Life in the Roman world of Nero and StPaul . arts fromour own professional education and the etiquette isrelaxed, we shall presumably revert to the same stateof things. A surgeon was commonly a sawbones,and a physician a compounder and prescriber ofmore or less empirical drugs. Their knowledge andskill were by no means contemptible, and theirinstruments and pharmacopoeia were surprisinglymodern. Among the Greeks and Orientals theirsocial standing was high, but at Rome, where they MIDDLE AND LOWER CLASSES 245 were chiefly foreigners, for the most part Greeks,the old aristocratic exclusiveness k
Life in the Roman world of Nero and StPaul . arts fromour own professional education and the etiquette isrelaxed, we shall presumably revert to the same stateof things. A surgeon was commonly a sawbones,and a physician a compounder and prescriber ofmore or less empirical drugs. Their knowledge andskill were by no means contemptible, and theirinstruments and pharmacopoeia were surprisinglymodern. Among the Greeks and Orientals theirsocial standing was high, but at Rome, where they MIDDLE AND LOWER CLASSES 245 were chiefly foreigners, for the most part Greeks,the old aristocratic exclusiveness kept them in com-paratively humble estimation, however large mightbe their fees in the more important cases. Somethingwill be said later as to the state of science and know-ledge in the Roman world. For the present it issufficient to note that artist, medical man, attorney,schoolmaster, and clerk belong theoretically to thecommon people, along with butchers, bakers, car-penters, and potters. Setting aside the aristocratic and wealthy classes. Fig. 69. — Surgical Instruments. (Pompeii.) on the one hand, and the pauperised class on theother, we have lying between them the workers,whether native Romans or the emancipated slaves,who are now citizens known as freedmen. Tothese we must add the rather shabby genteel personswhom we have already described as workers are found men and women of all thecallings most familiar to ourselves, with one do not include domestic servants. Romanswho could afford regular servants kept slaves. Itis true that occasionally one of the poorer citizens,and even a soldier on furlough, might perform some 246 LIFE IN THE ROMAN WORLD chap. menial task connected with a household, such ashewing wood or carrying burdens; but such serviceswere regarded as servile. With this exceptionthere is scarcely an occupation in which Romancitizens did not engage. In such work they oftenhad to compete with slave-labour. It is probable,doubtless,
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