By Water & Blood

Chapter 11: On Slaves and the Sigillaria

Then Evangelus said: "This, indeed, I can scarcely endure any longer: that our Praetextatus, for the display of his talent and the ostentation of speaking, wished a little while ago to assign to the honor of some god the fact that slaves feast with their masters—as though divine beings care about slaves, or any wise man would admit into his house the insult of so foul a companionship; or now he tries to ascribe the Sigillaria, which furnish playthings of clay dolls to infancy still crawling, to the service of religion; and because he is thought a prince of the religious, he is already mixing in some elements of superstition as well—as though it were not lawful for us sometimes not to believe Praetextatus."

When all had shuddered at this, Praetextatus, smiling: "I wish you to judge me superstitious, Evangelus, and unworthy of belief, unless reasoned proof shall have shown you the truth of both matters. And to speak first of slaves: do you think it is in jest or in earnest that there is a class of human beings whom the immortal gods do not deign to honor with their care or providence? Or perhaps you do not allow slaves to be in the number of human beings? Hear then how great an indignation over the punishment of a slave penetrated heaven.

In the four hundred and seventy-fourth year after the founding of Rome, a certain Autronius Maximus drove his slave, beaten and bound to a gibbet, through the Circus before the beginning of the games. For this cause Jupiter, indignant, commanded a certain Annius in a dream to announce to the senate that an act full of cruelty had not pleased him. When Annius disregarded this, a sudden death consumed his own son; and after a second warning, for the same negligence, he himself also was dissolved into a sudden weakness of body. Thus at last, carried on a litter by the advice of his friends, he reported to the senate; and scarcely had he finished his speech when, good health recovered without delay, he left the Curia on foot. And so by decree of the senate and by the Maenian law a day was added to those Circensian games to propitiate Jupiter, and it was called instauraticius, not from the gibbet, as some think, by the Greek name from stauros, but from renewal, as Varro holds, who says that instaurare is to make new again (instar novare). You see how great a care concerning a slave reached the highest of the gods.

But whence have you so great and so empty a disdain toward slaves, as though they were not composed of and nourished by the same elements as you, and did not draw the same breath from the same source? Will you consider that those whom the law calls yours were born of the same seeds, enjoy the same sky, live equally, die equally? They are slaves: no, human beings. They are slaves: no, fellow-slaves, if you have considered that fortune has as much power over both. You can as readily see him free as he can see you a slave. Do you not know at what age Hecuba began to be a slave, at what age Croesus, at what age the mother of Darius, at what age Diogenes, at what age Plato himself?

Finally, why do we so shudder at the name of slavery? He is a slave, to be sure, but by necessity, and perhaps with a free mind. He is a slave: this will harm him if you show what he is not. One serves lust, another avarice, another ambition; all serve hope, all fear; and certainly no slavery is more shameful than the voluntary. But we trample as wretched and vile the man who lies under the yoke imposed by Fortune, while we do not suffer to be blamed what we ourselves set upon our own necks. You will find among slaves someone stronger in money; you will find a master planting kisses on the hands of other men's slaves in hope of gain. I shall therefore judge men not by fortune but by character: each gives himself character; chance assigns condition. Just as he is foolish who, when about to buy a horse, does not examine the horse itself but its covering and bit, so he is most foolish who thinks a human being is to be estimated from clothing or from the condition which is wrapped about us in the manner of clothing.

It is not the case, my Evangelus, that you should seek a friend only in the forum and in the Curia: if you attend carefully, you will find one at home as well. Only live with your slave kindly, courteously too, and admit him into conversation and sometimes into necessary counsel. For our ancestors also, removing all envy from masters and all insult from slaves, called the master the father of the household and the slaves familiares. Therefore let your slaves rather revere you, believe me, than fear you.

Someone will say that I am now casting masters down from their height and in a way calling slaves to the cap of liberty, whom I said ought rather to revere than to fear. Whoever thinks this will forget that what is enough for the gods is not too little for masters. Then he who is revered is also loved: love cannot be mixed with fear. Whence do you think that most arrogant proverb has flowed, by which it is boasted that we have as many enemies as we have slaves? We do not have them as enemies but make them so, when toward them we are most proud, most insulting, most cruel; and our luxuries compel us to reach madness, so that whatever does not answer to our wish calls forth anger and fury. For at home we put on the minds of tyrants, and we wish to exercise over slaves not as much as is fitting but as much as is permitted. For to pass over other kinds of cruelty, there are those who, while they distend themselves with the abundance of the table and with greed, do not allow the slaves standing around even to move their lips, not even so as to speak: every murmur is checked by the rod, and not even chance sounds are exempt from blows; a cough, a sneeze, a sob is paid for with great evil. Thus it comes about that those speak of their master to whom it is not permitted to speak in the master's presence. But those with whom there was conversation not only in the presence of their masters but with the masters themselves, whose mouths were not sewn shut, were ready to offer their necks for their master and to turn impending danger onto their own heads: at banquets they spoke, but under torture they were silent.

