a more splendid home.” Among the most princely of these benefactors was the Athenian Professor of Rhetoric, Herodes Atticus, who added a new quarter to Athens in the reign of Hadrian. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of life in the Roman Empire under the good emperors of the second century is the growth of a lower class with occupations and ideals of its own. We have already remarked that the poor free Roman of republican days scarcely emerges into the light except as a soldier. But now the inscriptions show us a happy and industrious class of artisans and humble tradesmen, grading down through the freedmen to the slaves, many of whom now lived and worked under quite tolerable conditions of life. Especially noteworthy is the social tendency of the day. Every occupation and craft was forming its guilds or “collegia” about which the inscriptions give us full and most interesting details. The collegia were not quite Friendly Societies, and still less Trade Unions, though they undoubtedly claimed political privileges and perhaps even made some attempt at collective bargaining with the public. Sometimes they obtained exemption from taxation. They dined together, they had their chapels and festivals, their colours and processions. They had officers modelled on the old Roman magistracy, with senators as committee and a quæstor as treasurer. They had their list of patrons who were expected to earn the honour by generosity. In the main they were burial clubs. Even slaves, and even gladiators, the most despised of slaves, had their guilds and fraternities: of course they were regulated by the state.