CHAP. II.
------portion of slaves, who were valued as property, was more considerable than that of servants, who can be computed only as an expense[1]. The youths of a promising genius were instructed in the arts and sciences, and their price was ascertained by the degree of their skill and talents[2]. Almost every profession, either liberal[3] or mechanical, might be found in the household of an opulent senator. The ministers of pomp and sensuality were multiplied beyond the conception of modern luxury[4]. It was more for the interest of the merchant or manufacturer to purchase, than to hire his workmen ; and in the country, slaves were employed as the cheapest and most laborious instruments of agriculture. To confirm the general observation, and to display the multitude of slaves, we might allege a variety of particular instances. It was discovered, on a very melancholy occasion, that four hundred slaves were maintained in a single palace of Rome[5]. The same number of four hundred belonged to an estate which an African widow, of a very private condition, resigned to her son, whilst she reserved for herself a much larger share of her property[6]. A freedman, under the reign of Augustus, though his fortune had suffered great losses in the civil wars, left behind him three thousand six hundred yoke of oxen, two hundred and fifty thousand head of smaller cattle, and, what was almost included in the description of cattle, four thousand one hundred and sixteen slaves[7].
- ↑ In Paris there are not more than forty-three thousand seven hundred domestics of every sort, and not a twelfth part of the inhabitants. Messange, Recherches sur la Population, p. 186.
- ↑ A learned slave sold for many hundred pounds sterling: Atticus always bred and taught them himself. Cornel. Nepos in Vit. c. 13.
- ↑ Many of the Roman physicians were slaves. See Dr. Middleton's Dissertation and Defence.
- ↑ Their ranks and offices are very copiously enumerated by Pignorius de Servis.
- ↑ Tacit. Annal. xiv. 43. They were all executed for not preventing their master's murder.
- ↑ Apuleius in Apolog. p. 548. edit. Delphin.
- ↑ Plin. Hist. Natur. 1. xxxiii. 47.
