" Thus everywhere the
small farmers were disappearing, and the soil of Italy was fast passing
into the hands of a few territorial magnates, who, unfortunately (for it
tended to aggravate the mischief), were enabled by another cause to turn
their vast possessions to advantage. The conquest of the world had turned
the flower of the defeated nations into slaves. The prisoners taken either
after a battle or when cities surrendered unconditionally were bought up
steadily by contractors who followed in the rear of the Roman armies. They
were not ignorant like the negroes, but trained, useful, and often
educated men, Asiatics, Greeks, Thracians, Gauls, and Spaniards, able at
once to turn their hands to some form of skilled labor, either as clerks,
mechanics, or farm-servants. The great landowners might have paused in
their purchases had the alternative lain before them of letting their
lands lie idle or of having freemen to cultivate them. It was otherwise
when a resource so convenient and so abundant was opened at their feet.
The wealthy Romans bought slaves by thousands. Some they employed in their
workshops in the capital. Some they spread over their plantations,
covering the country, it might be, with olive gardens and vineyards,
swelling further the plethoric figures of their owners' incomes. It was
convenient for the few, but less convenient for the Commonwealth.
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