Note 15 — Chapter I
Reading edition
Everyone has shuddered at the awful picture drawn by Juvenal in his Sixth Satire of the fashionable Roman dame who had eight husbands in five years and who ordered her slave to immediate crucifixion. When her husband mildly ventured to suggest that there should at least be some evidence of guilt and that no time should be considered long where the life of a man is in question he was snubbed, just as the Roman lady who was expostulated with for taking her bath in the presence of man slaves asked "An servus homo?" The horrible but pithy dialogue reads:
"Pone crucem servo." "Meruit quo crimine servus Supplicium? Quis testis adest? Quis detulit? Audi Nulla umquam de morte hominis cunctatio longa est" "O demens, ita servus homo est? Nil fecerit, esto Hoc volo, sic jubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas." —Juvenal, Sat., VI, ll. 219-223.
"The cross for the slave!" "What is the charge? What is the evidence? Who laid the information? Hear what he has to say—No delay is ever great where the death of a man is in question." "You driveller! So a slave is a man! Have it your own way—he did nothing. I wish it, that is my order, my wish is a good enough reason."
The natural death for a Roman slave was on the cross or under the scourge.