The practical disappearance of the Italian peasant farmer meant the disappearance of those simple robust virtues, bred in thousands of homes of the countryside, like the little Sabine farm of the Elder Cato, which had contributed so largely to determine the type of Roman character. [Sidenote: (_c_) Growth of the slave system] The decay of the Italian peasantry was accompanied by the development of the slave system, so that at the same time that the peasant home, a nursery of sterling if crude virtues, was being destroyed, the slave estate with its chain gangs and its ergastula, a very hotbed of degrading vices, was being created. Of all the institutions that contributed to the moral degradation of the later Republic, slavery as it developed here must be assigned the first place of evil preëminence. Its effects were equally debasing upon the master, the slave, and the poor farmer. It tended to render more callous and cruel the spirit of the master,[534] to destroy the moral character of the slave, to undermine family morals,[535] and, by placing a stigma upon labor, to degrade the free laborer. Thus did the institution tend to develop in different classes of the population feelings, sentiments, and a disposition of mind wholly unfavorable to the existence or the development of a sound moral life in society at large. [Sidenote: (_d_) The disesteem of the industrial virtues] In placing a stigma upon labor, slavery did not create a new prejudice, but merely intensified and made more inclusive a prejudice already existing. As we have seen, there existed in classical antiquity a deep-rooted feeling against manual labor as morally unworthy of a freeman. Agriculture was the only occupation which escaped this general condemnation, and which was regarded as becoming a gentleman.[536] Cicero declares all mechanical laborers to be by virtue of their profession mean, the gains of hired workmen to be ungenteel, and says that all retailers of merchandise should be despised.[537] Even buying and selling on a large scale did not entirely escape the taint of retail merchandizing; it was merely a little less despicable. This general contempt for the occupations of the artisan and merchant rendered impossible the development of industrial virtues in the Roman masses. Torn from the soil and swept into the cities by the movement cityward in this period, the free poor, too proud to engage in occupations which were looked upon as degrading, were stranded in idleness and exposed to all the demoralizing influences of city life. Crowds of them became the dependents of the rich and formed that despicable client class of the later Republic and the early Empire whose abominable vices roused the anger and provoked the scorn of the satirists and moralists of the time. [Sidenote: (_e_) Free distribution of corn]