The term for a slave born and bred in the family was _verna_;​[46] and these slaves seem to have been entitled by custom to privileges and indulgences beyond others—a sufficient reason why the masters would not be fond of rearing many of that kind.​[47] Whoever is acquainted with the maxims of our planters will acknowledge the justness of this observation.​[48] Atticus is much praised by his historian for the care which he took in recruiting his family from the slaves born in it.​[49] May we not thence infer that that practice was not then very common? The names of slaves in the Greek comedies—Syrus, Mysus, Geta, Thrax, Davus, Lydus, Phyrx, etc., afford a presumption that at Athens, at least, most of the slaves were imported from foreign nations. The Athenians, says Strabo, gave to their slaves either the names of the nations whence they were bought, as Lydus, Syrus; or the names that were most common among those nations, as Manes or Midas to a Phrygian, Tibias to a Paphlagonian. Demosthenes, after having mentioned a law which forbid any man to strike the slave of another, praises the humanity of this law, and adds that if the barbarians from whom slaves were bought had information that their countrymen met with such gentle treatment, they would entertain a great esteem for the Athenians. Isocrates, too, insinuates that the slaves of the Greeks were generally or very commonly barbarians. Aristotle, in his _Politics_, plainly supposes that a slave is always a foreigner. The ancient comic writers represented the slaves as speaking a barbarous language. This was an imitation of nature. It is well known that Demosthenes, in his nonage, had been defrauded of a large fortune by his tutors, and that afterwards he recovered, by a prosecution of law, the value of his patrimony. His orations on that occasion still remain, and contain a very exact detail of the whole substance left by his father, in money, merchandise, houses, and slaves, together with the value of each particular. Among the rest were 52 slaves, handicraftsmen—viz., 32 sword-cutlers and 20 cabinet-makers,​[50] all males; not a word of any wives, children, or family, which they certainly would have had had it been a common custom at Athens to breed from the slaves; and the value of the whole must have depended very much on that circumstance. No female slaves are even so much as mentioned, except some housemaids who belonged to his mother. This argument has great force, if it be not altogether decisive.