of the milk men, or the collegium lacticariorum a milkman's union mentioned by Mommsen 31 as a corpus or labor union. This interlinking of many trades, whose sympathies and contact sometimes fitted them for carrying out cunningly concocted plots with the waiter thus became practically a sort of key to the treachery. Even the manufacturers of these milk jars had unions, one of which, in the collection of Gruter was found inscribed on a slab of slate or stone discovered at Narbonne. 32 A stone has been dug up bearing the inscription colleg- ium vasulariorum. It exhibits the relics of a union of manufacturers of cooking utensils. Most of their produc- tions were of copper or bronze. The vascula were of vari- ous shapes; spits, ladles, cups, bowls, soupspoons and many other implements of cookery. Hammer work with the ancient artisans was a fine art. Sometimes the best workmen, if not slaves, had organizations, which were called the malleatores, hammerers and are mentioned by Orelli as inscribed on a stone. 33 There also were the basket makers' unions the products of whom, sportulse, figure in the decree of laws governing sacred unions as found in the Roman temple of Barber- inis and given in full by Orelli in No. 2,417 of his great collection, which is in itself a curiosity. Other dishes used by the cooks were two-eared flagons or flasks for wine and other liquors, amphorse, besides a number oi others, for nearly all of which we have proof of unions hav- ing existed, who conducted their manufacture. Finally the tricliniarchs or stewards who had the su- preme charge of kitchen and dining room. Their name n Grater. Inscriptions Totius Orbil Romannmm, 643. 10. s Orell , Insbriptionum Latinorum Colltftio, No. 3,229. 3 Fabrett, p. 724. 443. 400 ROME'S VICTUALING SYSTEM. was derived from the celebrated triclinium or dining-couch of the ancients. It was a seat, generally cushioned, which extended around three sides of the table, upon which people did not sit, but reclined a practice so demonstra- tive of exuberant luxury, if not of lasciviousness that it was abolished as one of the abominations by the Chris- tians and seems to have completely disappeared from the earth. There is extant at least one monument giving clear evidence of a society of this kind, called in the inscrip- tion 31 tricliniarum socii. It is in the museum of Home and bears a very queer, unpolished style of Latin. Fabett, 449, 59 CHAPTER XVH. INDUSTRIAL COMMUNES AMUSEMENTS OF OLD. UNIONS OF PLAYERS. THE COLLEGIA SC^ENICORUM Unions of Mimics Horrible Mimic Performances in Sicily Bloody Origin of Wakes Unions of Dancers, Trumpeters, Bagpipers, and Hornblowers Ti p Flute-Players Roman Games Unions of C ircus Performei s Of Gladiators Of Actors Murdering Robust Wresilei - for Holiday Pastimes Unions of Fortune-tellers Proofs in the Inscriptions Ferocious Gladiatorial Scenes between the Workingmen and Tigers, Lions, Bears, and Other Wild Beasts made compulsory by Roman Law. THE Greeks and Komans are known to have given at an early period much attention to amusements, in which it appears there was a larger admixture of the lowly, with the noble class than occurred in other pursuits. The theatre with the Greeks, was quite a democratic affair. The earliest theatres were rude ; but during the heroic ages immense buildings were constructed. That of Me- gapolis in Arcadia was of gigantic size. Their size was such that roofs were out of the question, and people sat on stone seats for from four to eight hours in daytime exposed to sun and rain, during the performances, listen- ing to, and bound up in enthusiastic delight over the ini- mitable sallies of Aristophanes in the "Babylonians," satyr- ing the tyrant Cleon, or thrilled by the sublime grandeur of tragedy and mimic of Sophocles and Euripides at Athens. Some of the great theatres were capable of hold- ing 60,000 spectators. The great theatre at Ephesus was 660 feet in diameter and one in Syracuse 440 feet. An immense wooden theatre, built by Scaurus at Rome, 65 402 ORGANIZED AMUSERS. years before Christ, and at the moment when intolerance to the labor unions and profligacy among the grandees were beginning to crumble the proud Romans into de- moralization and decay, was capable of accommodating 0,000 people. We find no fewer than six genuine trade unions; called, on the stones, collegia scaenicorum. 1 They are coeval with the age of the Roman theatres. Their members of course, fared better than the gladiators, 8 another class who con- tributed to the Roman pastimes ; but they were hard- worked people and all belonged to the proletaries. We shall bring to view as illustrative of- our object, principal^ the Roman life in this section of the ancient trade unions, not because we are wanting of archteologi- cal specimens ; for there are very many profoundly in- teresting relics of the life of ancient labor now being dis- covered among the ruins of the Greeks. Renan, Wescher, Foucart and Bockh have eloquently told the story and the solemn silence of crumbling marbles, like skeletons seem to be speaking in incoherent phrase of a day when the whole Greek world was ablaze with labor communes, whose secrecy was suggestive of a smouldering social volcano. But if we gave them all it would make this work tediously voluminous. Besides, the inscriptions in the Latin tongue seem to bring the matter under inves- tigation more conspicuously before us, not only because they are topographically less remote but because the Ian- gauge in which they come to us is smoother and more in- telligible to the readers of the western world. In the Wiener Jahrbuch for 1829 there appeared a de- ciphering of an inscription on a plate of bronze containing an epitaph of the president of a union of mimic actors. It is written in the second person. He had lived to be nearly a hundred years old ; had never aspired above his fellows and had died bidding them farewell. It is in the Museum at Pesth. Several others have been found in Austrian territory. Orelli 8 describes several anaglyphs 1 One found at Wasserstadt, Aquceni"iim, a suburb of Buda, by Labus and published at Milan, 1827 reads: "Genio Collegio Scjeniariorum Felan, Secundus Monitor Decreto Decunonum. 2 Chapter xii., Spartacus, init. * Orelli, Inscriptionum Lalinorum Collfctio. in his Collegia Corpora, Sodalicia No. 7,183. Vol. Ill, Henzen. A. CURIOUS STONE. 403 in stone and metal composition, which have withstood the erosions of nature fully 2,000 years. la the Res Scaenica and Ludi, one is quoted from Muratori,* bearing uncer- tain evidence that it was a union of histrionic artists. It was from Prseneste. Two remarkable tablets bearing record of the year 112 A. D. are noted by Gorins. 5 They were preserved in the museum at Florence, and unless recently removed, are there still. Upon these slabs are inscribed the names of soldiers of the seven Roman co- horts, of the praetorian force of Misenum ever on the alert conducting the scenic plays. Claudius Gnorimus is be- ing made an aedile or superintendent of public works by the battalion; plays are going on by the acting comrades with their buffoons. Among all these are to be observed: 1st. The head mimic actor ; 2d. The mimic Greek 'ea 1- ers; 3d. The clowns; 4th. The Greek clowns ; 5th. Tne Greek actors ; 6th. The jesting dandies ; 7th. A working- man. All the names of the soldiers are given in the vo- cative case. Consequently the inscription is too long to be given entire in any work which we have seen. It portrays the kind of military theatrical scene which used to be enacted 200 years after the beginning of the Chris- tian era, or about 1,700 years ago and of course, much earlier. 6 Another inscription appears among the Res Scaenica in Orelli's catalogue which still more clearly rep- resents a mutually protective union of actors. It was found at the French city of Vienne, a few miles from Ly- ons, on the Rhone, by Millin. 7 It is also very ancient and shows that in that far off country of the AUobroges there was a great population long before Caesar's inva- sion. Although we are endeavoring to give the facts consec- Muratori, Thesaur., C69, 1; Gruter, Inter. Tot. Orb. Rom., 330, 3. * Cf. Etrutcan /user.. I. p. 125 and II, p. 447 and Mnr., 886-887, Consult Orellius, Inscriptionum Latinarum Collectio, No. 2.608. Muratori, Thesaur, 886-7. Gorius Elr. , I. p, 123. " Memorabiles sunt tabulae anni p. Chr. 212, duae a Gorio Etr. 1. p 125 (2,447). et Mur. 886 et 887 editae, Florentine nunc adsertae, in quibus referuntur nomina militum ex Cohortibns VII. Vigiluni et Classis praetoriae Misenatis, qui Ludos scenicos egerunt, quum Claudius Gncri- mus aedilis factus esset a vexillatione, luuosque ederet, ' agentibus commilitoni- bus cum suis acroamatibus ' In his notandi; 1. Archimimns. 2. Arcliimimi Graeci. 3. Stupidi. 4 Stupidi Graeci. 5. Scaenici Graeci 6. Scurra. 7. Oper- ariuB. Omnia militum nomina vocative efferuntiir," For more on the vexillum, red flag, and vexillalio, consult our chapter on the ancient red flag of the work- ingman. ' Voyage, 2, p. 21. 404 ORGANIZED AM USERS. utively, we shall here be compelled, for want of data, to mention in an anacoluthical manner, some of the most interesting of these unions known to have existed coeval with those times, or approximately so. The cotntnuniones mimorum, one of which 8 was dis- covered in the ruins of the theatre Bovillensis, and others in great numbers in Greece 9 and elsewhere, were unions of mimic actors. They constituted an order by them- selves. It appears that they marched around in the cities and took from their friends and the public whatever gifts were offered. We mention these data to exhibit to our readers the collossal scale on which amusements were conducted, that the mind may be prepared to compre- hend the vast amount of labor of the lowly, which the evo- lutions of this business entailed. Following up our scheme of inquiry into the dark chasms and gaps of history, from a standpoint of sociological in- vestigation, our point of intensest interest is the question whether these purveyors of pastimes were organized. Of this there is abundance of evidence in the inscriptions. In the catalogue of the archaeologist Orelli, there appear no less than 12 tolerably well preserved slabs which show not less than a hundred unions ! At Rome there is an inscription, much broken and de- faced by time and neglect, 10 which bears positive proof that the theatre players were not only organized but that they, like the gladiators belonged to the plebeian stock. Caput VI., of Orelli's work, headed Ludi, Res Scaenica et cet., has no less than 116 inscriptions, a large number of which are seen at a glance to be either genuine unions or corporate communes. But as some of these unions were those of gladiators, we reserve their description for that more tragical and brutal class of amusement, A very remarkable mimic performance for enjoyment was once in vogue during the insurrection of the Sicilian slaves B. C. 143-134. It may not be generally known that in addition to accredited kings and tyrants of Sicily there once reigned a king of the slaves. The extraordi- 8 Orell., Inscr., No. 2,625, also NOB. 4,094, 4,101. 9 Mommsen, De Collegriis et Sodaliciis Romanorum, p. 83. "Communia mim- orum Romanorum, et in nomine et in institutis TO. KOIVO. r Gruter, Inscr. Totius Orbis Romanorum, Xos. 471. 5, 358. 6 and others. *8 Gruter, Jnscr. Totius Orbis Rom., 477, 1. Kabrett, Explicaiio. p. 73, 72. *> Orell., Iiiscr., >io. 5,122, Collegium ccntonarirum Mun;cipii Mevaniolto. RAGPICKERS AND P1ECE-PATCHERS. 423 lections of rags picked up in the streets or obtained by beg- gary or otherwise in their wanderings by day, they found in their culling and sorting, material of mixed colors and qualities sufficient to make a coat, no matter how versicol- ored and bizarre it looked when finished, they set about cutting, patching and putting together the pieces, and of them creating a garment readily disposed of among the poor slaves and outcasts whose wretched lot it was often to work in sun and storm, heat and cold, without clothing, as naked as the gladiators who fought on the sands of the am- phitheatres. The immense number of inscriptions bearing record of these facts, affords proof of the formidable misery which poor despised humanity were obliged to suffer in ancient days. In proof of the position above stated, we have from Regium in Cisalpine Gaul a splendid stone containing over 100 words showing that the membership was allied to manufacturers, but of what sort is not given; that they had a temple of some kind of their own; and that they took an active part in public affairs by force of their organ ized num- bers. 31 We are inclined to the opinion that whoever investigates the subject of the ancient ragpickers from the numerous and unmistakable data already at command, will arrive at our conclusion that they were a sort of social jack-at-all- trades, undertaking in poverty, with limited means, and un- der many checks of social humiliation and contempt, any job that fell in their way by which they could make a living. Muratori exhibits in his enormous folio collection Nos. 563 2 and 564 1, of his Thesaurus two others, found at the town of Sentinum, a place in ancient Umbria, which, on the Tvhole, adds little to the points already given. In the Neapolitan museum is, or was a collection of bronze statues, statuettes, plaques and tablets, all conveying thoughts valuable to the study of ethnology the Heraclian or Herculanean museum. Stored there is another interest- ing tablet of these centonarii or ragpickers. It was found by Fabretti, direcily or indirectly, at Patavium. 83 Accord- ing to Heineck it is very old. 34 Another from the ager Co- 81 Orel!.. No. 4,133; Grntcr. 1,101, 1 and Murator, 663, 1. 3 2 Vide Orell., 4,134: "Similia decreia, nee minus verbosa, adulattonigque plena '' Fabretti. EzplivMo, p. 485, 160. Beinec, Antiqu, p. 286. 424 CLOTHES MAKERS. mensis, classed by Orelli, among the societies of artisans is equally suggestive.* 5 It is ascribed to Muratori, and is from Torcellum. Mommsen's great collection 36 contains another stone bearing an inscription of art ^Jsernian rag pickers' or- ganization and Orelli gives a very fine specimen from Brixia, wm'ch he arranges with his collegia, corpora et so- dalicia." One that Orelli mixed up with his Dii Immor- tales seems to commemorate one of those unions, combining several kinds of labor under one set of rules.* 8 When the monument was lettered the union had already existed 151 years. It is at Milan. These things show how dear the union was to freedmen. We have already cited twelve of the evidences of a power- ful organization of freedmen on Roman soil. There are over 40 more good specimens in the museums and other collections, and their record is made good for all time in the voluminous catalogues of Archaeologists. The great num- ber of inscriptions of the centonarii, or rag and old junk gatherers, in comparison with most other organized trades may be accounted for if we reflect that very many of the ancient lowly obtained their manumission late in life, after they had been worn out in toil, whose products had gone to their masters. Manumissions were easily obtained at an advanced age because the owner of a man would be glad to free himself from the expense of maintaining him after he became old, decrepit and useless. Doubtless the owner often killed his ultra-aged slaves rather than accord them the boon called liberty to die in possession of. But we may be sure that such was ever the longing for freedom when offered the slave under whatsoever motive that he seldom refused to accept the gift, though its acceptance entailed r. 1 ! the anxi- eties and dangers of the precarious competitive struggle tor existence. Assuming at an advanced age the responsibili- ties of life, he drifted into any labor, no matter how grovel- ling, and became the junk-man, rag-picker and patch-piecer; and with the mutual aid of his union succeeded in living happier in responsible independence than he was before in his irresponsible thraldom. A second reason for their large numbers may be, that s Orell., Inscr., No. 4070 : Mar. Theasaur, 513. 3. 8ee also Orell., No. 4071, tt Momm., Inter., No. 5,060. Orell., Inscr., No. 7,201. Orel!.. Inter., No. 1102. ANCIENT GYPSIES. 425 many times no work could be found; consequently to ob- tain enough to live upon they took to picking what others threw away and found that by scouring the streets and alleys they could bring to their rag and junk markets suffi- cient to relieve the pinch of hunger, and with the otherwise unusable stuff, make fires to cook their food and warm themselves in winter. The fact that these centonarii are found to have existed not only in Europe but throughout Asia, is a matter deeply suggestive to the student of ethnology. That they bad al- ready had their bands, and their bodies or corpores at the dawn of manumission from this primeval state of slavery there seems little doubt. The inscription that we cite from Orelli's catalogue** shows by its own words the identical ones engraved in antiquity upon a piece of stone that the onion had existed de facto already 151 years. Further light is suggestively shed here, to the effect that the union had been able, traditionally or otherwise, to count the years of its age with precision. These seemingly phenomenal things are cleared up when we come to discover that when the great wave of political antagonism to the growth and influence of organized labor struck backward and overwhelmed the unions which, as we have clearly shown by the inscription from the ruins of Pompeii, were able in some municipalities to elect their own superintendents of public works, a few were excepted with the proviso that they should keep themselves piously sub- ject to the rules of the ancient religion, should fear and honor the lares of the gentile immortals and preserve their identity and their habitat by an inscription or register of each union in perfect accordance with the law. Provided with this inscription whereon was registered their habitat, the name of the deity they had chosen as their tutelary guardian, and the business which they professed as a means of existence, the law accorded them the right to organize, jits coeundi. But these regulations they must strictly ob- serve; because they made it very convenient for the police whose duty it was to watch over them and report their be- havior to senate and tribunes of the people. Under the more ancient jits coeundi or right of combina- Orell., Inter., No. 1702, note 2 of explanation: " Collegii supra script! anni *61, ex quo collegium isthoc conslitutum fuerat." 