In  spite  of  the  grossness  and  base  vulgarity  of  sudden  wealth,
portrayed  by  Petronius  and  Juvenal,  the  new  class  of  free
artisans  and  traders  had  often,  so  far  as  we  can  judge  by  stone
records,  a  sound  and  healthy  life,  sobered  and  dignified  by
honest  toil,  and  the  pride  of  skill  and  independence.  Individu-
ally weak  and  despised,  they  were  finding  the  means  of
developing  an  organisation,  which  at  once  cultivated  social
feeling,  heightened  their  self-respect,  and  guarded  their  collective
interests.  While  the  old  aristocracy  were  being  rapidly
thinned  by  vice  and  extravagance,  or  by  confiscation,  the  leaders
of  the  new  industrial  movement  probably  founded  many  a
senatorial  house,  which,  in  the  fourth  and  fifth  centuries,  in  an
ever-recurring  fashion,  came  to  regard  manual  industry  with
sublime  contempt,  and  traced  themselves  to  Aemilius  Pauilua


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254  SOCIAL  LIFE  book  ii

an  immense  development  in  the  Antonine  age,  and  still  more
in  the  third  centurj,  after  the  definite  sanction  and  encourage-
ment given  to  these  societies  by  Alexander  Severus.  The
records  of  the  movement  are  numerous,  and  we  can,  after  the
scholarly  sifting  of  recentjrears,  now  form  a  tolerably  complete
and  vivid  conception  ofTtibese  corporations  which,  springing  up
at  first  spontaneously,  m^efiance  of  government,  or  with  its
reluctant  connivance,  were  destined,  under  imperial  control,  to
petrify  into  an  intolerable  system^i^sOiste  servitude  in  the  last
century  of  the  Empire  of  the  West^
I  The  sodalitia  and  collegia  were  of  immemorial  antiquity.
Certam  industrial  colleges  and  sacred  sodalities  were  traced
back  to  Numa,  and  even  to  the  foundation  of  Bome.^  In  the
flourishing  days  of  the  Bepublic  they  multiplied  without
restraint  or  suspicion,  the  only  associations  at  which  the  law
looked  askance  being  those  which  met  secretly  or  by  night.
