[Footnote 013: ouk echontos po Aischynen toutou tou ergou pherontos de ti kai Doxes mallon. Thucydides, L. 1. sub initio. kai euklees touto oi Kilikes enomizon. Sextus Empiricus. ouk adoxon all'endoxon touto. Schol. &c. &c.] [Footnote 014: Aristoph. Plut. Act. 2. Scene 5.] [Footnote 015: Zenoph. Apomnemon, L. 1.] * * * * * CHAP. IV. It will be proper to say something here concerning the situation of the unfortunate men, who were thus doomed to a life of servitude. To enumerate their various employments, and to describe the miseries which they endured in consequence, either from the severity, or the long and constant application of their labour, would exceed the bounds we have proposed to the present work. We shall confine ourselves to their _personal treatment_, as depending on the power of their masters, and the protection of the law. Their treatment, if considered in this light, will equally excite our pity and abhorrence. They were beaten, starved, tortured, murdered at discretion: they were dead in a civil sense; they had neither name nor tribe; were incapable of a judicial process; were in short without appeal. Poor unfortunate men! to be deprived of all possible protection! to suffer the bitterest of injuries without the possibility of redress! to be condemned unheard! to be murdered with impunity! to be considered as dead in that state, the very members of which they were supporting by their labours! Yet such was their general situation: there were two places however, where their condition, if considered in this point of view, was more tolerable. The Ægyptian slave, though perhaps of all others the greatest drudge, yet if he had time to reach the temple[016] of Hercules, found a certain retreat from the persecution of his master; and he received additional comfort from the reflection, that his life, whether he could reach it or not, could not be taken with impunity. Wise and salutary law![017] how often must it have curbed the insolence of power, and stopped those passions in their progress, which had otherwise been destructive to the slave!