This is the unseen presence behind the great empire visited by the Antonines in the 160s, though we should not pretend that slaves on estates in Roman Britain, or under the Saca in India, or the Kushans, were any less severely treated. Indeed, parallel texts to that of Hu Sheng, listing their various skills along with names, survive from as late as the eighteenth century in the Caribbean and the nineteenth century in the Southern United States.
