austere disposition. We have no reason for thinking that the lot of home-bred or purchased slaves was particularly hard in Athens; certainly they had there less rigorous masters than the Spartans or Romans were. But there can be little doubt of the contempt with which non-Hellenic races were viewed by Greeks in general, or of the broad line they drew between themselves and barbarians. Even in Attica, the happiness or misery of a bondman must have depended in great measure upon the disposition of his owner. He might be half starved or cruelly flogged—but no law protected him: overworked, without comment from the neighbours; tortured, if his evidence were required in a court of justice; cashiered, when his services were rendered useless by age or infirmity. Euripides, if his writings be in accordance with his practice, anticipated the humane sentiments of Seneca and the younger Pliny in his consideration for this, at the best, unhappy order of men. He did not regard it as the mark of an unsound mind to look on a slave as a human being. He introduces him in his plays as a faithful nurse, or an honest and attached herdsman, shepherd, or household servant. He endows him with good abilities, and at times shrewd and ready wit, with kindly affection to his fellows, and love and loyalty to his masters. He even goes almost to an extreme in putting into his mouth saws, maxims, and opinions meet for a philosopher. He perceived, and he strove to make others perceive, that servitude does not necessarily extinguish virtue or good sense. He left it to the comic poets to exhibit the slave as necessarily
