Valerius Maximus 243 



relations of patron and freedman, also discussed in these artificial 

 school-debates, are a further illustration of this tendency. Milder and 

 more humane principles were germinating, though as yet they had not 

 found expression in law. In arguing on a peculiarly revolting case (the 

 deliberate mutilation of child-beggars) a speaker incidentally refers 1 to 

 wealthy landowners recruiting their slave-gangs by seizing freemen. 

 The hearers are supposed to receive this reference to kidnapping as no 

 exceptional thing extravagantly suggested. We have seen that both 

 Augustus and Tiberius had to intervene to put down this suppressio. 

 One little note of interest deserves passing mention. In a discussion on 

 unequal marriages the question is raised whether even the very highest 

 desert on a slave's part could justify a father in taking him as a son- 

 in-law. A speaker cites the case 2 of Old Cato, who married the daughter 

 of his own colonus. Here we clearly have the tenant farmer in the 

 second century EC. In Plutarch the man appears as a client. Neither 

 writer makes him a freedman in so many words. But it is probably 

 the underlying fact. That the daughter was ingenua does not rule out 

 this supposition. 



Velleius and Valerius Maximus also belong to the reign of 

 Tiberius. The former in what remains of his history supplies nothing 

 to my purpose. Valerius made a collection of anecdotes from Roman 

 and foreign histories illustrating various virtues and vices, classifying 

 the examples of good and bad action under heads. They are 'lifted' 

 from the works of earlier writers: many are taken from Livy, already 

 used as a classic quarry. The book is pervaded by tiresome moralizing, 

 and points of interest are few. There is the story of the farm 3 of 

 Regulus, of the patriotic refusal 4 of M' Curius to take more than the 

 normal seven iugera of land as a reward from the state, of the horny- 

 handed rustic voter 5 being asked whether he walked on his hands; also 

 reference to the simple habits of the famous Catos, and a passing re- 

 mark that the men of old had few slaves. Those of the above passages 

 that are of any value at all have been noticed in earlier sections. The 

 freedman Phaedrus gives us next to nothing in his fables, unless we 

 care to note the items 6 of a farm-property, agellos pecora villam operarios 

 boves iumenta et instrumentum rusticum, and a fable specially illus- 

 trating the fact that a master's eye sees what escapes the notice of the 

 slave-staff, even of the vilicus. 



1 Seneca contr x 4 18 solitudines suas isti beati ingenuorum ergastulis excolunt. See 

 above p 233 and below on Columella p 263. 



2 Seneca contr vn 6 17, cf Plut Cat mat 24. 



3 Val Max iv 4 6. 4 Val Max iv 3 5, cf 4 7, 8 i. 5 Val Max vn 5 2. 

 6 Phaedr iv 5, n 8. 



1 6 2 



