from the carpenters, coppersmiths, and certain classes of musicians
and attached with a military organization to the army; and this may
perhaps have been the origin of the subsequent habit of depreciating
the manual arts and of the position of political inferiority assigned
to them. The institution of guilds doubtless had the same object
as the colleges of priests that resembled them in name; the men of
skill associated themselves in order more permanently and securely
to preserve the tradition of their art. That there was some mode
of excluding unskilled persons is probable; but no traces are to be
met with either of monopolizing tendencies or of protective steps
against inferior manufactures. There is no aspect, however, of
the life of the Roman people respecting which our information is
so scanty as that of the Roman trades.


Inland Commerce of the Italians


Italian commerce must, it is obvious, have been limited in the
earliest epoch to the mutual dealings of the Italians themselves.
Fairs (-mercatus-), which must be distinguished from the usual weekly
markets (-nundinae-) were of great antiquity in Latium. Probably
they were at first associated with international gatherings and
festivals, and so perhaps were connected in Rome with the festival
at the federal temple on the Aventine; the Latins, who came for this
purpose to Rome every year on the 13th August, may have embraced
at the same time the opportunity of transacting their business
in Rome and of purchasing what they needed there. A similar and
perhaps still greater importance belonged in the case of Etruria
to the annual general assembly at the temple of Voltumna (perhaps