There is another cretaceous earth, known as "argentaria,"[1]
from the brightness[2] 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[3] in the Circus, and for
marking the feet of slaves on sale, that were brought from
beyond sea. Such, for instance, were Publilius[4] Lochius, the
(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;[7] Chrysogonus, for example, the freedman of Sylla; Amphion, the freedman of Q. Catulus; the man who was the keeper[8] of Lucullus; Demetrius, the freedman of Pompeius, and Auge, the freedwoman of Demetrius,[9] or else of Pompeius himself, as some have supposed; Hipparchus, the freedman of M. Antonius; as also, Menas[10] and Menecrates,[11] 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,[12]
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!
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