§158. The Treatment of Slaves.--There is nothing in the stern and selfish character of the Roman that would lead us to expect from him gentleness or mercy in the treatment of his slaves. At the same time he was too shrewd and sharp in all matters of business to forget that a slave was a piece of valuable property, and to run the risk of the loss or injury of that property by wanton cruelty. Much depended, of course, upon the character and temper of the individual owner, and Juvenal gives us to understand that the mistress was likely to be more spiteful and unreasonable than the master. But the case of Vedius Pollio, in the time of Augustus, who ordered a slave to be thrown alive into a pond as food for the fish because he had broken a goblet, may be balanced by that of Cicero, whose letters to his slave Tiro disclose real affection and tenderness of feeling. The passionate man nowadays may kill or maim the dog or horse, although it has a money value and he needs its services, and most of us know of worn-out horses turned out upon the common to die. But these things are exceptional, and if we consider the age in which the Roman lived and pass for a moment the matter of punishments, we may say that he was rather pitiless as a taskmaster than habitually cruel to his slaves. §159. Of the daily life of the town slave we know but little except that his work was light and he was the envy of the drudge upon the farm. Of the treatment of the latter we get some knowledge from the writings of the elder Cato, who may be taken as a fair specimen of the rugged farmer of his time (234-149 B.C.). He held that slaves should always be at work except in the hours, few enough at best, allowed them for sleep, and he took pains to find plenty for his to do even on the public holidays. He advised farmers to sell immediately worn-out draft cattle, diseased sheep, broken implements, aged and feeble slaves, "and other useless things." §160. Food and Dress.--Slaves were fed on coarse food, but when Cato tells us that in addition to the monthly allowance of grain (about a bushel) they were to have merely the fallen olives, or, failing these, a little salt fish and vinegar, we must remember that this was no less and no worse than the common food of the poorer Romans. Every schoolboy knows that grain was the only ration of the sturdy soldiers that won Caesar's battles for him. A slave was furnished a tunic every year, and a cloak and a pair of wooden shoes every two years. Worn-out clothes were returned to the _vīlicus_ to be made up into patchwork quilts. We are told that this same _vīlicus_ often cheated the slaves by stinting their allowance for his own benefit, and we can not doubt that he, a slave himself, was more likely to be brutal and cruel than the master would have been.