CHAPTER II COMMON LAW IN SLAVERY Origin of slavery connected with worship In the Ancient World, wherever we look we find two social classes, only: Slaves and gods. But it is well to remember that the slaves are human beings, also that the so-called "gods" are of common clay. On the whole, the social system is based on abject slavery, but the accepted belief is that rulers are gods, or descendants of gods. When the king dies he is worshipped as a deity, and it is recorded that he goes to live on a distant star. And it was back in those remote uncharted centuries that our primeval ancestors originated legends of human perfection, reflected by Hesiod and later still by the Roman poets; fables having to do with a suppositious Golden Age. Even as late as the 1700's, Rousseau popularized the myth as sober history; the economic distress of French peasants provided fertile soil for the seed, and imagination did the rest. The ancient legend became the war cry of the French Revolution. Rousseau's historical conceptions of the origins of human progress are childish, but in his day he was acclaimed liberator of humanity, discoverer of the "lost title deeds" of our race. On the contrary, Jean Jacques was historically befuddled. We reflect on these situations, as we contemplate the amazing conceptions that in each generation masquerade for "historical" knowledge. Yes, even the great mind of Plato took delight in spreading the fairy tale that in a suppositious Golden Age, boundless politico-religious idealism existed to bless our race with universal plenty, sweetened by brotherly love (Plato, Laws iv, 6). "Before there were cities," writes Plato, "and during the reign of Saturn, there existed a happy mode to regu late the dwellings of men. It was governed by dæmons of a diviner, more perfect race.' This is historically absurd. On the contrary, social progress has been gained at the price of misery, martyrdom, starvation and death. But we also find Plutarch (d. 120 A. D.) repeating the legend of the Golden Age (Numa Pompilius), reminding us that Numa desired to bring back "those happy days to men. These tales all infer a superior breed of men and glorify a higher civilization that existed at the time the commentators were on earth. However, the ancient legend of Saturn and of our more perfect ancestors need not detain us long. What do we make out of all this? Plainly, neither swineherd nor historian is above superstition. To set up that government is of fabulous origin, as Plato wrote in the 300's B. C., as Hesiod taught in the 800's B. C., and as Rousseau proclaimed in the 1700's A. D., was in effect to preach the theological idea of the Garden of Eden, transposed to the field of politics. All this in turn shows how far into the Past we must reach, when we try to trace sources of modern progress. The persistence of "Golden Age" legend forces us to remark on that psychological urge set up by men in time of stress, to-wit, that there is a "soul" behind the machinery of government. In the land of Egypt, the symbol or soul was found in the bull, the raven, the cat; in Greece it was figured as "logical" exercises for the mind; in Rome it was the courage of the soldier united with the shrewdness of the law-giver. In every age the soulelement as applied to the mechanism of government borrows from the prevailing type of "knowledge" that at the period in question holds sway over men's minds. Plato's sage remarks on a more perfect race, Rousseau's famous formula of a broken Social Contract, were historical fakes devised to cover a situation demanding a show of legality where no legalisms then extant would suffice. To take the ground that in comparison with our ancestors of a remote uncharted time, the modern man is a pygmy, is contrary to common sense. Every passing age counts its gains, and to reverse the Clock of Time is to run the centuries back to savage ancestors, living in caves, fighting with clubs, men's minds haunted by ghosts and man himself victim to all the destructive forces of Nature. Instead of man being born "free" and enslaved by society, as set up by Rousseau, the very reverse is the lesson of social evolution; to-wit, man has no freedom outside of organized society, and the only freedom worthy of the name is freedom summed up for him by liberty, under law. Accepting as a fact man's love of the marvelous, through all centuries down to and including our own year, we should not be surprised at the myth of the Golden Age, to account for social origins. In flat refutal, let us pass several thousand years, and more, from the period we are speaking of to the time of Cæsar Augustus (d. 14 A. D.). Authorities dispute, but on the whole it is agreed, that of a population of 100,000,000 in the tide of Rome's glory, at least 70,000,000 were slaves; and there are writers who hold that the free population in Italy did not exceed one man in four. Also, in Greece, Mesopotamia, Persia, Egypt, and other countries, the social system was based on practically