426 UNIONS OF CLOTHES MAKERS. tion into unions of trades and professions, it certainly, as proved by many inscriptions of the period of the emperors of Rome, could not have been obligatory that the unions should chisel out these lithoglyphs, so precious to us now. So when the law came, some of them searched back for their chronology and pedigree and had them inserted with the rest of the inscription. We know from abundant evi- dence that the oldest societies stood the best chance of es- caping suppression. They were especially exempted by law. This exemption was based upon the respect for the laws and traditions of Numa, Solon and Tullius. The new societies, however, were looked upon with distrust; and it logically follows that if a, collegium, corpus or sodalicium could prove its age by tracing its record back to a time an- terior to the agrarian or servile troubles, it would have an almost certain chance of remaining unmolested. We have enlarged upon this curious subject of the rag pickers with a view of preparing the mind of the reader with facts in regard to our theory which we will admit to be original and unique upon the origin of gypsies. It is admitted that history has failed to record the origin, life and migrations of the gypsies. Of course everybody agrees both that they are a caste and that they are, so to speak, the pariah dogs of these later days ; but everybody, upon reflection, also admits that they always were and still are organized. The fact is, their organization has always been exclusive and severe. Another fact always was and is, namely, that their language is Latin although mixed with Sanscrit and Greek ; and this is the most incontrovertible stronghold to our suggestion that gypies are the slill linger- ing, self-constituted, tribal relics of the archaic children of the great gens families of the Aryan race, both Asiatic and Indo-European. We suggest that being outcasts of the domus or paternal home through the law of primogeniture, they served for unknown ages as slaves on the paiernal estate ; and at the dawn of the period of manumissions were among the first to form self-supporting, or mutually protective unions out of which the least qualified, most cunning and romantic never developed, but continued to pick up a living by petty theft, rag, junk and slop-gathering, horse-jockeying and piece-patching, warping their tongues to fit localities, and ORIGIN OF THE GYPSIES. 427 their ingenuity to all the cunning quibbles which character- ize the competitive system. These we conjecture were the centonarii or rag pickers, whose compulsory inscriptions we study with wondering surprise, They are simply the fruit of the cruel condition of ancient society ; and the unique monument their name and shame have built must arrest the gaze of man, imparting to him a mournful lesson as he toils onward to the revolution. CHAPTER XIX. TRADE UNIONS. THE PAGAN AND CHRISTIAN IMAGE-MAKERS. ORGANIZATIONS OF PEOPLE who worked for the Gods Big and little God-Smiths Their Unions object to the New Religion of Christianity because this, originally Repudiating Idolatry, Ruined their Business Compromise which Originated the Idolatry in the Church of to-day The Cabatores Unions of Ivory Workers Of Sisellarii or Deity-Sedan-Makers Of Image-makers in Plaster The Unguen tarii or Unions of Per- fumemakers Holy Ointments and the Unions that manu- factured them Etruscan Trinketmakers Bookbinders No Proof yet found of their Organization. DIRECTLY connected with and a component part of the ancient state, particularly that of the Indo-Europeans, was the great subject of the gods, deorum immortalium. This with them was no wild fancy but an institution so closely interwoven in all the affairs of public and private life that no person of patrician birth who could lay claim to a family ' could possibly, without heresy often punish- able with death, disregard or question. The worship of the manes at the domestic altar, and of the penates, the mysterious home of the lares and all the holy immortals was compulsory. All paganism was excessively, tyranni- cally, inexorably, cruelly, religious. It ignored the whole proletarian class; and most logically, according to its tenets; for they, possessing no family, no property, no paternity, could have no tutelary saint except by proxy and in an eleemosynary way, used by them superficially i The proletaries or working people had no recognized family. To be born into *n ancient family was to belong to a great and noble gens. AN INDUSTRY IN HOLT FURNITURE. 429 to flatter conscience,* and in all cases borrowed by them from the grandees, who sometimes permitted the loan of a family god 3 to act the sham of tutelary protector, and this sometimes out of mere contemptuous pity. But this archaic, aristocratic worship was in practice mechanical. Its temples, the work of the proletaries, were massive, often magnificent structures. Idols were numerous, some of them specimens of the finest sculptures the world ever produced. Its altars were solemn, massive and awful ; its sepulchres, sarcophagi and mausoleums, striking in the solemnity of their incidents and surroundings ; its little images and deities were visitants of every respecta- ble household ; its sacerdotal and sacrificial paraphernalia numerous and indispensable and the oracles and shrines of the aruspex and soothsayer had each to be adorned with furniture which best convenienced the cunning, flat- tery, superstition and makeshift of priestcraft. All these things required tools to make them and were the product of skill and industry of the proletaries. Great numbers of these emblems of Pagan piety are preserved in the collections ; and by them we know how to appreci- ate the methods of mechanics who produced them. The cabatores had a union that made images of the greater gods. By this is probably to be understood, the most powerful immortals, Jupiter, Ceres, Vulcan and the like. They had their shops in Kome and Athens. If they were numerous we are without evidence of the fact ; although their skill covered a considerable range. The cabator and the imaginifex made images of many kinds but the manner of their operations is obscure. We know more of their extent. The business of the former was to make the less elegant statues, relief?, and perhaps pic- tures of the great deities; while the latter busied himself with the manufacture of the household and toy gods for which there was always a steady demand. In this man- ufacture of deities there was from the most ancient epoch of which we have data, enough demand to keep large * Fustel, Cite Antique, livre II, passim. 8 Mommsen, De CoUegiis et SodaliciU Romanorum, p. 36: "Legibns collegii Dianna et Antinoi et collejdi -Esculapii et Hygiaa " Note W, Idem, p. 78. " In farnilia Augustali multa collegia opficum fuisse." Idem, p. 10, De Oultu Minerva " Nantes quidem accepit simulacrum, . . . Nautiorum iamilia (sacra Miaervee retinebat." 430 IMA G E -MAKERS. numbers of mechanics employed. It grew with the num- bers of the human race, and increased as human taste for luxury increased. Belief did not perceptibly change. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, even Anaxagoras and Diogenes worshiped the immortal gods whose emblems, statuettes, and profiles adorned not only the temp]es but the resi- dences of all respectable citizens. Such images, liable to accident and decay, had to be replenished or repaired, and the labor required to do this gave the incentive of organ- ization. We shall show in another chapter, that on the intro- duction of the Christian faith at Rome in after years, one of the objections most vigorously raised against the new doctrine was, not that it would interfere with them in point of conscience, but that it would interfere adversely to their means of earning bread ! It threatened to sap the fountain of economic existence. The early Christians wanted no idols. The image-makers who wrought holy emblems out of wood, brass, gold, pearl and sometimes of amber and the precious gems, gained a living by their trade ; and consequently, Christianity, however it might otherwise please their sense of mutual love, of equality, fraternity and freedom, yet so long as it threatened their means of livelihood, in the slightest degree they opposed it with every effort within their reach; whereupon a share of the Pagan idolatry was bargained for, sufficient to re- store the manufacture of images and idols. Then working people, always prone to accept, threw away their objec- tions and embraced the new religion in such numbers and with such zeal that the old religion began to dissolve, and in course of a few centuries crumbled to the dust, while the workman's craft of image-making continues to this day. Of the most celebrated idol manufacturers, Phidias, perhaps stands foremost. Like all proletaries his fam- ily is unknown. No blooded historian could taint the noble prestige with a line enlightening mankind upon his pedigree ; and writers of his own class, there were none. His superlative genius, however, wrote his history in the exquisite images of Athena, in the great works on the Propylsea of the acropolis and the Parthenon, wrought by his combined imagination and chisel. Ivory and gold GENIUS IN SHRINE MANUFACTURE. 431 entered into this last chryselephantine colossus; and his adornment of Olympia with the statue of Jupiter as a vir- gin goddess signalized his age by an exhibit of the me- chanical in the most exquisite and costly details. Pericles the renowned optimate and politician, stood in astonish- ment and admiration before this workingmau's genius and originality. Myron, the cotemporary and celebrated rival of Phidias, could sculpture a quoit-player, a cow or a god with equal perfection. His Hercules, his Jupiter and his Minerva were so perfect that Roman warriors in capturing them were captured by them. When, afterwards, Lysippus, Praxiteles, Scopas and a great many others adorned this art with perfection it never had before or since, it became a trade at which many thousands earned a living, Great schools of image-making flourished in Greece and Rome from times long anterior to Phidias. The Etrus- cans had schools of idol manufacture conducted, as in Greece, by the proletaries or working people. Once when the Romans beat them in battle and at the siege took Yolsinii nearly 300 years before Christ, about 2,000 holy images and statues were a part of the trophies of vic- tory. The Etruscans were hard working, faithful people who had trade unions in great numbers. Some of these were image-makers; and they well knew how to live and profit upon the superstitions which thus attached to the Pagan faith. While Rome produced few image-makers of brilliancy she patronized enormously the manufacture of all sorts of holy trinkets. The household from the earliest times was the true patron, and ladies bought many little imita- tions of gods and goddesses together with an endless variety of sacerdotal paraphernalia, such as suited their fancy as to merit and price. Orelli gives us an inscription of a genuine union of the bisellarii, who manufactured the great sacerdotal seat or chair; a splendidly finished and richly upholstered tete a tete for the gods.* There were also signs either of unions or private business of persons working ivory, ebu- * Inscriptianum Latinantm Collectio, No. 4,137, note 1, also Grnter, - tionnm. Totius Orbit Rom.anoru.rn, 12, 8, and Muratori, Tfiesaitru* Vctenrm Y/wcriiK tionum, 644, 1. 432 IMA G E- MA KERS. ram. The inscriptions are given by Orelli.* But we have more positive evidence of a trade union of ivory workers in a direct mention of them as such in the Justinian code which provided for them the right to organize and labor in the holy cause. 6 The evidences indicate that the tectoriolae or little plaster images of which Cicero 7 and others have made mention, were the work of the albarii.* An inscription found at Rome and published by Gruter, 9 appeal's to signify by its reading that the business was managed by one C. Ateius Philadelphus but gives no clue to warrant that he was managing officer of a trade union of the plasterers' craft. Besides the wonderful chryselphantine ivory workers belonging to the great school of Phidias, already men- tioned, there were the eburarii, who, as we have already stated, were fortified by a law in the code of Justinian, and were excepted in the late statutes on trade unions. 10 These craftsmen made little statuettes, symbols, ivory chains, variously shaped charms and talismans propitiatory of the gods. They for this purpose carried on a consid- erable trade with the Africans and Phoenicians whereby to obtain pure and delicate ivory. Indeed, the supersti- tion inculcated by the ancient religion led to a veritable industry which through many a long century furnished bread to these mechanics and their families. Orelli, 11 gives an inscription of an association or genu- ine trade union of the gods' bed makers, or pulvinarii. They were organized under the society name of sodalicium which Cicero characterized as low and mean; but we pre- sume that as in this case their calling was to manufacture the elegantly upholstered couches and silk embroidered sleeping furniture of the mighty immortals, the piety and solemnity which enveloped their workshops rescued them from the rigors of the conspiracy laws which Cicero and Orell. , idem, Nos. 4,180 and 4,309. Cod., Justiniani, y, 64, 1. ' Cic., Fan., 9, 22, 3. * Tertulian, Dr. Idolalatria, cap. viii. This author, however, admits that be- sides images placed In the walls, the albarii did several other kinds of plaster work. Gruter, Infer. Tot. Orb., 642, 11. W Orell., Nos. 4.180. 4 : 302. 11 InscripUonum Lritinarum Cottectio, No. 4.061. i J We say " genuine " in cases where we find full approval as to their sen- ninenegs. Orelli, Fabretti. Muratorius, etc., are high authority ROME'S VOLUPTUOUS HOUSE OF LORDS. 433 Caesar instituted for their extinction. Another inscrip- tion was registered by Oderic, of these couch makers. 1 * It says that one Julius Epaphra was a fruit seller, form- erly pulvinarius who worked at the couch makers' trade furnishing them for the great circus; and Orelli cites Suetonius to show that such seats or couches were com- mon at the games although their usurpation by the gran- dees did not please. 14 We close our section on the image-makers with the un- guentarii or perfumers. The reader by this time begins to see that in reality all these fine things " fit for the gods," which were manufactured by the unions in such quantities, were appropriated and used by the rich who in thus usurping or assuming what was destined for im- mortals, substituted themselves therefor; and in that way threw a halo of glory around themselves and their great, inapproachable gens families. The whole of it was a sort of self-deification, using political priestcraft to puff their vanity, inflame their egoism, and widen the chasm which forbiddingly yawned between them and the proletarian classes. These fine things, so pleasing to the sense of feeling and vision were not enough. They also required some- thing to gratify the olfactory sense; and perfumes of the richest kind were manufactured for them. There were unions in considerable numbers who did this work. At Capua before and during the servile war of Spartacus, there were perfumery factories which were celebrated all over Italy. The perfumers can scarcely be called image-makers, but their art completed the category of delicacies and amplified the means of satisfying the vo- luptuous cravings of the enormously wealthy. Their per- fumes were used in the temples, and at the sacrifices. They were esteemed at feasts and were used in dress. At the great circus, and afterwards the colliseum, the re- served seats of the grandees were known by their aroma. The perfumers were not only workers but also mer- chants ; and necessarily, because they had to carry on a considerable traffic with the east and south to obtain i' Oderic, Inscriptiones, p. 74. 14 " spectare cum circenaes ex pnlvinari non placet nobis.'' Suetonius, Claudius, 4. 434 IMAGE-MAKERS. gums, spices, nuts, seeds and other raw material for their products. The perfumers or unguentarii also had similar unions in Athens and Corinth where they carried on a considerable business. There are found quite a num- ber of inscriptions of different kinds of these workmen and their societies. One archaeologist cites an inscription found in Rome, upon which there has been some com- ment made, arising from a disagreement about its exact meaning. 15 Publicius JXicanor, was a perfumer on the Via Sacra, and one Maximus Accensus, was one of the members of the union whose duty was to do up the goods. Most probably it was a union of perfumers chart- ered under the names of two foremen, or one foreman and one director as was customary in order to comply with the law. Marini 16 cites another inscription showing that these prominent officers were females, or at least one of them. The slab was found in Naples. Orelli " has an inscription found by Gruter at Venusia in Lucania, which celebrates the setting free of a bondsman and family , by the father, out of the money obtained as proceeds of the perfumery business. His name was Philargyrus, a per- fumer. This was probably a private business of the Au- gustine period. The marble is broken here, leaving us with this conjecture. All the image-makers and perfumers' trades were countenanced and provided for by King Numa who be- lieved that religion was a thing most proper to cultivate. He further believed that it was impious to wage war; or at any rate, to risk the chances of war lest the sacred temples and alters be desecrated by its ravages. Thus from a high antiquity, and largely out of respect to the memory and works of this king, the image-makers were classed as the futherers of the holy cause and exempted from many of the restrictions and persecutions which in later times became the source of bloodshed. There was a regular trade society of the pearl fishers, margaritarii, 1 * who, it appears, communicated with the is Donati, Roma, Vetttt et Recent, p. 327, 51. It is also mentioned by Muratori, Thesaurus, Velerum fnscriptionum is AUi, 2, p. 516. De Unguentarii. " Orell., 2,988. 18 Orell., Inscriptionum Latinarum Collectio, Nos. 1,602, 4,076, 4,218. One of these, No. 4,076 is a genuine trade union. No. 4,218 comes under the title of Artei et Opifica, leaving it questionable as to its haying been a private business. BOOKBINDERS. 435 -workshops in the cities, which their labor supplied with pearls in the rough. Diving and scraping in the distant waters for pearls was, at the starting point of this preca- rious business, a trade which to render successful, needed to be fortified by a federation with the inlayers and other pearl finishers working at home. Much of this pearl was used in decorating the images which the demands of an idolatrous faith places upon the market ; and by thus fur- nishing labor, gave bread to the working people. On a superficial view, the fact that the great artists, such a Phidias, Myron, Polycletus, Alcamenes of the heroic school -of Ageladas, or the still more versatile school of a few years later of which Lysippas, Praxiteles and Scopas were the heroes, we do not find the pearl industry to have ex- tensively entered into the composition of the great sculp- tures. But we must remember first, that the descriptions are defective, and next, that the originals are lost. 1 ' We know that pearls were used in archaic times. If they en- tered into the composition of idols and there seems to be no ground for doubt of this it must probably have been by inlaying. Great skill was required in the whole pearl business. Among the Etruscans and Romans the art turned rather toward the trinket manufacture. Many of the little goda of the household, emblems, talismans, mementos and charms were gemmed with pearls. Of course, these things, at this late period, if dug from the ruins, would fail to discover the perishable pearls; because the delicate carbonate crumbles with moisture, neglect and time. We find a few dim accounts of book-gluers mixed up with the amanuenses or scribes. They acted the part, so to speak, of the modern printers. These, together with poets, teachers and persons engaged in medicine and sur- gery, were always, or nearly always, of lowly birth.