Principles of western civilisation

176 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

the only limit to conquest was, therefore, the successful resistance of others, and of which the only possible final ideal was universal dominion. Proceeding from this constitution of the State, with its inherent conception of exclusive citizenship, we see how naturally and inevitably there arose, therefore, all those social features which present the ancient civilisations to the imagination of the present time as the incarnation of the rule of force. It was the accepted position in the Greek States, as it remained to the end a fundamental principle of the public law of Rome, that the lands and persons of the conquered belonged absolutely to the conquerors.* We have, accordingly, always in sight the spectacle in each case of a comparatively small citizen class living amongst vast populations to which even the elementary rights of humanity were denied, and the existence of which was for the most part the direct result of war. In many of the Greek cities the slaves must have considerably outnumbered the free population ; and, although estimates, in which the former have been made to appear as vastly more numerous than the latter, are probably exaggerations, there can be no doubt that the slave population was large in proportion to the citizen class.” The citizen looked down with contempt, not only upon this population of slaves, but also upon large numbers of freedmen and unqualified residents who were similarly excluded permanently from all participation in the rights of the State. ‘‘In no case could the

1 The Institutes of Roman Law, by Rudolph Sohm; Jnst. Jzust., lib. i. tit. iii. ; and Pxdlec ‘Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman En:pire, by Andrew Stephenson (Johns Hopkins University Studies).

2 Cf An Essay on Western Civilisation in its Economic Aspects (Ancient Times), by W. Cunningham, Il. c. il.