and electricity work
for us. Individuals were manumitted on account of the gain to the
master. The owner said, in the presence of a magistrate, "I will that
this man be free, after the manner of the Quirites." The magistrate
touched the head of the slave with his rod, the master boxed his ears,
and he was a free man.[777] The law provided a writ, "resembling in some
respects the writ of _habeas corpus_, to compel any one who detained an
alleged freedman to present him before a judge."[778] The Roman lawyers
also, if they could find a moment during gestation when the mother had
been free, employed legal fiction to assume that the child had been born
at that moment.[779] Florentinus defined slavery as "a custom of the law
of nations by which one man, contrary to the law of nature, is subjected
to the dominion of another."[780] Ulpian likewise said that, "as far as
natural law is concerned, all men are equal."[781]

+290. Slavery as represented in the inscriptions.+ "The inscriptions
reveal to us a better side of slave life, which is not so prominent in
our literary authorities." They show cases of strong conjugal affection
between slave spouses, and of affection between master and slave.[782]
In the first century the waste of the fortunes won by extortion from the
provinces, and the opening of industrial opportunities by commerce, with
security, gave great stimulus to free industry. The inscriptions "show
the enormous and flourishing development of skilled handicrafts," with
minute specialization. "The immense development of the free proletariat,
in the time of the early empire, is one of the most striking social
phenomena which the study of the inscriptions has brought to light." The
time was then past when Roman society depended entirely on slave labor
for the supply of all its wants.[783] Dill thinks that "the new class of
free artisans and traders had often, so far as we can judge by stone
records, a sound and healthy life, sobered and dignified by honest toil,
and the pride of skill and independence."[784] The slave acted only
under two motives, fear and sensuality. Both made him cowardly,
cringing, cunning, and false, and at the same time fond of good eating
and drinking and of sensual indulgence. As he was subject to the orders
of others, he lacked character, and this suited his master all the
better. The morality of slaves extended in the society, and the society
was guided by the views of freedmen in its intellec