Part 3
The primitive social and intellectual condition of the populations dwelling along the shores of Africa washed by the Mediterranean sea, can only be inferred from their respective relations with the Phoenicians and Carthaginians. Other sources of historical information as to that remote period there are none, while later times also give comparatively scanty satisfaction.
Ethnology has not yet positively determined who the aborigines of Libya were, and it is questionable if it can ever be satisfactorily settled. Egyptian inscriptions indicate a white race in the north-eastern corner of Libya, adjoining Egypt; while further to the west lived the blacks. At a period exceedingly remote, the whites mixed with these negro blacks, who probably immigrated from the centre of Africa--Soudan--and spread over the whole of Libya. These remote epochs, however, altogether refuse chronological limitation. But when chronology, even of the most rudimentary kind, becomes possible, history shows us the existence, in Libya, of a nomadic and agricultural people, who can be no other than these cross-breeds, and who had brought a part of the land to a high degree of cultivation. The Libyans may thus be considered as an autochthonous African population--a theory which is confirmed by other evidence not now necessary to give.
Among these Libyans--called by the Greeks _Afri_, and by the Romans, _Africani_--agriculture was in a highly flourishing condition at the epoch of the earliest myths and legends of Greece: all the Hellenic legends relating to the distant sea-wanderings of gods or heroes, carry them to the Libyan shores about the _Regio Syrtica_--Tripolis. Among these are the Argonauts and Heraklides, Perseus, Kadmos, Odysseus, and Menalaos. So the Greek myths of Atlas and the Garden of the Hesperides have their spring and source in that part of Libya. All this presupposes a very old culture. Herodotus says that the Ægis of the Greek Pallas originated in Libya, as also that Athene here received Gorgona's head for her Ægis. Even at the present day, the chiefs of some of the tribes in the southern part of ancient Libya carry the skins of leopards and other wild beasts on their shoulders in such a way that the head of the animal, Ægis-like, covers their breast. The adventurous Phoenician and Greek navigators of the earliest period accordingly found the Libyans already a highly cultivated people. This culture, too, they possessed previous to their intercourse with the Canaanites, Phoenicians, or Greeks--anterior even to the wanderings of Astarte, Anna, or Dido.
At this epoch the Libyans were possessed of written language. Their alphabet was, in certain peculiarities, of an older type than even the Phoenician--that father of so many eastern and western alphabets. _Leptis_ and _Oka_ are Libyan names for Libyan cities which were in existence previous to any Phoenician colonizations--though these colonizations are themselves anterior to positive history.
Goats, sheep, and other domestic animals were introduced into Greece and Italy from Libya; and from thence also came the knowledge of how to breed and rear them. The Libyans also, in all probability, first taught them the mode of keeping and rearing bees, as the Greek word for "wax," _keros_--Latin, _cera_, is by some deduced from the Berber (Libyan) _ta-kir_, and the Greek designation for honey, _meli_, _mel_--Latin, _mel_, from the Berber _ta-men-t_. Others, however, trace both those words to a Sanscrit root.
As an evidence of their advanced civilization, it may be mentioned that the Libyans were highly accomplished in horticulture at a time when the fields of Greece and Italy were only rudely ploughed. From Libya across the Mediterranean, the leguminous or pulse plants seem to have been introduced into Southern Europe, together with the mode of their use and culture; and some investigators consider that the Latin names for "pease" (_cicer_), for "lentils" (_lens_, _lentis_), and for "beans" (_faba_), have their origin in the Berber _ikiker_, _ta-linit_, and _fabua_. But to these words, also, others give a Sanscrit origin. _Cucurbis_ "cucumber," is in Berber _curumb_--although, again, it is traced, but forcedly, to the Sanscrit. Whatever may be the origin of the words, it is an historical fact that the Romans acquired their whole knowledge of horticulture from the Libyans and Libyo-Phoenicians; and it may even be surmised that the Latin _urtus_, "hortus," had its root in the Berber _urt_.
Civilization among the Libyans, therefore, was anterior to any contact either with Phoenicians or Greeks, and long centuries anterior to the Carthaginian domination over the northern shores of Africa.
The Libyans were a nation of agriculturists and freeholders. No trace of slavery appears among them, and, if it existed at all, was altogether insignificant and accidental. When the Phoenicians and Canaanitish settlements increased in power and number, the Libyans became tributary colonists, and the Phoenicians instituted the slave-trade among them, whose victims were confined mostly to the nomads.
As we have before said, the poor white colonists sent from Canaan and Phoenicia to Libya intermarried with the natives; and from this union came the Libyo-Phoenicians of history. The relations which the Libyans (and subsequently the Libyo-Phoenicians, when again subjugated) held to Phoenician and Canaanitish settlers, were similar to those which free Romans afterward held to the Longobard and Frankish conquerors who settled upon and held the lands of which they were once the masters.
