Vespasian. Slave-philosophers 327 



remarkable distinction. For two generations they had combined with 

 fair success the common Roman professions of military service and 

 finance. They were respectable people of good local standing. But 

 there was another story relative to a generation further back. It was 

 said that Vespasian's greatgrandfather (this takes us back to Re- 

 publican days) had been a contractor 1 for rustic labour. He was a 

 headman or ' boss ' of working-parties such as are wont to pass year 

 after year from Umbria into the Sabine country to serve as farm- 

 labourers. Of this story Suetonius could not discover any confirm- 

 ation. But that there had been, and perhaps still was, some such supply 

 of migratory labour available, is a piece of evidence not to be ignored. 

 Vespasian himself was a soldier who steadily rose in the usual official 

 career till he reached the coveted post of governor of Africa. After a 

 term of honest but undistinguished rule, he came back no richer than 

 he went, indeed he was very nearly bankrupt. He was driven to mort- 

 gage all his landed estate, and to become for a time a slave-dealer 2 , 

 in order to live in the style that his official rank required. The im- 

 plied disgrace of resorting to a gainful but socially despised trade is at 

 least evidence of the continual demand for human chattels. Of two 

 acts of Domitian 3 , his futile ordinance to check vine-growing, and his 

 grant of the remaining odd remnants of Italian land to present occu- 

 pants, enough has been said above. 



It is not necessary to collect the numerous passages in writers of 

 this period that illustrate the growing change of view as to slavery in 

 general. The point made by moralists, that moral bondage is more 

 degrading than physical (for the latter need not be really degrading), 

 came with not less force from Epictetus the slave than from Seneca 

 the noble Roman. It is however worth while just to note the frequent 

 references to cases of philosophers and other distinguished literary 

 men who had either actually been slaves or had at some time in their 

 lives been forced to earn their daily bread by bodily labour. Such 

 cases are, Cleanthes 4 drawing water for wages, Plautus 5 hired by the 

 baker to grind at his mill, and Protagoras 6 earning his living as a 

 common porter. In one passage several slaves 7 are enumerated who 

 became philosophers. Now, what is the significance of these and other 

 references of the same import? I suggest that they have just the same 



1 mancipem operarum quae ex Umbria in Sabinos ad culturam agrorum quotannis com- 

 meare soleant. 



2 Vesp 4 ad mangonicos quaestus. Hence his nickname mulio, for which as a sign of 

 indigence cf Gellius xv 4. 



3 Domit 7, 9. See p 272. 



4 Fronto p 144 Naber, cf Seneca epist 44 3. 



5 Sueton /ro^w p 24 Reifferscheid, Gellius in 3. 



6 Gellius v 3. 7 Gellius II 18. 