Shall we review virtues practiced in a slave's breast? Let Urbinius first occur to you: when, ordered to be killed, he was hiding in the Reatine territory, and his hiding-places had been betrayed, one of his slaves, marked with his ring and clothing, lay in the bedroom into which the pursuers were bursting, in place of his master, and offered his neck to the entering soldiers and received the blow as though he were Urbinius. Urbinius afterward, restored, made him a monument with an added inscription that spoke of so great a desert. Aesopus, the freedman of Demosthenes, knowing of the adultery which his patron had committed with Julia, though tortured for a very long time, persevered in not betraying his patron, until other accomplices proving it, Demosthenes himself confessed. And lest you think that a secret can easily be concealed by one person: when Labienus was hiding with the help of freedmen, the freedmen could be compelled by no kind of torture to inform against him. And lest anyone say that freedmen owed this loyalty rather to the benefit of liberty received than to their nature, hear the kindness of a slave toward his master even when he himself was being punished by the master. For Antius Restio, proscribed and fleeing alone at night while others were plundering his goods—a slave in chains with an inscribed forehead, after the condemnation of his master had been freed by another's pity, pursued the fugitive and urged him not to fear him, knowing that his own insult was to be imputed to fortune, not to his master, and by his service nourished him in hiding. Then when he perceived that the pursuers were at hand, he cut the throat of an old man whom chance offered and threw him onto a pyre he had built. When it was lit he met those who were seeking Restio, saying that the condemned man had paid the penalty to him, having been punished by him far more bitterly than he himself had been punished; and faith being given, Restio was freed.

A slave of Caepio also, who had been minded to kill Augustus, after the crime was detected and he was condemned, carried him to the Tiber in a chest and, conveying him to Ostia, thence led him by a night journey into the Laurentian territory to his father's villa. Then as companion of the voyage, after shipwreck had cast master and slave ashore together, he concealed his master at Naples without showing it; and when seized by a centurion, he could be brought neither by bribe nor by threats to betray his master. When Asinius Pollio also was harshly compelling the people of Patavium to contribute money and arms, and the masters were hiding for this reason, and a reward with liberty was proposed to slaves who would betray their masters, it is agreed that no slave was overcome by the reward so as to betray his master.

Hear in slaves not only loyalty but also a mind fertile in good invention. When a siege pressed Grumentum, slaves left their mistress and fled to the enemy. Then when the town was taken they made an assault on the house by common conspiracy and dragged out their mistress with faces threatening punishment and with a voice asserting to those they met that at last opportunity had been given them to punish a cruel mistress; and having seized her as if for punishment, they protected her with services full of piety. See in this fortune also a greatness of soul preferring the issue of death to mockery. When Vettius the Paelignian of Italica had been seized by his own cohorts to be handed over to Pompey, his slave killed him and then killed himself, lest he survive his master. When Gracchus fled from the Aventine, Euporus his slave—or, as some relate, Philocrates—so long as there was any hope of safety, as an inseparable companion protected him by whatever means he could; then over the slain man he poured out his life, having cut open his own vitals with a wound. Publius Scipio himself, the father of Africanus, after he had fought with Hannibal, a slave set wounded upon a horse and alone, when the rest were deserting, brought him into camp.

It would be too little to have rendered service to living masters: what of the fact that spiritedness in exacting vengeance is also found among them? For a slave of King Seleucus, when serving a friend of his by whom his master had been killed, stabbed him at dinner in vengeance for his master. What of the fact that I see two virtues, which even among nobles are uniquely famous, to have been in one slave—skill in ruling an empire and greatness of soul in despising an empire? For Anaxilaus of Messene, who founded Messana in Sicily, was tyrant of the Rhegians. When he left small children, he was content to entrust them to his slave Micythus. He conducted the guardianship sacredly and held the power so mildly that the Rhegians did not disdain to be ruled by a slave. Then when the boys had been brought to age he handed over both goods and power; he himself, taking a small traveling allowance, set out and grew old at Olympia with the greatest tranquillity.

What the fortune of slavery has also contributed in common is taught by not a few examples. In the Punic War, when there were lacking those who could be enrolled, slaves who promised to fight for their masters were received into citizenship and called volones, because they wished this of their own accord. At Cannae also, when the Romans had been defeated, eight thousand purchased slaves served as soldiers; and although the captives could have been ransomed for less, the state preferred in so great a storm to entrust itself to slaves. But also after the calamity of the well-known disaster at Trasimene was received, freedmen too were called to the military oath. In the Social War the service of twelve cohorts enrolled from freedmen showed memorable valor. We learn that Gaius Caesar, when he was substituting soldiers in place of those lost, also received slaves from his friends and used their brave service. Caesar Augustus in Germany and Illyricum enrolled several cohorts of freedmen, which he called voluntary. And lest you think these things happened only in our state: the Borysthenites, when Zopyrion was besieging them, by freeing slaves and giving citizenship to foreigners and making new tablets of debt, were able to withstand the enemy. Cleomenes the Lacedaemonian, when only fifteen hundred Lacedaemonians who could bear arms had survived, enrolled nine thousand warriors from slaves manumitted. The Athenians also, when public resources were exhausted, gave liberty to slaves.

