7 HIS SENTENCE WAS NOT THE SACK, NOR SERPENTS
2. EVEN SLAVES HAVE THE RIGHT OF REFUGE AT THE STATUE
For slaves, if pressed by their masters’ unbearable cruelty, used to take refuge at the emperors’ statues, and if they implored assistance with just reason, they were released from their former master’s power. In Inst. Just.
[1.8.2] Antoninus, consulted by certain governors of the provinces concerning slaves who flee to a sacred temple, or to the statues of the princes, ruled that if the savagery of the masters seems unbearable, they be compelled to sell their slaves at good terms. Of the same sentiment is the constitution of Valeflus, Theodore, and Arcadius, Codex Just. [1.25.1].
Suetonius [Tib., 58]; Gradually this kind of reproach proceeded to the point that to have killed a slave or changed one’s clothes at a statue of Augustus also became capital offenses, etc. This right of asylum was later transferred to the basilicas of the Apostles and Martyrs, as we read in many places of the law. See Augustine [DCD, 1.4].
ALTHOUGH THE LAW ALLOWS ANYTHING IN DEALING WITH A SLAVE
As toward him over whom the power of life and death is permitted to the master.
THERE IS SOMETHING IN DEALING BETWEEN MAN AND MAN
For nature endowed all living things with society, each in its own kind, in order that man may not violate man, nor dog dog, nor horse horse. In order that this meaning might be brought out clearly, I have changed the old reading.
WHO DID NOT HATE VEDIUS POLLIO
Argument from contraries. For if Vedius Pollio excited hatred on every side by casting slaves into his fish pond to be devoured by muraenae (lampreys), this is then something not permitted by the common code of living beings for man to do to man. What Seneca has to say about Vedius Pollio agrees with the authority of Pliny, whose words are [9.23.(39).77]:
Vedius Pollio, knight of Rome, one of the friends of the deified Augustus, found in this animal (the lamprey) a means of displaying his cruelty when he threw slaves sentenced to death into ponds of lampreys — not that wild animals on land were not sufficient for this purpose, but because with any other kind of creature he was not able to have the spectacle of a man being torn entirely to pieces at one moment. For this reason Tacitus [Ann., 1.10.5] reckons among the charges against Augustus by detractors, the excesses of gedius Pollio, because he was Augustus’ friend. In Ann.
[12.60.3] Tacitus lists Vedius among the names of influential Roman knights, who had great power during Augustus’ reign. I wonder what Erasmus had in mind when in his second edition of Seneca he replaced Vedium with Atedium in On Anger [3.40.2], where Seneca relates the same story, when Coelius Rhodiginus [Lex. Ant., 12.52] has set forth the correct reading, referring to the words of Seneca himself, although without
mentioning the author by name. Seneca’s words are: When Augustus was dining with Vedius Pollio, one of the slaves had broken a crystal goblet.
Vedius ordered him to be led away to die, and that too in no common
fashion. He ordered him to be thrown to feed the muraenae, some of which fish he kept in a pond of great site. Who mould not think he did this out of luxury? But it was out of cruelty. The boy slipped through the hands of those mho tried to seige him, and flung himself at Caesar’s feet in order to beg for nothing more than that he might die in some different may, and not be eaten. Caesar was shocked at this novel form of cruelty, and ordered him to be let go, and all the crystal mare to be broken in his presence, and the pond to be filled up.
MURAENAE (LAMPREYS)
Muraena (which the Greeks call myraina) according to Varro [Ling. Lat., 5.77] was a fish considered to be a prime delicacy, and which even now is considered very costly in its right season: to what extent I can judge from the description by Pliny and others. This fish is commonly called
“lamprey,” not too different from the eel. As proof of how highly the Romans esteemed the muraenae: Antonia, wife of Drusus, put earrings on a muraena which she loved; [Pliny, 9.55.81.172] and Crassus, a severe man, putting on mourning, bewailed one lost as flit were his daughter. Also the Muraenae took their name from the muraena of which they were very fond. Notable is the error of Perottus who imagines them to be called
“Muraenae” from the spots on the body, contrary to the evidence of Varro, Macrobius and Columella. He is also dreaming when he writes that Chirrus devised fishponds (vivaria) for them. For Pliny, Varro, Columella and Macrobius give his name as C. Hirrius, a man from whom Caesar received six thousand by weight when he gave a triumphal banquet for the people. Read more in Pliny [9.55.81 (171)], Macrobius [Sat., 3.15], Varro [De Re Rust., 3.17.3], Columella [8.16.5f; 8.16.10].
FISHPOND (VIVARIUM)
Vivarium here is used for piscina, contrary to the distinction made by Gellius [2.20.1] who defines a vivarium as a place where live animals are kept in the wild state, sometimes called leporarium, sometimes
roborarium. Yet in this meaning one finds the word used more than once by writers. Juvenal [Sat., 4.50f]:
Ready to affirm that the fish was a run-away That had long feasted in Caesar’s fishponds.
Seneca, Ep. Mor. [90.7]: But for my part, do not hold that philosophy devised these shrewdly contrived dwellings of ours which rise story upon story, where city crowds against city, any more than that she invented the fishponds, which are enclosed for the purpose of saving men’s gluttony from having to run the risk of storms...
WHICH HE MEANT TO EAT That is, was so doing for the sake of luxury.
OR WHETHER HE KEPT LAMPREYS ONLY TO FEED THEM ON SUCH FOOD
In order to exercise cruelty.