Section VI. The world of work. Professions and trades

These two walls record the traders (officia) held both in the Imperial House and in private contexts, as well as “artists, craftsmen, merchants”, and offer significant evidence of work in ancient times. Indeed, these (burial) inscriptions provide an interesting and variegated panoramic view of the daily life of those in the service of the emperor and those who carried out manual or intellectual activities both autonomously or as employees of important and wealthy families, some of which belonged to the Roman governing class; they are often slaves or freedmen, liberti. There are also figurative elements, such as artisanal tools, alluding to the type of work performed or references to places in Rome linked to it in various ways; such references have sometimes proved to be valuable to scholars of urban topography.