MISCELLANEOUS NOTES 747
libraries. . . . .Shorthand writing was in common use under the Empire, and slave Notary 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 Jullius Modestus, his own freedman. We hear of freedmen historians of a slave philosopher who was encouraged to argue with his master’s, friends’ 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 messeiurs should be forthcoming. All these are to be found in slavery, often trained by teachers who had acquired some reputation” [1] .
“The age of Augustus was the beginning of a period of commercial and industrial expansion. . . . . slaves had indeed been employed (in arts and crafts) before, but the sudden growth of trade. . . .their employment in numbers that would otherwise have been unnecessary. Romans engaged more freely and more openly in various forms of commercial and industrial venture. Yet, even so the agent became more important, for commercial activities became more widespread; and such agents were almost necessarily slaves.....(this is so) because the bonds of slavery (are elastic). They could be so relaxed as to offer an incentive (to the slave) to work by the prospect of wealth and freedom, and so tightened as to provide a guarantee to the master against loss from the misconduct of his slave. In business contracts between slave and master third person seem to have been common, and the work thus done, and no doubt, the profits
1 Slavery in the Roman Empire, p. 63.