ABSTRACT
SLAVERY remained until the end of Roman history one of the bases of the economic system: upon it to a great extent agricultural and industrial production rested, as also the working of a certain number of public services, but the part which it played steadily decreased. Neither the Stoics nor the Christians can be credited with bringing about this decay of a predominant and fundamental institution, for whatever sympathetic words the writers of either doctrine may have found for the captives, they never fought the principles of the system which had endured for centuries and never insisted on complete respect for the physical person. The law, the customs and the moral ideas of the time condemned neither the ownership nor the sale of individuals. In this respect no development was to take place in the last centuries of the Empire and though certain regulations were passed to prohibit the violences which were traditionally exercised on the servi they were inspired mainly by self-interest and responded above all to the desire to safeguard a necessary economic factor, the maintenance of which seemed to be more and more compromised.
