Note 71 — JOURNAL. (continued 2)
Reading edition
"The custom of exposing old, useless, or sick slaves, in an island of the Tyber, there to starve, seems to have been pretty common in Rome; and whoever recovered, after being so exposed, had his liberty given him, by an edict of the Emperor Claudius; where it was likewise forbid to kill any slave, merely for old age or sickness."—"We may imagine what others would practise, when it was the professed maxim of the elder Cato, to sell his superannuated slaves for any price, rather than maintain a useless burden."—Discourses of the Populousness of Ancient Nations.