Aut nodis revocare, et rursus vertice denso
Fingere et appositis caput emutare capillis.[[136]]
In these arts they were regularly taught under masters, and there would likewise appear to have been a set of men who earned their subsistence by initiating slaves in household labours. An example is mentioned at Syracuse of a person[[137]] who probably had an establishment of his own, where he instructed slaves in the whole round of their domestic duties, such as bread-making, cooking, washing, and so on. In the baker’s business Anaxarchos, an Eudaimonist philosopher, one of the fitting companions of Alexander the Great,[[138]] introduced an improvement by which modern times may profit,—to preserve his bread pure from the touch, and even from the breath of the slaves who made it, he caused them to knead the dough with gloves on their hands, and to wear a respirator of some gauze-like substance over the mouth.[[139]] Other individuals, who grudged their domestics a taste of their delicacies, obliged them, while employed at the kneading-trough, to wear a broad collar, like a wheel, which prevented them from bringing their hands to their mouths.[[140]] This odious practice, however, could not have been general, as it is clear, from an expression in Aristophanes[[141]] and his scholiast, that slaves employed in making bread used to amuse themselves by eating the dough. This seems to be one of the principal causes of disgust to the rogues in the piece employed in preparing the delicacies with which Trygæos feeds the beetle whereon he is about to mount to the court of Zeus.
In the city of Abdera, as we find from an anecdote of Stratonicos,[[142]] every private citizen kept a slave who served him in the capacity of herald, and announced by sound of trumpet the appearance of the new moon, and the festival by which it was followed. A bon mot worth repeating is ascribed to this travelling wit. Being one day in the cemetery of Teicheios, a town of the Milesian territory,[[143]] inhabited by a mixed population from all the neighbouring countries, and seeing on every tomb the name of some foreigner, “Come,” said he to his slave, “let us depart from this place. Nobody dies here but strangers.”
One of the most steady and faithful of the domestics was usually selected to be the porter.[[144]] Occasionally, moreover, in the establishments of opulent and ostentatious persons, as Callias for example, eunuchs, imported from Asia, were employed as door-keepers.[[145]]
The directions, as Mitford justly observes, which Penelope’s housekeeper gives to the menial servants for the business of the day, might still serve in the East without variation: “Go quickly,” she said, “some of you sweep the house, and sprinkle it, and let the crimson carpets be spread upon the seats; let all the tables be well rubbed with sponges, and wash carefully the bowls and cups. Some of you go immediately to the fountain for water.”[[146]]
Besides working at the mill, and fetching water, both somewhat laborious employments, we find that female slaves were sometimes engaged in offices still more unfeminine; that is, in woodcutting upon the mountains, where the impudent old fellow, in Aristophanes, takes advantage of Thratta.[[147]] Events of this kind, however, could only happen among the peasant girls. In the city both mistresses and maids were too domestic to meet with adventures in forest or on mountains. Towards the decline of the commonwealth, it became a mark of wealth and consequence to be served by black domestics, both male and female, as was also the fashion among the Romans and the Egyptian Greeks. Thus Cleopatra[[148]] had negro boys for torch-bearers; and the shallow exclusive, in Cicero,[[149]] is anxious to make it known that he has an African valet. Juvenal, in his sarcastic style, alludes to this practice.[[150]]
Tibi pocula cursor
Gætulus dabit aut nigri manus ossea Mauri.
The Athenian ladies, like our Indian dames, affected as a foil, perhaps, to be attended by waiting-maids rendered “by Phœbus’ amorous pinches black.”[[151]]