right on their side, may be easily seen. For the words slavery and
slave are used in two senses. There is a slave or slavery by law as
well as by nature. The law of which I speak is a sort of convention-
the law by which whatever is taken in war is supposed to belong to the
victors. But this right many jurists impeach, as they would an
orator who brought forward an unconstitutional measure: they detest
the notion that, because one man has the power of doing violence and
is superior in brute strength, another shall be his slave and subject.
Even among philosophers there is a difference of opinion. The origin
of the dispute, and what makes the views invade each other's
territory, is as follows: in some sense virtue, when furnished with
means, has actually the greatest power of exercising force; and as
superior power is only found where there is superior excellence of
some kind, power seems to imply virtue, and the dispute to be simply
one about justice (for it is due to one party identifying justice with
goodwill while the other identifies it with the mere rule of the
stronger). If these views are thus set out separately, the other views
have no force or plausibility against the view that the superior in
virtue ought to rule, or be master. Others, clinging, as they think,
simply to a principle of justice (for law and custom are a sort of
justice), assume that slavery in accordance with the custom of war
is justified by law, but at the same moment they deny this. For what
if the cause of the war be unjust? And again, no one would ever say he
is a slave who is unworthy to be a slave. Were this the case, men of
the highest rank would be slaves and the children of slaves if they or
their parents chance to have been taken captive and sold. Wherefore
Hellenes do not like to call Hellenes slaves, but confine the term
to barbarians. Yet, in using this language, they really mean the
natural slave of whom we spoke at first; for it must be admitted
that some are slaves everywhere, others nowhere. The same principle
applies to nobility. Hellenes regard themselves as noble everywhere,
and not only in their own country, but they deem the barbarians
noble only when at home, thereby implying that there are two sorts
of nobility and freedom, the one absolute, the other relative. The
Helen of Theodectes says:

     Who would presume to call me servant who am on both sides
sprung from the stem of the Gods?

What does this mean but that they distinguish freedom and slavery,
noble and humble birth, by the two principles of good and evil? They
think that as men and animals beget men and animals, so from good
men a good man springs. But this is what nature, though she may intend
it, cannot always accomplish.

  We see then that there is some foundation for this difference of
opinion, and that all are not either slaves by nature or freemen by
nature, and also that there is in some cases a marked distinction
between the two classes, rendering it expedient and right for the
one to be slaves and the others to be masters: the one practicing
obedience, the others exercising the authority and lordship which
nature intended them to have. The abuse of this authority is injurious
to both; for the interests of part and whole, of body and soul, are
the same, and the slave is a part of the master, a living but
separated part of his bodily frame. Hence, where the relation of
master and slave between them is natural they are friends and have a
common interest, but where it rests merely on law and force the
reverse is true.

                                   VII

  The previous remarks are quite enough to show that the rule of a
master is not a constitutional rule, and that all the different
kinds of rule are not, as some affirm, the same with each other. For
there is one rule exercised over subjects who are by nature free,
another over subjects who are by nature slaves. The rule of a
household is a monarchy, for every house is under one head: whereas
constitutional rule is a government of freemen and equals. The
master is not called a master because he has science, but because he
is of a certain character, and the same remark applies to the slave
and the freeman. Still there may be a science for the master and
science for the slave. The science of the slave would be such as the
man of Syracuse taught, who made money by instructing slaves in
their ordinary duties. And such a knowledge may be carried further, so
as to include cookery and similar menial arts. For some duties are
of the more necessary, others of the more honorable sort; as the
proverb says, 'slave before slave, master before master.' But all such
branches of knowledge are servile. There is likewise a science of
the master, which teaches the use of slaves; for the master as such is
concerned, not with the acquisition, but with the use of them. Yet
this so-called science is not anything great or wonderful; for the
master need only know how to order that which the slave must know
how to execute. Hence those who are in a position which places them
above toil have stewards who attend to their households while they
occupy themselves with philosophy or with politics. But the art of
acquiring slaves, I mean of justly acquiring them, differs both from
the art of the master and the art of the slave, being a species of
hunting or war. Enough of the distinction between master and slave.

                                   VIII

  Let us now inquire into property generally, and into the art of
getting wealth, in accordance with our usual method, for a slave has
been shown to be a part of property. The first question is whether the
art of getting wealth is the same with the art of managing a household
or a part of it, or instrumental to it; and if the last, whether in
the way that the art of making shuttles is instrumental to the art
of weaving, or in the way that the casting of bronze is instrumental
to the art of the statuary, for they are not instrumental in the
same way, but the one provides tools and the other material; and by