There was, however, one type of desperate character who was permitted to roam at large. This was the guardian of the flocks, who wandered unrestrained over the mountains during the summer months and along the prairies in the winter season. These herdsmen formed small bands. It was reckoned that there should be one for every eighty or hundred sheep and two for every troop of fifty horses.[255] It was sometimes found convenient that they should be accompanied by their women who prepared their meals--women of robust types like the Illyrian dames to whom child-birth was a mere incident in the daily toils.[256] Such a life of freedom had its attractions for the slave, but it had its drawbacks too. The landowner who preferred pasturage to tillage, saved his capital, not only by the small number of hands which the work demanded, but also by the niggardly outlay which he expended on these errant serfs. It was not needful to provide them with the necessaries of life when they could take them for themselves. When Damophilus of Enna was entreated by his slaves to give them something better than the rags they wore, his answer was: "Do travellers then travel naked through the land? Have they nothing for the man who wants a coat?" [257] Brigandage, in fact, was an established item In the economic creed of the day. The desolation of Italy was becoming dangerous, and the master of the lonely villa barred himself in at nights as though an enemy were at his gates. On one occasion Scipio Africanus was disturbed in his retreat at Liternum by a troop of bandits. He placed his armed servants on the roof and made every preparation for repelling the assault. But the visitors proved to be pacific. They were the very _elite_ of the fraternity of brigands and had merely come to do honour to the great man. They sent back their troops, threw down their arms, laid presents before his door and departed in joyous mood.[258] The immunity of such bands proved that a slave revolt might at any moment imperil every life and every dwelling in some unprotected canton. It was indeed the epoch of peace, when Roman and Phoenician armies no longer held the field in Italy, that first suggested the hope of liberation to the slave. Hannibal would have imperilled his character of a protector of Italian towns had he encouraged a slave revolt, even if the Phoenician had not shrunk from a precedent so fatal to his native land. But one of the unexpected results of the Second Punic War was to kindle a rising in the very heart of Latium, and it was the African slave, not the African freeman, that stirred the last relics of the war in Italy. At Setia were guarded the noble Carthaginians who were a pledge of the fidelity of their state. These hostages, the sons of merchant princes, were allowed to retain the dignity of their splendid homes, and a vast retinue of slaves from Africa attended on their wants. The number of these was swelled by