female slaves punishments of the most cruel atrocity for faults of the
most venial character. A brooch wrongly placed, a tress of hair
ill-arranged, and the enraged matron orders her slave to be lashed and
crucified. If her milder husband interferes, she not only justifies the
cruelty, but asks in amazement: "What! is a slave so much of a human
being?" No wonder that there was a proverb, "As many slaves, so many
foes." No wonder that many masters lived in perpetual fear, and that
"the tyrant's devilish plea, necessity," might be urged in favor of that
odious law which enacted that, if a master was murdered by an unknown
hand, the whole body of his slaves should suffer death,--a law which
more than once was carried into effect under the reigns of the Emperors.
Slavery, as we see in the case of Sparta and many other nations, always
involves its own retribution. The class of free peasant proprietors
gradually disappears. Long before this time Tib. Gracchus, in coming
home from Sardinia, had observed that there was scarcely a single
freeman to be seen in the fields. The slaves were infinitely more
numerous than their owners. Hence arose the constant dread of servile
insurrections; the constant hatred of a slave population to which any
conspirator revolutionist might successfully appeal; and the constant
insecurity of life, which must have struck terror into many hearts.

[Footnote 20: Juv. _Sat_. i. 219--222.]

Such is but a faint and broad outline of some of the features of
Seneca's age; and we shall be unjust if we do not admit that much at
least of the life he lived, and nearly all the sentiments he uttered,
gain much in grandeur and purity from the contrast they offer to the
common life of--

"That people victor once, now vile and base,