** is A more thorough ransacking of this subject may bring to light much of value regarding the unions of image-makers who inscribed their record in the Greek tongue. 20 Gunl and Kohner, Life of the Greek* and Romant, p. 526. "Three classes Amongst the slaves and freedmen, held a distinguished position by their intel- lectual accomplishments, viz: the media, chirurgi and literati." As to the literati, idem, p. 529 we quote as follows : " We have already mentioned the literati, cul- tivated slaves, general y ol Greek origin, who had to copy books or write from dictation. By these slaves manuscripts were copied with astounding celerity, with the aid of abbreviations called, from their inventor, Tim. a freedman of Cicero, Tironlan notes. These copies, sometime? full of mistakes, went to the shops of the bookseller (bibliopolaj, unless these kept copyists in their own 436 IMAGE-MAKERS. Gluers, glutinatores, are spoken of by Cicero." That they were numerous is evident from the large amount of work required of this kind. The great histories of ancient writers were copied times without number and some of them were bound in boards or leather or cloth with much art and taste. It is, however, beyond our power, as yet to discover whether the book-binders possessed a trade organization. The fact that most of the other trades had unions renders it probable that they also were organized, and it is possible that inscriptions may yet be discovered revealing the fact shops. Numerous copies were thus produced in little time. The satirical writ- ings ef Ovidns. Propertius and Martialiswere in everybody's hands, as were alao the works of Homer and Virgil, the odes of Horace, and the ipeeches of Cicero ; grammars, anthologies, etc., for schools, were reproduced in the same manner; Indeed, the antique book-trade was carried on on a scale hardly surpassed by modern times." Much ia taken from Pliny, Natural History, lib. XXIX. intt. 41 Cicero, Ad Atticuan, liber, IV. c. IY. 1. See also Ore)l.,/nscripM0num, Latin- arum Collettio, No. 2,925, 4,198. Glutinarius, the inscription is on an elegant tomb inside of a vault, according to Gruter, copied by (Orell., Artes et Qpificia, Vol. II. p. 293). See bookbinding, Ed. Bevan. Series of British Manufactory Industries, (Article by Freeman Wood, pp. 70-ui). CHAPTER XX. TRADE UNIONS CONCLUDED. THE TAX-GATHERERS. FINAL REFLECTIONS. Unions OF COLLECTORS A Vast Organized System with a Uni- form and Harmoniously Working Business Trade Unions under Government Aid and Security The Ager Publicus of Rome True Golden Age of Organized Labor Government Land A prodigious Slave System their Enemy Victims of the Slave System Premonitions on the Coming of Jesus Demand by His Teachings for Absolute Equality. JUDGING from all the records within our reach, it was Numa who first recognized the necessity of regularly or- ganized trades unions for express purposes of purveying goods of every kind, in a systematic manner. He was a strictly business man; and the most important business has ever been that of getting the means of life. In ad- dition to the federated trades there had to be the tax collectors; otherwise the expenses of the govexi'tient could not be defrayed. For this, there was a set of work- men, whose express business was to traverse city and country with their credentials from the regularly chart- ered union of the Vectigalaria or tax collectors. There were, at that early time, no such arrangements as now ex- ist, by which the government did its own work of this kind. A labor guild or union did this work "We have evidence showing that the men going on their rounds col- lecting the taxes, were sometimes severe, even brutal to the poor farmers, forcing them to comply with the re- quirements of the law. Of the branches into which king Numa distributed the 438 TAX-GATHERERS. working people we have already spoken elsewhere, rep- resenting them as they appear to us from evidence, through a long vista covering what we, for our own scheme of reasoning, term the golden age because the workmen thrived. Meantime we are well aware that the so-called Golden Age of Rome, is reckoned between the years 250 and 14 before Christ; but this calculation is made by historians of the competitive system, and befits itself to conquest and literature, not to the progress of so- cial prosperity. It actually begins about the time this so- cial and economical prosperity had reached its zenith. We cannot admit the Golden Age of Rome to have begun at so late a date. From a well sought point of view of sociology this era began with the recognition, by the law of Numa, of the right of free organization ; and the la- borers' methodical assumption of the business of supply- ing the people with the means of life. This was the true golden age of Rome ; and as it also covers the largest part of the era ordinarily admitted to have been the golden age, including the great period of Roman conquest and the splendid era of literature, it only varies in hav- ing commenced 670, instead of 250 years before Christ. If it was necessary for the scheme of Numa to have the public lands formed by the guilds or societies of practi- cal agriculture it was also as necessary for him to institute some reliable means of collecting the fruits of this labor and distributing them among those whom the law recog- nized as the true owners. We have had abundant evi- dence that among the ancient Indo-European Aryans, no persons except those born to an inheritance possessed the right of owning the public domain. Even the patricians who were the privileged class, and the makers of the laws, did not, until a comparatively late date, attempt to get per- sonal possession of the ager publicity of Italy. The plebei- ans who were the only workers, never owned any land. The state owned the land and the proletaries worked it. The fruits of the lands had to be brought to the people. What is meant by the state ownership, in ancient law, is citizen ownership the state holding it in common for the citizens. But who were the citizens ? It certainly was, not the working people, who were the outcasts, the de- scendants of the slaves, or the slaves themselves. They ANCIENT PLAN OF TAXATION. 439 owned nothing and could own nothing. But their func- tion was to do the work ; and Numa permitted them to organize and do the work socially or in common. After the harvest the grain had to be distributed among the citizens who. according to the law, were the owners of the land, the state holding it for them in trust. The workers were always obliged to recognize their lowly condition, and were always glad to get enough of what they produced to keep them alive.' The plan instituted whereby to collect these products and distribute them among the privileged citizens and others, was organization of the vectigalarii or collectors of incomes, who did this work through a system of societies. The society had a manager or principal overseer, procu- rator, and was also supplied with a quaestor or inspector, who was perhaps the chief clerk. Then came sometimes a secretary, a treasurer and foremen and the working hands, all of whom constituted the membership of the union or commune. The old name of the secretary was sometimes set down in the inscriptions found by the an- tiquaries, as cornicularius, 1 which signified that the secre- tary had risen to the place by promotion. It appears from the numerous inscriptions cut in stones, that these customs collectors had societies or unions all over the provinces under Roman domination. 3 At Lyons, after the conquest of Csesar, there were several of them." Their work was to collect the proceeds of the harvests. Others collected the products of the manufactories : others the proceeds of the fisheries. Even the proceeds of the brothels were collected and distributed in money. 4 All the multiform labor of collecting had to be done, and the state made it obligatory upon the customs-unions to do their work well. This accounts for Granier's* remark 1 Later an assistant secretary, Cod. TJieodosii, VII. 4, 32. 8 See Orell., Inscriptionurn Collectio, 6,642. Vectigalia and many others. 3 Boissean, Inscription de Lyon, VII. 25, p. 272, found one which reads as follows: " Memoriae AureliiCeciliani prffipositus. Vectigaliumposuit Epictatus Alumnvs Lugduni." Meaning that Epic the apprentice inscribed the slab to the honor of the director one Aureiius Cecil, in Lyons, < banger. History of Prostitution; Rome, j>. 68: "The Prostibulce (strangera not organized) paid no tax to the state; while their registered rivals (organized mercirictt, see p. 66 idem), contributed largely to the municipal treasury." Greece, 48. " Any speculator had a right to set up a dicteriott by paying the tax to the state.'' 5 Hisioire des Classes Ouvriera, chap. xiv. Ancien'. Trade Unions and Their De- velopment. 44 TA X- GA THERERS. that these customs collectors were sometimes brutal to the poor farmers whose unions failed to garner as much as the law required.' It is evident that the collectors had to put themselves in direct business relation with the union of vectuarii or teamsters ; as they more frequently took the produce itself than the money. Their practice was to supply the citizens, not so much with the money these proceeds of labor, were worth, but with the proceeds themselves. 7 The trade unions were recognized by the state and held responsible to the state for their work. If in conveying the grain from the farms to Rome, the wagon was attacked by mountaineer brigands and the goods lost, the citizens, who were the state, held, not the teamsters but the whole union responsible. In almost all cases, however, the pro- duce of the ager pubiicus was transmitted to Borne by sea. For instance; a certain quota of the province of Aquit- ania, or the neighboring province of Lugdunensis, where are found many relics of these societies, is claimed at Rome. Lugdunum or Lyons was connected by water every step of the way to Rome. The society at Lyons sent the grain down the river Rhone by barges to the Mediterranean. At Aries, a ship took it on board and consigned it to Ostia, the mouth of the Tiber and port of Rome. Now the barges of the Tiber had to belong to a union. So there were unions of bargers, caudicarii. The first society guaranteed the safe arrival of the grain as far as the mouths of the Rhone, Ora Rhodani. Here were the ships of another society to further convey it to the port of Rome, so hither it had to be conveyed on board a ship. Thus is seen why the sea- faring men also must have an organization; otherwise, if the ship was lost, captain, crew and cargo, there would remain nobody responsible ; and the citizens would be the sole suf- ferers. It became necessary therefore, since the govern- ment had jobbed out one part of this business to a commune, that it do the same thing in their case, bc-cause the rich citi- zens who were to be fed by labor, though, personifying government, could legislate or conduct war, could not work; because upon it there was a taint. So the order of the navi- 6 Dionysius of HalicarnassuB, book V. chap, 43, explains the power of the law permitting and furthering these organizations. * Granier. Histoire des Classes Ouvriers, chap. xiv. Much additional informa- tion may be obtained by reading this valuable chapter of M. uranier'8 wort--. THE RESPONSIBLE UNIONS. 441 cutarii existed; and being chartered by government, was made responsible for th e loss of any cargo. When the cargo arrived at Ostia, the month of the Tiber, sixteen miles from Rome, it was conveyed to the granaries of the city by the societies of boatmen, known as caudicarii, bargemen, under guarantee, precisely in the same manner as in former cases. Thus for the least possible trouble and with utmost security, the government or non-laboring citizens got the greatest possible amount of produce from the ager publicus, or com- mon land. Yet the people who labored were satisfied and thrived better than they were ever known to thrive under any system, because their industry produced enormously and their strong arms made labor easy, agreeable and safe. Now the customs collectors or vectigalarii were interested in all these details of supply ; because the government looked to them directly or indirectly for everything the citizen population had to live upon from year to year. But the supply of grain, wine, oil and other agricultural products was not all these tax collectors had to attend to. There were many artisan societies. These we have treated separately and in regular order, according to their import- ance. They all had more or less to do with the tax or cus- toms collectors, with whom they were interlinked in the gr^at social bond. Sometimes, as in the case of the pork butchers union, 8 there were officers appointed whose busi- ness was to go personally, or send, into the stock farm c 'Uiitry and collect the tai either in money or in kind. This would, of course, entail an immense amount more labor than that attached to butchery. It would entail the whole business of the drover. Weighing would require much at- tention and an inspection of all the various operations of several vocations. Slabs have been found to the number of 262, bearing in- scriptions of the vectigalia, of different dates, ranging mostly from the time of the first Caesars to that of the emperor C-instantine. These 262 include only those registered by Orelli in his work on the Roman Antiquities. Great num- bers of those unions probably existed of which no record Granier, whose researches into these societies and the laws governing them reveal an astonishing versatility and accuracy, says that very many, if not all the commercial trades had officers . whose work was to oversee the customs collec- tions. See idem, \>\>. niO-315. There was a Boatmen's insurance mentioned by I.ivy xxiii. cap. 44. Beckmann, HM. of Inventions, (Bonn) I. p. 234. (Caudica- 442 TAX- GA THERE RS. was kept, and antiquaries of the future may yet reveal more. On the whole these facts regarding inner workings of the ancient human family present a picture of deep interest, re- vealing as they do a system of industry unique in its method of supplying the great population of Rome at that time con- taining probably about 2,000,000 inhabitants 9 and its nu- merous municipia or provincial cities and town with mer.ns of life. The vectigalia evidently covered more of the im- mense business of those times than the ordinary reader would ascribe to them. Orelli, 10 speaks of iron miners who sometimes interlinked with the mines situated at great dis- tances from the city ; yet it would appear by this mention that the miners far away in the mountains and perfectly or- ganized, were in close and systematic, if not happy mutual communication with the forgers' association stationed at Home. The most remarkable part of the system was that it was government work; that the work was performed by trade unions instead of isolated individuals as in the competitive system; and that during many centuries through which this system existed, both in war and peace, the ancient working people were prosperous and happy. Of course, this organ- ization does not apply in any form to slaves. This terrible scourge of the human race still existed ; but there are strong proofs that the trade unions were at one time making in- roads upon the slave system which required care by the masters and slave owners in order to conduct business; whereas the trade union system endorsed by king Numa lifted all the troublesome details and responsibilities from the shoulders of the patricians who regarded individual la- bor as a disgrace. Labor being a humiliation to the pro- pertied class who managed the government land but did not perform the actual work, it was a matter of convenience for them to have trade unions. The state, then, was their great patron and protector. Rich individual slave owners like Crassus or Cicero or Nicias could job out their slaves' labor to persons of enterprise, but the very pride of their blood prevented them from undertaking any except the noble en- 9 Consult Dr. Beloch. Bulletin de Statisque de I'Institttte International, tome,. I. ann6e 1886, p. 62 sqq. Roma. 1 Roman antiquities, Xo. 1,239 vectigalia ferrariorum also ferrifodinarit See also Mur. 9T2. 10. The inscr. reads: "6. M. Primonis ferrariariorum vitali* contuber." Found at the mines of Nimea. NO REVOLUTION. 443 terprises of war and politics. There was nobody to com- pete with the unions and the state became their great em- ployer. But we have seen in our account of strikes and up- risings that human cupidity, taking advantage of the slave system and by means of it, grasping, holding and tilling the ager publicus^ finally destroyed the public trade unions. That the trade union or social system was good there- seems to be no ground for doubt ; but the workman being stamped by the old religio-political jealousy of paganism which branded him as a wretch, preventing him from taking political action, whereby to secure and fortify his system, gave the grandees all the advantage because they made the laws. When, therefore, the unions found that they must exercise their political power, which they did in later times, it was too late. They were themselves too deeply tinged with the deadly, unmanly sense that their masters were superior to them by birth. There had been no Christ to boldly declare a new state of things based upon absolute equality by birth and natural rights of all men. Seeing the encroachments upon themselves as well as upon the public lands their sole source of raw material, the trade unions tardily fell into the struggle, learned to wrestle valiantly, Buffered a more pronounced hatred of their masters, grew in self-dignity but gradually lost in vested rights, forced up a great social struggle but incurred the deep-rooted hatred of Cicero and Csesar, grew poorer, more numerous, more Becret, vindictive and conniving and wrought up a spirit all over Greece, Rome, Judea and the provinces, which ren- dered possible the kindling of that marvelous revolution that destroyed the identity of ancient paganism. But there is one thing our researches tail to discover. We do not find clear and sufficient evidences of a system of agricultural communes. These may have existed. We are in doubt. Everything else was organized. Where is this missing link? Had it existed, would not the great trade nnion system have grown so complete as to gradually ob- tain the ascendency, political as well as industrial and thus been able to realize thousands of years ago, the revolution ? CHAPTEB XXI. ROMANS AND GREEKS. THE COUNTLESS COMMUNES. US'IONS OF ROMANS AND G-RBKKS compared Miscellaneous Soci- eties of Tradesmen Shipcarpenters Boatmen Vesselmak- era Millers Organization of the Lupanarii Of the Anci- ent Firemen Description of the Greek Fraternities The Eranoi and Thiasoi- Strange Mixture of Fiety and Easiness Trade Unions of Syria and North Palestine Their Offi- cers Membership and Influence of Women Large Num- bers of Communes in the Islands of the Eastern Med iterra- nean Their Organizations Known and Described From their Inscriptions. ALL antiquity was at one time a hive of trade unions. Nearly every species of business was organized. Especially was this the case in southern Italy, where Plato found a System of communism extensively prevailing, supposed by some to have been planted there by Pythagoras. 