and a deep cavern
remarkable for its mephitic exhalations. It is more interesting to us to
know that it was within a few miles of Colossae and Laodicea, and is
mentioned by St. Paul (Col. iv. 13) in connexion with those two cities.
It must, therefore, have possessed a Christian Church from the earliest
times, and, if Epictetus spent any part of his boyhood there, he might
have conversed with men and women of humble rank who had heard read in
their obscure place of meeting the Epistle of St. Paul to the
Colossians, and the other, now lost, which he addressed to the Church of
Laodicea.[61]

[Footnote 61: Col. iv. 16.]

It is probable, however, that Hierapolis and its associations produced
very little influence on the mind of Epictetus. His parents were people
in the very lowest and humblest class, and their moral character could
hardly have been high, or they would not have consented under any
circumstance to sell into slavery their sickly child. Certainly it could
hardly have been possible for Epictetus to enter into the world under
less enviable or less promising auspices. But the whole system of life
is full of divine and memorable compensations, and Epictetus experienced
them. God kindles the light of genius where He will, and He can inspire
the highest and most regal thoughts even into the meanest slave:--

"Such seeds are scattered night and day
By the soft wind from Heaven,
And in the poorest human clay
Have taken root and thriven."

What were the accidents--or rather, what was "the unseen Providence, by
man nicknamed chance"--which assigned Epictetus to the house of
Epaphroditus we do not know. To a heart refined and noble there could
hardly have been a more trying position. The slaves of a Roman _familia_
were crowded together in immense gangs; they were liable to the most
violent and capricious punishments; they might be subjected to the most
degraded and brutalising influences. Men sink too often to the level to
which they are supposed to belong. Treated with infamy for long years,
they are apt to deem themselves worthy of infamy--to lose that
self-respect which is the invariable concomitant of religious feeling,
and which, apart from religious feeling, is the sole preventive of
personal degradation. Well may St. Paul say, "Art thou called, being a
servant? care not for it: _but if thou mayest be made free, use it
rather_." [62]

[Footnote 62: 1 Cor. vii. 21.]

It is true th