45) continued to exist in the last century of the Republic,[331] though the majority had to be suppressed owing to their misuse as political clubs.

Supposing that the members of these collegia were small employers of labour, it is reasonable to assume that the labour they employed was at least largely free; for the capital needed to invest, at some risk, in a sufficient number of slaves, who would have to be housed and fed, and whose lives would be uncertain in a crowded and unhealthy city, could not, we must suppose, be easily found by such men.

Here and there, no doubt, we find traces of slave labour in factories, e.g.as far back as the time of Plautus, if we can take him as writing of Rome rather than translating from the Greek: An te ibi vis inter istas versarier Prosedas, pistorum amicas, reginas alicarias, Miseras schoeno delibutas servilicolas sordidas ?[332] _Poenulus_, 265 foll.
But on the whole, we may with all due caution, in default of complete investigation of the question, assume that the Roman slaves were confined for the most part to the great and rich families, and were not used by them to any great extent in productive industry, but in supplying the luxurious needs of the household[333].

In all probability research will show that free labour was far more available than we are apt to think.

We hear of no outbreak of feeling against slave labour, which might suggest a rivalry between the two.
Slave labour, we may think, had filled a gap, created by abnormal circumstances, and did not oust free labour entirely; but it tended constantly to cramp it, and doubtless started notions of work in general which helped to degrade it[334].