In this division is assembled a series of miscellaneous objects illustrating trades and crafts, political life, agriculture, and other occupations.

The processes of agriculture and craftsmanship in Greece and Italy were much like those of Europe and America a century ago, before mechanical devices became common. Cultivation of grains, the olive, and the grape has been practised in Aegean lands from prehistoric times. A bronze farmyard group in Case 3 shows the animals and utensils most necessary to a farmer, and though Roman, will serve as an illustration of Greek life as well. The animals include two bulls, two cows, a pig and a sow, a ram and a ewe (fig. 130). There are also two double yokes, a cart, and a plough. The plough-tail has been lost, but a hole shows the place of attachment. The remainder is in one piece, though the joints of the rude wooden original are carefully represented, the pole which is fastened to the yoke being attached to the share-beam by pegs and the share-beam to the share by thongs or ropes. This primitive wooden plough is still used in Greece today (fig. 131). The cart is merely a platform with a front-board and tail-board, mounted on solid wheels. A terracotta cart from Cyprus, though of the early Iron Age, is much like the Roman cart (fig. 132). A small bronze sickle with indented edge from Cyprus belongs to a type common in Minoan Crete (Case 5). The bronze shepherd’s crooks in the same case recall the important place held by the care of sheep and goats in ancient country life. A stone model of a sheep-fold in Case 40 in the Cesnola Collection, containing sheep and a drinking-trough, was intended as a votive offering, probably for increase of flocks.

The cultivation of the vine and wine-making for domestic use were a part of the yearly routine on the farms of Greece and Italy, while the finer kinds of wine were a valuable article of commerce. The only object in the collection which illustrates wine-making is an Arretine bowl in Case G2 in the Eighth Room, decorated with figures of satyrs gathering and treading grapes. The process of getting rural produce to market is represented by two terracotta figures of donkeys with panniers whose counterparts can be seen in Greece at the present day (figs. 133-134). The conformation of Greece and Italy, and the numerous islands of the Mediterranean compelled the inhabitants to accustom themselves to seafaring from the earliest times. A vase painting and some clay boats from Cyprus are valuable illustrations of the type of ship in use in the sixth century. A black-figured krater of that date in Case 1 has three long boats or war vessels painted inside the mouth. These vessels were propelled by oars, as the method of fighting made speed essential to them, though a sail was used when the wind was favorable. Two of the ships have eleven oars on a side, and the third has nine. The steersman sits in the stern with one or two steering paddles. The forecastle is surmounted by a high stem-post, and between the stern and the forecastle runs a railing or bulwark. The bow projects in the form of an animal’s head, probably a fish or a boar, and a large eye is painted just above the water-line. The edge of the krater has been injured so that the sail has disappeared, but the single mast can be seen, as well as the sheets and halyards. A ship of this kind regularly has a square sail and halyards, brailing-ropes, braces, and sheets. Above the stern projects an ornament rather like the tail of a bird. It was this that was taken by the enemy as a trophy (fig. 138). The clay boats from Cyprus in the same case are of a type frequently found in sixth-century graves in Amathus. Two of them represent merchant vessels, as is shown by their breadth and deep hulls. The largest has strakes along the water-line which held the “under-girding” of ropes used to prevent the planks from springing in stormy weather, and large cat-heads at the bows to receive the anchor. The helmsman sits in the stern with his two steering-oars. Of the two other boats the smallest is a row-boat, and the other has a deck and a small deck-house (fig. 139).

A rude relief on a stone slab from Cyprus (Case 1) is a votive offering for rescue from an accident in quarrying or mining. Above is Apollo seated before an altar. Below, a man is hastening to help another who is standing in front of a large mass of rock or earth. Between them a pickaxe lies on the ground. Probably the relief represents a dangerous fall of rock or earth. The inscription runs: “Diithemis dedicated it to the god Apollo, in good fortune.”

Very few wooden objects have survived from ancient times, but examples of the tools used in making them and of metal fittings remain. The axe-blades from Cyprus in Case 5 and in wall-cases in the corridor are of almost pure copper. These blades were inserted in a haft or lashed to a handle. In Case B in the First Room are four double axes from Crete of the second millennium B.C., and in Case A in the Fifth Room another of much later date. Handles were inserted between the two blades, as in the modern hammer. The chisels, awl, nails, and hinges in Case 5 are Cypriote. In Case B in the First Room are chisels and an awl, and in Case D 2 several knives, from Crete. They are especially interesting in that they are well preserved and of excellent workmanship.

The keys exhibited in Case 5 (figs. 135 and 137) are of three types. The earlier one is shown with the bolt to which it belongs. The key when inserted into the bolt pushed upward with its teeth a series of pegs which fitted into holes in the bolt and took their place. It could then be used as a handle to pull the bolt backward. The second consists of a plate provided with notches which lifted a series of tumblers and allowed the bolt to be shot. The third key belongs to the type in use today, and as such keys have been found in Pompeii, they must have been known before 79 A.D. The lock-plate is perhaps from a strong-box (fig. 136).

