The Greeks, as in some degree all the peoples of antiquity, considered domestic slavery a social misfortune to the enslavers, and an accursed fatality inherent in human society. They never presented it under the false colors of a normal and integral social element. The striking analogies between the workings of slavery in the ancient world and in the American republic, show that the disease is everywhere and eternally the same, and that it does not _ennoble_ either the community or the individual slaveholder, as the pro-slavery combatants apodictically assert. If in the despotic oriental empires, domestic and political slavery at times played into each other's hands until they jointly destroyed national life, _it was domestic slavery, single-handed, which did the work in Greece_, and particularly in Sparta and Athens. Domestic slavery enervated the nation and made it an easy prey to foreign conquest. It converted into a putrescent mass the once great and brilliant Grecian world. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 12: Edward A. Pollard, letter to the _Tribune_.] [Footnote 13: So the poor whites of the South emigrate and settle in the Western territories, and the planters magnify their plantations and their chattels.] XII. ROMANS--THE REPUBLICANS. AUTHORITIES: _Corpus Juris, Livy, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Niebuhr, Arnold, Savigny, Puchta, Mommsen, Jhring, Clinton, Carl Hegel, Zumpt, etc._ The primitive occupants of the Mediterranean peninsula--anciently, and at the present time, called Italy--issued from the same Aryan stock as peopled Greece. These immigrants, almost from the first moment of their arrival, seem to have devoted themselves to agriculture, as all the relics still dimly visible in prehistoric twilight certify to this fact. Thus, the domestic legend of the Samnites makes an ox the leader of the primitive colonies, which is only a different version of another tradition, according to which Vitulus or Italus--a legendary king, from whom the name of "Italy" is derived--brought about among his subjects the transition from shepherds to farmers. The name _Italia_, in ancient Latin, signified a _country full of cattle_. The oldest of the Latin tribes has the name of _Siculi_, _Sicani_, reapers, and another, _Opsci_, or field-laborers. Among the Italians (or _Italos_, _Italiots_), the legends, creeds, laws, and manners all originate in agriculture; while every one knows the use of the plough in the distant background of the legendary foundation of Rome. The oldest Roman matrimonial rite, the _confarreatio_, also has its name from _rye_. With agriculture is primarily connected a fixed abode, and thus springs up the love of home and family. From agricultural life arises the tribe or clan, which is simply a community of individuals descending from the same ancestor. In this primitive condition the field-labors and domestic occupations were performed by various members, first of the family, and then of the clan.