The policy of the ancient republics of Greece, and that of Rome, though it honored agriculture more than manufactures or foreign trade, yet seems rather to have discouraged the latter employments, than to have given any direct or intentional encouragement to the former. In several of the ancient states of Greece, foreign trade was prohibited altogether; and in several others the employments of artificers and manufacturers were considered as hurtful to the strength and agility of the human body, as rendering it incapable of those habits which their military and gymnastic exercises endeavored to form in it, and as thereby disqualifying it more or less for undergoing the fatigues and encountering the dangers of war. Such occupations were considered as fit only for slaves, and the free citizens of the State were prohibited from exercising them. Even in those States where no such prohibition took place, as in Rome and Athens, the great body of the people were in effect excluded from all the trades which are now commonly exercised by the lower sort of the inhabitants of towns. Such trades were, at Athens and Rome, all occupied by the slaves of the rich, who exercised them for the benefit of their masters, whose wealth, power, and protection made it almost impossible for a poor freeman to find a market for his work, when it came into competition with that of the slaves of the rich.[1] Slaves, however, are very seldom inventive; and all the most important improvements, either in machinery, or
- ↑ The rich man of antiquity was a kind of "treasure hoarder." His idea was to preserve his wealth intact, and add to it as occasion offered; but the notion of increasing it in the process of circulation was for the most part foreign to him. His domestic establishment was self-sufficient. He bought what slave artificers he required, and enriched himself directly by their labor. "Trade" proper was a very insignificant factor in ancient society, while "production" primarily for profit was hardly known before the declining period of the Roman empire (Com. Arist. Ethics I. 5).—Ed.
