For the Hellenes as a nation regarded all forms of handicraft as _bourgeois_ (βάναυσος [banausos]) and contemptible. Herodotos says that they derived this view from the surrounding peoples, who all held it.[98] To do anything in order to extract money from some one else was, in their opinion, vulgar and ungentlemanly. The lyric poets and the Sophists were alike blamed for taking fees. The cheapness and abundance of serf- or slave-labour made it possible for a large proportion of the free population to live in idleness, and devote their time to the development of the body by physical exercises, of the mind by perpetual discussions, and of the imagination by art and music. Citizenship required leisure, in the days before representative government came into vogue. It was owing to this principle that the Athenian received pay for a day’s attendance in the Law Courts or the Assembly, for by this means the poorest citizen obtained an artificial leisure for the performance of his duties. Otherwise true citizenship was impossible. Plato regards a tradesman as unfit to be an acting citizen.[99] Aristotle rejects as unworthy of a free man all trades which interfere with bodily development or take time which ought to be devoted to mental improvement.[100] Xenophon explains the reason of this attitude. The discredit which attaches to the _bourgeois_ occupations is quite natural; for they ruin the physical condition of those who practise them, compelling them to sit down and live in the shade, and in some cases to spend their day by the fire. The body thus becomes effeminate, and the character is weakened at the same time. Tradesmen, too, have less leisure for serving their friends and the State. In some communities, especially the most warlike, the citizens are not allowed to practise sedentary trades.[101] The owner of a factory or a farm worked by slave-labour was exempt from corrupting influences: it was only actual work which was degrading.