utilised; but as regards
labour in the city no such research has as yet been made,[328] and the
material is at once less fruitful and more difficult to handle. A few
words on this last point must suffice here.

We have seen in Chapter II. that there was plenty of employment at
Rome for freemen. Friedlaender, than whom no higher authority can be
quoted for the social life of the city, goes so far as to assert that
even under the early Empire a freeman could always obtain work if he
wished for it;[329] and even if we take this as a somewhat exaggerated
statement, it may serve to keep us from rushing to the other extreme
and picturing a population of idle free paupers. In fact we are bound
on general evidence to assume for our own period that he is in the
main right; the poor freeman of Rome had to live somehow, and the
cheap corn which he enjoyed was not given him gratis until a few years
before the Republic came to an end.[330] How did he get the money to
pay even the sum of six asses and a third for a modius of corn, or to
pay for shelter and clothing, which were assuredly not to be had for
nothing? We know again, that the gilds of trades (see above, p. 45)
continued to exist in the last century of the Republic,[331] though
the majority had to be suppressed owing to their misuse as political
clubs. Supposing that the members of these collegia were small
employers of labour, it is reasonable to assume that the labour they
employed was at least largely free; for the capital needed to invest,
at some risk, in a sufficient number of slaves, who would have to be
housed and fed, and whose lives would be uncertain in a crowded and
unhealthy city, could not, we must suppose, be easily found by such
men. Here and there, no doubt, we find traces of slave labour in
factories, e.g. as far back as the time of Plautus, if we can take him
as writing of Rome rather than translating from the Greek:

An te ibi vis inter istas versarier
Prosedas, pistorum amicas, reginas alicarias,
Miseras schoeno delibutas servilicolas sordidas?[332]

_Poenulus_, 265 foll.

But on the whole, we may with all due caution, in default of complete
investigation of the question, assume that the Roman slaves were
confined for the most part to the great and rich families, and were
not used by them to any great extent in productive industry, but
in supplying the luxurious needs of the household[333]. In all
probability research will show that free la