Note 57 — Chapter VII · SLAVES.

The servile wars of Sicily assumed a far more important character, and resembled rather those civil commotions in states in which one division of the citizens carries on hostilities against the other; for the wealth of the islanders increasing rapidly after the expulsion of the Carthaginians, they purchased great multitudes of slaves, chiefly from the East, whom they employed in the usual drudgery, and treated with extraordinary rigour, branding them in the body like cattle:—Χαρακτῆρα ἐπέβαλλον καὶ στιγμὰς τοῖς σώμασιν. Diodor. Sicul. 34. ap. Phot. Biblioth. Cod. 244. p. 384. Bekk.