IV.
CARTHAGINIANS.
AUTHORITIES:
_Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Polybius, Corippus, Moevers, etc._
The Carthaginians were the great ethnic offshoots of Phoenicia in the western part of the ancient world. It would not be in place here to inquire what motives led these wanderers away from their Asiatic home, or what was the nature of the settlement which they made. They left Tyre and founded the celebrated city of Carthage, on a spot where an ancient colony from Sidon previously existed.[6] Carthage very early--indeed, we might almost say, at the start--assumed a higher character than any previous colony or city of Phoenicia. It soon became, in fact, an independent political power. It began to flourish at a time when Tyre and Sidon were on the decline, and when these once great cities had become tributary to Asiatic potentates. The Carthaginians became first the protectors, and soon afterward, the masters of all the ancient Phoenician colonies scattered over the western world. Nor did they stop here; they became a warlike and conquering empire. The political misfortunes of their mother country increased, by almost uninterrupted immigration, the number of poor free citizens in Carthage, as well as in other seacoast cities now Punic, though once Phoenician--many of them, indeed, having a numerous Libyo-Phoenician population. This surplus the Carthaginians sent off as colonists into the interior of Libya, where they founded smaller cities or settled as agriculturists among the native population, whose lands, in many instances, were assigned to the new-comers. The Carthaginian oligarchy soon began to oppress and look with contempt upon the ancient Phoenicians, Libyo-Phoenicians and Libyans. In process of time, the new colonists mixed with the ancient populations, and all were soon equally sufferers from oppressive tributes and exactions. The common hatred of these various populations against the oligarchy, which frequently led to revolt, was a powerful aid to the Numidian kings and to the Romans in their efforts to crush haughty Carthage.
The great Carthaginian oligarchs and slaveholders extended and perfected what the Phoenicians perhaps only began. They acquired in various ways vast landed estates, and oppressed and impoverished the tributary colonists and small freeholders by grievous exactions; they seized their homesteads, and finally reduced them to serfdom and slavery. Toward the decline of Carthaginian power, such estates were mostly cultivated by slaves; and these slaves--those in the country as well as those in the cities--were either Libyo-Phoenicians and Libyans, or belonged to Asiatic and European races--the unhappy individuals being either bought or taken as prisoners of war. The subdued and slave populations were as mixed as the Carthaginian armies, which, in Africa especially, contained a vast number of negroes--thus presenting an antetype of the French Turcos.
The gigantic struggle of Carthage with Rome decided the destinies of the world. Carthage fell. But the breath of the moribund slave-holding oligarchy of Carthage poisoned Rome. The tragic malediction of Dido received its fulfilment, though not in the precise manner recorded by Virgil in the Ænead.
After having conquered Carthage and Numidia, the Romans distributed among their own colonists the immense estates of the Carthaginian slaveholders, which, however, had been previously appropriated by the Numidian kings. Phoenicians, Libyo-Phoenicians, Libyans and Carthaginians, all now either became Roman colonists, or else serfs and chattels in the villas of their Roman masters. When the Vandals conquered Africa, the Romans in their turn shared the fate of all their predecessors, who had in succession been reduced to serfdom and domestic slavery, the one by the other. In the character of serfs and chattels, these various races now cultivated for their Vandal masters the lands and farms which once were their own. Thus affording an additional illustration of the eternal and omnipotent law of _retribution_ and _compensation_.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 6: The name _Carthage_ signifies a "new borough," or "city."]
V.
HEBREWS, OR BENI-ISRAEL.
AUTHORITIES:
_The Scriptures, Ewald, Rénan, Duncker, Gessenius, Grotefend, etc._
The pro-slavery party, pacific as well as militant, has long sought to fall back on the Mosaic records for the justification of the "sacred" and "patriarchal" institution. The historic records throw a bright light on the gray dawn of Hebraic life--giving us an insight into the primitive forms of society, not only of the Hebrews, but of the other, and especially the Shemitic inhabitants of Syria and of Fore-Asia. And, truly enough, servants and slaves are found around the tent of the patriarch.
It has already been mentioned that in times long prior to any definite chronology, the regions constituting Syria, Palestine and Arabia were inhabited by various tribes--some of whom were offshoots from one stem and some from another. Of these tribes, some had already formed themselves into well-developed societies, while others, if they were not absolutely roving nomads, yet often changed their dwellings according to the exigencies of pastoral life. Palestine, the final home of the Hebrew, was, in all probability, the earliest as well as the chief highway of antiquity--especially for the Shemitic and Chamitic races, just as the Caucasus and its slopes are supposed to have been the highway for Aryan or Indo-European emigrants, and for Finnic, Altaïc, and Mongolian or yellow races. This character it had before the time when Terah, Abraham's father, drove his herds from the table-lands of Mesopotamia (_Naharaina_); and it preserved it under Phoenician as well as under Hebrew dominion. Repeatedly did Egyptians, Assyrians and Babylonians, as well as Persians, and finally Alexander and his generals, march through Palestine in their invading and conquering expeditions. The important part which Palestine played in the early commercial history of the world, also, has already been pointed out while treating of the Phoenicians.
