After the foreigners come the slaves. At Rome itself they formed about
one-third of the population. This is not the moment for any detailed
account of their employment, their treatment, or their liberation.

Suffice it for the present that the slave possessed no rights at all.
He was the chattel of his master, who possessed over him the full
power of life and death, limited only by public opinion and prudential
considerations. A Roman might have at his disposal one slave or ten
thousand slaves. He could use them as he liked, kill them if he chose,
and, subject to certain limitations, set them free if he willed,
provided that he did not set too many free at once. The last
restriction was especially necessary, inasmuch as a slave who was
manumitted by his master with the proper ceremonies became _ipso
facto_ a Roman citizen, but was still bound by certain ties of loyalty
to his former master. For a Roman to possess too large an attachment
of "freedmen," as they were called, might prove dangerous. The
"freedman," though a citizen, could not himself enter upon a public
career; neither, in ordinary circumstances, could his children; but in
the third generation the family stood on an entire equality with any
other Roman family in that respect.

For the present it may be added that our conception of the meaning of
the word "slave" must not be that attached to its modern use. Many
such slaves were men of great special or general ability, or men of
high culture, especially if Greeks, Syrians, Jews, or Egyptians. They
were frequently superior to their masters, and subsequently, as free
citizens, added much to either the refinement or the over-refinement
of Roman life. Perhaps it is as well, in passing, to point out that
the later Roman people was in no small degree descended from all this
aggregation of foreigners and emancipated slaves, and that we must