1 The early inhabitants of the Italian peninsula were well acquainted with trade unionism ; and traces of it, if not mentioned are "uma beiriended the trade onions. ORGANIZED SAILORS. 445 the world the benefit of his communistical lucubrations. The nearest he could possibly get to a decent government was to one of bosses, policemen and slaves, and the sociologist of our day is forced to drop Plato with a species of chagrin or disgust. Aristotle did better ; but both were aristocrats, enslaved 10 great men of wealth. Both Solon and Numa, long before them had planted the real, practical government which the world is at this moment following. Though Aris- totle could analyze the course the world should and does take, yet he was too Pagan-bound to see beyond the galling bands of slavery. The Fabri navalium, ship carpenters and boat makers, of the Tiber had well regulated unions which were considered among the most respectable of the organizations. These Associations were found along the banks of the navigable rivers and the coasts of the sea on both sides of the penin- sula and also in Sicily. Of the boatmen's unions, collegia naviculariorum, the greater number, according to our evidence, were to be found in the country. There could not have been many boatmen at Home ; but we have a mention, among others, by the great jurist Gaius, who speaks of them in discriminating the right of organization in later times. 2 The unions of boatmen were naturally confined to the sea shores. We might speak of them as possibly connected directly or indirectly with the lawless boatmen who swarmed the sea from Naples to Syracuse, and whom Plutarch says Spartacus found to be treacherous, without principles and looking only for grain. Even to this day the Mediterranean is lined with them from Gibralter to Barcelona and thence to Toronto. At Genoa and Nice and on the Baltic, they are still well organized and take advantage of every opportunity to gain a lira by fair means and in all their methods to attain this end are thoroughly sustained by one another, as they enjoy all the mutually assisting quirks known to their union. The collegium vasculariorum* (metal vessel makers), was, of course, a union of potters; but it appears their art was mostly, if not quite confined to manufacturing vessels in * Gaius, Digest, 1, III. 4, " Item collegia Romae certa sunt, quorum corpus tanctis coll. atque constitntionibus principalibus coniiraiatum eat, veluti pis- torum et quorundam aliorum et naviculariorum et inprovinciis sunt." a An old inscription mutilated by age and ill usage reads: ll P, Monetius so- ciorum ISbertus, Philogenes vascularins Veturia C. 1. Salvia sibei et sueis." (Se brettl, Intcriptumwn Antiquarian Explicatio, 632, 276.) 446 THE COUNTLESS COMMUNES. metals. The vascularii were skilled workmen. They often wrought beautiful urns in bronze and ofcher material. Some of the delicately chiseled amphorae having two handles were of their workmanship, although most amphorae were made of potters' clay. Many vessels in gold were the work of their hands. They are known to have realized well by vir- tue of their trade union ; because their patrons were largely the proud gens who were not stingy about the amount of cost, if they could have their aesthetic tastes gratified. The collegium pistorum, union of millers, who ground grain in mortars and afterwards in mills, was also a trade organization. This trade was a very important one, as it furnished thefarines for the family use of all who could af- fored to eat wheat flour or any of the cereals, course or fine. When we further take into account that it required at least seventy men to grind as much grain in a given time as is now ground in a steam mill by a single man, we may realize that in Rome and vicinity there must have been several thousand workmen constantly employed at this handicraft in order to produce enough to supply the demand. It must not be forgotten, however, that there were many people at Rome and everywhere, and from the earliest times, too poor to enjoy bread and who were obliged to subsist on peas, roots and other cheap food. 4 Nevertheless the mil- lers were numerous, and being organized, they succeeded in competing with slave labor and got considerable of the work to do as a free industry. Originally or in the remotest antiquity, all such work was done by slaves on the paternal estate, under the eye of the paterfamilies or head of the family ; but when those de- graded slaves became numerous and began to think for themselves, as we have previously seen, they secured manu- < Feeding the laboring class poor food is of early record. Herodotus (Eriterp 125). expressly tells how cheap fed were laborers who built the great Egyptian monuments. They were glad to get onions, garlic and roots. The same para- graph explains the cost of their living: " Sea-ij^eurai fie Sia ypafindriov Ai-yvirTiW tv rjj TTVpafii-Si, ocra Is rt &vpij.a.ii)v KO.\ Kpo/j-fiva KOI o-KOpoSa. di/ai) rolo-t ipya.fofjifvoi.cri:- -q taxo. Livy, XXXIX.. 8-19. 448 TEE COUNTLESS COMMUNES. of Drumann, Foucart, Wescher, Liiders, Mommsen, De Broglie and others. It is through the great labors of such men that the modern students of the labor movements are made aware of what wonders in the social problem were wrought in antiquity. But their evidence is nearly all de- rived from the silent inscriptions upon slabs, urns and sar- cophagi that survive the corroding vicissitudes of the sad centuries. In fact the industry of the archaeologists may yet reveal as valuable contributions to the science of soci- ology as the fossil diggers have revealed to their branch of paleontology. It is now made certain from multitudes of inscriptions which have weathered the storms of more than two thousand years, that great numbers of social organiza- tions of the laboring classes existed simultaneously in Asia Minor, Egypt, Greece and Italy. The variety of names for them found on the relics are more attributable to epochs and languages than to differ- ences in their character and tenets of association. Where the Greek was spoken they were called after the term eranos, meaning a meal of victuals in common, or food for which a common assessment was made upon members who enjoyed it by mutual consent. Thus it came to be a method of pro- curing or earning the meal a trade union. Hence the eranoi were organizations or co-operations for the purposes of self-support; and partook more of the character of the community method, such as in our day exhibits itself at the Societe de Conde sur Vesgre, than of the more prevalent co-operative associations, 9 like the Equitables. This term Eranos is unmistakable in meaning. An oblo- quy attaches to it, pretty much the same as to our word communism, wherever it is used in the classics ; because the societies existed during that period of the world's career in which the sovereignty of the individual was more fierce and intolerant toward the meeker spirit of mutual help than it is now; for the eranoi were the Greek guilds. Yet evi- dences are abundant that such communities existed in large numbers ; that they obtained no little moral and pecuniary aid from outside; that they were persecuted by the politi- cians, hated by the optimates, and were obliged to assume Consult Ltidere, Die Dionysischen KGnstler. Einleitendt UeberticM, 8. 1-49. Verschiedenheit und Augbreitung der Organisational . GREEK LABOR UNIONS. 449 a good deal of veneration for the sods, and play other so- cial as weil as political counter-tactics to exist. Another name, that of Thiasos, was given to a similar, and it would appear cotemporaneous class of organization. In fact so far as we are able to determine, the thiasoi and the eranoi were pretty much one and the same thing. But as the term thiasos with the various forms of verb and sub- stantive, refers to demonstrations of joy, such as marching, dancing, singing and the like, in the open streets, it appears they were one kind of organization with two names that of eranoi, the secret union which met twice and sometimes four times a month ; and of the more generally known thiasoi whose members sometimes paraded in large numbers in the open air. 10 Mr. Tompkins, who has devoted his very useful life to statistical matters regarding the Friendly Societies of Great Britain, is prone to picture analogies between the ancient and the modern form. Studying the former from the light he and others have rendered, we are strongly suspicious, because they were distinct from the bacchanalia and the more ancient erotiae, that they were unions of trades whose tenets involved nearly all the elements of the socialists of to-day, rather than ot the present standard of liberty and de- velopment to be found in the Friendly Societies of Great Britain. According to Mr. Tompkins' list, which was al- ways official, the Friendly Societies in 1868 numbered 23, 000, with an aggregate membership of 1,700,000, and a capital of nearly 50,000,000 dollars. 11 The comparison therefore is at least respectable. We quote from his paraph- let on Friendly Societies of Antiquity: "Let us now consider what these companies were which are called by the names of eranos and thiasos, and of which the following and other inscriptions have revealed the num- ber and importance. These companies were formed of members who met together to sacrifice to certain divinities and to celebrate their festivals in common ; besides this they assisted those members who fell into necessitous circum- stances, and provided for their funerals. They were at once religious associations and friendly societies. 12 Sometimes 10 See further on these distinctions in subsequent chapters, also much re- epecting them and the Jewish and Egyptian cummnnes. ' Report of the Registrar of Friendly Societies of Gieat Britain, for the year 1868 u This author might have here said "trade uniona;" for numbers or the 450 THE COUNTLESS COMMUNES. they daringly partook of a political and commercial character- These private corporations (recognized by the state), had their presiding and other officers, their priests, their funds supplied by the contributions of members and the liberality of benefactors. They assembled in their sanctuary and made decrees. They were found in great numbers in the important cities, and especially in the maritine ones. At Rhodes, for example, there were the Companions of the Sun, the Sons of Bacchus, of Minerva Lindienne, of Jupiter Atabyrius, of Jupiter the Savior. At Athens (or rather at the Pirams), there were the Heroistes, the Serapistes or company of the worshipers of the god Serapis,theEranstes the Orgeons and lastly the thiasotes." 13 Many of these were trade unions possessing a common fund, the amount of which depended upon the number of members who paid regular contributions, and the amount of the donations that were given from wealthier people who were in sympathy with them. There is plenty of evidence that women as well as men formed the membership of these societies. Woman took her stand with all the dignity and the honors of the man ; and there are several slabs of stone and other relics on which are inscribed some of the particu- lars in regard to the kind and importance of the honors awarded her for faithfulness and ability in performing the duties of an executive officer. The monthly meetings or so- ciables held in enclosed gardens and groves were largely conducted by the women who gave the attractive convivial feature, which may account for their long existence and extraordinary status and power, that enabled them to do what no social society of our more enlightened age is doing write their record as the dinotherium and the trilobite have done, in the irrefutable argument of their stone remains . and inprints. There are at present very few societies of so- cialists of which we have any knowledge that are in the habit of chiseling out their archives with such a degree of minuteness and upon such imperishable material as was habitual with the ancient eranoi and sodalicia. It is true, we are making so profound an impression that friendly aocieties of Great Britain have become, since the repeal of the conspir acy laws in 1824, genuine trade unions of the best pattern. During the exist ence of i he cruel law of Elizabeth they maintained the title of friendly and burial societies almost exactly like the colleges anil cranes. I: ' Mr. H. Thompkins' pamphlet on the Fritndly Societies of Antiquity. Lon- don. 1807. WROTE THEIR HISTORY ON THE STONES. 451 the histories and printed records of our existence and of our important transactions are slowly becoming a possible thing; and such records may possibly save us from oblivion ; but the true and thorough histriographer of the labor move- ments of the world has a broad and attractive field not yet all laid open in the study, and interpretation of the multitudes of reliefs, anaglyphs, and other queer paleographs upon slabs, urns, amphorse and such objects of those by-gone ages ; a work which falls to the lot of the archaeologist to develop and complete. The truth is, the history of labor has been neglected ; and there is reason to believe that very nearly all of that which in this more propitious age is at- tracting profound consideration by the wise and benevolent, has been gone over and tried, amid the vicissitudes of wars and other antagonisms of the outside competitive world, more than two thousand years ago. But the fact that their non- competitive plan failed of gen- eral adoption need not be adduced as an argument against them. They seem to have been very successful so far as they were intended to apply. They were trade unions for the most part among the mechanics and laboring people ; and so far as their societies concerned them, they succeeded. It had not become particularly a broad question. When, however, Christ took up the principle of community of in- terests involved in their tenets, and organized his system of advocacy, their immediately arose upon it a world-wide culture and an opposition; because this threatened the over- throw of the competism which has always been the basis of both social and political economy. That the communes, called the eranoi in Greece, the Gre- cian Archipelago, Asia Minor and Egypt, in the Greek tongue, and the collegia, sodalicia or coetus in the Latin, were the chief cause and originators of Christendom, we can, after mature reflection, entertain little doubt. Already faint glimpses of proof are extant that the prin- ciple or thesis of our modern community of interests, " no excellence without unity in labor," and that "endless toil in collecting good, both by experiment and observation," which is now giving preponderance to Aristotle's philosophy over that of Plato, is significantly crowding Christianity out from the impractical self-denying school of St. Jerome, back into its primeval socialism, or non-compeiism, in the 452 THE COUNTLESS COMMUNES. defense of which Jesus, Nestor, and a thousand others have suffered. Fortunately for us, the ancient trade unions were in the habit not only of writing their minutes and preserving them in their own archives, in each state where they existed but many of the great events were further inscribed either in alto, demi or basso-relievo; and many times this was done on marble or good blue or sand-stone, which has withstood all the erosions of time. In some places, as at the Piraeus the ancient seaport of Athens, in the Isle of Santorin, in Rhodes and in Asia Minor, the societies were very numerous. It is a well known fact that during the period of the existence of these nations, ranging about 58 years before Christ down to the destruc- tion of the Alexandrian archives by Theophilus and St. Cyril, about A. D. 414, the laws against these poor people and their organizations where almost whimsically severe. M. Renan says of the Roman communes, that there waa still less favor here given the disinherited classes than in other countries. During the Roman Republic, in the " af- fair of the Bacchanales," 186 years before Christ, the policy of Rome on the subject of these associations had first been proclaimed." It was the nature of the Roman people to cleave to fra- ternizing organizations, and especially to those of a religi- ous character. This kind of association, however, was hate- ful to tha patricians the dispensers of the political power who recognized the family and the state in actual force, as the correct social group. These patricians took the minutest precautions against allowing the plebians the scope of developing into a counter power. They had to be scru- pulously authorized before they could become an associa- tion probably by charter. They could not appoint a per- manent president or magister eacrorum. The number of their members had to be limited. The meanest restrictions were enacted against their accumulating too large a fund for their commune. Similar peevishness continued against the disinherited classes during the existence of the Roman Empire. The archives of the law contained every imagin- able provision for the repression of their growth. 14 So we find the great social wars or the rebellions of slaves, assisted by the unemployed original inhabitants, to have raged from about this same period. NAMES AND DUTIES OF OFFICERS. 453 M. Renan further asserts that the Syrians gathered into these societies inoculating them with opinions which the patricians vainly sought to destroy. The Revue Archeolo- gique says that there was a " contest of opinions between the communes and the patricians,'' which is very natiiral; since the whole gist of the former was to do away with competism and the system of intermediary commission men depended upon, by the patricians, as a principle for their very existence. The Greek societies are known by inscriptions now in the Archaeological Museum at Athens, to have had the follow- ing officers: 1. Three presiding officers of both sexes : (a) the presi- dent (prostates), male ; and (b) the guardian in charge (pro- eranistria), female. They had also, (c) a president of finance (archer -anistes). 2. A stewardess or housewife (lamia). 3. A manager or trustee ; of whom, doubtless each era- nos or union had more than one (cpimeletes). There are evidences that the functions of this important office were divided among the men and women of the union. 4 The recording secretary or scribe who wrote the min- utes for the archives (grammateus). 