Only the balance seems to have been known to the Greeks, but the Romans made use of the steelyard also. The example shown in Case 1 does not differ from those of modern times. The hooks and chains at the end of the rod were used for suspending the articles to be weighed. Three other hooks, of which two are preserved on movable rings, were for hanging the steelyard. Each is attached to a different side. When the steelyard was hung by the hook nearest to the graduated bar, articles up to twelve pounds could be weighed by sliding the weights along the bar. The second side of the bar weighs articles of from five pounds to twenty-two; the third, articles of from twenty to fifty-eight pounds. The large weight is made of lead covered with bronze, and weighs two pounds, while the small weight is entirely of bronze and weighs one ounce (see head-band, p. 109.)

There are a number of objects illustrating various industrial processes in the collection. A fragment of a pottery cup of the red-figured technique shows the stage at which the figure is outlined with a broad band of black paint, in order to make a red silhouette, but the background has not yet been filled in with black (fig. 141). Several moulds for making terracotta reliefs are shown with modern impressions made from them; they represent the lower part of a young man’s figure (Case A in the Fifth Room, fig. 142), a grotesque of a man, a Medusa head, and a number of symbols, perhaps for stamping sacred cakes. Another mould, unfortunately fragmentary, is a chimaera or a goat, a fine and spirited figure (Case B in the Seventh Room). In Cases C and G2 in the Eighth Room are examples of Arretine ware, the most beautiful pottery of ancient Italy. There are also ancient moulds with modern bowls made from them. Several of the moulds are signed by the makers and by the owner of the workshop. A small stone mould for casting gold ornaments of the Late Minoan period is in Case B in the First Room. It has two dies representing animals, one a bull and the other probably an ibex. The gold-beater’s block in Case 5 was used for making small ornaments when many of the same kind were needed. A thin sheet of metal was laid on the die, covered with wax or lead, and then beaten into the die with a hammer. There are twenty-two dies on this block belonging in style to the Roman period. Some gold ornaments used for borders among the Roman jewelry in the Gold Room were probably made in this way, but such mechanical devices do not seem to have been employed in making Greek jewelry of the best period (fig. 140).

The earliest traders of the Mediterranean lands practised barter, and in the Homeric poems we find cattle and bronze utensils frequently mentioned as standards of value. In the later part of the eighth century or the early part of the seventh, coinage originated in Asia Minor, the earliest coins being merely rough lumps of metal with striations on the reverse made by the roughened surface of a punch. In the process of manufacture a flat blank of metal was placed red hot on a die, a punch was then held upon the reverse of the blank, and struck with a hammer. As no “collar” was employed, the metal of course spread at the edges, making the coin only roughly circular. With the advance of art the coin types received the attention of the best artists and craftsmen, and in consequence the value of Greek coins, both as original works of art and as historical documents, cannot be exaggerated. Roman coins, while not often beautiful, are an important source of information relative to political and economic conditions. These facts may be noted with regard to the practical side of ancient coinage; Greek coins are not dated, they will not stack, and marks of value are more often absent than present. The earlier Roman coins resembled the Greek in these features, but, later, marks of value were added and the date indicated.

A number of small bronze instruments in Case 5 may have been part of a physician’s or pharmacist’s case. They include several probes, one being double (fig. 144), spatulae (fig. 145), spoon-probes, and two scalpels or bistouries. The spatulae were used for preparing and spreading ointments, and also by painters in mixing colors.

The dikast’s ticket gives us a glimpse of Greek city life. It is the ticket of a juryman, Epikrates, entitling him to sit in the ninth court at Athens, of which there were ten in all, and to draw three obols a day, about ten cents, a “living wage,” however (fig. 143).

The statuette of a negro boy in Case C in the Seventh Room is a reminder of the important part taken by slave labor in ancient times. This was much greater among the Romans than in Greece. Slaves were sometimes captives taken in war, or their descendants, but were more frequently acquired through trade. Their condition was much better in Greece than in Rome. On the grave stele of a young man in the Sculpture Gallery (No. 7) a little slave stands beside his master.

These are, of course, domestic or personal servants, but slaves formed a large part of the laboring class in Greece, and the proportion was still greater in Rome in the later Republican period and under the Empire. They worked on the farms, in the factories, and, most dangerous occupation of all, in the mines and quarries, as well as in the workshops of skilled artisans and as clerks and copyists in private and public offices.

There are many proofs of the existence of an extended and active commerce in the Mediterranean world, but none is more convincing than to note the far-distant places in which Athenian pottery has been found. The cities and tombs of Italy have furnished many of the most beautiful specimens, but vases have been found in Asia Minor, Egypt, the islands of the Aegean, and the Crimea. A specimen of ancient advertising appears on three glass cups signed by the maker Ennion, a Sidonian (Case H in the Eighth Room). One was found in Cyprus, a second near Venice, and a third near Nazareth. Each bears the maker’s signature and the words, “Let the buyer remember.”