23
First of all, remember never again from that time forward to think yourself free or noble. All that— your pride of race, your freedom, your ancient lineage—you will leave outside the threshold, let me tell you, when you go in after having sold yourself into such service; for Freedom will refuse to enter with you when you go in for purposes so base and humble. So you will be a slave perforce, however distasteful you may find the name, and not the slave of one man but of many; and you will drudge from morn till night: with hanging head, “for shameful hire.”Either a variation upon Homer (cf. Odyssey19, 341: Iliad 13, 84, 21, 444-5), or a quotation from a lost epic. Since you were not brought up in the company of Slavery from your boyhood but made her acquaintance late and are getting your schooling from her at an advanced age, you will not be very successful or highly valuable to your master, — The memory of your freedom, stealing over you, plays the mischief with you, sometimes causing you to be skittish, and for that reason to come off badly in slavery.
23
Perhaps, however, you think it quite enough to establish your freedom that you are not the son of a Pyrrhias or a Zopyrion, and that you have not been sold in the market like a Bithynian by a loud-voiced auctioneer. But, my excellent friend, when the first of the month arrives and side by side with Pyrrhias and Zopyrion you stretch out your hand like the rest of the servants and take your earnings, whatever they are—that is sale! There was no need of an auctioneer in the case of a man who put himself up at auction and for a long time solicited a master.
