A list of the chief classes of workmen employed in the sixth century on a monumental building in Italy given by Cassiodorus,[339] names the following--Instructor-parietum, sculptor-marmorum, camerarum-rotator, gypsoplastes, and musivarius. The instructor-parietum is probably the man who set out the work, the camerarum-rotator is he who turned the vaults. The gypsoplastes, a literal transcription of γυψοπλάστης, signifies a worker or modeller in stucco, corresponding to the plastes-gypsarius of the edict of Diocletian. The musivarius is the “putter together of tesserae” of S. Gregory. Workmen who understood the mysteries of “vault turning” seem to have been especially appreciated, as Theophanes tells us that Isaurian workmen were employed to build the dome of S. Sophia. In the humblest work the personality of the maker is often delightfully expressed. A Byzantine brick in the British Museum is stamped “ΧΡ. made by the most excellent Narsis,” and a late Roman glass cup bears the legend “Ennion made this. Think of it, O buyer.” In his inquiry as to the methods of workmanship, M. Choisy says the Byzantine Greeks did not efface from buildings all traces of the workman’s individuality. “The workman is no mere passive instrument, obedient, without any regard to initiative or responsibility, to the workshop foreman; he is treated as an intelligent power, and finds in front of him liberty, and a field open to his imagination.” In Roman times the system was that we call “division of labour.” “_L’art roman est un fait d’organisation._” The workman was not an independent citizen working at his own pleasure for his daily wants; he was a _functionnaire_, and compulsorily a member of an association organised by the state on the model of military service. In the East an altogether freer system seems to have obtained. The guilds were independent associations, and in Palestine the Carpenter’s Son and the tentmaker followed their callings irrespective of state authority. “In Byzantine buildings the same name occurs in turn upon columns, capitals, or simply squared blocks of stone, and there is nothing to show that the foreman of the works kept one man at one particular kind of work. The East never changes; at present the absence of division of labour in Oriental buildings is most striking. The proprietor chooses a master workman (_protomaistor_); to this improvised architect he adds a certain number of head workmen (_maistores_) and their companions, and these same men will work at digging the foundations, at the masonry of the walls, and at the carpentry of the roof; even the ironwork and joinery is scarcely reserved for special workmen.” The terms masters and companions suggest an arrangement which merits consideration. Like western workmen the Greek artizans were affiliated to corporations which have lived to our days. These associations (_sunergasiai_) had a council, composed exclusively of those, who, by apprenticeship and