For the pirates could probably bring better material to the slave market than was usually won in war.[238] A superior elegance and culture must often have been found in the helpless victims on whom they pounced; beauty and education were qualities that had a high marketable value, and by seizing on people of the better class they were sure of one of two advantages--either of a ransom furnished by the friends of the captives, or of a better price paid by the dealer. There was scarcely a pretence that the traders were mere intermediaries who bought in a cheap market and sold in a dear. They were known to be raiders as well, and numbers of the captives exhibited in the mart at Side in Pamphylia were known to have been freemen up to the moment of the auction.[239] The facility for capture and the proximity of Delos, the greatest of the slave markets which connected the East with the West, rendered the supply enormous; but it was equalled by the demand, and myriads of captives are said to have been shipped to the island and to have quitted it in a single day. The ease and rapidity of the business transacted by the master of a slave-ship became a proverb;[240] and honest mercantile undertakings with their tardy gains must have seemed contemptible in comparison with this facile source of wealth. An abundant supply and quick returns imply reasonable prices; and the cheapness of the labour supplied by the slave-trade, whether as a consequence of war or piracy, was at once a necessary condition of the vitality of the plantation system and a cause of the recklessness and neglect with which the easily replaced instruments might be used. Cato, a shrewd man of business, never cared to pay more than fifteen hundred denarii for his slaves.[241] This must have been the price of the best type of labourer, of a man probably who was gifted with intelligence as well as strength. Ordinary unskilled labour must have fetched a far smaller sum; for the prices which are furnished by the comic poetry of the day--prices which are as a rule conditioned by the value of personal services or qualities of a particular kind, by the attractions of sex and the competition for favours--do not on the average far exceed the limit fixed by Cato.[242] For common work newly imported slaves were actually preferred, and purchasers were shy of the _veterator_ who had seen long service.[243] Employment in the fashionable circles of the town doubtless enhanced the value of a slave, when he was known to have been in possession of some peculiar gift, whether it were for cookery, medicine or literature; but the labours of the country could easily be drilled into the newest importation, and prices diminished instead of rising with the advancing age and experience of the rustic slave.[244]