=--Every prisoner of war, every inhabitant of a
captured city belonged to the victor. If they were not killed, they
were enslaved. Such was the ancient custom and the Romans exercised
the right to the full. Captives were treated as a part of the booty
and were therefore either sold to slave-merchants who followed the
army or, if taken to Rome, were put up at auction.[130] After every
war thousands of captives, men and women, were sold as slaves.
Children born of slave mothers would themselves be slaves. Thus it was
the conquered peoples who furnished the slave-supply for the Romans.
=Condition of the Slave.=--The slave belonged to a master, and so was
regarded not as a person but as a piece of property. He had, then, no
rights; he could not be a citizen or a proprietor; he could be neither
husband nor father. "Slave marriages!" says a character in a Roman
comedy;[131] "A slave takes a wife; it is contrary to the custom of
every people." The master has full right over his slave; he sends him
where he pleases, makes him work according to his will, even beyond
his strength, ill feeds him, beats him, tortures him, kills him
without accounting to anybody for it.
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