ceed slowly
on the highroads near the city, as for instance up the slope of the
Appian Way as it passed over the south-western spur of the Alban
Hills. Other towns would be infested in the same manner. Nor were
thieves and footpads wanting in the streets or highwaymen upon the
roads, especially in the lonelier parts near the marshes between Rome
and the Bay of Naples. The city was, indeed, liberally policed, but
Roman streets, as we have seen, were for the most part narrow,
crooked, and unlighted at night. As usual, it was the comparatively
poor who suffered from the street robber; the rich, with their torches
and retinue, could always protect themselves.

After the "rabble" we will take the "people" in the sense current at
this date. We must begin by adjusting our notions somewhat. The Romans
made no such clear distinction as we do between trades and
professions. To perform work for others and to receive pay for it is
to be a hireling. Painters, sculptors, physicians, surgeons, and
auctioneers are but more highly paid and more pleasantly engaged
hirelings. Only so far do they differ from sign-painters, masons,
undertakers, or criers. No doubt the theory broke down somewhat in
practice, yet such is the theory. That which in our day constitutes a
"liberal" profession--a previous liberal education and a high code of
professional etiquette--can hardly be said to have existed in the case
of corresponding professions at Rome. If the liberality departs from
our own professional education and the etiquette is relaxed, we shall
presumably revert to the same state of things. A surgeon was commonly
a "sawbones," and a physician a compounder and prescriber of more or
less empirical drugs. Their knowledge and skill were by no means
contemptible, and their instruments and pharmacopoeia were
surprisingly modern. Among the Greeks and Orientals their social
standing was high, but at Rome, where they were chiefly foreigners,
for the most part Greeks, the old aristocratic exclusiveness kept them
in comparatively humble estimation, however large might be their fees
in the more important cases. Something will be said later as to the
state of science and knowledge in the Roman world. For the present it
is sufficient to note that artist, medical man, attorney,
schoolmaster, and clerk belong theoretically to the common "people,"
along with butchers, bakers, carpenters, and potters.

[Illustration: FIG. 69.--SURGICAL INSTRUMENTS. (Pompeii.)]