“Fishmongers, butchers, cooks, and poulterers,[p. 155] as Terence says. Add to these, if you please, the perfumers, dancers, and the whole corps de ballet2
And fishermen,
”
[150]
42. Now in regard to trades and other means1
of livelihood, which ones are to be considered
becoming to a gentleman and which ones are
vulgar, we have been taught, in general, as follows.
First, those means of livelihood are rejected as undesirable which incur people's ill-will, as those
of tax-gatherers and usurers. Unbecoming to a
gentleman, too, and vulgar are the means of livelihood of all hired workmen whom we pay for mere
manual labour, not for artistic skill; for in their
case the very wage they receive is a pledge of their
slavery. Vulgar we must consider those also who
buy from wholesale merchants to retail immediately;
for they would get no profits without a great deal
of downright lying; and verily, there is no action
that is meaner than misrepresentation. And all
mechanics are engaged in vulgar trades; for no
workshop can have anything liberal about it. Least
respectable of all are those trades which cater for
sensual pleasures:
M. Tullius Cicero. De Officiis. With An English Translation. Walter Miller. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1913.
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