‘Some say that the Præfect had promised him his liberty for a certain sum of money. The slave pinched himself for years to raise it, and when he brought the money Pedanius broke his bargain.’ The hearers only shrugged their shoulders. ‘That happens commonly enough,’ said Cæcina Tuscus, Nero’s foster-brother, who had himself been born a slave. ‘It only meant,’ said Senecio, ‘that the Præfect had changed his mind.’ ‘Others say,’ continued the man, ‘that Pedanius had a favourite, who had been also a favourite of Vibius, who was driven wildly jealous.’ ‘The notion of a slave presuming to have a favourite!’ lisped the effeminate Quintianus. ‘What next?’ ‘How many slaves had Pedanius?’ asked Petronius. ‘Four hundred.’ ‘Is that all?’ said Tigellinus. ‘It is lucky that he had no more. They will be executed, every one of them--that’s one comfort. Let us thank the gods for the Silanian law.’ They saw Seneca approaching them; and it was evident that he had heard the news, for his face wore a look of sorrow and alarm. ‘How say you, Seneca?’ asked Lucan; ‘is the Silanian law to be carried out, and are all Pedanius’s four hundred slaves to die?’ ‘I should hope not,’ said the philosopher, indignantly. ‘What! are we to butcher this multitude, of whom three hundred and ninety-nine are probably innocent? The Silanian law is fit for barbarians. Every good feeling within us abhors the cruel wrong of murdering young and old, innocent and guilty, in one promiscuous massacre.’ ‘But that the Præfect of Rome should be murdered by one of his own slaves!’ murmured his hearers. ‘By one of his own slaves--but maddened, report says, by an intolerable wrong.’ ‘Wrong?’ answered Vestinus, in surprise. ‘Are not, then, our slaves our chattels? Has a slave rights?’ ‘He has the rights of a human being,’ answered Seneca. ‘Are not our slaves of the same flesh and blood as we? Has not a slave feelings? Has not a slave passions?’ ‘Yes; very bad passions,’ said young Vedius Pollio. ‘Do they stand alone in that respect?’ asked Seneca, fixing a keen look on him. ‘Do masters never show bad passions?’ Every one understood the allusion, for in the days of Augustus the young man’s ancestor, Vedius Pollio, had ordered a slave to be flung into the fish-pond to feed the lampreys, merely because he fell and broke a crystal vase. Augustus, who was dining with Pollio that day, was so indignant that he ordered the slave to be set free, and every crystal vase in the house to be broken. ‘Seneca will begin to think himself mistaken if I say that _I_ agree with him,’ said Petronius. ‘Nevertheless, I do. I cannot bear to enter a friend’s house and hear it clanking with chains and ringing with yells, like an ergastulum.’ ‘Petronius is the soul of good nature,’ said Cassius Longinus; ‘but I pity Rome if those maudlin views prevail.’