the field, stuffing them with all kinds of food which cattle eat, and
even with things which cattle would refuse![85] we may take it that at
all times the Roman of the lower class consumed fruit and vegetables
largely, and thus gave employment to a number of market-gardeners and
small purveyors. Fish he did not eat; like meat, it was too expensive;
in fact fish-eating only came in towards the end of the republican
period, and then only as a luxury for those who could afford to keep
fish-ponds on their estates. How far the supply of other luxuries,
such as butchers' meat, gave employment to freemen, is not very clear;
and perhaps we need here only take account of such few other products,
e.g. oil and wine, as were in universal demand, though not always
procurable by the needy. There were plenty of small shops in Rome
where these things were sold; we have a picture of such a shop
(_caupona_) in another of the minor Virgilian poems, the _Copa_, i.e.
hostess, or perhaps in this case the woman who danced and sang for the
entertainment of the guests. She plied her trade in a smoky tavern
(fumosa taberna), all the contents of which are charmingly described
in the poem.[86]

Let us now see how the other chief necessity of human life, the supply
of clothing, gave employment to the free Roman shopkeeper.

The clothing of the whole Roman population was originally woollen;
both the outer garment, the _toga_, the inner (_tunica_) were of this
material, and the sheep which supplied it were pastured well and
conveniently in all the higher hilly regions of Italy. Other
materials, linen, cotton, and silk, came in later with the growth
of commerce, but the manufacture of these into clothing was chiefly
carried on by slaves in the great households, and we need not take
any account of them here. The preparation of wool too was in well