What types of jobs did upper class Romans do?
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There is an ample evidence (from authors like Plutarch, Cicero etc.) that the only occupations which were considered appropriate for the Romans from good families were military, politics, administration, law and literature. (To be sure many of them were involved in business but they did not like to advertise this). Doctors, engineers, artists (including painters, sculptors etc.) and architects were definitely out of the list of desirable professions for a noble. Let me illustrate this by a cite from Plutarch:
In other cases, admiration of the deed is not immediately accompanied by an impulse to do it. Nay, many times, on the contrary, while we delight in the work, we despise the workman, as, for instance, in the case of perfumes and dyes; we take a delight in them, but dyers and perfumers we regard as illiberal and vulgar folk. Therefore it was a fine saying of Antisthenes, when he heard that Ismenias was an excellent piper: "But he's a worthless man," said he, "otherwise he wouldn't be so good a piper." And so Philip once said to his son, who, as the wine went round, plucked the strings charmingly and skilfully, "Art thou not ashamed to pluck the strings so well?" It is enough, surely, if a king have leisure to hear others pluck the strings, and he pays great deference to the Muses if he be but a spectator of such contests.
Labour with one's own hands on lowly tasks gives witness, in the toil thus expended on useless things, to one's own indifference to higher things. No generous youth, from seeing the Zeus at Pisa, or the Hera at Argos, longs to be Pheidias or Polycleitus; nor to be Anacreon or Philetas or Archilochus out of pleasure in their poems. For it does not of necessity follow that, if the work delights you with its grace, the one who wrought it is worthy of your esteem.
(Plutarch, Pericles I-II).
Remark. To be in upper class in Ancient Rome was not the same as to be rich. We know that some freedmen (former slaves) were richer than some senators. But the most prestigious jobs were closed to them. The crucial thing was your family, ancestors. However this gradually changed with time.
Especially despicable were all kinds of jobs related to public performances. It seems that the emperors like Nero, Commodus and Elagabal were hated first of all for their public performances, rather then for being murderers. They are unanimously rated worst emperors, though some others killed more people and performed worse.
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