The third portion of Roman society consisted of slaves. This unhappy class formed a large portion of the Roman population from an early period. So numerous were they at one time, that when it was proposed to distinguish them from the citizens by a particular dress, the proposal was negatived, on the ground that it would be dangerous to the state, if these bondmen discovered their numerical strength. Domestic occupations of all kinds were allotted to slaves, numbers of them were employed as artisans. Some of them were devoted to professional pursuits; and great men had among their slaves, physicians, librarians, and secretaries: a state of things obviously most pernicious, as the moral influence exerted by them upon the families with whom they resided must have been most injurious: nor was the peril small from having so large a class of persons in the community, whose feelings towards their masters, in a multitude of instances, must have been deeply embittered. At one period, the possessors of slaves in Rome exercised over them a perfectly irresponsible authority, and scourged and put them to death at pleasure: but under the emperors Adrian, and the Antonines, the shield of legal protection was extended over this oppressed portion of society. Some melioration in the state of Roman slaves, no doubt, was secured during the last age of the empire; but the wrongs inseparable from slavery were still endured, and a disposition to be avenged on their oppressors still nourished; for amidst the scenes of terror and violence, which marked the taking of Rome by Alaric, we have seen forty thousand slaves rising to join the Goths in shedding Roman blood, and in trampling in the dust the remains of Roman pride and greatness. That the servile part of the Roman population, ministering, as they did, to the luxury, the extravagance, and the vices of their masters, partook of the prevalent moral corruption of the times is certain; and thus society, in the imperial city, presented the picture so affectingly described by the prophet, "the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint, from the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it: but wounds and bruises and putrifying sores; they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment."[7]