In a population consisting largely of slaves, who were generally of the same race as their masters, often men of education and intelligence and employed in positions of confidence, legal proceedings must frequently have turned upon their evidence, in both civil and criminal cases. Their evidence, however, was inadmissible, except when given under torture, and then, by a singular confusion of logic, it was estimated as the most convincing kind of testimony. Consequently, the torturing of slaves formed an important portion of the administration of Athenian justice. Either party to a suit might offer his slaves to the torturer or demand those of his opponent, and a refusal to produce them was regarded as seriously compromising. When both parties tendered their slaves, the judge decided as to which of them should be received. Even without bringing a suit into court, disputants could have their slaves tortured for evidence with which to effect an amicable settlement. In formal litigation, the defeated suitor paid whatever damages his adversary’s slaves might have undergone at the hands of the professional torturer, who, as an expert in such matters, was empowered to assess the amount of depreciation that they had sustained. It affords a curious commentary on the high estimation in which such testimony was held to observe that, when a man’s slaves had testified against him on the rack, they were not protected from his subsequent vengeance, which might be exercised upon them without restriction. As the laws of Greece passed away, leaving few traces on the institutions of other races, save on those of Rome, it will suffice to add that the principal modes in which torture was sanctioned by them were the wheel, the ladder or rack, the comb with sharp teeth, the low vault, in which the unfortunate patient was thrust and bent double, the burning tiles, the heavy hogskin whip, and the injection of vinegar into the nostrils.[1384] In the earlier days of Rome, the general principles governing the administration of torture were the same as in Greece. Under the Republic, the free citizen was not liable to it, and the evidence of slaves was not received without it. With the progress of despotism, however, the safeguards which surrounded the freeman were broken down, and autocratic emperors had little scruple in sending their subjects to the rack. Even as early as the second Triumvirate, a prætor named Q. Gallius, in saluting Octavius, chanced to have a double tablet under his toga. To the timid imagination of the future emperor, the angles of the tablet, outlined under the garment, presented the semblance of a sword, and he fancied Gallius to be the instrument of a conspiracy against his life. Dissembling his fears for the moment, he soon caused the unlucky prætor to be seized while presiding at his own tribunal, and, after torturing him like a slave without extracting a confession, put him to death.[1385]