We have already mentioned the armed, and frequently mounted, slave-herdsmen in the great pastoral ranges of Italy;( 9) and the same sort of pastoral husbandry soon became in the provinces also a favourite object of Roman speculation--Dalmatia, for instance, was hardly acquired (599) when the Roman capitalists began to prosecute the rearing of cattle there on a great scale after the Italian fashion.

But far worse in every respect was the plantation-system proper--the cultivation of the fields by a band of slaves not unfrequently branded with iron, who with shackles on their legs performed the labours of the field under overseers during the day, and were locked up together by night in the common, frequently subterranean, labourers' prison.

This plantation-system had migrated from the east to Carthage,( 10) and seems to have been brought by the Carthaginians to Sicily, where, probably for this reason, it appears developed earlier and more completely than in any other part of the Roman dominions.( 11) We find the territory of Leontini, about 30,000 -jugera- of arable land, which was let on lease as Roman domain( 12) by the censors, divided some decades after the time of the Gracchi among not more than 84 lessees, to each of whom there thus fell on an average 360 jugera, and among whom only one was a Leontine; the rest were foreign, mostly Roman, speculators.

We see from this instance with what zeal the Roman speculators there walked in the footsteps of their predecessors, and what extensive dealings in Sicilian cattle and Sicilian slave-corn must have been carried on by the Roman and Non-Roman speculators who covered the fair island with their pastures and plantations.

Italy however still remained for the present substantially exempt from this worst form of slave-husbandry.