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142 General History oj Europe deal of political bribery, and the laws directed against it seem to have had little effect in checking it. 222. Growth of Great Estates; Decline of Small Farms. The evils of the new wealth were not less evident outside of Rome. It was not thought proper for a Roman senator or noble to engage in any business. The most respectable form of wealth was land. Hence the successful Roman noble or capitalist bought farm after farm, which he combined into a great estate or planta- tion. Only here and there were still to be found groups of little homestead farms of the old Roman days. The small farm seemed in a fair way to disappear. 223. Slave Revolts and Disorders. It was impossible for a wealthy landowner to work these great estates with free, hired labor. Nor was he obliged to do so. From the close of Hanni- bal's war onward the Roman conquests had brought to Italy great numbers of captives of war. These unhappy prisoners were sold as slaves. The estates of Italy were now filled with them. The life of slaves on the great plantations was little better than that of beasts. When the supply of captives from the wars failed, slave pirates for many years carried on wholesale kidnaping in the ^Egean and eastern Mediterranean. Thus Italy and Sicily were fairly flooded with slaves. The brutal treatment which they received was so unbearable that at various places in Italy they finally rose against their masters. In central and southern Sicily the revolting slaves gathered some sixty thousand in number, slew their masters, captured towns, and set up a kingdom. It required a Roman consul at the head of an army and a war lasting several years to subdue them. 224. Evil Influences of the Long Wars of Conquest. Slave labor and the great wars were meantime further ruining the small farmers of Italy. Never has there been an age in which the terri- ble and desolating results of war have more tragically revealed the awful cost of military glory. Fathers and elder sons had been absent from home for years, holding their posts in the legions, fighting the battles which had brought Rome her great position as mistress of the world. The mothers, left to bring up the