And lest you judge that virtues among slaves existed only in the male sex, hear a deed of maidservants no less memorable, nor one more useful to the state that you may find in any nobility. That the Nones of July are a festival day of maidservants is so commonly known that neither the origin nor the cause of the celebration is unknown. For on that day free women and maidservants alike sacrifice to Juno Caprotina under a wild fig tree in memory of the kindly valor which appeared in the minds of maidservants for the preservation of public dignity. For after the city had been taken, when the Gallic disturbance had been quieted but the state had been reduced to a thin remnant, the neighbors, snatching at the opportunity of invading the Roman name, set over themselves Postumius Livius, dictator of the Fidenates, who sent mandates to the senate demanding that if they wished the remnants of their state to remain, mothers of families and maidens should be given to him. And when the fathers were suspended in doubtful deliberation, a maidservant named Tutela or Philotis promised that she with the other maidservants would go to the enemy under the names of their mistresses; and having put on the dress of mothers of families and of maidens, they were thrust upon the enemy with the tears of those escorting them to give credit to the grief. When they had been distributed in the camp by Livius, they challenged the men with a great deal of wine, pretending that there was a festival day among them. When these were asleep they gave a signal to the Romans from a wild fig tree that was nearest the camp. When the Romans had overcome them by a sudden onset, the senate, mindful of the benefit, ordered all the maidservants to be manumitted and made them a dowry from the public funds and allowed them to wear the adornment they had then used, and named the day itself the Caprotine Nones from that wild fig tree from which they took the signal of victory, and established a sacrifice to be celebrated with annual solemnity, at which the milk that flows from the wild fig is employed because of the memory of the preceding deed.

But neither was a slave's mind unfit or unequal for philosophizing. Phaedo of the Socratic circle, most familiar to Socrates and Plato—so much so that Plato dedicated to his name that divine book on the immortality of the soul—was a slave of liberal form and talent. Cebes the Socratic is said to have bought him at Socrates' urging and to have kept him in the disciplines of philosophy, and he afterward emerged as an illustrious philosopher, and his conversations about Socrates are read as quite elegant. Not a few other slaves also afterward stood forth as famous philosophers. Among them was that Menippus whose books Marcus Varro rivaled in the satires which others call Cynic and he himself calls Menippean. But also Pompylus, slave of the Peripatetic Philostratus, and the slave of Zeno the Stoic who was called Persaeus, and that of Epicurus, whose name was Mys, lived as philosophers not obscure in that age. Diogenes the Cynic too, though from a free condition, had been sold into slavery. When Xeniades of Corinth wished to buy him, he asked whether he knew any craft: "I know," said Diogenes, "how to command free men." Then Xeniades, marveling at his reply, bought him and set him free, and handing over his sons to him said: "Receive my children for you to command." But concerning the noble philosopher Epictetus, that he too was a slave, the memory is more recent than that it could be unknown among things obliterated. Of him also two verses written about himself are current, from which you may understand secretly that those who in this life struggle with a variety of hardships are not in every way hated by the gods, but that there are hidden causes to which the curiosity of few has been able to arrive: "I Epictetus was a slave, and maimed in body, and Irus in poverty, and a friend to the immortals."

You have, as I think, the assertion that the name of slave is not to be despised with disdain, since both Jupiter's care touched a slave and it has been established that many of them have been faithful, provident, brave, and even philosophers. Now concerning the Sigillaria, lest you think I have said things laughable rather than holy, a few things must be reviewed. Epicadus relates that Hercules, after killing Geryon, when as victor he had led his herds through Italy, having built for the time the bridge that is now called the Sublician, cast into the river images of men equal in number to the companions whom he had lost by the chance of his wandering, so that, carried by the current into the sea, they might be restored as it were in place of the bodies of the dead to their ancestral seats; and that from this the custom of fashioning such images remained among the rites. But to me that origin of this matter seems truer which I remember having related a little earlier: that the Pelasgians, after a happier interpretation had taught that heads meant not of living beings but of clay, and that the valuation of phos signifies not only a human being but also light, began rather to light wax candles for Saturn and to bring into the shrine of Dis adjoining Saturn's altar certain little figures in place of their own heads. From that it was handed down that wax candles should be sent about at the Saturnalia and that little images should be fashioned by the potter's art and prepared for sale, which people might offer as an expiation for themselves and theirs to Dis Saturn. Therefore at the Saturnalia the begun celebration of such commerce occupies seven days, which it makes only holidays, not all festival days. For we have proved that the middle day, that is the thirteenth before the Kalends, is a court day, and this has been proved by other assertions by those who have more fully related the reckoning of the year, months, and days and the arrangement digested by Gaius Caesar."