They are the necessary and inevitable product of the growth
of a town population, and of the resulting division of labour. The
following passage from a work on industrial organisation in England
may be taken as closely representing the same process in early
Rome:[74] "The town arose as a centre in which the surplus produce of
many villages could be profitably disposed of by exchange. Trade
thus became a settled occupation, and trade prepared the way for
the establishment of the handicrafts, by furnishing capital for the
support of the craftsmen, and by creating a regular market for their
products. It was possible for a great many bodies of craftsmen,--the
weavers, tailors, butchers, bakers, etc., to find a livelihood, each
craft devoting itself to the supply of a single branch of those wants
which the village household had attempted very imperfectly to satisfy
by its own labours."
As in mediaeval Europe, so in early Rome, the same conditions produced
the same results: we find the craftsmen of the town forming themselves
into _gilds_, not only for the protection of their trade, but from a
natural instinct of association, and providing these gilds, on the
model of the older groups of family and gens, with a religious centre
and a patron deity.
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