=103. Vast Number of Slaves. Universality of Slavery.=--The slaves, however, are always officially at the bottom of the human ladder. Their number is great, making up close to half, if not quite half, of the population of Rome. They are not required to wear a special dress.[56] Some years ago it was proposed to order this in the Senate, but the motion was voted down: “It would be dangerous to show the wretches how numerous they really were.” Ordinarily they go about in sad-colored tunics and long cloaks like most of the common citizens, or else they wear some bright livery devised by their masters. Only a few of these unfortunates have Italian countenances and can speak Latin without some foreign accent. Plenty of alien adventurers, it is true, drift to Rome as willingly, but probably the great bulk of the cosmopolitan multitudes everywhere observable, even if free at present, come to Latium involuntarily--as slaves imported to wait on the masters of the world. Almost no one has questioned the rightfulness and necessity of slavery. Seneca, indeed, has written that no man can be enslaved beyond a certain point--his body is his master’s, but his mind is his own. Horace has written grandiloquently “Who is truly free? The wise man alone; who is stern master of himself.” This sounds well but does not alter the practical results of a situation wherein, for example, all farm implements are solemnly classified in the handbooks under three heads: I. _Dumb tools_--plows, mattocks, shovels, etc.; II. _Semi-speaking tools_--oxen, asses, etc., that can bellow or bray; III. _Speaking tools_--slaves useful as farm hands. =104. Power of Master over Slaves.=--Until very lately, before Hadrian’s time, these “Speaking Tools” have had rather less legal protection than may be granted to horses by the “humane” legislation of later civilization. The reigning Emperor, however, a remarkable innovator, and tinctured with the Stoic philosophy, has lately issued an edict that a slave cannot be killed outright by his master without some kind of consent by a magistrate. Every owner of human bipeds has probably grumbled that “discipline is now made impossible,” but the new law is of little practical help to the slave. His master can still order a punishment so brutal that death is certain, and if he should murder a servant, slave witnesses can give no valid testimony, and almost no citizen will turn traitor to his class and prosecute. Half of Rome, therefore, continues in the absolute power and possession of the other half.