In Attica, the institution of slavery,[68] though attended, as it everywhere must be, by innumerable evils, nevertheless exhibited itself under the mildest form which it anywhere assumed in the ancient world.[69] With their characteristic attention to the interests of humanity, the Athenians enacted a law, in virtue of which slaves could indict their masters for assault and battery. Hyperides, accordingly, observed in his oration against Mantitheos, “our laws making no distinction in this respect between freemen and slaves, grant to all alike the privilege of bringing an action against those who insult or injure them.”[70] To the same effect spoke Lycurgus[71] in his first oration against Lycophron; but Demosthenes has preserved the law which empowered any Athenian, not labouring under legal disability, to denounce to the Thesmothetæ the person who offered violence to man, woman, or boy, whether slave or free. The action was tried before the court of Heliæa, and numerous were the examples of men who had suffered death for crimes committed against bondsmen. Not, therefore, without reason did the orator eulogise the humane spirit of the law, or dwell upon the beneficial effects which a knowledge of its existence must produce among those barbarous nations who furnished Greece with servile labourers.[72] Another privilege enjoyed by the slave class in Attica was that of purchasing their own freedom, as often as, by the careful management of the peculium secured them by law, they were enabled to offer to their owners an equivalent for their services.[73] ----- Footnote 68: For the condition of the public slaves δημόσιοι see the notes on Demosth. Olynth. ii. 7. Orat. Att. t. v. p. 45. Footnote 69: Occasionally we find them sleeping with their masters in the same apartment, which, doubtless, resembled the _chambre de ménage_ of the old French. Aristoph. Nub. 5, et Schol. Footnote 70: Ap. Athen. vi. 92. Footnote 71: Lycurg. Frag. xi. Orat. Att. iv. 482. Cf. Meurs. Them. Att. ii. 11. Petit. Legg. Att. vi. 5. 470. Plato was less just to them than the laws of his country. If, in his imaginary state, a slave killed a slave in self-defence he was judged innocent; if a freeman, he was to be put to death like a parricide. De Legg. t. viii. p. 150. Footnote 72: Cont. Mid. § 14. Footnote 73: Petit. Legg. Att. ii. 6, p. 179. -----