The men carried on the few trades that were current, all consumption being virtually limited to the city itself.

Among the women there were bead-workers and embroiderers; and the manufacture of religious articles, such as medals and chaplets, and of certain popular jewellery had always occupied a fair number of hands.

But after marriage the women, invariably burdened with numerous offspring, attempted little beyond household work.

Briefly, the population took life as it came, working just sufficiently to secure food, contenting itself with vegetables, pastes, and scraggy mutton, without thought of rebellion or ambition.

The only vices were gambling and a partiality for the red and white wines of the Roman province--wines which excited to quarrel and murder, and on the evenings of feast days, when the taverns emptied, strewed the streets with groaning men, slashed and stabbed with knives.