rvants, who can be
computed only as an expense. [55] The youths of a promising genius were
instructed in the arts and sciences, and their price was ascertained
by the degree of their skill and talents. [56] Almost every profession,
either liberal [57] or mechanical, might be found in the household of an
opulent senator. The ministers of pomp and sensuality were multiplied
beyond the conception of modern luxury. [58] It was more for the interest
of the merchant or manufacturer to purchase, than to hire his workmen;
and in the country, slaves were employed as the cheapest and
most laborious instruments of agriculture. To confirm the general
observation, and to display the multitude of slaves, we might allege a
variety of particular instances. It was discovered, on a very melancholy
occasion, that four hundred slaves were maintained in a single palace of
Rome. [59] The same number of four hundred belonged to an estate which an
African widow, of a very private condition, resigned to her son, whilst
she reserved for herself a much larger share of her property. [60] A
freedman, under the name of Augustus, though his fortune had suffered
great losses in the civil wars, left behind him three thousand six
hundred yoke of oxen, two hundred and fifty thousand head of smaller
cattle, and what was almost included in the description of cattle, four
thousand one hundred and sixteen slaves. [61]

[Footnote 53: Seneca de Clementia, l. i. c. 24. The original is much
stronger, "Quantum periculum immineret si servi nostri numerare nos
coepissent."]

[Footnote 54: See Pliny (Hist. Natur. l. xxxiii.) and Athenaeus
(Deipnosophist. l. vi. p. 272.) The latter boldly asserts, that he knew
very many Romans who possessed, not for use, but ostentation, ten and
even twenty thousand slaves.]

[Footnote 55: In Paris there are not more than 43,000 domestics of every
sort, and not a twelfth part of the inhabitants. Messange, Recherches
sui la Population, p. 186.]

[Footnote 56: A learned slave sold for many hundred pounds sterling:
Atticus always bred and taught them himself. Cornel. Nepos in Vit. c.
13, [on the prices of slaves. Blair, 149.]--M.]

[Footnote 57: Many of the Roman physicians were slaves. See Dr.
Middleton's Dissertation and Defence.]

[Footnote 58: Their ranks and offices are very copiously enumerated by
Pignorius de Servis.]

[Footnote 59: Tacit. Annal. xiv. 43. They were all executed for not
preventing their master's murder. *