CHAPTER XI

SOURCES OF INCOME AND MEANS OF LIVING. THE ROMAN'S DAY

§403. It is evident from what has been said that abundant means were necessary to support the state in which every Roman of position lived. It will be of interest to see how the great mass of the people also earned the scantier living with which they were forced to be content. For the sake of this inquiry it will be convenient, if not very accurate, to divide the people of Rome into the three great classes of nobles, knights, and commons, into which political history has distributed them. At the same time it must be remembered that there was no hard and fixed line drawn between any two of these classes; a noble might if he pleased associate himself with the knights, provided only that he possessed the required sum of $20,000, and any freeborn citizen might aspire to the highest offices of the state, however mean the circumstances of his birth, however poor in pocket or in talent he might be.

§404. Careers of the Nobles.--The nobles inherited certain of the aristocratic notions of the old patriciate, which limited their business activities and had much to do with the corruption of public life in the last century of the Republic. Men in their position were held to be above all manner of work, with the hands or with the head, for the sake of sordid gain. Agriculture alone was free from debasing associations, as it has been in England within our own time, and statecraft and war were the only careers fit to engage their energies. Even as statesmen and generals, too, they served their fellow citizens without material reward, for no salaries were drawn by the senators, none were attache