1 88 His attitude towards labour 



sophical speculations was a detail of no serious importance. Taking 

 this as a rough sketch of the position occupied by Romans of social 

 and political standing, we must add to it something more to cover the 

 case of Cicero. He was a 'new man.' He was not a great soldier. He 

 was not a revolutionary demagogue. He was ambitious. In order to 

 rise and take his place among the Roman nobles he had to fall in with 

 the sentiments prevailing among them : the newly-risen man could not 

 afford to leave the smallest doubt as to his devotion to the privileges 

 of his race and class. Thus, if there was a man in Rome peculiarly tied 

 to principles of human inequality, it was Cicero. 



Therefore we need not be surprised to find that this quick-witted 

 and warm-hearted man looked upon those engaged in handwork with 

 a genial contempt 1 sometimes touched with pity. To him, as to the 

 society in which he moved, bodily labour seemed to deaden interest 2 

 in higher things, in fact to produce a moral and mental degradation. 

 In the case of slaves, whose compulsory toil secured to their owners 

 the wealth and leisure needed (and by some employed) for politics or 

 self-cultivation, the sacrifice of one human being for the benefit of 

 another was an appliance of civilization accepted and approved from 

 time immemorial. But the position of the freeman working for wages, 

 particularly of the man who lived by letting out his bodily strength 3 

 to an employer for money, was hardly less degrading in the eyes of 

 Roman society, and therefore in those of Cicero. We have no descrip- 

 tion of the Roman mob by one of themselves. That the rough element 4 

 was considerable, and ready to bear a hand in political disorder, is 

 certain. But they were what circumstances had made them, and it is 

 probable that the riotous party gangs of Cicero's time were not usually 

 recruited among the best of the wage-earners. It is clear that many 

 slaves took part in riots, and no doubt a number of freedmen also. 

 In many rural districts disputes between neighbours easily developed 

 into acts of force and the slaves of rival claimants did battle for their 

 several owners. Moreover, slaves might belong, not to an individual, 

 but to a company 5 exploiting some state concession of mineral or other 

 rights. In such cases 'regrettable incidents' were always possible. And 

 the wild herdsmen (pastores) roaming armed in the lonely hill-country 

 were a ready-made soldiery ever inclined to brigandage or servile 



1 See Brutus 257, de orat I 83, 263, n 40, de finibus v 52, Tttsc disp I 34, in 

 77> v IO 4- The mes sores whose rustic brogue is referred to in de orat ill 46 surely are 

 free Italians. 



2 From lack of the ingenuae artes and liberates doctrinae etc. 



3 de ojfic I 150 inliberales autem et sordidi quaestus mercennariorum omnium quorum 

 operas non quorum artes emuntur: est enim in illis ipsa merces auctoramentum servitutis. 



4 The operae often referred to. 



5 The familiae pub lie ano rum. The publicani complained loudly when their slave-staff 

 was in danger from the violence of others. Cf de imperio Pompei 16. 



