industry
industry(Greek and Roman). Industry in the sense of hard labour (Gk. ponos; Lat. labor) the Greeks and Romans knew all too much about; total freedom from productive labour (scholē, otium) remained a governing ideal from one end of pagan antiquity to the other. But industry in the modern sense of large-scale manufacturing businesses they knew hardly at all, let alone as the characteristic form of manufacturing unit. That role was always filled by the individual workshop (ergastērion), and it is no accident that the largest Greek or Roman industrial labour force on record barely tipped over into three figures. Nor did élite Greeks and Romans value labourers any more highly than labour as such; this was partly because manual labour, even when not actually conducted by slaves (see slavery), was nevertheless always apt to attract the opprobrium of slavishness. As Herodotus (2. 167)...
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