A slave-auction was in progress when Isidorus arrived, so he had to wait till it was over before plying his quest. A gang of slaves, unchained, but guarded by keepers, armed with whips and spears, awaited their fate. Stripped nearly naked, they were rudely examined, pinched, handled, and made to stoop, lift heavy weights, walk, run, and show their paces like horses for sale. Many had their ears bored—a sign of servitude from the time of Moses—and others were seamed with scars of the cruel lash. This, however, lessened their market value, as it was evidence of their intractable and troublesome character.
Slavery was, at the time of which we write, one of the greatest evils of the Roman empire. It was a deadly canker, eating out the national life. It cast a stigma of disgrace on labour, and prevented the formation of that intelligent middle class which is the true safeguard of liberty. Never in the history of the world was society so based upon the abject misery of vast multitudes of human beings. The slaves outnumbered, many times, their masters. They were forbidden to wear a peculiar garb, lest they should recognize their numbers and their strength, and rise in universal revolt. As it was, servile insurrections were of frequent occurrence. But they were crushed and punished with ruthless severity. In one slave revolt, 60,000 of these wretched beings were slain. The first question about a man's property was, "Quot pascit servos?"—"How many slaves does he keep?" Ten was considered the least number consistent with any degree of respectability. Four hundred slaves deluged with their blood the funeral pyre of Pedanius Secundus. Vidius Pollio fed his lampreys with the bodies of his human chattels. A single freed-man left over 4,000 at his death. Some 2,000 men were lords of the Roman world, and the great mass of the rest were slaves. Their condition was one of inconceivable wretchedness. They had no rights of marriage, nor any claim to their children. Their food was a pound of bread a day, with a little salt and oil. Flesh they never tasted, and even wine, which flowed like water, almost never. Colossal piles, built by their blood and sweat, attest to the present day the bitterness of their bondage. The lash of the taskmaster was heard in the fields, and crosses, bearing aloft their quivering victims, polluted the wayside.
This dumb, weltering mass of humanity, crushed by power, and led by their lusts, became a hot-bed of vice, in which every evil passion grew apace. To these wretched beings came the gospel of liberty, with a strange, a thrilling power. The oppressed slave, in the intervals of toil or torture, caught with joy the emancipating message, and sprang up enfranchised by an immortalizing hope. He exulted in a new-found freedom in Christ, which no wealth could purchase, no chains of slavery fetter, nor even death itself destroy. In the Christian Church the distinctions of worldly rank were abolished.[27] The highest spiritual privileges were opened to the lowliest slave. In the ecclesiastical hierarchy were no rights of birth, and no privileges of blood. In the inscriptions of the Catacombs, no badges of servitude, no titles of honour appear. The wealthy noble, the lord of many acres, recognized in his lowly servant a fellow heir of glory. They bowed together at the same table of the Lord, saluted each other with the mutual kiss of charity, and side by side in their narrow graves, at length returned to indistinguishable dust. The story of Onesimus was often repeated, and the patrician master received his returning slave, "not now as a servant, but above a servant—a brother beloved." Nay, he may even have bowed to him as his ecclesiastical superior, and received from his plebeian hands the emblems of their common Lord.
We return from this digression to the slave-market of Milan. Very few of Ezra's stock were black—not more than half a dozen, from Nubia and Libya. Most of them were as white as himself, or whiter still. There were Dalmatians, Illyrians, Iberians, Gauls, Greeks, Syrians, and many other nationalities. Ezra was engaged in busy converse, in a broken mixture of Latin and Greek, with the wealthy patrician, Vitellius, the lord of wide corn lands on the fertile banks of the Po.
"Field hands your Excellency wants? I have some splendid ones," he said, eagerly. "Here, you fellows, step out there and show your muscles;" and he struck with his whip-lash two brawny white-skinned, blue-eyed, yellow-haired British slaves.
"Sullen dogs these British often are," he said, "but they are as good as gold. They never run away like the Germans, nor steal like the Greeks, nor kill themselves like the Gauls."[28]
"Glad of that," said Vitellius. "I have had a perfect epidemic of suicide among my slaves. I had to kill several of them to keep them from killing themselves"—a sad but frequent comment on the utter wretchedness of their condition, from which death itself was the only refuge.
"Does your Excellency want anything of a higher grade?" asked Ezra. "Some skilled workmen to finish your elegant villa, for instance. I have a splendid Greek sculptor, almost another Phidias, and another a second Zeuxis with the brush. Then if you want a steward, or bookkeeper, or secretary, or reader, or a skilled physician, I have them all; or a hand-maid for your Excellency's wife. I have a beautiful Greek girl here, highly accomplished; can embroider, play the zither, sing in two languages. I sold her sister last week for 100,000 sesterces[29]—nieces of an ex-archon. I felt really sorry for them, but what would you?—trade is trade. Times are bad. Poor Ezra has had bad luck. Several of his slaves kill themselves. Market glutted; price falls. I sell them very cheap—very cheap."
Vitellius made his purchases, had them chained together in a gang, and driven by his steward, like cattle, to his farm. The account of Ezra's interview with Isidorus we must defer to another chapter.