ABSTRACT
SLAVERY is the basis of the whole economic system in the States of antiquity. It became general, as we have said, in the known world of the ancients, like serfdom and the wage system at other periods. Without slavery Roman society is as unthinkable as would have been the Greek societies without it. Attica in the fifth century B.c., that is to say, during the phase of its splendour, counted ten times as many bondsmen as free men. It is true that towards the same time the proportion was far from being the same in the domain under Roman sway but every patrician family had already its contingent of slaves sharing the various tasks among them and unable, under penalty of death, to leave their master's house.
