§155. Such a staff as has been described belonged, of course, to a wealthy and fashionable man. Persons with more good sense had only such slaves as could be profitably employed. Atticus, the friend of Cicero, a man of sufficient wealth and social position to defy the demands of fashion, kept in his service only _vernae_ (§138), and had them so carefully trained that the meanest could read and write for him. Cicero, on the other hand, could not think it good form to have a slave do more than one kind of work, and Cicero was not to be considered a rich man. §156. Legal Status of Slaves.--The power of the master over the slave, called _dominium_ (§37), was absolute. He could assign him the most laborious and degrading tasks, punish him even unto death at his sole discretion, sell him, and kill him (or turn him out in the street to die) when age or illness had made him incapable of labor. Slaves were mere chattels in the eyes of the law, like oxen or horses. They could not hold property, they could not make contracts, they could testify in the courts only on the rack, they could not marry. The free person _in potestāte_ was little better off legally (§31), but there were two important differences between the son, for example, and the slave. The son was relieved of the _potestās_ on the death of the _pater familiās_ (§34), but the death of the master did not make the slave free. Again, the condition of the son was ameliorated by _pietās_ (§73) and public opinion (§§32, 33), but there was no _pietās_ for the slave and public opinion hardly operated in his behalf. It did enable him to hold as his own his scanty savings (§162), and it gave a sort of sanction to the permanent unions of male and female slaves called _contubernium_, but in other respects it did little for his benefit. §157. Under the Empire various laws were passed that seemed to recognize the slave as a person, not a thing: it was forbidden to sell him for the purpose of fighting with wild beasts in the amphitheater; it was provided that the slave should not be put to death by the master simply because he was too old or too ill to work, and that a slave "exposed" (§95) should become free by the act; at last the master was forbidden to kill the slave at all without due process of law. As a matter of fact these laws were very generally disregarded, much as are our laws for the prevention of cruelty to animals, and it may be said that it was only the influence of Christianity that at last changed the condition of the slave for the better.