complete chattel slavery. Whence were these unnumbered millions of slaves conscripted? And how are we to account for leaders held to be brothers to gods, or indeed gods in their own right? To examine these questions is to lay the necessary foundation for our study of the subsequent rise of the Common Man; for as we observed a moment ago, already at the dawn of recorded history we find the Common Man in the pit. As we pass, we must therefore continue to point out many collateral ways, political, social or religious that added to the hosts of the downtrodden; but on the whole is seems not unreasonable that slavery as a social institution began in that customary condition of ancient life, wherein disinherited brothers and sisters submitting to the will of the eldest son, became a socially dependent class branded with servile marks. Early worship of the Undying Flame on the It is well known that long before men built cities, our ancestors lived the simple communal life represented by clusters of families; and in that remote time it was the practice to bury the dead under the hearthstone. We are told that when man passed out of this world of light, he took up his abode in the flame on the hearth; and the eldest son in each generation was solemnly enjoined by custom as well as by the promptings of his inner nature, to keep alive this Undying Flame; for that light was conceived to be in spiritual essence the translated form of the departed. When the fire was kindled and the blaze danced in the moonbeams, there in the semi-twilight members of the family gathered near and marveled, believing that the spirit of the dead again amongst them, was clearly visible in the flickering firelight. Likewise later, when men began living in larger groups, cities sprung up; then the custom was to have vestal virgins attend the civic hearth, or altar, where an eternal flame was watched and tended, symbolic of the founders of the city, the workers, the heroes, the wise men of that city; and finally in the unfolding of time each city had thus its individual gods, its personal heroes, its own laws and social obligations; but whatever diversity there might be the worship of ancestors was never allowed to pass from the memories of the living. And the only cities that were ultimately destroyed, so legends say, were those that forgot their dead. Whenever a war was coming on, it was the solemn duty of the priests of the temples to make sure that the statues of the gods were bound with chains; or hidden away in caves; or covered with sand, in some secret place. If the enemy carried away the city's gods, all was lost. The conquerors level the city in the dust, and the place was strewn with salt, says the noted Coulanges (The Ancient City). Is it any wonder, then, that the formula that had to do with speaking to the gods were never written down, but instead the mystic words were guarded as a profound secret by those specially charged with that dire responsibility? For if the enemy once learned the spoken spell to which the local gods replied, all was over; the chains could be broken, the hidden places found, the gods carted away, the city's altar overturned, and the inhabitants sold into slavery, henceforth laboring in field, mine or before the forges, under the lash of foreign slave-drivers. And it was written that if a man went from one city to another he was regarded as a stranger there. The reason is plain. As a stranger he could take no part in local civic games, was outside the protection of local laws. As a stranger, he was disqualified from attending local religious ceremonies, was denied presence at or participation in the annual feast for the Dead-and by feast we mean communal prayer and sacrifice. Moral sentiment as well as astral practice demanded that a man's real home must, therefore, be in the city where his fathers were buried. There and there only was he under the protection of his fireside gods, and there and there only was it possible for him to recite the mystic formule wherewith his native gods were petitioned in time of danger. In the sacred sentiment of the Ancients, a man's country was not merely a place in which to live. His country was summed up for him by the spot where his Dead had sepulchre, under the family hearth. And if he left that country or forgot that spot, he lost his gods. Henceforth, he must wander, unprotected from the shafts of fate. Likewise, for a man to die far from home meant plainly that the office for the Dead in the keeping of the elder guardian of the family hearth, could not be recited over the grave of the absent one. And in that case it came to pass that his name was struck from the familyroll, and he was held to be lost forever. Henceforth his spirit was condemned to wander with the unburied Dead; a veritable lost soul; adding another to the midnight ghosts wailing on the wind ceaselessly throughout time, and seeking rest but finding none; because the body, lying in an unblessed grave, was beyond the power of |