All doctors were excluded from having to pay taxes. Roman
laws dealt more harshly with laborers than with other Romans.
Where a patrician might be fi ned for stealing, a laborer could
expect to be whipped and sentenced to years of hard labor.
Wage earners tried to compensate for their low status in
society by establishing their own institutions, called collegia.
Collegia were formed by people with related skills, such as
fi shmongers, butchers, perfumers, auctioneers, interior deco-
rators, and candy makers. Th e collegia gathered dues and spent
the money to buy a meeting hall as well as food and drink. Th e
collegia served primarily to provide dinners at which the mem-
bers could gather and enjoy one another’s company. Th e elected
leaders of the collegia were held in high esteem by members.
Women could participate in many forms of employment.
Male commoners were expected to serve 20 years in Rome’s
military, which in time of war left many jobs to be done by
women. Even women from the wage-earning class tended to
be educated, and they worked as secretaries, teachers, and
doctors. Th ey also worked as hairdressers, seamstresses, and
midwives. When desperate, as they oft en were, they worked
as prostitutes.
During the Roman Republic and the early years of impe-
rial rule, wage earners were oft en paid with coins, but their
employers were expected to feed them too. Milk, cabbages,
and vegetables were given to laborers. Sometimes they were
paid in kind, meaning that for their services they were paid
with other services, perhaps the cleaning of a coat exchanged
for repairing masonry. During the second century b.c.e.
Rome developed a cash economy: Almost all buying and sell-
ing was done with money. Infl ation ate away at the value of
money, and in 301 c.e. the emperor Diocletian tried to stem
infl ation by fi xing prices and wages by law. Th e best-paid
workers were clothes washers and teachers, who were paid by
the item of clothing or by the student. Carpenters and stone-
masons could earn fi ft y denarii (roughly 50 American dol-
lars) per day. Farm laborers earned half that amount. Scribes
were paid per 100 lines.
Coins lost their value during the fi nal three centuries of
the Roman Empire, becoming smaller and having less and
less real silver in them. During his reign, Constantine (r. 307–
337 c.e.) regularized Rome’s money and brought back the use
of large silver coins. Aft er his reign, money became increas-
ingly hard to fi nd, and laborers took payment in the form of
goods for their services. Taxes on them became so high that
many throughout the empire had to pay the government with
their children, who became government-owned slaves. By
the time Germanic kings put an end to the Western Roman
Empire, wage earners were little more than slaves themselves,
and they were mostly glad to be rid of the empire.
THE AMERICAS
BY MICHAEL ALLEN HOLMES AND TOM STREISSGUTH
Historians have a limited understanding of the systems of
employment and labor that existed in ancient America. Re-
cords are scant and in many places were kept on perishable
material, such as wood or bark. Th e Maya used hieroglyphic
or ideographic texts painted on ceramic vases or inscribed on
stone, but these writings deal with political or religious rather
than practical matters. Still, certain conclusions regarding
the manner in which people worked for and with each other
have been gleaned from archaeological research.
As the ancient Native Americans settled the deserts,
plains, and woodlands of North America, the division of la-
bor followed the demands of available local resources. On the
Great Plains, for example, hunters worked together to cull
massive herds of bison. In the hunt for game, the bow and
arrow replaced spears and stone points around 400–500 c.e.
Archaeologists have discovered many buff alo jumps, where
hunters ran bison herds over cliff s and then gathered the car-
casses at the base. One such buff alo jump, in Alberta, Canada,
was used for more than 7,000 years.
Th e development of agriculture demanded a more settled
and sedentary life. Th e tasks of raising village homes and long-
houses were taken up in a cooperative manner by large clan
groups. Among many tribes it was the task of women to plant
and harvest maize and other edible plants, while the men’s duty
was to hunt. In eastern North America fi shing and the gather-
ing of edible coastal shellfi sh became important occupations.
Wherever competition for territory and available resources
gave rise to armed confl ict, Native American tribes developed
a class of warriors, whose occupations were tracking, raiding,
and using weapons, such as clubs, spears, and bows.
In the Olmec society of Mexico, systems of hired labor
developed between roughly 1000 b.c.e. and 300 b.c.e. Apart
from agricultural production, labor was performed largely at
the direction of the priestly class, allowing for the construc-
tion of temples as well as the carving and transportation of
massive stone heads. One of the most fruitful Olmec settle-
ments has been La Venta, an island in modern eastern Mex-
ico. Giant heads weighing as much as 40 tons were carved
from basalt found at least 80 miles away. Workers dragged the
heads along land to the nearest river and then fl oated them
aboard massive raft s. Th e painstaking work of transporting,
carving, and raising the heads demanded the use of skilled
artisans and large gangs of common laborers.
Th e Maya built their largest, most complex structures
fairly early in their overall development as a society, in about
600 b.c.e. Mayan city-states never attained widespread central-
ization and unifi cation. Nevertheless, dominant cities arose
where platforms and temples stood 100 feet high; the Danta
complex of El Mirador, in the central Petén lowlands, was over
200 feet tall. Between 300 and 50 b.c.e. the Maya built a system
of canals and reservoirs around Edzná, on the western Yuca-
tán, which served some 1.75 square miles of farmland.
Archaeologists have concluded that the Maya devel-
oped important work specializations, including architects,
stonemasons, plasterers, and sculptors, with priests and even
astronomers contributing oversight to building eff orts. His-
torians generally assume that laborers were not employed434 employment and labor: The Americas