But it is not difficult to perceive that those who assert the contrary, in a certain respect, speak rightly. For slavery and a slave are predicated in two ways. For a man may be a slave, and perform the offices of a servant by law; since law is a certain compact, in which it is said that things which are taken in battle are the property of the conquerors. Many persons, however, that are conversant with the laws, accuse this justice, as they do an orator who decrees what is illegal, as if it were a dreadful thing that he who is vanquished by force should become the slave of him who by force can vanquish him, and is superior to him in power. And on this subject, even among the wise, some are of this, and others are of a different opinion. The cause however of this ambiguity and variety of arguments is, that virtue, when accompanied with ability and means, is in the highest degree able to compel, and that which vanquishes always possesses a transcendency of a certain good; so that it seems that force is not without virtue, but that the ambiguity is alone concerning the just. For on this account, to some persons justice appears to be benevolence, but to others this very thing seems to be the just, that the superior and more powerful person should govern. Among these dissonant opinions, that is of no worth, either as to strength or credibility, which asserts that he who excels in virtue ought not to govern, and possess absolute authority. In short, some persons adhering as they fancy to a certain justice, for law is something just, maintain that slavery according to war is just, yet they do not assert that it is wholly so. For it is possible that the principle of the wars may not be just; and no one will say that a man who is in slavery undeservedly is therefore a slave; for if so, it may happen that men of the noblest families may be slaves, and the offspring of slaves, if they should chance to be taken prisoners and sold. Hence they are not willing that such persons as these, but that Barbarians should be called slaves; though when they say this, they investigate nothing else than, as we said from the first, who it is that is a slave by nature. For it is necessary to assert, that some persons, wherever they may be situated, or in whatever circumstances they may be, are slaves, but others are not in any situation. The like also must be said respecting nobility. For those of noble descent are not considered as such in their own country only, but every where; while the Barbarians are only respected on this account at home; as if the one were simply noble and free, but the others not; as also the Helen of Theodectes says: From roots divine my lineage I derive On either side. Who dares then call me slave? When, however, they say this, they define the slave and the free man, the noble and the ignoble, by nothing else than virtue and vice. For they think it reasonable that as man is generated from man, and brute from brute, so likewise a good man should be the offspring of good men. And it is indeed the intention of nature to do this, but frequently she is unable to effect her purpose. It is evident, therefore, that the doubt has some reason in it, and that the one are not slaves, but the others free by nature; and that in some instances it is obvious, that it is advantageous for one person to be a slave, and another to be a master; and that it is just that one person ought to be governed, but another ought to govern in the way that nature intended. To govern ill, however, is disadvantageous to both. For the same thing is advantageous to the part and to the whole, to the body and to the soul. But the slave is a certain part of the master, being as it were something animated belonging to the body of the master, but a separate part. Hence there is something advantageous, and a friendship between the master and the slave, when they are thus relatively disposed by nature. But the contrary takes place among those who are thus connected together by law and violence.
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