5. Lawyers (sundikoi), whose exclusive business was to watch and defend the society and its members, individually as well as collectively, against the persecution of the outside competitive world which was always too prone to enforce any one of the many repressive and intolerant laws and measures above referred to, against them. 6. The manager of religious rites (hieropoios). 7. Priest, one who attended to the religious ceremonies or rites (hierokeryx). A glance at ancient mythology will show that a great many isms, creeds or denominations existed in hierarchical affairs ; and that the power of each was nearly coequal so far as political and social status or respectability was con- cerned. All seem to have been shielded by the law of the land. So the communes took refuge under the favors of religious discipline, and are known to have been obliged to do so to keep themselves reconciled to their persecutors. By these tactics and by the smartness of their own lawyers, who gave their time to the labor of love, they kept the hoa- 454 THE COUNTLESS COMMUNES. tile and restringent clauses of the law a " dead letter," in epite of the patricians and optimates. M. Renan and others declare that there were radical " differences of opin- ion " on the part of the unions all through those centuries. The truth is, that then, as now, their very existence was an organized socialistic state, though of a low order. We find that some of the eranoi or Greek-speaking com- munities worshiped, and even dedicated themselves to one god with its peculiar litany, some to another. Here is a translation from the very slab or " stone tablet " referred to in the command of the decree, which strangely enough, has survived all the ages since the beginning of the third cen- tury before Christ. On looking it over, who shall doubt that this was a great and perhaps wealthy community, in every way respectable? It was dedicated to the mythical god, Jupiter, and chronicles the fact clearer than the recusant historian could have done upon papyrus, that it was an honorable and responsible body, and in nowise allied to the bawdy erotomania that inspired the orgies of earlier origin and that formed the subject matter of Anacreon's dithyrambics and the voluptuous bacchanalian ditties of Pindar. This translation is clipped verbatim from Mr. Henry Tompkin's pamphlet. 15 "It has been proposed: seeing that Menis, son of Mnistheus, of Heraclea, is full of good will toward the thiasotes, and of zeal for the tem- ple, that at present, being treasurer, appointed under the archontate of he has fulfilled that charge with zeal and honesty; that he has finished the portico and the front of the temple of Jupiter Lebraundos in a manner wprtb.y of the god; that he has managed the common funds with honesty and justice, and that to all the thiasotes he has been irreproachable both before and after taking office as treasurer ; that he has not hesitated to add his own money toward the expenses of the temple, showing thus, in an evident manner the good will that he has for the thiasotes, and that he has fulfilled the sacerdotal office in a manner worthy of the god. For all these things the thiasotes have decreed to award a vote of thanks (eulogium) to Menis, son of Mnistheus, of Heraclea ; to crown him with a chaplet of foliage ; to consecrate, in a part of the tem- ple where it will be best seen, his likeness, painted on a For the original See Re\i. AtrMologique Paper by M. Wescher. SPECIMENS OF GREEK COMMUNES. 455 piece of wood, according to law, in order to show to all those who wish to prove their zeal toward the temple what honors they may obtain, each one according to the good he may be able to do for the thiasotes ; and to engrave this decree on a stone tablet, and to place it in the tem- ple of the god." We have proved in our own mind that the thiasoi whose members, the thiasotes, paraded in the open streets, "danc- ing in honor of the gods," were identical with the secret eranoi who met much oftener to enjoy their meals, con- vivials, discussions and social pleasures in common and to contrive for each other situations to work. The eranoi were much less known, though their purpose was far more significant. " They met from two to four times a month to transact business and to discuss their " differ- ence of opinion." It was here that the above mentioned officers felt the responsibility of their functions. The treasurer was of so much importance that he was called president of finance. Doubtless the male president (pros- trates) was considered to outrank the female president (pro&ranistia), if indeed the aristocratic idea of ranks was permitted to enter the commune. The number and im- portance of the offices seem to have resembled those of the Patrons of Husbandry, or Knights of Labor. We are unable, as yet, to determine exactly what class of women it was who shared the communistic proletarian societies of Greece and the Greek-speaking inhabitants under trade union laws daring the power of the Greek philosophies, but are of opinion that they were of the two most respectable classes recognized by law. It is quite certain that their movements at Athens were watched by the Areopagus or court of Mars, whose jurisdiction was over criminal cases and public order and decency. The two classes were the wives of mechanics, their daughters, and the aulitrides who made their living by playing the flute. It is almost certain that the wonderful, coexistent class of women known as the hetairai also participated in these Eranoi as members. But to prove that the a*tpftv tKaaroi*' xaAclrci S 6 avros K .-. > ayo* :ai dtacrot *oc 6i avpiovTcf tpavitrrai Tuiv Kai cparicrruv avrai yap dvcrta; cfexaxai uvyovjiav. Ethics, VIII. II GAMBLING HELLS OF COMPETITION. 457 Avhether in the exigency of the winning, or of the losing game, is to behave with decency. Such are the ethics at the gambling stakes and each must conform. The excitement of the competitive game goes on. The lookers-on forget self, home and duty in their admiration of the contestants' skill. Their variety of method, their quivering versatility, their genius, bold of one, delicate of another, exhilarate as they amaze. But when the one more skilled in gaming or more favored in fortuity, sweeps the stakes and stalks off in triumph with the gold of his helpless neighbors, there must come a reaction of feeling, though the rules of the gambling table require resigna- tion. The defeated need not try to hide discomfiture. A. hungry wife and children, blighted hopes, baffled plans and chagrin, beget despair. They are the conjurers of dis- trust, jealousy, vengeance, hate, suicide. Even the winner dies in misery; for a little selfish ecstasy adds nothing to the sum of a life's possibilities and joys. He is often the next victim in the shifting vicissitudes of the trade. Now this is a fair picture of that hell which constituted ancient society. The household, the shambles of volup- tuous commerce and of deal, the judiciary and the war- spirit were so many sheols of licensed competism reeking with a virus of the gambler's code and intolerant of this socialism of the poor. Unfortunately it is too exact a pic- ture of the maudlin present ; but the present we are not dealing with. Society was a vast concern in which fashions, means and fine things were huckstered and raffled from hand to hand ; and then as now, the working classes or proletariat were the sensitive target which every club of misguided genius bruised and imbruted. The discovery, then, of unquestionable proof that there existed comtemporaneously with this outside state of things an order of human association whose code of ethics, or whose accepted opinion of duty, one to another, was the antithesis of this ; whose rule of home and labor was based deep in that love and mutual protection which af- terwards became the doctrine of salvation as proclaimed by a greater teacher, 88 is a triumph glorius and incalcula- 18 Plato, Aristotle and Socrates were all deeplv touched by the brotherly love of the innumerable eranists whose works though hnmble were followed by them 458 TEE COUNTLESS COMMUNES. ble to the struggling, disjointed love of the labor move- ment to-day. The fragment at Athens referred to is a piece of blue Hymettian marble with little border work. The inscription is in plain Attic Greek of the Aristotelian epoch, and its translation from the Revue Archeologique, is as follows: " By a rulable and just administration of the common fund of money belonging to the community of eranistai, and having ever conducted himself with kindness and with honesty; and as he has righteously husbanded the funds successively paid by the eranistai themselves, as well as the annual subscription, according to the law of the eranos ; and in view of the fact that in everything else he still continues to show integrity to the oath which he swore to the eranistai, therefore Hail Alcmeon ! "The community of the erareistai rejoice to praise Alcmeon, son of Theon, a stranger who has been natur- alized their president of finance (archer anistes); and do crown him with a chaplet of foliage because of his faith- fulness and good will to them. They are moreover re- joiced and praise the trustees (epimaletai) and also the hieropoioi of Jupiter the Savior, and of Hercules, and of the Savior of the gods. And they crown each of them with the wreath of honor because of their virtue and their lively interest in the community of the eranistai." The stone is here broken, leaving us in the dark as to the exact date of this interesting relic. The principle however, upon which this eranos was conducted, accept- ing the signification given this word by lexicographers and writers of the adverse school, was communism means taxed from a common membership for mutual support. This settled, we next ask: did such an experiment thrive ? The above inscription is full of praises and rejoicing over its success. Then if it did succeed, and if in conjunction with it, it is made clear that the less secret jubilees of the thiasoi furnished means out of the same well-husbanded fund, for the sweet convivials, and the dance, to the fam- ous music of the female flute-players, did not this " com- munity of the eranistai " greatly augment for the " disin- herited classes," the means of happiness and viiiue 1 ? all. Liiders commenting, quotes Socrates from Xenojihon, Conversation/a VIII. ' Wir siud ja alle Thiasoten deses gottes. 1 ' Uhig passage gives btoim 1 fv \U-nce that Socrates was a member of a commune. SOCRATES A MEMBER OF A COMMUNE. 459 These are important conjectures coming from the un- written mists of the finest of the world's ages of antiquity. Let the ethnologist and the paleontologist divest them- selves of bias, and with these new skeletons of ancient history remodel and reproduce an ethologic anatomy of these two great rivals for power individualism and com- munal love. For if the desired means of happiness was procured through this one experiment of whose relics we have given a rendering, then it is evident by the many other similar inscriptions that a thousand such microcosms embellished the morals and gladdened the hearts of slaves and outcasts. These microcosms of a far future society must not, how- ever, be supposed to have been as sweeping or as pure in their radicalism as some that are developing at the present time ; for it must be remembered that though the ignor- ance of the present age is averse to the implanting of a system which means introversion and revolution of com- petitive disassociation, yet we possess at least the boon of tolerance which was almost utterly denied the struggling poor of those times. According to the best information to be had regarding inscriptions that are resuscitating the history of the an- cient proletaries, the societies called the eranoi and the thiasoi were by no means confined to the Hellenic Penin- sula and the Ionian and Grecian Archipelagoes. Similar societies are known to have existed both on the continent of Asia and of Africa. Mommsen, Orelli, Bockh and other archaeologists, in their Latin works of Descriptiones Re- liquarum, have filled thousands of folio pages with sketches of all sorts of paleographs which are fac-similes of inscrip- tions, monograms, escutcheons and many kinds of hiero- glyphic and anaglyphic gravery and embossing in stone and metal. These curious things are being dug up in different parts of Europe, Asia and Africa, wherever an- cient history speaks of the doings of men. Great numbers are described that have come from Dal- matia, the rivers and plains of Austria, Hungary and the Kranish provinces. They exist in countries once occu- pied by the Armenians, Phoenicians and Chaldeans; and as it is now becoming apparent that the most correct phi- losophies of the Alexandrians and Athenians were first 460 THE COUNTLESS COMMUNES. inspired by Indians of the east, it is possible that great revelations are yet forthcoming from the Hindoo school, of which the Sankhya Kapila was the inspiring oracle. But however this may be whether Buddhism was, or was not the idiosyncrasy that germinated the every-growing schism among dialecticians of all succeeding ages, it mat- ters little. One thing is certain in our mind : that the societies of self-help among the proletaries have uniformly followed the grouping, self-teaching, perpiatetic method of Aristo- tle and Kapila, while their competitive enemies and per- secutors have followed the dreamy, non-practical Olym- pus-beclouded generalities of Plato. The communities always worked well under Numa, Solon, Jesus and Nestor, but always suffered under Lycurgus, Appius Claudius, Csesar and Cyril. If the strange and newly unearthed library of Asshurbanipal, who was emperor of the Assyr- ians a thousand years before Christ, is ever scanned in a non-prejudical spirit, its ideographs and its history of their systems of nomenclature, computation and collec- tion may be found suggestive of similar doings. We have already said something concerning the rules and by-laws of the societies, which by the marble tablet whereon their records are graven, are known to have existed. As a general thing these decrees and regulations are made on the stones that still honor some of the offi- cers. Although the evident object of each of these or- ganizations was to enlarge the means of happiness of the members by providing liberties for them through the as- sociative sphere of the collectivity, and may be said on this account to have been temporal in their objects, yet they all partook strongly of some religious faith incul- cated at the services of the gods in the temples. Some writers upon the subject are convinced that they resembled the old semi-religious guilds of trade in Eng- land. They also intimate that like the continental guilds for a similar object, connected with the Roman Catholic Church, they seem to have been under the patronage of a tutelary saint, and that under this tutelage they some- times founded industrial, commercial and maratime cor- porations. Sometimes they made it a specialty to aid each other in acquiring a profession. Our own opinion is, that FORM OF THE MEETINGS. 461 they were a genuine type of the trade union. 19 The evi- dences of this are many ; and it is no argument against the position if they are found to have been religious. The objections will be, that they opened their sessions with prayer, and that they admitted women in large num- bers. But some of our own trade unions undergo forms similar to prayer and Bible reading. As to their having had women as members it only proves that they were trade unions of a higher, more long-lived and a more suc- cessful development than these of the present day ; and this brings us to the sad reflection that with all the boast of modern trade unionists and all the good they are do- ing, and with all their philosophy and practical forcing of the true political economy upon governments, they still fail to equal the judgment of the trade unionists of Greece, who based their associations upon co-operation for peace ful, rather than co-operation for aggressive self help. Another resemblance to the trade unions is seen in their extreme secrecy. " The meetings of these pre-Christian societies opened with prayer ; after which came the general business. The place at which they were held was called the synod, or sometimes the Synagogue, and the assembly was abso- lutely secret no stranger could be admitted, and a severe code maintained order thereat. They were held, it ap- pears, in enclosed gardens surrounded with porticos, or piazzas or little arbors, in the middle of which the altar of sacrifice was erected. The officers made the candidates for membership submit to a sort of examination, and they had to certify that they were 'holy, pious and good.' There was in these little confraternities, during the two or three centuries that preceded the Christian era, a movement which was almost as varied as that which pro- duced in the middle ages so many religious orders and so many sub-divisions of these orders. Very many have been counted in the single island of Rhodes, of which several bear the names of their founders or of their re- formers. Several of these confraternities, especially that of Bacchus, had sublime and elevated doctrines ; and en- deavered with a good will to give to mankind some con- i The reasons for their being often religions and borrowing pods or lary duties are explained in our chapter on the Koman trade unions, q. v. tute- 462 eolation. If there still remained in the Greek world any love, any piety, any religious morality, it was owing to the liberty granted to such private religious doctrines. The doctrines competed in some measure with the official religion, the decline of which became more evident day by day." 20 But it must not be inferred because the eranoi, or Greek- speaking unions took the name of the particular god they venerated, that they were exclusively religious. The archaeologist, Hamilton, has produced fac-similes of inscriptions on slabs that were found on the shores of the Gulf of Symi. The translation of one runs thus : "Alexander, of Cephalonia, has been honored with the gift of a crown of gold, and also Nisa, his virtuous wife, of Cos. This honor is given by the Adoniastes, Aphro- diastes and the Asclepiastes. Bpaphrodite and his wife, by wish of the Heroistes and of the Aeaciastes, have also been honored with a golden crown." These Adoniastes, Aphrodiastes, Asclepiastes, etc., were eranoi, whose union was, on account of the peculiar religi- ous notions of the members and of the country, dedicated respectively to the gods Adonis, Aphrodite, Esculapia, etc. Another inscription taken from Ross's Inscriptiones Greques," is also very interesting as proof that these so- cieties were usually dedicated to the popular gods of the mythic hierarchy of Mount Olympus. It is valuable as a proof of the general position assumed, on account of its bold mention of union and confraternity thus showing that it belonged to the eranian and thiasian school of co-operation or trade unionism. It is from Rhodes, and is somewhat defaced. Here is the rendering as given in Mr. Tompkins' review: "* * * crowned with a crown of gold by the community of Jupiter Xenos, the Dionysiates Chseremoniens, as well as by the Panatheniastes and the ****** crowned with a crown of gold by the Soteri- astes (worshipers of the Soter, or Messiah, the confraternity of Jupiter Xenos, and that of Minerva Lindienne, followers of Caius, crowned with a crown of foliage by the commu- nity of Jupiter Atabyritm and the Agathodncnioniastos Phi- loniens, as well as by the community of Dionysiastes Cluorc- moeiens and by that of Appollo." to Tompkins, Friendly SwAeHtt of Antiquity. Ketearches in Asia Minor MANAGED BY WOMEN. 