Latin Texts & Translations

There is another cretaceous earth, known as "argentaria," ^[Note] from the brightness ^[Note] which it imparts to silver. There is also the most inferior kind of chalk; which was used by the ancients for tracing the line of victory ^[Note] in the Circus, and for marking the feet of slaves on sale, that were brought from beyond sea. Such, for instance, were Publilius ^[Note] Lochius, the

founder of our mimic scenes; his cousin, Manilius Antiochus, ^[Note] the first cultivator of astronomy; and Staberius Eros, our first grammarian; all three of whom our ancestors saw brought over in the same ship ^[Note]

(18.) But why mention these names, recommended as they are by the literary honours which they acquired? Other instances too, Rome has beheld of persons rising to high positions from the slave-market; ^[Note] Chrysogonus, for example, the freedman of Sylla; Amphion, the freedman of Q. Catulus; the man who was the keeper ^[Note] of Lucullus; Demetrius, the freedman of Pompeius, and Auge, the freedwoman of Demetrius, ^[Note] or else of Pompeius himself, as some have supposed; Hipparchus, the freedman of M. Antonius; as also, Menas ^[Note] and Menecrates, ^[Note] freedmen of Sextus Pompeius, and many others as well, whom it would be superfluous to enumerate, and who have enriched themselves at the cost of Roman blood, and the licence that results from proscription.

Such is the mark that is set upon those droves of slaves which we see on sale, such the opprobrium thrown upon them by a capricious fortune ! And yet, some of these very men have we beheld in the enjoyment of such power and influence, that the senate itself has decreed them—at the command of Agrippina, ^[Note] wife of the Emperor Claudius—the decorations even of the prætorship: all but honoured with the fasces and their laurels, in fact, and sent back in state to the very place from which they originally came, with their feet whitened with the slave-dealer's chalk!