The domains on which the activity of the ancients was chiefly concentrated were agriculture and cattle rearing, trade, and handicraft. Intellectual or artistic labour, which at the present day plays a very important part as a means of earning a livelihood, was hardly considered at all in Ancient Greece, and the artist, if he worked for pay, was put on the same footing as the artisan; in fact there were very few intellectual professions connected with money. These circumstances changed somewhat in the Hellenistic period; but even there the intellectual labour of teachers, physicians, etc., would be placed in the same class with other occupations, though gradually, as the payment of this labour increased, so did also the estimation in which it was held. As to the statistical relation in which agriculture, industry, and trade stood to one another, there were naturally many changes as civilisation advanced; and again, local circumstances in every part of Greece, in every district, and perhaps even every city, as well as the geographical position, the nature of the land, the adaptability of the soil for cultivation, etc., were of importance for these branches; and again, peculiarities of race, national prejudices, were often of great weight in the choice of a profession. It was an idea not peculiar to the Doric races, though most strongly developed among them, that in reality every kind of work done for pay was unsuitable for a citizen, and that his whole activity should be given without reward to the State; but this theory--though the main features of it are defended even by philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, and it rests on the assumption that every citizen must have sufficient possessions for himself and his family, and obtain what he requires by the labour of slaves--was only gradually developed, and was quite foreign to the Homeric age, as well as to the period immediately following, in which Hesiod could venture to say that not work but idleness was disgraceful. Changes in political conditions produced other changes as well. When the old Monarchy was succeeded by the rule of the Oligarchs, and the privileged class being in possession of landed property and numerous slaves, devoted its whole activity to military and political matters, the prejudice originated that only such occupations were worthy of a free and noble citizen, and that all work was low and servile; and it is natural that this opinion should have been obstinately maintained at Sparta, because the constitution there kept the character of the Oligarchy most rigidly. In other places a healthier conception of work gradually prevailed, and, in particular, the tyrants of the older period tried to combat the disinclination of the citizens for professional activity; in their case, however, it was not only reasons of political economy, but also political expediency that influenced them, since they did not wish to see their rule