Mute, motionless, fasting, the slaves had to stand by while their masters supped; A brutal and stupid barbarity often turned a house into the shambles of an executioner, sounding with scourges, chains, and yells.[20] One evening the Emperor Augustus was supping at the house of Vedius Pollio, when one of the slaves, who was carrying a crystal goblet, slipped down, and broke it.

Transported with rage Vedius at once ordered the slave to be seized, and plunged into the fish-pond as food to the lampreys.

The boy escaped from the hands of his fellow-slaves, and fled to Caesar's feet to implore, not that his life should be spared--a pardon which he neither expected nor hoped--but that he might die by a mode of death less horrible than being devoured by fishes.

Common as it was to torment slaves, and to put them to death, Augustus, to his honor be it spoken, was horrified by the cruelty of Vedius, and commanded both that the slave should be set free, that every crystal vase in the house of Vedius should be broken in his presence and that the fish pond should be filled up.

Even women inflicted upon their female slaves punishments of the most cruel atrocity for faults of the most venial character.