at even in the heathen world there began at this time to
be disseminated among the best and wisest thinkers a sense that slaves
were made of the same clay as their masters, that they differed from
freeborn men only in the externals and accidents of their position, and
that kindness to them and consideration for their difficulties was a
common and elementary duty of humanity. "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.

But Seneca's inculcation of tenderness towards slaves was in reality
one of the most original of his moral teachings; and, from all that we
know of Roman life, it is to be feared that the number of those who
acted in accordance with it was small. Certainly Epaphroditus, the
master of Epictetus, was not one of them. The historical facts which we
know of this man are slight. He was one of the four who accompanied the
tragic and despicable flight of Nero from Rome in the year 69, and when,
after many waverings of cowardice, Nero at last, under imminent peril of
being captured a