463 This date "in the year 178" is supposed to mean the 178th year of the existence of this union. Here we have, in the midst of the lady members of this old and probably rich and respectable eranos, or union and at the public feast or monthly sociable in the enclosed garden that always dis- tinguished the open thiasoi from the secret business meet- ing of the eranoi, a flute-player; in all probability one of the famous auletrides whose charms are celebrated by Alciphron, AthennKus and Theopompus; and of whom a writer in his work on prostitution, unconsciously intimates that they were abandons 23 and would doubtless construe it so as to make this feast no nobler than the callipygian games, which though unfrequented by men must have been, of course, " scandalous." May not anything be scandalous when re- garded in a censorious and uncharitable light. But this feast of the Communists described was nothing of the sort. This invaluable memento is in good care and preservation in the museum at Athens. On the bas-relief are these sug- gestive figures: A god and a goddess in an enclosed garden. It is Cybile the Phrygian goddess who sits with her head crowned. In front of her crouches a lion ? The god is Apollo in a flowing robe and in a standing attitude, lie has a salver (patera) in one hand and a lyre iu the other. There is a priestess or proeanistria standing, and a musi- cian or auletrid is playing the flute.** A lamb for the feast is in the arms of a young man. Under this is the inscrip- tion of which the following is the translation. a Stratonice, daughter of Menecrates, is crowned by the members, men and women, of this thiasos. In the year 178 she (Stratonice) was female president of the club (proeran- istria), a crown of foliage is decreed lier and a marble tablet ornamented with banderoles to honor her public proclama- tion in the assembly of Jupiter in honor of her virtue." It is not only interesting but extremely useful as an ex- ample for the guidance of future society, that we be made acquainted with some of the inner and unrecorded life of antiquity. The same turbulent warlike millions swarmed the cities and thoroughfares then, as now. The same unor- ganized and inequitable methods of production and appor- M Sangera, History of Prostitution, p. 46. See also Tafel II. Ltiders, Die IXonysitchcn KUnster. Ivxplanation of the plates, 8. 10-11. 464 THE COUNTLESS COMMUNES. tionment. The same egoism and sacrifice of neighbor for aggrandizement of self, and the same intolerance and big- otry in prevailing faiths that inspire the competing Muscovite Russians against the Rural Solidarities, the Mennonities and the Dutchobors to-day the same selfishness that makes man hate man, and church hate church wherever we go. In this prodigious whirlpool of self-serving negativeness and ignorance the painful, tiresome desert through which all proletarian humanity plods, it is gratifying to discover that a great counter element once existed with organizations based upon that community of equal interests which is fund- amentally revolutionizing the policies of our own brilliant, but depraved and selfish century. The specimen adduced was a festival of aneranos it was the thiasos itself, and a glance at Liddell will satisfy the skeptic that it was a society of poor, persecuted people, who agreed to assess each other in common for their daily food and their monthly convivials ; and the proof that these poor girls were sometimes members greatly intensifies the inter- est in them. Besides, it is a known fact that among these musical trades unionists were some of the most beautiful and intelligent people the world ever produced. It was not considered prostitution in those days to do what they did. The stern philosopher Zeno, hero of Stoicism, fell desper- ately in love with one; and if we are to believe Athenseus was ready to defend his love with the antics of a madman. This was after he had vainly insulted her because she camo to him for protection. But the most magnificient proof of the communist move- ment in those days is yet to be given. CHAPTER XXTL THE A-NCIENT BANNER. INCALCULABLY AGED FLAG OF LABOR. THE OLD, Old Crimson Ensign An Emblem of Peace and Good Will to Man Strange Power of Human Habit Descent of the Rsd Banner through Primitive Culture White and Azure the Colors of Mythical Angels, Grandees and Aristocrats Colors for the Lowly without Family, Souls or other Seraphic Attributes How the Bed Vexillum was Stolen from Labor Tricks which Compromised Peace Tenets of the Flag The Flag at the Dawn of Labor's Power Testimony of Polybius Of Livy Of Plutarch Causes of Working People's Affec- tion for Red The Emblem of Health and the Fruits of Toil Ceres and Minerva their Protectresses and Mother-God- desses Wore the Flaming Red Emblem of Strength and Vi- tality Archaeology in Proof Their Color First Borrowed from Crimson Sun-Beams More Light and less Darkness White and Pale Hues for the Priests Origin of the Word " FLAG" It is the "Word-Root of " Flame " a Red Color- Proofs Quoted Mediaeval Banner in Fran'ce and England The Red of All Modern Flags Borrowed from that of the An- cient Unions Disgraceful Ignorance of Modern Prejudice and Censure. THE typical color of the great non-laboring classes in an" cient times was white and azure blue ; while that of the strictly laboring element was red. This phenomenon has come down to us by the power of habit, from high antiquity. 1 1 Consult Tylor, Primitive Culture, (Vol. I pp. 70, eq. 5f. Y. 1888, Survival, for illustrations on the power of habit: " The saying that marriages in May are unlucky believed so 18 centuries ago and more, fee Ovid, Fastm, V. survives to this day in England, a striking example how an idea, the meaning of which has perished for ages, may continue to exist simply because it has existed. There are thousands of cases of this kind which have become, so to speak, land- 466 THE OLD RED FLAG. White, in heathen mythology, was thought to be emblem- atical of degree. It was the color used by the gens families and by the priesthood. Very often a beautiful azure of var- ious shades accompanied the pure white. Following this habit of the optimates and their hierarchy, we still imagine white to be the color of the robes of angels, and still make it a holy color.* All people, ancient or modern, having a history and a priesthood with concomitant crafts, have re- garded white as the adumbration of holiness, of purity, of aristocracy. It is the color which befits itself to supersti- tion and to property ; therefore the gens or the gentle, who do not work, who are unsoiled, who eat up the products of labor, who robe themselves in white and ascend throne, see, chancel, pulpit or patriarchal seat, and who talk of their " subjects " whom they spurn and absorb, are of all others most certain to flaunt the robes of white, and azure and shin- ing purple. These colors date from a dim era of antiquity, and like the etymon they were self-suggestive as the anti- thesis of sweat and toil and grime. They embellished and decked the bodies of the " washed," and could not go hand in hand with creatures smoked and smeared at the fnrnace and the anvil. Hence a contempt of labor.* The idea of Plato which he copied from the Pagan religion and which Christianity unfortunately afterwards copied from him, un- der the name of Neo-Platonism, was that of white robes, white wings, white banners a mysterious power in the clouds, a home at Mount Olympus, and the vaulted dome of heaven and myriads of slaves and menials in red, brown, dun and murk who were to plod without souls, liberties the course of culture." This aut^r hereupon cites many instances showing the extreme age of our paltriest habits, some of which are really aston- ishing, One of the most striking instances which might have been enumerated by Mr. Tylor, along with the many that he here adduces, is the red banner, which for antiquity and pith of antecedent meaning has perhaps no rival in the tale of primitive culture . We have another remark illustrative of the power of habit and one which may be regarded as curious and far-fetched, made by Rogers, So- cial Life in Scotland, Vol. I. p. 6, in speaking of the giants and cave-dwellers of the stone period: "In popular superstition there stiil linger memories of the Neolithic age. 1 ' This is really wonderful. 2 Revelations, vii. 9, 14. So idem, xix. 8 : " And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in line linen, clean and white, for the fine linen is the right- eousness of saints." So again xix. 14, " And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean.'' " Guhl aud Koner, Li/eofthe Greeks and Romans, tr. Hlifler, p. 485, speaking of the ancients says : " The usual color of the dress was originally white i for the toga this was prescribed by law), only poor people, slaves and freedmen wore dress of the natural brown or black colors." Hed, a " color," was always coneid- qred finer than brown or black, though all were labor colors, WHITE IS HIGH, COLOR JL&W; RED, A COLOR. 467 honors or rewards, in the degrading service of keeping them white, clean-washed and fat. The idea of Aristotle, the practical, was, that labor itself was pure, worthy, and the only thing which could possibly lead men to knowledge and good; yet even his great mind could not at that early day discern a method of ridding the world of slaves, although Socrates, a member of a commune that waved the red ban- ner, had told them that manual labor was a virtue.* Again, white was the color of the ancient aristocratic flag or military banner, both of the Romans and Greeks. This is distinctly told to us in an elaborate description of all the phases of the subject, by Polybius, 5 who wrote just at the time when the greater slave rebellions were beginning fiercely to rage. As long as the ancient military ranks remained undefiled by the presence of slaves and freedmen, or persons of lowly condition, the semeion or vexillum, that is, the flags arid banners were white, azure and gray. But we find that curiously enough, the red vexillum comes temptingly into the Roman tent at the very time when the workingmen be- gan to assume military and political importance. It was evidently introduced as a means for inspiring this class of soldiers to desperate acts of valor; 6 because the red banner of the communes was so sacred to them that they would recklessly cast their lives into the jaws of death in the act of recapturing it from an enemy. Multitudes of instances are on record proving that the Roman generals cunningly managed to toss the vexillum or red banner, in some surrep- titious manner, over into the enemy's camp at a moment of onset, thereby enthusing the soldiers with a reckless oblivion of danger, as they crushed into it in desperate haste and de- termination to seize from the polluted fingers of the bar- barian their endeared and cherished flag. 7 * For more on this great man's philosophy, see chapters iv. on the Eleusinian Mysteries, and xxiv. on tile Plans of the Ancient Benefactors. 5 Polybiub Megal, Historia, VII. c. 39, pp. 676-677, ed. Gronovii. Amstelo- darni, 1670: 'tis arravriov iapi)s 7rpe(70i )? oi x l ^' a PX ot rpt^tovaiv Ttrpa.TTr)V Trap" iroQev ra <7TpaTO7re6a. Kat Taurus /iei- woioOcro'i ifroivixas rt Se r. Schliemann, in Tiryn*, i/i '03-307, gives Proi. Fabricius' descriptions of the " mighly bull," recently d. a wall-painting of that pro-Homeric city. The animal, mostly red, ;* leupu, , ;nd bounding at the games, while an acrobat upon his back is girding him in :he dangerous scene. These actors, always of the slave race (see chap, xvii A inn*.-., ,.>/!/.> of Antiquity, pp. 401-414), were tugging and Sweating wtthout pay, lor masters, a thousand years before Christ, 'ibis scene is represented in Plate XIII. while fig. 142 gives another proof of the remarka- ble proclivity in days before Homer, for red. ' \\ hilst the lower broad stripe is red, the ground of the ornament shows a bright red colour; the two strokes of the scale - like ornament are black, the little circles and lines within the scales, white. Very noteworthy is the simultaneous occurrence of two different shades of the red color.'' 17 Guhl and Koner. Life of the Greeks and Romans, p. 160, sqq. These gar- ments are here minutely described. " Men also appear in these pictures with the cherry coloured chlamys and the red himation." But we remark that the same authors assure us in both their descriptions of the Greeks, and of the Kom- ans, that colors were only for the common people. In course of time the hima- tion, originally white and worn by the rich, became popular and took on the ni.bcian hue. 474 THE OLD RED FLAG from the very first, endeavored to suppress them. These magnates were the natural enemies of the working class ; the kings their natural friends. This seeming phenomenon is a suggestive fact of history. The kings wanted and recog- nized their systematic, organized labor; the consuls, who where sure to be rich grandees of blood and family, were jealous as well as afraid of this new and growing power which the mild and favorable laws of the kings had made it possible for labor to develop under. This was the origin of the greatest intestine contest Rome ever had. It was a death-grapple of lordship with labor, in which consular power aped the banner and color of com- munes, 18 and even bent all energy to involve Rome in Great wars of conquest for the express object of wriggling out of the terrible plebeian grip. 19 The patrician consuls fought the hated workingraen, ac- cording to Livy, with such an unabating determination for about five years (B. C. 375-370), as to cause a solitudomag- istratuum or vacancy, in which there occurred what is now called an interregnum neither the lords nor the people, holding the helm of power. This was under the plebeian, Licinus Stolo, author of the agrarian law, the most renowned statute of antiquity a germ of the same contention which cost the Gracchi, Blossius and Clodius their lives, as cham- pions for the poor in the memorable agrarian and labor tur- moils, and finally brought Rome, with her Cicero and Caesar to an ignominious end, because she purloined the segis of laborers on whom she glutted herself while maintaining slavery as a fundament of her religion and government. is Pee Encydopcedia Brittanica, 9th edition, Stoddart, Phil. Vol. VI. p. 279, describing the consuls: '' A cloak with a scarlet border and an ivory staff were badges or their office." For more than 600 years thereafter the scarlet which darkened into purple became a state color. The consuls stole the red vexillw* by a similar species of trick, from the communes a blasphemy against the an- cient peace-color of Ceres and Minerva the protecting divinifes of laborers and the fruits of labor. The following modern criticism admits this: If the consols "wished to subdue any outbreak of the plebeians, they feigned that some powerful enemy was marching against the city, and thus succeeded in obtaining extraordinary powers.'' Encyclopcedia Britannica, Vol. VI. p. 280. 19 Speaking of those patrician consuls, the same author in idem, colnmn 2, says: " tiaving once begnu the struggle (against the plebeians), however, they maintained it for the space of 80 years, with a spirit and resolution which made even a foreign war desirable as a relief from internal contents." 20 Livy, VI. 35, Jin. " Hand irritce cecedere mince: comitia, prseter aedilium tribunorumque plebis, nulla punt habita. Licinius Sextiusque, tribuni plebis re- fecti, nullos curules magistvatus creari passi sunt: eaque soMudo magis/ratum, et plebe reflciente duos tribunes, ct his comitia tribunorum militum tollentibns, per qninquennium urbein tenuit." Such was the tremendous power of the out- c ist element thai Koine lost her aristocratic hold for 5 whole years. PRAETORS WITH WHIPS AND AXES. 475> In this aristocratic consular arrangement, next after the consuls themselves, were many prsetors, lieutenants of the consuls and lord mayors of the provincial cities. These with the Komans were also generally the grandees who dis- pensed military force. 31 " The insignia of the pra?tor were those common to the higher Roman magistrates the pnr- ple-edged robe (toga praetexta), and the ivory chair (sella curulis). In Rome he was attended by two lictors, in the provinces by six.' 1 The curules or ivory sedans, were from the state four and six horse chariots and represent extraor- dinary power. An example of the power exercized by the praetor over the poor slave, is given by us in another page, where a brave man in Sicily, for killing a dangerous wild boar, so excited his lordship's jealousy, that, taking advantage of an ancient law prohibiting persons of lowly birth from the use of the javelin, he ordered the trembling man to be crucified upon the spot. These prtetors made use of the red color of labor for the brutal purposes of war, and it looks seriously as though this was a sort of cunning ruse or dodge, played upon the credulous, whereby to curry favor with the already powerfully organized numbers of labor. Next after the consuls and prsetors in the military pag- eant came the lictors. They wore the blue and azure cloak when in the field, which was the sagum caeruleum, epithet of death, darkness, night In this garb the lie- tor's fierce military characteristics were personified. The grand magistrate's attendant, he strutted at the pageant in line of march, with a bundle of rods in his hand and held on high the formidable axe of execution, that the people might understand the presence of a sublime power and bow their heads in respect. If a criminal or malefactor was caught, his duty was to whip him with the scourges and cleave his head from his body with the axe." n Encyclopaedia Brittanica, Vol. XIX. p. 675. ** Livy, 1.26. "Horatius cni goror virgo, qnae desponsa r ni ex Cnriatiis fuerat, ob via ante portam Caper.am fait : cognitoqae gaper humeros paiudarnento eponsi, quod ipga confecerat, solvit crine?, et flebiliter nomine spoiisum mortuurn appellat. Movet feroci jtiveni animnm comploratio sororis in victoria sua tan- toqne gaudio publico. ;tricto itaque gladio, sinuil verbis increpans. trsnsflic puellum: 'Abi hinc cnm immature amore ad sponsum, inqnit * * * * 1 lictor colliga manus qnae pauilo ante armatae imperium r.opnlo Komano peperernnt " The game ferocioas order was given the lictor by the father of .Nh-nUus. ' Livy, X liber VIII. cap. 7( ; I. lictor deliga ad plum." A consul, prretor or other su- perior officers had the right to order a lictor to perform any execution. 