Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/73

 THE ROMAN EMPIRE 37 These slaves were sometimes large gangs owned by the land- owner; sometimes smaller groups or individuals belonging to the more prosperous tenants. If the great landowner had too much land to attend to himself, he would lease it out in large tracts to contractors {conductor es), who would sublet these to tenants or cultivate them by slave labor. Seldom or never did the person who actually tilled the soil own it. The emperor was the largest landowner of all. As war waned and conquest ceased, it became more difficult to get slaves, while tenants made their landlords considerable trouble by roving about and not remaining permanently in one place. The tenant was, however, rather dependent upon his land- lord, who usually had to provide him with ploughs, domestic animals, and other equipment at the commencement of his tenancy. The Romans spread new plants, trees, breeds of domestic animals, and perhaps better methods of cultiva- tion into the lesser developed parts of the Empire, such as Britain. It is perhaps worth while to list some of the typical occu- pations in the Roman Empire. Politicians and soldiers, lawyers and financiers, priests and diviners, ^ ... Occupations magicians and astronomers, orators and gram- marians, poets and philosophers, mathematicians and med- ical men, musicians and athletes, merchants and business agents, sculptors and painters, jewelers and goldsmiths, druggists and dealers in aromatics and pigments and un- guents, dyers and fullers, tanners and potters, workers with fire and metals, cooks and tavern-keepers, fishermen and fowlers and hunters, farmers and gardeners, shepherds and grooms, cowherds and swineherds, pilots and sailors, divers and water-carriers, embalmers and undertakers and guards of sepulchers, weavers and workers in wool, makers of tunics and manufacturers of linen, miners, turners, shoemakers, millers, bakers, flower-sellers, and wine merchants, — such were the workers in the Roman Empire. Social life in the Empire has already been touched upon in several connections. It remains to point out that eating, drinking, and love-making absorbed man more than to-day