This law was, of all others, the most important; as the prospect of liberty, which it afforded, must have been a continual source of the most pleasing reflections, and have greatly sweetened the draught, even of the most bitter slavery.
Thus then, to the eternal honour of AEgypt and Athens, they were the only places that we can find, where slaves were considered with any humanity at all.

The rest of the world seemed to vie with each other, in the debasement and oppression of these unfortunate people.

They used them with as much severity as they chose; they measured their treatment only by their own passion and caprice; and, by leaving them on every occasion, without the possibility of an appeal, they rendered their situation the most melancholy and intolerable, that can possibly be conceived.
* * * * * FOOTNOTES [Footnote 016: Herodotus.

L.2.

113.] [Footnote 017: "Apud AEgyptios, si quis servum sponte occiderat, eum morte damnari aeque ac si liberum occidisset, jubebant leges &c." Diodorus Sic.