The origin first of domestic servitude, and then of absolute chattelhood, among the primitive pastoral tribes, may be traced to two distinct sources, both of them springing from abnormal conditions and events. One source was the constant feuds and wars of the tribes; the other, individual indolence and shiftlessness. The household of a patriarch, originally composed of a family and then of a clan, soon had its share of restless as well as indolent dependents. Such hangers-on were neither as frugal nor as industrious as the patriarch's family, and so enjoyed but small consideration; generally, moreover, they were most likely strangers who, through necessity or gratitude, adhered to the house and considered themselves an integral part of it. But the patriarch had the most absolute power over all the members of the family--over his wife, his sons and daughters, and all their progeny and relations. He could banish them from the family and hearth; he could sell them away to others; he had power of life and death over them all; and such powers, of course, extended over dependents and servants. In fact, the patriarch was the supreme and only-existing law. His will, and absolute obedience thereto, was the only guarantee of order inside of the tent, and outside of it also in their relations with the tents and clans of other patriarchs. The more exclusive and distinct such a family or clan was, the more independent it was in all its relations with similar social crystallizations; and the more closely did the dependents adhere to it for support and protection.
Such was undoubtedly the origin of the domestic servitude which appears in the Scriptures with the apparition of Abraham as a distinct historical individuality. But such servants and dependents being a part of the family, were not commonly sold nor made an article of merchandise, and were not, strictly speaking, chattels, as were prisoners made in feuds or wars.[7] Besides, in the formation of the primitive patriarchal household, the domestic, pastoral and agricultural labors were performed by the family--children, grandchildren, etc.; just as it is in the present day in every simple household--for a simple family formed the germ of the tribe and of the retainers around the tent of the patriarch. As the family increased, so did the herds, and so also did the duties to be performed. Meanwhile the members of the expanding family continued to attend to the household services--just as is now the case in similar circumstances--without their becoming slaves or chattels for all that. The primitive Aryan language (of which hereafter) clearly confirms what both reason and analogy assert as being an inherent fact in the constitution of every family, whatever may be the peculiarities of skin or skull, or their other ethnic characteristics. Moreover, even according to those opposed to the absolute unity of the whole human race, the Shemites descend from the same common progenitor as the Aryas (of whom are we), and this affinity strengthens what was said above concerning the similarity of their domestic life.
With the increase of the tribes and families, neighboring or scattered, increased the degeneracy of the dependents, until finally these miserable persons, grown to be an excrescence on the primitive Hebrew family life, and unable to take care of themselves, willingly accepted slavery--at times indeed craved it. The same phenomenon, under different modifications, and occasioned by various causes, again and again reappears in divers nations and empires, just as the same bodily maladies have constantly reproduced themselves throughout the countless centuries of human existence. And indeed the _morale_ of Noah's curse can only be, that servitude, being generated by corruption of manhood, was, in its very nature, a diseased and degraded condition.
Abraham belonged to a class common to the Arabs, Hebrews, and all the Shemitic races--shieks or chiefs of warlike tribes, who were in the habit of making war against each other, carrying off prisoners, and even kidnapping on occasion. It was these victims chiefly that were the objects of traffic; and this very trait is true of the Arab tribes down to the present day.
The Hebrews, liberated from captivity in Egypt--that is, from political slavery, which must never be confounded with chattelhood--fought against their kinsmen, the Shemitic Canaanites, with a view to make themselves a home in a country already thickly settled, and in comparatively advanced culture and civilization. The Hebrews, poor, energetic, and hardened by the privations of a long captivity, bore the same relation to the nations of Canaan which they invaded, as the half-naked, half-starved barbarians of a long subsequent epoch bore to the Roman world, against which they rushed with the force of doom. The invading Israelites, according to the commands of Jahveh (Jehovah), carried on wars of extermination against the Phoenicians, Philistines, Ammonites, Amorites, Moabites, and other inhabitants of south-western Syria. Many of these original occupants and cultivators of the land of Canaan fled even to Africa, from the exterminating fury of the Jews, led by Moses, Aaron, and Joshua. Meanwhile the Jews took possession of the conquered and abandoned lands, which were divided between the tribes; and the great body of the Hebrews settled on them as agriculturists and free yeomen. In process of time, under the direction and inspiration of Jahveh, the supreme Lord of Israel, the body of commandments, regulations and ceremonials, called the Mosaic law, was framed.
