ed it to their very dear son. Also to Julius
Athenodorus, his brother, who lived thirty-five years. Euthenia set it up.
He has been placed here, to whose burial the guild of rag-dealers has
contributed three hundred denarii."[112] People of all ages have craved a
respectable burial, and the pathetic picture which Horace gives us in one
of his Satires of the fate which befell the poor and friendless at the
end of life, may well have led men of that class to make provisions which
would protect them from such an experience, and it was not an unnatural
thing for these organizations to be made up of men working in the same
trade. The statutes of several guilds have come down to us. One found at
Lanuvium has articles dealing particularly with burial regulations. They
read in part:[113]

"It has pleased the members, that whoever shall wish to join this guild
shall pay an initiation fee of one hundred sesterces, and an amphora of
good wine, as well as five _asses_ a month. Voted likewise, that if any
man shall not have paid his dues for six consecutive months, and if the
lot common to all men has befallen him, his claim to a burial shall not be
considered, even if he shall have so stipulated in his will. Voted
likewise, that if any man from this body of ours, having paid his dues,
shall depart, there shall come to him from the treasury three hundred
sesterces, from which sum fifty sesterces, which shall be divided at the
funeral pyre, shall go for the funeral rites. Furthermore, the obsequies
shall be performed on foot."

Besides the need of comradeship, and the desire to provide for a
respectable burial, we can see another motive which brought the weak and
lowly together in these associations. They were oppressed by the sense of
their own insignificance in society, and by the pitifully small part which
they played in the affairs of the world. But if they could establish a
society of their own, with concerns peculiar to itself which they would
administer, and if they could create positions of honor and importance in
this organization, even the lowliest man in Rome would have a chance to
satisfy that craving to exercise power over others which all of us feel,
to hold titles and distinctions, and to wear the insignia of office and
rank. This motive worked itself out in the establishment of a complete
hierarchy of offices, as we saw in part in an African inscription given
above. The Roman state was reproduced in miniature in these