If Giton is retaken, he can thank the gods if he is merely flogged almost to death, and is not also given a year in the ergastulum. Naturally slaves can only testify in court by their master’s consent and under torture, although the reigning humane Emperor has just issued a decree limiting its use to the last resort. Hadrian, also, contrary to the usage in Nero’s day, has ordained that if a man is murdered by his slaves, only the slaves near the actual scene of crime are to be tormented, and he has actually banished a certain matron, Umbricia, for “abusing her slave girls most atrociously for trivial reasons.” All this perhaps dimly foreshadows a new day; but what human chattel can wait to see the abuses of slavery whittled down by the law across the centuries? Have the slaves along Mercury Street any nearer hope? Possibly. The other day many of them saw in the front benches of honor at the Circus a man of dignity. His hands glittered with sardonyx rings; his lacerna was of Tyrian purple; his shoes were scarlet, his hair reeking with costly essences; a great train bowed and cringed to him. But his forehead was covered with “numerous white patches like stars”; “sticking plaster,” everybody whispered, to cover up the FVR once branded on his countenance. He was an ex-slave, an exalted freedman, who, a couple of decades before, had stood on the auction block, but now was a mighty power in Roman high finance. CHAPTER VIII THE SOCIAL ORDERS: FREEDMEN, PROVINCIALS, PLEBEIANS, AND NOBLES =116. Manumission of Slaves Very Common.=--A Roman slave’s legal position may be miserable, but usually he is not under that fearful stigma of race and color weighing upon the slaves of another era. His complexion and his brain power do not differ essentially from his master’s.[65] If he is a Greek or Levantine, often his mental acuteness may be greater than that of his lord. An intelligent slave under not too harsh a master will devote himself to the latter in every possible way, expecting pretty certainly the great reward for faithfulness and zealous service--freedom. Of course, many dull hardened wretches, especially upon the farms, will die as the toiling chattels they have lived; but freedom comes often enough to make manumission something for which to hope eagerly. Often the death of a master is the signal for a grand enfranchisement of all the older members of his familia. It costs nothing thus to reward faithful service at the expense of your heirs; and it is a fine thing to have a long file of newly created freedmen, all wearing the tall red caps of “liberty,” march in your funeral procession. Everybody will praise your “generosity,” and the freedmen can be expected to cherish their lord’s memory. Incidentally, also, there are few better ways of punishing a generally incompetent slave than having him ostentatiously _refused_ freedom when all his comrades go about rejoicing.