It is impossible, then, to decide whether our customs are better or worse than those of the ancients. It is certain, on the other hand, that we are much more human than they. For with us, a sentiment, which with the ancients was very weak, if not non-existent, is lively and profound, the sentiment of the moral equality of every individual. The ancients simply refused to recognise in the slave and in the free man, in the nobleman and in the plebeian, in the citizen and in the foreigner, human creatures made of the same clay and animated by the same spirit, whom the mysterious accidents of fortune had placed in different situations, and all of whom had certain sacred and inviolable rights in the supreme domain of justice. A few philosophers dared just to hint at such doctrines, but without laying too much stress upon them. And theirs were voices crying in the wilderness. The free man, the patrician, and the citizen felt themselves creatures of another species and of a higher nature than slaves, plebeians, and foreigners, towards whom the former group might have capricious bursts of benevolence, but to whom they never regarded themselves as bound by any obligation. Hence came that asperity which appears in all the social relations of ancient peoples,—in their laws, their customs, their wars, their political quarrels,—and which often seems to us in so striking a contrast with the lofty and noble culture which adorned the ancient states. Augustus, for instance, was a grave, well-balanced, and prudent man, who avoided all extremes. Yet the ancient writers tell us to his credit that he had amongst his numerous freedmen several men of the loftiest intellect, of wide knowledge, and of transparent honesty, who had rendered him great services; but that, though he held them in great honour, he never invited any of them to his table. Such an act of familiarity between freedmen and patricians would have seemed to the ancients derogatory, and so they praised Augustus for having avoided it. To us, on the other hand, this attitude of reserve on the part of the great Emperor seems strange and incomprehensible, as it would seem on the part of a great and wealthy manufacturer who was ashamed to dine with the heads of departments of his business.