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Again, the work of all artisans (_opifices_) is sordid;
there can be nothing honourable in a workshop."[71]
If this view of the low character of the work of the artisan and
retailer should be thought too obviously a Greek one, let the reader
turn to the description by Livy[72]--a true gentleman--of the low
origin of Terentius Varro, the consul who was in command at Cannae; he
uses the same language as Cicero. "He sprang from an origin not merely
humble but sordid: his father was a butcher, who sold his own meat,
and employed his son in this slavish business." The story may not be
true, and indeed it is not a very probable one, but it well represents
the inherited feeling towards retail trade of the Roman of the higher
classes of society,--a feeling so tenacious of life, that even in
modern England, where it arose from much the same causes as in the
ancient world, it has only within the last century begun to die
out.[73]
Yet in Rome these humble workers existed and made a living for
themselves from the very beginning, as far as we can guess, of real
city life.


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