ainst it ceased. It seemed
to be accepted as inevitable, and one of the unavoidable ills of life.
It ruled society. Scarcely a man represented the old civilization who
can command our respect. The social and civic virtues were dead.

+300.+ In all the ancient world we meet with distinct repudiation of
slavery only amongst the Therapeuts, a communistic association amongst
the Jews in the last century before Christ. They were ascetics, each of
whom lived in a cell. We first hear of them through Philo Judaeus (_The
Contemplative Life_) about the time of the birth of Christ. They had no
slaves. They regarded slavery as absolutely contrary to nature. Nature
produced all in a state of freedom, but the greed of some had vested
some with power over others.[832] The Therapeuts, who included women,
did their own work. They carried on no productive industry the products
of which they could give in exchange. Their system could not endure
without an endowment.[833] Bousset[834] thinks that, "if they ever
existed, they can never have had more than a limited and ephemeral
significance." Their central home was on a hill near lake Marea. Their
place of meeting, on the seventh day, was divided by a wall, three or
four cubits high, into two compartments, one for the women, the other
for the men. They reduced the consumption of food and drink as much as
possible. Sometimes they abstained for three or four days. They had a
very simple feast on the forty-ninth day, the men and women sitting
separately on coarse mattresses.[835]

+301. Slavery amongst the Germanic nations.+ According to the most
primary view, the one which we might call natural, a war captive's due
fate was to be killed in sacrifice to the god of the victor. During some
interval of time before his public execution he was set at work, and the
convenience of his services was learned. He was kept alive in order to
be employed in the labors which were the most irksome and disagreeable.
The joke of letting him live on to perform these tasks was not lost.
When, now, we turn our attention to the Germanic invaders of the Roman
empire, we are carried back to primitive barbarism. In the heroic age of
Scandinavia we find that thralls are sacrificed at Upsala at solemn
feasts in honor of the heathen gods. They were thrown from the cliffs,
or into a hole in the ground, or tortured and hung up in the clear air,
or the spine was broken.[836] In the prehistoric period of German
history the