Thus then, to the eternal honour of AEgypt and Athens, they were the only places that we can find, where slaves were considered with any humanity at all.  The rest of the world seemed to vie with each other, in the debasement and oppression of these unfortunate people.  They used them with as much severity as they chose; they measured their treatment only by their own passion and caprice; and, by leaving them on every occasion, without the possibility of an appeal, they rendered their situation the most melancholy and intolerable, that can possibly be conceived.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES

[Footnote 016:  Herodotus.  L. 2. 113.]

[Footnote 017:  “Apud AEgyptios, si quis servum sponte occiderat, eum morte damnari aeque ac si liberum occidisset, jubebant leges &c.”  Diodorus Sic.  L. 1.]

[Footnote 018: 

“Atq id ne vos miremini, Homines servulos
Potare, amare, atq ad coenam condicere. 
Licet hoc Athenis. 
Plautus.  Sticho.”
]

[Footnote 019: 
“Be me kratison esin eis to Theseion
Dramein, ekei d’eos an eurombou prasin
menein” Aristoph.  Horae.

Kaka toiade paskousin oude prasin
Aitousin.  Eupolis. poleis.]

[Footnote 020:  To this privilege Plautus alludes in his Casina, where he introduces a slave, speaking in the following manner.

“Quid tu me vero libertate territas? 
Quod si tu nolis, siliusque etiam tuus
Vobis invitis, atq amborum ingratiis,
Una libella liber possum fieri.”
]

* * * * *

CHAP.  V.

As we have mentioned the barbarous and inhuman treatment that generally fell to the lot of slaves, it may not be amiss to inquire into the various circumstances by which it was produced.

The first circumstance, from whence it originated, was the commerce:  for if men could be considered as possessions; if, like cattle, they could be bought and sold, it will not be difficult to suppose, that they could be held in the same consideration, or treated in the same manner.  The commerce therefore, which was begun in the primitive ages of the world, by classing them with the brutal species, and by habituating the mind to consider the terms of brute and slave as synonimous, soon caused them to be viewed in a low and despicable light, and as greatly inferiour to the human species.  Hence proceeded that treatment, which might not unreasonably be supposed to arise from so low an estimation.  They were tamed, like beasts, by the stings of hunger and the lash, and their education was directed to the same end, to make them commodious instruments of labour for their possessors.