But other masters are mentioned who treated their slaves as animals,
punished them cruelly, and even had them put to death for a whim.
Examples of these are not lacking. Vedius Pollio, a freedman of
Augustus, used to keep some lampreys in his fish-pond: when one of his
slaves carelessly broke a vase, he had him thrown into the fish-pond
as food for the lampreys. The philosopher Seneca paints in the
following words the violent cruelty of the masters: "If a slave coughs
or sneezes during a meal, if he pursues the flies too slowly, if he
lets a key fall noisily lo the floor, we fall into a great rage. If he
replies with too much spirit, if his countenance shows ill humor, have
we any right to have him flogged? Often we strike too hard and shatter
a limb or break a tooth." The philosopher Epictetus, who was a slave,
had had his ankle fractured in this way by his master. Women were no
more humane. Ovid, in a compliment paid to a woman, says, "Many times
she had her hair dressed in my presence, but never did she thrust her
needle into the arm of the serving-woman."
Public opinion did not condemn these cruelties.
Pages:
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356