"I am glad to learn," says
Seneca, in one of his interesting letters to Lucilius, "that you live on
terms of familiarity with your slaves; it becomes your prudence and your
erudition. Are they slaves? Nay, they are men. Slaves? Nay, companions.
Slaves? Nay, humble friends. Slaves? _Nay, fellow-slaves,_ if you but
consider that fortune has power over you both." He proceeds, in a
passage to which we have already alluded, to reprobate the haughty and
inconsiderate fashion of keeping them standing for hours, mute and
fasting, while their masters gorged themselves at the banquet. He
deplores the cruelty which thinks it necessary to punish with terrible
severity an accidental cough or sneeze. He quotes the proverb--a proverb
which reveals a whole history--"So many slaves, so many foes," and
proves that they are not foes, but that men _made_ them so; whereas,
when kindly treated, when considerately addressed, they would be silent,
even under torture, rather than speak to their master's disadvantage.
"Are they not sprung," he asks, "from the same origin, do they not
breathe the same air, do they not live and die just as we do?" The
blows, the broken limbs, the clanking chains, the stinted food of the
_ergastula_ or slave-prisons, excited all Seneca's compassion, and in
all probability presented a picture of misery which the world has rarely
seen surpassed, unless it were in that nefarious trade which England to
her shame once practised, and, to her eternal glory, resolutely
swept away.
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