על המידות הטובות כ״דOn the Virtues 24
א׳
1[121] These and others similar to these are his judgements as applied to the free. In the same strain, as is evident, he legislates for slaves as well, and allows them also to benefit by measures conceived in a spirit of kindness and humanity.
ב׳
2[122] The serfs who through the lack of the necessaries of life have subjected themselves to servitude to others ought not he holds to suffer anything unworthy of the freedom to which they were born, and he exhorts those who obtain their services to consider how incalculable is fortune and to respect their changed condition. As for the debtors, who through temporary loans have sunk into bearing both the name and the painfulness which their cruel situation entails, and those whom a more imperious compulsion has brought from freedom into slavery, he would not allow them to remain for ever in their evil plight, but gave them total remission in the seventh year.
ג׳
3[123] For creditors who have not recovered the debt, or have gained possession in some other way of those who were formerly free should be content, he says, with six years as a time for their service, and those who were not born to slavery should not be altogether deprived of comforting hope, but should pass back to the old independence of which they were deprived through adverse circumstances.
ד׳
4[124] And if another man’s slave, it may be with two generations of slavery behind him, takes refuge with you to obtain protection in fear of his master’s threats or through consciousness of some misdeed, or because without having committed any offence, he has found his master generally cruel and merciless, do not disregard his plea. For it is a sacrilegious act to surrender a suppliant and the slave is a suppliant who has fled to your hearth as to a temple, where he has a right to obtain sanctuary, and protected from treachery may preferably come to an honest and open agreement, or if that is not possible, be sold as a last resort. For though in changing masters there is no certainty which way the scale will turn, the uncertain evil is not so grave as the acknowledged.