[572] “In the Stoic emperors ... we find probably the earliest example of great moral principles applied to legislation on a large scale.”—Clifford, Lectures and Essays, vol. ii, p. 108.
[573] Public feeling in regard to the exercise of the patria potestas had been slowly changing during the centuries. Seneca relates (De Clem. i. 14) how within his memory the people furiously assaulted in the Forum a certain knight because he had whipped his son to death.
[574] “The alleviations of slavery by the imperial law are essentially traceable to the influence of the Greek view.”—Mommsen, Roman Provinces (1887), vol. i, p. 296.
[575] “The majority of the free population had probably either themselves been slaves, or were descended from slaves.”—Lecky, History of European Morals, 3d ed., vol. i, p. 237.
[576] Dill, Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius (1904), p. 3.
[577] Lecky, History of European Morals, 3d ed., vol. i, p. 312.
[578] De Clem. i. 18.
[579] Tacitus, Annals, xiv. 42–45.
[580] Manumissions were frequent even in Seneca’s time. Pliny the Elder was a kind master, regarded his slaves as “humble friends,” and manumitted many of them.
[581] The client class of the imperial period was made up almost wholly of freedmen.