476 THE OLD RED FLAG. But when there was peace and while they were in Rome, the lictors wore the toga, purple or purple-bor- dered, because the lictors must be of high-born stock; al- though the toga of the unions was red, brown or dark red. It corresponded in Italy to the himation in Greece; and was the color of the lowly class everywhere, repre- senting peace, not war, M as seen in any Latin dictionary. This remarkable fact reveals itself more and more plainly as the arguments and material evidences upon which it is based, receive investigation. Full attention to the an- cient communal inscriptions has not yet been given, partly on account of the fact that colors do not often survive ven where they were painted on the tablets; but princi- pally, because ensigns and emblems whose colors, being sacred were at all times universally conceded were never painted at all, but simply engraved on the stone or cast- ing in the natural color of the material on which they were cut But it must be borne in mind that the lictors who were required to be of the optimate class, wore only a purple-red, not the labor-red. This was a mixture of the genuine with the azure (cseruleus) or the white. Thus color in ancient days, socially speaking, was a line of demarcation separating optimates from plebeians.* 4 We have thus shown how in war the sagum and the vexil- ** See note supra, on the red himation, ** See Guhl and Koner, Life of the Greeks and Romatis, pp. 485-6 : Tbo usual colour of the dress was originally white (for the toga this was required hy law only poor people, slaves and freedmen wore dresses of the natural brown G- black colour of the wool." "In imperial times, however, even men adopted dresses of scarlet etc." * * * "The bride wears a reddish violet stola. adorned with an embroidered instita of darker hue." These are the poorer class, as they eem to come under the general remark quoted, viz : that only poor people, slavet and freedmen wore colors. Then ! page 486 , occurs this remark ; The outside of Perseus' dress is reddish brown, the inside white,' 1 as if to coax with the great rising element, while taking care to keep "pure " within, in difference to this fabulous royal potentate, son of the great cerulean Zeus. Speaking of the toga of Italy, or the himation, of Greece, the same authors, p. 486 remark, that " Looked at straight, the blood-red dress thus prepared had a blackish tint : looked at from underneath, it showed a bright red color " Thus the toga no matter by whom worn, was red when it represented peace a fact which remaims good for all antiquity ; while the regular war-colors were azure and blue or white and azure-blue. So again idem, p- 168, speaking of the Greek robes and other articles of apparel, and the pictures wnence "the information is taken, says ; " Men also appear in these pictures, with the cherry-coloured chlamys aud the red himation; ' and speaking of the Mirpa or ancient turban, used also sometimes as a zone-belt, which was red, the same authors add: The Oriental turban ia undoubtedly a remnant of this custom." Here again we have an example of the power of habit, to transmit itself through indefinite periods of time. In another phrase, idem, p. 168, speaking of the plebeian class, is the expression; "The original colors, although (particular the reds) slightly altered by the burning pro- cess, may still be distinctly recognized." ANCIENT COLOR LINK 47T lum in its original tints, were white, caerulean or azure and blue, in the field of war, 25 while the peace toga which was red and the vexillum when seen among the com- munes, were of a brilliant crimson, So also we have ex- plained somewhat the manner in which in later ages of the republic the phenomenal love and reverence of the lowly class, so soon as they exhibted a political and mili- tary weight was taken advantage of and even adopted in sham in the Roman camp, seemingly to curry favor with this rising class. It now remains to further proceed in explanation of the Koman -military pageant. The next officers in rank after the lictor were sometimes the equites or knights on horseback; and their military pomp, when preceded by consuls, praetors and their lictors, as the latter bore aloft their praetorian bundles of whips and their hatchets and axes when going out of the gates to war, or returning in triumph from it, was a spectacle anything but flattering to the poor, to whose backs and necks the scourges and the axes were too often applied. Another powerful argument substantiating the preva- lence of red as an adopted color of the gods of industry, where peace and not war was intended, is seen in the typi- cal goddess Pomona, another name perhaps for Ceres or Demeter, Isis, Cybele and other guardians of agricultural labor. She presided over the orchard fruits and the gar- dens, and her emblem, symbol or sign was a flaming red. This old Koman divinity had charge of fruit- orchards. In the deep forests she was adored by satyrs and other sylvan fairies. 26 Pomona stands out as an excellent corroboration to the argument that from the most ancient conceivable times red was the typical color for the symbols, emblems or ban- ners of the strictly working people and shows furthermore, that to carry out the original idea of Pomona, a priest or priestess of a Pomona of to-day must be attired in a flaming red and must not represent strife; as her function is that of peace." It was even forbidden on high penalty that her attendant servant or priest should look upon an In Pisrmrm. 23; " logulfe 'ictorlbne ad portam prsssto fnerent, jptis, saaula rejecerunt et catervano imperatori suo novam pvrobue- i. 20 Ovid. Metamorphoses, XIV. 623 seqq 27 (juhl and Kouor, Life oftlie Greeks and Jtont.ins, p, 536. 25 Cicero. . quibusilli acce runt.' 478 THE OLD RED FLAG. army ; strife being to her a terrible sin. He must even turn his head from the sight of soldiers. This divinity chose tt from the plebs " 28 a priest called the Flamen Pomonalis. He was allowed to take a wife but could never be divorced from her; for that would be sug- gestive of strife. True to the typical color of the labor she represented, she was called flaminica, and she held in her hand a pruning knife, although this instrument is represented to have also been intended for sacrificing the lamb at the feasts of Pomona. She was robed in a chiton or himation, which in Rome -was called a toga. It was made of wool, and was screened from the vulgar by a long veil, (fiammeum), of a naming red color or Phoenician glow, 29 typical of her plebeian estate. This Plaminica not only represented and presided over, but also performed, labor ; for she busied herself in the toils of her husband, the flamen, in the work of the feasts and entertainments. The collegia were fond of celebrating by parading with naming streamers and flags. The worship of the sacred ibis has also something to do in this connection. It is mentioned in compapy with Pomona and was probably the sacred scarlet ibis, of the Egyptians, whose red colors have ever been unscientifically mixed or confounded with the flamingo. This bird, agreeably to its name, flamen, flaminica, flamingo was, es- pecially all the wing part, of a fiery red (phoenicopteros). The imagination of the ancients pictured the red to be emblematic of love, 30 ardency and warmth ; all of which were portrayed in the beams of the sun, and this impres- sion chrystalized into a red color. But the aristocratic 48 See Johnson's, Universel Cyclopaedia, Vol. III. p. 1,328, Art. Pomona; Ovid. Metamorphoses, XIV. 623, gays that she was courted by Puemunns another divinity of the Italian forests and gained her by a trick. It is also stated that Pomona had a citadel or seat among sacred groves near Ostia called the Pomonal and that she had a vicegerent or sacerdos& man or perhaps woman chosen from among the laboring element, who had to rank last and lowest ot the 15 llamea of Rome, From Varro, Lingua Latina, V. 15, 25 : " . . . . flamiues, quod in Latio, capite velato, erant semper ac caput cinctum habebant fllo, flamines dicti. " Consult Flamineus, sq. in any good Latin Lexicon; Guhl and Koner, p. 537 so So in Greek we have 'Epu6i6s for the heron presumably applied to both these birds the scarlet ibis and the flamingo sometimes adored for the scarle 1 - ot sacred ibis. But the 'epuSios was a form of "epw? signifying the flame of love. So Ardea, the Latin for heron the selfsame bird, has its etymology in arde.o to burn and blaze. It may therefore be strongly suspected that Pomona and he flimrns had something to do with the temple at Ardea near Rome burned by /Eneas, and from whose ashes, phoenix-like, arose the wonierful red heron or phoenix. Nothing can gainsay this, for both ardea aud . We say however, that while tne thiasoi were the sect the eranoi were the order. Lightfoot (same pages), speaks of their tenets being "of foreign origin.'' This is still further proof. The grammatical structure, and how changed, is clearly seen ou page 355, Eoiraios, Eo-trr/cd? resemble fltWos, Oiacrrivos. Again, they were baptists. Thi# they got from the venerable custom among the unions, of the constant use of the baths. AN ANCIENT SLANDER EXPLODED. 505 more about the Dionysischen Kuenstler, or Bacchic skilled workmen. The Dionysia at Athens were of four sorts, but not necessarily connected with these social communes. In that country, in early times, the Dionysia were feasts, or autumnal jubilees at the vintage. They were amusements at which the boys and girls hopped and caroused. Some- times they danced upon sacks or ollas filled with water, or climbed the greased pole, or jumped and climbed on bowl- ders smeared with oil which by their slipping and awkward- ness caused great merriment. Undoubtedly the farmers at a bee of this kind sometimes drank wine to excess. The second Dionysia were feasts of the wine presses. It was almost exactly equivalent to our Thanksgiving ; fully as re- ligious but less sedate and reverential. It was a series of banquets and festivities at which the meats and dainties were paid for from the public purse. Then there were drinking festivities called anthesteria at which in the spring of the year the citizens gathered and indulged in enjoyments. But we are not quite certain whether the working part of the popula- tion were allowed to attend; since citizens in Athens, as elsewhere, in the Hellenic peninsula and, in fact, wherever Greek was spoken, were regarded as above labor. Lastly, the great Dionysia held mostly within the city. They consisted principally of theatrical entertainments at the cost of the state. These again were aristocratical and had little to do with workingmen's organizations. The anthesteria in the month of February and the great Dionysia held in Elaphebolion, month of March, strikingly resembled the Eleusinian Mysteries, to the description of which we have devoted a chapter. They had secret sacrifi- ces at which the wife of the archon was symbolically mar- ried to Bacchus, the celebrated god of plenty. It is quite probable that the poor working people and the slaves, in their longings to rise to enjoyment and esteem, aped these great aristocratic orgies of the citizens, which sometimes were performed especially at Eleusis with a display of magnificence only equalled by their mysterious secrecy and their religious pomp. Thus, the labor unions had nothing in common with those orgies and must not be mixed up with them. In 1364, there appeared an article in the Revue Archeo- logique, on the eranoi and thiasoi of the inscriptions. The 506 PALESTINE. theme maintained that these unions tended towards a cult,. and that the result of their humble existence for a period of many ages was an upward and civilizing tendency. The writer, M. Wescher, an archaeologist who had devoted much time to deciphering the meaning of relics so curious, took the ground similar to that maintained in these chapters, although he does not pre-suppose that the unionists had anything to do with labor. This is the strongest of all the phenomena which beset the pen of scholars. Granier de Cassagnae wrote his history of the ancient laboring men from that point of view; and although his exceedingly scientific and rare penetration was for 30 years talked down by the sav- ants of Germany and France, they are now maintained by greater ones who acknowledged that they were taught by him. Such was also the fate of M. Wescher, who ventured to suggest that the eranoi, very nearly identical with the Roman collegia or trade unions of which Granier had made his magnificent expose, were something more than mere re- ligious sects ; for we find M. P. Foucart denying the truth of M. Wescher's remarks 24 and in his preface, express- ing his sensation of pleasure at imagining himself able to disprove Wescher's hypothesis. 44 One would suppose that any discovery that they were labor societies would be hailed with pleasure by the most critical; but the contrary is hurled in his old friend's face with scorn. We feel an interest lively enough in the little polemic of Foucart and Wescher to reproduce an example: Wescher examines the fraternal character of the Associations 3 * in these words: " Now is it not natural that, at an epoch of in- quietude and of religious agitation like that of the great Alexandrian school, the number of these societies should be considerable? Ought we to be astonished that many men and women abandoned the official religion which had long proved itself ineffectual to free culture, arid to the de- velopment of spontaneous, fraternal goodness such as re- sponds to the innermost aspirations of the heart ? The Greek soil must be considered the veritable cradle of this religious movement. It will redound to the inextinguish- able honor of Greece for having planted such examples iu * Associations Religieuses chez Its Greet, pp. 139-153. x Idem, Preface, p, 14. " Une certaine satisfaction etune certaine confiance .' M Sevue Arciieoloffiyue, 1865, II. pp. 220 and 227. OPINIONS OF SCHOLARS. 60S the world, before the appearance of Christianity." M Wescher continues: " The common fund of the societies was devoted to mutual assistance and assurance, destined to fur- nish advances to members in need, 27 to provide for them in cases of sickness and defray the expenses of a decent burial." 28 Farther along he says: "The members were a mutual community, one with another; the well-to-do paid, the indigent received, in rotatory form, as the case happened. Poverty was no motive of exclusion." This last declaration is stoutly met by M. Foucart who says it is based solely upon an expression of Rangabe. In point of fact this com- munistic mutuality is the only definition ever attached to either the Greek words eranos or Latin collegium ! He fur- ther quotes from Tbeophrastus, 2 ' a passage in rebuttal which substantially acknowledges not only, that the eranoi were mutual sharers, but also that the celebrated successor to Plato knew all about them. Not discomfited with this in- consistency he drags up the case of one Lacerates, an Athe- nian, who being about to move to Megara sells his house and his slaves, charging one of his friends with the task of paying and settling up with his creditors, money he owes and to straighten accounts with his eranos. It does not follow from this, that this rich man was even a member, any more than was Augustus Caesar a member of the many col- legia at Rome which he patronized under the well known name of Collegia Domus Augustalis. The whole of the matter is, that these were poor working people's societies for mutual aid. They corresponded very closely indeed to our trade unions. They had existed from immemorial times as trade and labor societies for mutual support and were almost indentical with the Roman colegia on which we have devoted a chapter, and regard- inlg which evidences in inscriptions and otherwise, are over- whelming. Those poor people did not work all day at wearying drudgery and then labor at night in their unions merely for religion's sake as M. Foucart imagines." They *> Here Wescher himself is unable to understand that the fund was for mem- bers out of employment, which places labor at the bottom of their organization. 28 Revue Archeologique, idem, p. 226. 29 Theophrastus, Ethikoi Karakteres, 17, so Mommsen, e Collegiis et Sodaliclis Romanorum, Cap. V., De Collegiis lati rub Imperitoribus. The emperor Augustus was of course, not a member of the trade unions but he befriended, protected and patronized some of their labor while a great many of them he suppressed.. 508 PALESTINE. had to combine as the men are now combining, to take measures regarding the best advantage at which they might on the morrow, exchange the only goods they possessed their labor for their daily bread. Even slaves, when al- owed, sometimes joined, to better their condition. So much for the eranoi. The thiasoi were, as we have described them, simply clubs of the eranoi who arranged and conducted the little banquets and social amenities which throughout antiquity seem to have made life worth living. These thiasoi corresponded to the sodalicia of the Romans. We have, however, in our description of the Roman trade unions, shown that owing to the severely restrictive and cen- sorious laws, the unions, toward the commencement of the Ohristian era were compelled to assume a strongly religious and pious aspect in order to prevent being suppressed by these rigors, after the servile wars. Precisely the same ia Greece, Asia Minor, Palestine and the Islands of the .ZEgean Sea; because all these provinces from about B. C. 200 had become Roman territory by conquest. Any law touching them at Rome in the Latin tongue was as rigorous against them in Greece, Asia Minor or Canaan in the Greek or He- brew. These are the points which the learned Foucart seems to have forgotten. He is an expert as an epigraphist but lacks the aptitude of the comparative sociologist. The keen preception of Mommsen detected and cleared up the mystery in his laws on the Roman trade unions." These are things which seem strongly to support our argument that a spontaneous, genuine secret movement per- vaded the Greek, Latin and Hebrew-speaking countries far and wide at 'this particular epoch of the advent of Christ. The unity and brotherhood shown to have existed among the secret societies is almost touching. The more the upper stratum of society was distracted by the consequences of the competitive system having failed, on a trial of thousands of generations, the more completely did the brotherly love system of the labor unions grow into usefulness, through accord and mutual support. There is an example of this seen at the Pirseus. The Phrygians were considered barbarians by Greeks and Ro- mans. Their patron goddess was Cybele. Lliders reports 81 Assoc, Relig. Chez. Let. Grecs., passim. One comparison of them with a of the Ramans M. Fouc * rt finds this error clearly prorad. De Colleyiit et Sodaliciit Romanorum. Passim. EQUALITY AND FRATERNITY. 