Travellers among the higher Alps are almost invariably attended by Swiss guides who, laden with their employer’s baggage, climb before them up the rocks, and are less fatigued at the close of the day’s journey than the rich pedestrians who carry nothing beyond their own weight. This is an exact image of the style of travelling in antiquity. It was then common even for opulent men, to “make their own legs their compasses,” as Scriblerus phrases it; but, not to load their own delicate shoulders with a knapsack, they were attended, like Bacchos in the Frogs, by a steady slave, who carried the baggage, mounted on a porter’s knot upon his shoulders. To employ more than one valet in this service was esteemed a mark of luxurious habits; and therefore Æschines reproaches Demosthenes that, during his embassy, he was attended by two domestics with each a carpet-bag.[[152]] Both by Theophrastus and Xenophon this attendant is called an Acoluthos, or follower, because it was his duty to walk behind his master; but this name in general signified a youthful valet, kept in personal attendance on the great.[[153]] The simplicity of republican manners at Athens condemned the habit of maintaining many of those elegant youths, which, moreover[moreover] was prohibited by law.[[154]]
From the severity of manners, however, one evil arose—the single slave was sometimes condemned by vanity to carry the burden of two; and as their grumblings were proportioned to their hardship, their case was soon taken up by the comic poets, not, I fear, so much for the sake of humanity, as because it often furnished them with a good joke or two. By degrees, as no writers dwell so constantly on a fruitful topic or so frankly imitate each other, it became the fashion of the stage to introduce a miserable devil into every comedy, whose misfortunes, like those of the clown in our pantomimes, usually kept the theatre in a roar. The practice, however, had already grown stale in the time of Aristophanes, who both ridiculed and followed it; for while his sneers at the grumbling valet are repeated usque ad nauseam, much of the humour and interest of the Frogs arise out of the tricks and adventures of a melancholy wag of this description as Casaubon[[155]] long ago observed.
When men have usurped an undue dominion over their fellows, they seldom know where to stop. The Syrians themselves, enslaved politically, and often sold into servitude abroad, affected when rich a peculiarly luxurious manner: female attendants waited on their ladies, who, when mounting their carriages, required them to crawl on all-fours that they might make a foot-stool of their backs.[[156]]
[1]. On the state of domesticity in modern times, see the interesting work by Monsieur Grégoire, Sur la Domesticité, p. 3, sqq.
[2]. Cf. Plat. de Legg. t. viii. p. 38.
[3]. Thus Metrodoros:—Δοῦλος ἀναγκαῖον μὲν κτῆμα, οὐχ ἡδὺ δὲ. Stob. Florileg. Tit. 62. 44.
[4]. Cf. Plat. de Legg. vi. t. vii. p. 460.
[5]. Even no house according to Aristot. Polit. i. 3. Stob. Floril. Tit. 62. 44.
[6]. Herodes Atticus, for instance, lamented the death of his slaves as if they had been his relations, and erected statues to their memory in woods, or fields, and beside fountains. Philost. Vit. Soph. ii. 10. Among respectable slaves it was thought disgraceful to drink when the family was in trouble. Vict. Var. Lect. viii. 4. A striking example of the affection produced by good usage is mentioned by Libanius: “Sed, ut intelligas,” says the sophist, writing to Uranius, “quam fidum habeas servum, quæsivi ego tunc otiosus, cur, præter ejus generis hominum, consuetudinem tanta fide res tuas curaret? Is vero mihi graviter sapientissimèque respondit se novum quoddam fidissimæ servitutis genus excogitare oportuisse, quoniam herum habeat nomine, re vero fratrem, cum quo eundem cibum caperet, idem vinum biberet, à quo non modo vapularet, sed ne malum quidem unquam aliquid audiret,” Epistol. i. 16. Lat. ed J. C. Wolf. p. 739. a.