d, or bookkeeper, or
secretary, or reader, or a skilled physician, I have them all; or a
hand-maid for your Excellency's wife. I have a beautiful Greek girl
here, highly accomplished; can embroider, play the zither, sing in two
languages. I sold her sister last week for 100,000 sesterces[29]--nieces
of an ex-archon. I felt really sorry for them, but what would
you?--trade is trade. Times are bad. Poor Ezra has had bad luck. Several
of his slaves kill themselves. Market glutted; price falls. I sell them
very cheap--very cheap."

Vitellius made his purchases, had them chained together in a gang, and
driven by his steward, like cattle, to his farm. The account of Ezra's
interview with Isidorus we must defer to another chapter.

[Illustration]

FOOTNOTES:

[26] This might easily happen, for after successful raids or slave
hunts, the victims were sold by their pirate captors by the thousand.
The fact is on record, that at Delos, a famous slave market, 60,000 were
sold by Celician pirates in a single day.

[27] Apud nos inter pauperes et divites, servos et dominos, interest
nihil. Lactant. _Div. Inst._ v. 14, 15.

[28] These were the most common faults of slaves, for attempting which
they were often branded on cheek or brow.

[29] Over $4,000 of our money. Very beautiful or accomplished slaves
sometimes brought twice that amount.

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CHAPTER XII.

THE LOST FOUND.

"Do you remember buying or selling a slave named Demetrius, a Jew?"
asked Isidorus of Ezra, the slave-dealer of Milan. He wasted no words in
circumlocution, for he knew that there was no use in trying to deceive
the keen-eyed Jewish dealer in his fellowman; and that his best chances
of success were in coming directly to the point.

"Selling a Jew? Oh, no! I never sell my own kinsmen. That's against our
law. It is like seething a kid in its mother's milk. I often ransom them
from pirates and set them free."

"But this Demetrius was a Christian Jew--a convert from Moses to Jesus,"
said the Greek.

"A Christian dog," cried Ezra with a wicked execration. "He was no Jew.
He had sold his birthright like Esau, and had no part nor lot with
Israel. Of course, I'd sell him if I got him--to the mines, or to the
galleys, or the field gang, to the hardest master I could find. But I
know naught about your Demetrius, who was he?"

"He was a Jew of Antioch," said Isidorus, "captured by Illyrian pirates
and sold in the slave market of Ravenn