pleasing the spectators.  What is marvellous, playing at dice is one of their most serious employments; and even sober, they are gamesters:  nay, so desperately do they venture upon the chance of winning or losing, that when their whole substance is played away, they stake their liberty and their persons upon one and the last throw.  The loser goes calmly into voluntary bondage.  However younger he be, however stronger, he tamely suffers himself to be bound and sold by the winner.  Such is their perseverance in an evil course:  they themselves call it honour.

Slaves of this class, they exchange in commerce, to free themselves too from the shame of such a victory.  Of their other slaves they make not such use as we do of ours, by distributing amongst them the several offices and employments of the family.  Each of them has a dwelling of his own, each a household to govern.  His lord uses him like a tenant, and obliges him to pay a quantity of grain, or of cattle, or of cloth.  Thus far only the subserviency of the slave extends.  All the other duties in a family, not the slaves, but the wives and children discharge.  To inflict stripes upon a slave, or to put him in chains, or to doom him to severe labour, are things rarely seen.  To kill them they sometimes are wont, not through correction or government, but in heat and rage, as they would an enemy, save that no vengeance or penalty follows.  The freedmen very little surpass the slaves, rarely are of moment in the house; in the community never, excepting only such nations where arbitrary dominion prevails.  For there they bear higher sway than the free-born, nay, higher than the nobles.  In other countries the inferior condition of freedmen is a proof of public liberty.

To the practice of usury and of increasing money by interest, they are strangers; and hence is found a better guard against it, than if it were forbidden.  They shift from land to land; and, still appropriating a portion suitable to the number of hands for manuring, anon parcel out the whole amongst particulars according to the condition and quality of each.  As the plains are very spacious, the allotments are easily assigned.  Every year they change, and cultivate a fresh soil; yet still there is ground to spare.  For they strive not to bestow labour proportionable to the fertility and compass of their lands, by planting orchards, by enclosing meadows, by watering gardens.  From the earth, corn only is extracted.  Hence they quarter not the year into so many seasons.  Winter, Spring, and Summer, they understand; and for each have proper appellations.  Of the name and blessings of Autumn, they are equally ignorant.