The gilds (_collegia_) of Roman craftsmen were attributed to Numa, like so many other religious institutions; they included associations of weavers, fullers, dyers, shoemakers, doctors, teachers, painters, etc.,[75] and were mainly devoted to Minerva as the deity of handiwork.

"The society that witnessed the coming of Minerva from Etruria ...

little knew that in her temple on the Aventine was being brought to expression the trade-union idea."[76] These _collegia opificum_, most unfortunately, pass entirely out of our sight, until they reappear in the age of Cicero in a very different form, as clubs used for political purposes, but composed still of the lowest strata of the free population (_collegia sodalicia_).[77] The history and causes of their disappearance and metamorphosis are lost to us; but it is not hard to guess that the main cause is to be found in the great economic changes that followed the Hannibalic war,--the vast number of slaves imported, and the consequent resuscitation of the old system of the economic independence of the great households; the decay of religious practice, which affected both public and private life in a hundred different ways; and that steady growth of individualism which is characteristic of eras of town life, and especially of the last three centuries B.C.
It is curious to notice that by the time these old gilds emerge into light again as clubs that could be used for political purposes, a new source of gain, and one that was really sordid, had been placed within the reach of the Roman plebs urbana: it was possible to make money by your vote in the election of magistrates.

In that degenerate when the vast accumulation of capital made it possible for a man to purchase his way to power, in spite of repeated attempts to check the evil by legislation, the old principle of honourable association was used to help the small man to make a living by choosing the unprincipled and often the incompetent to undertake the government of the Empire.
Apart, however, from such illegal means of making money, there was beyond doubt in the Rome of the last century B.C.a large amount of honest and useful labour done by free citizens.

We must not run away with the idea that the whole labour of the city was performed by slaves, who ousted the freeman from his chance of a living.