Moral Letters to Lucilius

​I have learned with pleasure from those who come from you that you live familiarly with your slaves. This becomes your prudence, this becomes your erudition. “They are slaves.” Rather, they are men. “They are slaves.” Rather, they are comrades. ”They are slaves.” Rather, they are humble friends. “They are slaves.” Rather, they are fellow-slaves, if you consider that fortune has the same power over both.

​Therefore, I laugh at those who think it disgraceful to dine with their slave. For what reason, except that a most arrogant custom has surrounded the dining master with a crowd of standing slaves? He eats more than he can contain, and with immense greed loads his distended stomach, which is now unaccustomed to its proper office, so that he excretes everything with greater labor than he took it in; but the unfortunate slaves are not allowed to move their lips, not even for this purpose, namely, to speak.

​Every murmur is checked by the rod, and not even accidental sounds are exempt from floggings—coughs, sneezes, hiccups. The silence interrupted by any voice is paid for with a great punishment. All night long they stand fast, hungry and mute.

​Thus it happens that those speak about their master, who are not allowed to speak in the presence of their master. But those who had conversation not only in the presence of their masters but with them, whose mouths were not sewn up, were ready to offer their necks for their master, to turn aside imminent danger onto their own heads; they spoke at banquets, but in the midst of torments they were silent.

​Then, from the same arrogance, the proverb is bandied about, that there are as many enemies as there are slaves. We do not have them as enemies, but we make them so. Meanwhile, I pass over other cruel and inhuman things, because we abuse them not even as men, but as beasts of burden. When we have reclined for dinner, one wipes up the spittle, another, crouched under the couch, collects the leavings of the drunkards.

​Another carves the precious birds; drawing his skilled hand along the breast and rump with certain strokes, he cuts off the pieces—unfortunate man, who lives for this one thing, to carve fattened fowl properly, except that he is more miserable who teaches this for the sake of pleasure than he who learns it out of necessity.

​Another, a wine-steward dressed in a woman’s fashion, struggles with his age; he cannot escape his boyhood, he is dragged back to it, and though already of military age, he is kept hairless, with his hair rubbed off or completely plucked out, and stays awake all night, which he divides between his master’s drunkenness and lust, being a man in the bedchamber, but a boy at the banquet.

​Another, to whom the censorship of the guests has been permitted, stands unfortunate and waits to see whom flattery and intemperance of either gluttony or tongue will recall for tomorrow. Add the caterers, who have a subtle knowledge of the master’s palate, who know what flavor excites him, what appearance delights him, by what novelty he, though nauseated, can be aroused, what he already loathes from sheer satiety, and what he hungers for on that day. To dine with these he cannot bear, and he thinks it a diminution of his majesty to approach the same table with his slave. Heaven forbid!

​How many of these has masters! I saw his own master standing before the threshold of Callistus, and him who had attached the price-tag to him, who had produced him among the worthless slaves, shut out while others were entering. That slave, cast into the first decuria, in which the herald tests his voice, paid back the favor; he himself in turn rejected him, and he himself did not judge him worthy of his house. The master sold Callistus; but how many things did Callistus do to his master!

​Will you please consider that this one, whom you call your slave, sprung from the same seeds, enjoys the same sky, breathes equally, lives equally, dies equally! You can see him as a freeborn man just as much as he can see you as a slave. By the Marian disaster, fortune cast down many born most illustriously, who were beginning their senatorial career through military service, making one of them a shepherd, another a keeper of a cottage; despise now a man of that fortune into which, while you despise it, you can transition.