§404. Careers of the Nobles.--The nobles inherited certain of the aristocratic notions of the old patriciate, which limited their business activities and had much to do with the corruption of public life in the last century of the Republic. Men in their position were held to be above all manner of work, with the hands or with the head, for the sake of sordid gain. Agriculture alone was free from debasing associations, as it has been in England within our own time, and statecraft and war were the only careers fit to engage their energies. Even as statesmen and generals, too, they served their fellow citizens without material reward, for no salaries were drawn by the senators, none were attached to the magistracies or to positions of military command. This theory had worked well enough in the time before the Punic wars, when every Roman was a farmer, when the farm produced all that he needed for his simple wants, when he left it only to serve as a soldier in his young manhood or as a senator in his old age, and returned to his fields, like Cincinnatus, when his services were no longer required by his country. Under the aristocracy that supplanted the pure democracy of the earlier time, it subverted every aim that it was intended to secure. §405. Agriculture.--The farm life that Cicero has described so eloquently and praised so enthusiastically in his _Catō Māior_ would have scarcely been recognized by Cato himself and had become a memory or a dream long before Cicero wrote. The farmer no longer tilled his fields, even with the help of his slaves. The yeoman class had practically disappeared from Italy. The small holdings had been absorbed in the vast estates of the wealthy landowners, and the aims and methods of farming had wholly changed. Something has been said of this already (§146 f.), and it will be sufficient here to recall the fact that grain was no longer raised for the market in Italy, simply because the market could be supplied more cheaply from over seas. The grape and the olive had become the chief sources of wealth, and for them Sallust and Horace complain that less and less space was being left by the parks and pleasure grounds (§145). Still, the making of wine and oil under the direction of a careful steward (§148) must have been very profitable in Italy and many of the nobles had plantations in the provinces as well, the revenues of which helped to maintain their state at Rome.