"There," says Plautus, "moan the
wicked slaves who are fed on polenta; there resound the noise of whips
and the clanking of chains." Three centuries later, in the second
century, Apuleius the novelist, depicts the interior of a mill as
follows: "Gods! what poor shrunken up men! with white skin striped
with blows of the whip, ... they wear only the shreds of a tunic; bent
forward, head shaved, the feet held in a chain, the body deformed by
the heat of the fire, the eyelids eaten away by the fumes, everything
covered with grain-dust."
=Character of the Slaves.=--Subjected to crushing labor or to enforced
idleness, always under the threat of the whip or of torture, slaves
became, according to their nature, either melancholy and savage, or
lazy and subservient. The most energetic of them committed suicide;
the others led a life that was merely mechanical. "The slave," said
Cato the Elder, "ought always to work or to sleep." The majority of
them lost all sense of honor. And so they used to call a mean act
"servile," that is, like a slave.
=Slave Revolts.=--The slaves did not write and so we do not know from
their own accounts what they thought of their masters.
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