However lamentable its results may have been in other ways, especially on the great pastures, the economic history of Italy, when it comes to be written, will have to give it credit for an appreciable amount of benefit.
2.

The legal and political aspect of slavery.

A slave was in the eye of the law not a _persona_, but a _res_, i.e.he had no rights as a human being, could not marry or hold property, but was himself simply a piece of property which could be conveyed (res mancipi)[350].

During the Republican period the law left him absolutely at the disposal of his master, who had the power of life and death (jus vitae necisque) over him, and could punish him with chastisement and bonds, and use him for any purpose he pleased, without reference to any higher authority than his own.

This was the legal position of all slaves; but it naturally often happened that those who were men of knowledge or skill, as secretaries, for example, librarians, doctors, or even as body-servants, were in intimate and happy relations with their owners[351], and in the household of a humane man no well-conducted slave need fear bodily degradation.