Well-to-do Romans were more likely than Greeks to kill and torture their slaves for trivial indiscretions. But otherwise they expressed similar attitudes to slavery and work as the ancient Greeks and, like Victorian Britons nearly two millennia later, considered themselves to be the inheritors of the ancient Greeks’ civilization. They too considered manual work demeaning, and working for a living to be vulgar. It was only appropriate for citizens to engage in big business, politics, law, the arts, or military pursuits.
