The condition of slavery in the ancient world did not in itself involve the same measure of personal degradation with which it is associated in these days; it was only one of many inequalities recognized by society. If a slave could not appear in the law courts of Rome, no more could the resident alien, however rich, however noble in the city from which he came; if the slave could not hold real property, no more could the sons of his master; if he could under certain conditions only acquire personal property, his master’s son was similarly disqualified; the ceremony by which each acquired freedom was the same; neither could make a will, nor work entirely for his own profit; both were included in the family; the domestic disqualifications under which the slave lived were common to him and the children of the house; the political disqualifications he shared with the free citizens of any community not expressly recognized under treaty by the inhabitants of the community in which he lived. Ancient society never contemplated individual independence as the fundamental condition of human existence; it was based on the contrary theory, that individual independence was the exception, and the privilege of the few; only gradually, and as the consequence of established law and habitual order rendering personal security possible for the mean man without the intervention of a powerful protector, did the modern conception of the rights and obligations of the individual human being grow up; and in its perfect development the conception has only very recently been realized. The slave and his master might be, and commonly were, members of the same race; if they were of different races, the slave might be a more highly civilized man than his master, better educated, more capable in many respects; there were hordes of slaves drawn from less civilized races, and even from savage races, and the work which fell to their share tended to be menial or arduous according to their unfitness for work demanding previous training; but the fact that the slave was by no means universally of an inferior type of humanity to his owner, and frequently quite the reverse, put slavery as an institution on a totally different footing from that which it has held in modern times.