The law of Moses has two prominent divisions--first, imperative commands, and second, dispensations. In respect of all absolute duties to God, as well as domestic and social duties, the law lays down its commands even to the minutest details, and rigidly condemns their violator. But, on the other hand, taking into account human frailty, and the temptations to which it is exposed, as also the exigencies and customs of life, the law is also full of dispensations. This twofold character of the Mosaic law affords its antagonists a broad field for assaults on its apparent contradictions. The law condemns idolatry, yet Aaron, the first high-priest, casts a golden calf for the people to worship, while Moses raises a brazen serpent before their eyes as a material symbol for their faith. The law commands monogamy, but permits and regulates concubinage. It prohibits licentiousness, fornication, and rape, but overlooks them in certain instances, as, for example, after a successful battle or the storming of a city, because such crimes are unavoidable when the demoniac passions are brought powerfully into play. Many other illustrations of this twofold character of the Mosaic law might be pointed out.
But minute and precise though the Mosaic record is in its religious and social commands and obligations, it nowhere commands the Hebrews, as a religious or social duty, to enslave the Canaanitish idolaters among whom they lived. Enslavement and chattelhood are nowhere laid down as special duties, nor is slavery regarded as forming the corner-stone of the Jewish social, civil, and religious structure. Slavery is not the subject of the covenant with God or of the covenant with man; neither did the possession of slaves confer any political, religious, or social rights. All this was left for the deduction of modern theology and politics.
The Mosaic law deals with slavery as with an existing evil, and regulates it as an abnormal institution. The lawgiver recalls to the memory of the Jews that they were themselves captives and bondsmen--an historic fact to which, as we have already seen, the ancestry of many of the slaveholders in the United States, at the present day, furnish a parallel.
But perhaps Biblical commentators have not drawn with sufficient severity the distinction in meaning between the Hebrew word for "servant," "attendant," etc., and that for an "absolute chattel." Chattelhood, in the modern legal and practical application of the term, was undoubtedly a rare condition in the time of the patriarchs, and even in the primitive theocratic epochs of Beni-Israel. The Hebrew language has four words to express the primitive domestic relations of the race, and neither of them will admit the meaning of positive chattelhood. Probably the oldest is the word _a'buddah_, which occurs in the book of Job, whose dialect is considered by modern philologists to be far older than the Mosaic scriptures; the same word is also found once only in Genesis (Gessenius Dict.). It is a collective noun, and signifies "attendants," "laborers," and, according to some exegetes, it also signifies an "_estate_." Such may perhaps be its meaning in the book of Job, as it occurs after the enumeration of various movables, such as flocks and herds, and may thus, in distinction, convey the idea of real property. The logical sequence in such enumerations was undoubtedly the same then as it is now--movables first in order, then landed property. Another Hebrew word for the primitive domestic servant is _na'ar_, but its application seems to have been rather limited; it is mostly employed to designate a "lad-servant" or "apprentice." The word most generally used, however, and the one most variously translated and explained by lexicographers is _e'bed_: it variously signifies "subject," "servant," "serf," "slave," "attendant," "officer," etc. Its application to a "serf" or "slave" has perhaps rather a moral or ideal than a positive legal or social sense. Thus, when in Genesis it is said that "Moses removed the swarms of flies from Pharaoh, from his servants (_e'bed_), and from his people," the word _e'bed_ undoubtedly signifies "ministers," "courtiers," "officers," and "servants of the court," and not actual serfs or slaves. Common sense would surely indicate that chattels could not have been mentioned immediately after the great Pharaoh, and before his people; and still less likely is it that the oriental despotism which reduced _all_ to political slaves was unknown in the Egypt of the early Pharaohs. Finally, the word _abduh_ alone may signify a "slave" in the strict sense of the term; it is used by Ezra, and belongs to a period of national degradation, when both slavery and idolatry flourished in Israel.
Slavery, however, never became an integral element of Hebrew life, nor, during their centuries of glory, did its pestilence-breath endanger the national vitality. The Mosaic record, covering a period of nearly one thousand years, never mentions any slave revolt, such as so often shook the neighboring and contemporaneous Phoenicians.
For domestic slaves, the Hebrews procured foreigners, through traffic or by war; and such slaves were of the same race as the slaves of the Phoenicians and other neighboring nations. In the history of the Beni-Israel, there are long episodes containing accounts of wars, principally with tribes belonging to the same Shemitic family from which the Hebrews themselves sprang, and many of the slaves made in these wars must have belonged to the nearest cities and kingdoms. If these had been so numerous as to be employed in large bodies in agricultural labor, undoubtedly there would have been revolts during the absence of their masters on military expeditions, or even during times of peace. The absence of any such event in the history of the Hebrews, proves that domestic slavery was for many long centuries recognized only as an abnormal institution, and its growth circumscribed by jubilees and limitary statutes.