500 that in the Pirseus alone, such was the harmony among the orgeons and thiasoi, who represented, apparently without the least jealousy or dispute, many nationalities there, that the Phrygians had an especial temple standing close by the great temple of the goddess Metroon, where she was wor- shiped by the members of a society whose members called themselves orgeones and thiasotes on the inscription. It reads that the decrees 15 and 19 provide that strangers be admitted to the society. One of the officers is himself a stranger. In the list of officers, one is a tutelary soter, or savior from Trcezen, and one, Cephalion, from Heraclia. So also women officiated in responsible functions in the same society. 33 At the Piraeus was the thiasos embracing the cult of Serapis; of Zeus Labraundos, Metroon 'and Cybele ; of Heroistes, Demos Collyte, Apollo, Nymph Lycia and others. Some of the inscriptions bear date ofB. C. 324. M The fact of their having lived in their quiet fraternal way so many ages organizing, living in common, teaching as they went, and constantly inculcating the spirit of fraternity as it were, un- derground, while overhead in the great competitive world, kings, nobles, money-changers, and politicians were fighting and dashing each other against the competitory rocks of the Pagan aristocracy, is of itself, strong evidence that they were the real planters of a future state which could not ob- tain in the open world without a revolution. Our maxim that the greater the organization of the la- boring poor into a brotherhood for common help the higher will be the pitch of human enlightenment, certainly holds goo Dionysch. Kiinst., 8.7. " Beide Arten von eranos scheinen schon in sehr frQher Zeit mit den thiaaoten Vereinen vermischt vrorden zu sein. ZH Dionysichen KOnstor, S. 13. 512 PALESTINE. us in B. C. 133-129,*" became the mellow ground wherein the early Christians planted and on which they reared one of their most celebrated churches. The laboring people were in trouble at the time of this uprising one of the bloodiest on record. They possessed organizations throughout the country which they were enjoying in ap- parent peace, when they were startled by that paltroon act of Attains IV. deeding at his death, the whole king- dom to the Romans. Fearing lest they be seized by the hated Romans and reduced to slavery, they unanimously joined the pretender. But there were inscriptions showing that the Pergamenian working people were en- joying a thrifty organization dating from high antiquity down to the coming of the Messiah. Cappadocia which did not fall into Roman hands until A. D. 17, was also one of the early posts of the Christians. The first epistle of St. Peter bears this name. Here too the labor brotherhoods had a strong foothold. This is rendered certain by the recent discovery of several of their slabs and monuments bearing inscriptions. Laodi- cia was also a stronghold of both the unions and the early Christians. This place, together with Ephesus and Hieropolis, is where were founded the seven Apocalyptic churches. 44 The early church found mellow soil among the brotherhoods of the eranoi and thiasoi. Apamea near Antioch, the birthplace of Eunus, insti- gator of the greatest of all the slave uprisings, was also the cradle of one of the early churches. 48 We have, in our account of this great strike shown that Eunus and his men seemed both to be deeply imbued with the every- where present idea of the Messiah, who was to redeem the world, and also thoroughly acquainted with the methods of secret organization. His knowledge of the auspices, and plan of organization were really at the base of his suc- cess. These things, added to inscriptions found in the vicinity of labor unions of an antiquity coeval with this great servile war, show very plainly why Christianity took root so readily in those regions of Asia. See chap. x. p. 242. Aristrmicus, giving a full sketch of the event. St. Paul, Collossianf, IV. 15, alludes to it where he asks that his letter be fihown to the brethren in the church of Laodicia. Revelations, i. 11. John here also epeaks of the church of Pergamus ae one of the seven. NAZARETH. 513 Rhodes was also one of the places where Christianity established itself, although its successes there have been sad. But of all spots in the world Rhodes seems to have been one of the most prolific in those queer inscriptions indicating a great labor organization in ancient times. They existed in great numbers on this island. 4 ' The abundance of these inscriptions found in Rhodes and at Piraeus, have attracted much attention from the archaeolo- gists of late. The fact is, the societies being mostly era- noi or labor unions and enjoying in common brotherhood, the scanty proceeds of their toil, had for many ages, pre- pared the ground for the new plant ; consequently it was found mellow and in readiness for the greater Messiah when at last he really arrived. But one of the most interesting centers of the early church was Apamea, the birthplace of Eunus, the great slave-king of Sicily, Athenion, hero of the second Sicilian strike-war, and Saint Paul the most famous of the apostles of Jesus. This city, not far from Nazareth, was a hive of free labor organizations until stricken by the Roman con- quest. It gave birth to three of the most wonderful char- acters of the history of the lowly and being warmed up in the old cult of the communes, easily became the seat of an early Christian church. Another significant fact may here by mentioned that Plato takes Socrates down to the Piraeus among the com- munal fraternities of the working people where he and his friends remained for days, as it were, in this socialis- tic atmosphere. They there discussed and drew up the whole of Plato's most celebrated work the Republic. Socrates was himself a member and this may account for Plato's notion.* 7 Summing up the mass, we find five great revolutionary 4* See I.liders, Die Dionyischtu Ktinitler, 8. 37*42 and elsewhere. Foncart, LfM Associations Religievsea chez IKS Grecs. chap. xii. " Les associations religieuses n' etaient pas moins nombreuses qu' an Piree." They were worshipers of num- erous deities. M. \Vescher in the Revut. Archfologtqne, 1864, tome II. p. 473, says lie collected a list of 19 inscriptions representing as many organizations in the inland of Rhodes. i" Plato. Republic, I. 1, Socrates says: " Yesterday I went down to the Pirzus along witli Glaukon, Ariston's son, to worship the divinity and attend the festi- val." This tutelary patroness was Artemis, sister to Apollo, central figure ol the sun-worship (see chapter on Red Banner). She ranked with the group of labor protectresses, Cybele. Ceres, Minerva, under whom so many organizations were ronui'e'1. 514 PALESTINE. characters, aside from kings and men in absolute power, like Lycurgus, Numa and Solon. These five men repre- sent the labor of five active lives devoted to the improve- ment of human conditions on a large scale. They are Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Spartacus and Jesus. Socrates and Jesus, the first and the last, seem like an incarnation of two great goodnesses in one. The analogy from beginning to end is wonderful. Both were sons of humble mechanics one a marble-cutter, the other a car- penter. Both were surrounded by communes of the se- cret eranoi, and probably both were members. Both preached quietly to their deciples, occasionally addressing open-air mass meetings. Both were betrayed by the per- fidy of their own pretended converts and suffered death on the plea of corrupting the morals which the ethics of the same Pagan faith had fostered and grown, out of the hideous philosophy of human slavery. The result to the human race, of these parallel lives and martyrdoms has been altogether incalculable. Plato, the admirer of Socrates, dared not follow his master. Aristotle, borrowing from Anaxagoras and Kapila, laid the foundation of human improvement, with great pre- cision, upon the scientific ground-work of mechanics. His ideas, restored by Bacon, are those which the world is now following. Spartacus, the greatest representative of the purely iras- cible, the most sublime character and type of the lower philosophy of resistance, who careered on the ground of " an eye' for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," last, and just anterior to the great carpenter, was a shepherd, humble and without ambitions, but because implicated with an age of injustice wherein " opportunity makes the man," magnetized, split asunder, almost conquered the world, which in his day was Rome. Jesus, who before coming to proper age, is said to have studied diligently, seems to have shaped his life-course from the results of lessons gained by these predecessors. He accepted the acceptable and sternly refused that which bore no promise of contributing to the establishment of a heaven on earth. He gained his great triumph over slavery by adjusting the three moral impulses of Plato COMPARATIVE WORK OF GREAT MASTERS, 515 and the dialecticians irascibility, concupiscence, sympa- thy. He soothed the jarring bitterness of the first by coaxing concupiscence from its ancient realm and bring- ing it down to "want;" and married them together by the tie of sympathy, the impulse most matured by the so- cial unions ; and there formed the stronghold of his doc- trine from beginning to end. Plato, the ancient mouth-piece of them all, as he is resurrected in Neo-Platonism, after a test of 7,000 gener- ations, must be placed, by those engaged in the labor problem of to-day, as an extraordinary tissue of harmony and absurdity. He wanted the better (or individual), to overcome the multitude (or worse).** The experience of these 7,000 generations since Plato, forces the now living family of mankind to pronounce an opposite opinion. It is the masses who are " beautiful," (as Plato used that word); while the individual proves himself constantly to be the lying, bribe-taking, merchant- able tt sell-out" and under-dealer; ready as a rule, under the competitive sy&tem, for any trade, seditiously corrupt, planning schemes of jobbery; and he has actually to be watched by the honest masses. Plato wanted slaves. His slave system, large already, during his life-time was small compared with its huge- ness after his philosophy was promulgated and its influ- ence extended to the Roman conquests. Before his time, slaves were the children of the citizens. Soon after him, Rome in her enormous conquests, turned the vast popu- lations of that age into rebellious slaves, and the world became almost depopulated. This master not only wanted degraded slaves, but he laid down laws for them, consign- ing them to death by torture for unpremeditated homicide while the mastt-r was allowed, if he murdered a slave, to be tried by his friends, acquitted and no stigma inflicted upon his name ; and Plato lays down a law to that effect. 4 * The entire enlightenment of our modern age repudiates 48 Laws, I. 3, 4, Bekker, Lond. ed. Laws, IX. 9, More on Plato's views of Slavery will be found as follows : Breeding mean with mean and best with best. Republic , V. 8, Great fear of slave uprising in consequence of the system, acknowledged, IX. 5, Id. \ "Abject race;' Slatetmen, 49: Necessary to possess slaves Laws, VI. 19; Agricultural slaves, Laii-a, \ JI. 13: For homicide the slave must invariably die: preferably by torture, Lava, IX. 9; ^uch punishment must be "clean," it. vengeance, Law*, XI. a, 10, fm. 516 PALESTINE. this as unfairness, relegating the slave system to a realm of low barbarity. On human slavery, the subsequent world has emphatically pronounced against Plato's views ; and the little investigating mites of Aristotle, and the work- ing elements of Jesus, are banishing it from the earth. Plato wanted war. 50 He laid many plans and laws upon his theory of external strife, wishing only education and mutuality within. Neo-Platonism took it up, and in blas- phemous contradiction to the teacher, endorsed it, and actually engrafted this Pagan precept into the mild and peaceful system of Jesus. Things have not turned out to substantiate these coun- sels of the great philosopher. Wars the people had; and the wars made a million slaves. Eunus, Athenion and Spartacus resented by warring back; and when the world, devastated by combined horrors of war and slavery, got time to breathe and recruit, another slave-war struck man- kind even in our civil rebellion, with the final result to fix the conviction that the peace plan of Jesus was correct. Plato wanted it understood and implicitly believed that all things spring from the most high, the mythical and invisible inhabitants of Ouranos; and that men derived existence, and were watched over from those heights in the vaulted dome of heaven, the Olympian abodes whence an endless chain of priestcraft. Neo-Platonism engrafted these absurdities into a Chris- tian dogma. Modern common sense, backed by science, with its in- numerable tools proving the true laws of nature, finds the facts to be the exact reverse of the Platonic dogma, and is wheeling us back to the physicism of Aristotle, that it is the little things and the little men and women who perform all works, who produce all that is produced ; that it is not the great, conjured to be so in the elastic imagination, who accomplish anything, but the infinites- simals that do it all. 50 Republic, vii. viii. Polemarch is .made to eay that justice consists in do- ing good to friends and evil to enemies. Socrates however, in an ironical t^ally of moral reasoning demolishes Poleinarch's logic wheeling him unto the great thesis of Jesus which now proves to be the idea that alone can prevail: See Matthew, v. 43, 44, 24; John, xv. 17. First Epistle of John, ii. 10, 11 The anti-war teachings of Jesus are actively forcing these horrors from the earth jnst a chattel slavery has been forced out of existence and wages slavery is fast following. SYMPATHY, IRASCIBILITY, CONCUPISENCE. 517 Jesus, if we read him rightly, appears to have been less a Platonist than an Aristotelian and when he comes to be preached in our pulpits from labor points of view, there will be found hundreds of texts whose meanings, long smothered, will furnish substance enough to solve the problem. 51 Emancipation came from Christianity. 52 The great principle of mutual love among all men was the really original idea and practical work of Jesus. He taught a new doctrine a peaceful plan of salvation. Spartacus, who represented tbe old method of allevia- tion from suffering, based upon the irascible principle with its wars and bloodshed, was, beyond all cavil, the highest type of that. culture. He was evidently informed on the great wars of Viriathus, Eunus, Athenion and per- haps Drimakos. But in both opportunity and military aptitude Spartacus surpassed them alL He lost. But after the million crucifixions of his own and a few gener- ations preceding him, and the enormous lessons which his own and his predecessors' blows had administered to cruel, concupiscent Rome, who shall have the temerity to say that these blows, crucifixions, bloody scenes and awful lessons did not go far, very far, toward shaping the convic- tions of Jesus, who but continued the great conflict with his milder leadership ? Modern progress, which has almost outgrown chattel slavery, still seems quite undecided in regard to the plan of Spartacus ; and might even yet swing back upon it, were it not for the stern, inexorable hold which Jesus main- tains in the wreck of his tortured, priest-ridden temples and this hold is the hope of the future ; for his plan ap- plies with wonderful harmony to the investigations and experiments of Aristotle. Plato wanted the unequivocal mingling of religion and politics." 51 There are many expressions recorded in the Ne\o Testament which are vague in meaning and mast remain BO until better understood. After this they may be used by ministers of the gospel, in the labor movement. i Compare Canon Lightfoot, OntheCollosstans.p. 321 ; Bockh, ZH Lauriscken Silberberywerke. Hundreds of the most candid authors acknowledge that it was the Christian cult which finally fought down this terrible institution. In going, paganism had also to go. But as we study the origin and course of evcnts'we must acknowledge ttiat the blow against slavery had been struck before the ad- Tent of Christ. He it was, who killed slavery by tempering the spirit of human kindness. 618 PALESTINE. Modern statesmen, notwithstanding the almost desper- ate struggles of priest-power to hold firm this Pagan grip r are now steadily disestablishing state and church: and the verdict of enlightenment both in the realm of science and sociology, is to cast overboard, as worthless and per- nicious, this old idea of Plato and let religion and politics each take their course alone. Jesus not only separated church from state by admonishing the typical money- changers, but he said: "Render unto Caesar "etc. The Caesar here referred to, was the mild Augustus, whose reign was, in political respects, a model, and a glory to Rome. Plato wanted an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.** He encouraged hatreds even in his " city of the Blessed," and trained an army of both women and men to the science of fierce contention. " Resist not evil," the law of the mechanic of Nazareth, has so far supplanted these savage doctrines, that already the trade unions and other social and labor organizations in many countries, are discussing and planning to resist against men of Plato's class, on grounds that they them- selves are forced to become innocent victims of a hateful idea which pits them, like Spartacue and the gladiators* against their fellow men, who have given them no caua* for offense. Yet all things considered, the world cannot afford to belittle Plato, the father of idealism ; even though many of his time-serving thoughts are passing away. His mind was too great for his age and his weaknesses were but subterfuges which saved him to a good old age while bolder men were martyred in comparative youth. But Aristotle who began with microscopic things, whose mind, a consension of Kapila, of Anaxagoras, of Empedo- cles, of Parmenides, of Zeno, of Plato himself, is, as the world grows old and wise, and as light gleams in upon intelligence, beaming more brilliantly with each decade; and this great man's thoughts are laying bare the in- crusted truth and leading to the final, perfected philoso- phy. Aristotle's is the mind which draws ever nearer as Lawt, book VI. cap. 7, Bekk. It was always so in the ancient code. Neo- Platoniflm and the Nicine Decrees afterward succeeded in getting thin old Paean thing back into the Christian church where it g'ill remains, in aome countries. * Plato, Juttice, 5 ; JRepublic, pastim ; Lau-f, in man? plate*- THE GREAT ARISTOTLE. 519 the ages waft him farther away among the satellites of an .awful forever. Jesus, who planted among the communes and laborers all that was good and pure, but whose beautiful works have been almost banished by the proud old paganism still adhering in his temples, departed only to return ; for these growing squadrons of the modern mites foretell that he is deeting back to assume command of a great army of unreconciled but longing intelligences, which the an- cient working people quickened, and which tlie suns of two thousand years have mellowed for the harvest. University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed.