10 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
between foreman and slave remained there; the slave was often a fellow worker. The kindliness of Pliny towards his staff is wellknown. It is in no spirit of self-righteousness, and in no wish to appear in a favourable light in the eyes of the future generations which he hoped would read his letters that he tells of his distress at the illness and death of his slaves. The household (or Pliny) is the slaves’ republic. Pliny’s account of his treatment of his slaves is sometimes regarded as so much in advance of general or even occasional practice as to be valueless as evidence. There is no reason for this attitude.
From reasons both of display and genuine literary interest, the rich families attached to their households, slaves trained in literature and art. Clavisices Sabinus is said by Seneda to have had eleven slaves taught to recite Homer, Hesioid, and nine lyric poets by heart. ‘Book cases would be cheaper’, said a rude friend. ‘No, what the household knows the master knows’ was the answer. But, apart from such abuses, educated slaves must have been a necessity in the absence of printing;.... The busy lawyer, the dilettante poet, the philosopher and educated gentlemen of literary tastes and need of copyists and readers and secretaries. Such men were naturally linquistic also; a librarius who dies at the age of twenty boasts that he was ‘literatus Graecis Latinis’. Amanuenses were common enough; librarians are to be found in public and private libraries.... Shorthand writing was in common use under the Empire, and slave Notarii were regularly employed. Many freemen, rhetoricians and grammarians are collected by Snetonius in a special treatise. Verrius Flaccus was tutor to Austus’s grandsons, and at death was publicly honoured by a statue. Scribonius Aphrodisius was the slave and disciple of Orbilius and was afterwards freed by Scribenia. Hyginus was librarian of the Palatine Library, in which office he was followed by Julius Modestus, his own freeman. We hear of freemen historians of a slave philosopher who was encouraged to argue with his master, friends of slaves and freed architects. Freemen as doctors occur frequently in the inscriptions, some of them specialists, they had been trained in big households as slaves, as is shown by one or two examples; after Manumission they rose to eminence and became notorious for their high fees.”
The tastes of some section of society demanded that dancers, singers, musicians, montebanks, variety artists, athletic trainers and messieurs should be forthcoming. All these are to be found in slavery, often trained by teachers who had acquired some reputation [1] .
1 Slavery in the Roman Empire, p. 63.