"Certainly, I will be your slave and wait on you, my Caipor! Where is your couch?"
Couches with, small tables for the guests had been arranged in form of a triclinium at one end of the large apartment. Leading Aurelian to one of these seats, the hunchback fool reclined upon his elbow in [a] most approved dining attitude; and, as Aurelian rolled the table to his side and helped him to wine and fruit, looked around the room with mingled pride and pleasure at being the only one so honored.
Meantime Zoilus told Sisinnius the history and character of several slaves. There were about four hundred present. Our readers may give us credit for exaggeration if we draw attention to the vast numbers, the varied origin, and occupations of slaves owned by noble Romans in the age of Domitian. Slavery arose from three causes, namely, from birth, from civil punishment, and captivity in war. The captives by war alone would swell the number enormously. In the reign of Augustus a freedman died leaving by will over four thousand slaves, after having lost other thousands in the civil wars. Historians say that many Romans had from ten to twenty thousand. Juvenal puts the test of a person's fortune in the question, "Quot pascit servos?" "How many slaves does he support?" During the empire they filled every position, from the most menial to the most literary. They were tillers and caretakers of the territories of the patricians in Italy, Sicily, and in the provinces beyond the mountains and the seas. They were employed as bakers, barbers, cooks, stewards, and artisans; as tutors, clerks, amanuenses, readers, teachers, physicians, astronomers, rhetoricians, poets, and philosophers. The literature and science of the Roman world, the "Orbis terrarum" found many a worthy representative in their ranks. Hence it has been well said that the martial prowess of Rome conquered that of foreign nations, but that the civilization and learning of foreigners conquered or rather produced hers.
We need not wonder, therefore to find hundreds of slaves in the household of Aurelian. His family was among the oldest and noblest of the city. Counting those on his Italian and foreign estates, they numbered many thousands. In the assemblage which Sisinnius was scanning, many nationalities had representatives—Phrygians, Cappadocians, Thracians, Britons, Greeks, and Jews.
"Whence was Caipor purchased?" asked Sisinnius.
"The mother of Aurelian," answered Zoilus, "was driving in her four-wheeled chariot (rheda) through the streets of Rome. Her attention was drawn to a dwarfish figure, who, emerging from the forum of Augustus, followed the chariot-wheels, clapping his hands and crying out, 'Well done! little wheel. Run fast! Big wheel can't catch you; well done, little wheel!' He was in ecstasies on seeing the smaller wheels of the carriage, as it rolled quickly on, keep their position at the same distance from the larger. The slave-dealer from whom he had wandered came up and scourged him severely. He cried piteously and called on the lady for protection. Moved with pity, she made her husband buy him at a cost of ten thousand sestertia, ($50,000.) [Footnote 169] Since that time he has been the pet fool of the household (morio,) and was, according to custom, named Caipor (Caii puer) after my noble master's father."
[Footnote 169: A morio, or fool, in the reign of Nero cost $15,000! Dio.]
"What is the name of that female yonder? How beautiful is the symmetry of her face and figure! But there is determined purpose in her lip and eye."
"That is Judith the Jewess," said Zoilus, slightly confused. "She was bought like myself from among the slaves left by the late Consul Domitilla. She was a little girl during the siege of Jerusalem; and, having miraculously escaped was, like other girls of her age and beauty, brought to grace the triumphal return of the conqueror Titus. During the procession she was perched like a winged Iris on the same chariot with Venus and Apollo."
"And that other near her?"