word expressed the full scorn felt by the free citizen living on his own fortune, and devoting all his intellectual and physical powers to the State--of the gentleman, in fact--for the man with the horny hand, who toiled in his workshop to earn his daily bread. This reproach of “mechanical” was never aimed at the rich owner of a number of slaves, who worked for his benefit; a factory owner need not take part in the work himself, but had his overseers to attend to that; it was the little man who had no other hands to work for him, and who wielded the hammer himself, or who worked the cloth in the fuller’s shop, whom they looked down on. In vain wise lawgivers tried to call the attention of the citizens to the blessing of handicraft, and the honourable nature of this occupation; in vain the democrats gave political equality to artisans by permitting them to vote and speak in the Assembly of the people along with the other citizens; while there was even a law forbidding anyone publicly to reproach a citizen with his occupation. There were some states in which an important part of the prosperity depended on handicrafts, and there a more moderate view gradually made way, but, generally speaking, the contempt for handicraft remained and continued, the rather as even philosophers regarded it as but a necessary evil. Doubtless they recognised the usefulness of handicrafts, but still they maintained that work of this kind in the workshop, near the hot furnace or in the gloomy room, was not suited to a free citizen, and that the effort of gaining money which was connected with it was injurious to the mind, and made it coarse and uncultivated, and it was thus that the word _banausos_ came to be synonymous with common, low, and stupid. No wonder that even the artists, whose work depended on handicraft, and who, with few exceptions, worked for pay, were put in the same class with shoemakers, bakers, and smiths! It is strange indeed, that this depreciation of handicraft observed throughout Greek literature in no way prevented the development and perfection of the technical arts of Greece. There were many branches of it which continued for centuries at the same point without making any technical advances; but still trades attained a high degree of perfection in antiquity, though it was chiefly in those where the practical element was not as important as the artistic that the natural sense of beauty of the Greeks made itself felt, so that there are numerous productions of ancient handicraft which even our modern trades cannot rival. In fact, we might almost say that, with the exception of such trades as bakers, butchers, or fullers, Greek handicraft in almost every branch developed into art, while at the present day there are only a few branches which rise above the ordinary craft level.