Caligula the dupe of favorites the slave of lust stupid, bloody and rapacious.

We have said these aqueducts were cemented with the blood of slavery, and such undoubtedly was the fact, although we have no direct testimony to offer in its support. But we know that slavery was coeval with the foundation of Rome for although Romu- ;

lus, as it is related by Livy, at the commencement, and in order to increase its popula-

218 MEMOIR OP THE tion, made his new city an asylum for runaway slaves, it is also recorded, that before " From that his reign ceased, captives made in war, were reduced to slavery. time," " the number and says a modern and learned writer, importance of the slaves of the Ro mans, are abundantly attested by authorities of all descriptions, and of every period down to the fall of the Western Empire."*

Hume, Wallace, and others, who have scrutinized the accuracy of the numbers of slaves said to have existed at Rome, leave no room for doubt, that vast multitudes were

kept in that degraded condition. They were the only servants, and according to Diony- " sius of Halicarnassus, the only operatives" or workmen in the city, and so great was the increase in numbers of this sort of population, that in the age of the Gracchi, the labor of agriculture, too, was performed by them, and the class of free husbandmen disappeared from Italy. It was from indignation at this state of things, consequent upon the possession of immense landed estates and many slaves, by a few proprietors, that Tiberius Gracchus was stimulated to propose the Agrarian law.t It may be assumed with confidence, that the slave population of Rome, was from an early period, at least equal to that of the freemen ; and as wealth and luxury increased, and it became a mark of rank and condition to have a numerous retinue of slaves, this class much preponderated.