The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 2 (of 6)

The highest price ever given for a man born in slavery, so far as I am able to discover, was that paid for Daphnus, the grammarian, who was sold by Natius of Pisaurum1184 to M. Scaurus, the first man in the state, for seven hundred thousand sesterces.1185 In our day, no doubt, comic actors have fetched a higher price, but then they were purchasing their own freedom. In the time of our ancestors, Roscius, the actor, gained five hundred thousand sesterces annually. Perhaps, too, a person might in the present instance refer to the case of the army commissary1186 in the Armenian war, which was of late years undertaken in favour of Tiridates; which officer, in our own time, received his manumission from Nero for the sum of thirteen million sesterces;1187 but, in this case, the consideration was the profit to be derived from the war,1188 and it was not the value of the man that was paid for. And so, too, when Lutorius Priscus bought of Sejanus, the eunuch, Pæzon, for fifty million sesterces,1189 the price was given, by Hercules! rather to gratify the passion of the purchaser, than in commendation of the beauty of the slave. Universal sorrow and consternation then reigning, the public were too much pre-occupied with it to put a stop to a bargain of so scandalous a nature.1190