Her people, from the very cradle to the end of their childhood,The same figure is used by Florus, 4 ff. (, pp. 6 ff.). a period of about three hundred years, carried on wars about her walls. Then, entering upon adult life, after many toilsome wars, they crossed the Alps and the sea. Grown to youth and manhood, from every region which the vast globe includes, they brought back laurels and triumphs. And now, declining into old age, and often owing victory to its name alone, it has come to a quieter period of life.

Thus the venerable city, after humbling the proud necks of savage nations, and making laws, the everlasting foundations and moorings of liberty, like a thrifty parent, wise and wealthy, has entrusted the management of her inheritance to the Caesars, as to her children.

And although for some time the tribesThe thirty-five tribes into which the Roman citizens were divided. have been inactive and the centuriesThe comitia centuriata. at peace, and there are no contests for votes but the tranquillity of Numa’s time has returned, yet throughout all regions and parts of the earth she is accepted as mistress and queen; everywhere the white hair of the senators and their authority are revered and the name of the Roman people is respected and honoured.

But this magnificence and splendour of the assemblies is marred by the rude worthlessness of a few, who do not consider where they were born, but, as if licence were granted to vice, descend to sin and wantonness. For as the lyric poet Simonides tells us,The passage does not occur in the surviving fragments. Plutarch, , 1, attributes the same saying to Euripides, or whoever it was. one who is going to live happy and in accord with perfect reason ought above all else to have a glorious fatherland.

Some of these men eagerly strive for statues, thinking that by them they can be made immortal, as if they would gain a greater reward from senseless brazen images than from the consciousness of honourable and virtuous conduct. And they take pains to have them overlaid with gold, a fashion first introduced by Acilius Glabrio,See Livy, xl. 34, 5. after his skill and his arms had overcome King Antiochus.At Thermopylae in 191 B.C. But how noble it is, scorning these slight and trivial honours, to aim to tread the long and steep ascent to true glory, as the bard of Ascra expresses it,Hesiod, , 289 ff. τῆς δ᾽ ἀρετῆς ἱδρῶτα θεοὶ προπάροιθεν ἔθηκαν | Ἀθάνατοι· μακρὸς δὲ καὶ ὄρθιος οἶμος ἐπ᾽ αὐτὴν, | καὶ τρηχὺς τὸ πρῶτον· ἐπὴν δ᾽ εἰς ἄκρον ἵκηται, | Ῥηιδίη δὴ ἔπειτα πέλει, χαλεπή περ᾽ ἐοῦσα. is made clear by Cato the Censor. For when he was asked why he alone among many did not have a statue, he replied: I would rather that good men should wonder why I did not deserve one than (which is much worse) should mutter Why was he given one?

Other men, taking great pride in coaches higher than common and in ostentatious finery of apparel, sweat under heavy cloaks, which they fasten about their necks and bind around their very throats, while the air blows through them because of the excessive lightness of the material; and they lift them up with both hands and wave them with many gestures, especially with their left hands,Probably to display their rings; cf. Pliny, xxxiii. 9, manus et prorsus sinistrae maximam auctoritatem conciliavere auro. in order that the over-long fringes and the tunics embroidered with party-coloured threads in multiform figures of animals may be conspicuous.

Others, though no one questions them, assume a grave expression and greatly exaggerate their wealth, doubling the annual yield of their fields, well cultivated (as they think), of which they assert that they possess a great number from the rising to the setting sun; they are clearly unaware that their forefathers, through whom the greatness of Rome was so far flung, gained renown, not by riches, but by fierce wars, and not differing from the common soldiers in wealth, mode of life, or simplicity of attire, overcame all obstacles by valour.

For that reason the eminent Valerius Publicola was buried by a contribution of money,In 503 B.C.; see Livy, ii. 16, 7. and through the aid of her husband’s friendsValerius Maximus, iv. 4, 6, says that it was the senate that came to their aid. the needy wife of Regulus and her children were supported. And the daughter of ScipioCn. Cornelius Scipio, who wrote from Spain in the second Punic war, asking to be recalled, that he might provide a dowry for his daughter; see Valerius Maximus, iv. 4, 10. received her dowry from the public treasury, since the nobles blushed to look upon the beauty of this marriageable maiden long unsought because of the absence of a father of modest means.

But now-a-days, if as a strangerEnsslin, p. 7 (see Bibliography), refers this to Ammianus; cf. note on 6, 2, above. of good position you enter for the first time to pay your respects to some man who is well-to-doFor bene nummatum, cf. Horace, i. 6, 38. and therefore puffed up, at first you will be greeted as if you were an eagerly expected friend, and after being asked many questions and forced to lie, you will wonder, since the man never saw you before, that a great personage should pay such marked attention to your humble self as to make you regret, because of such special kindness, that you did not see Rome ten years earlier.

When, encouraged by this affability, you make the same call on the following day, you will hang about unknown and unexpected, while the man who the day before urged you to call again counts up his clients, wondering who you are or whence you came. But when you are at last recognized and admitted to his friendship, if you devote yourself to calling upon him for three years without interruption, then are away for the same number of days, and return to go through with a similar course, you will not be asked where you were, and unless you abandon the quest in sorrow, you will waste your whole life to no purpose in paying court to the blockhead.

And when, after a sufficient interval of time, the preparation of those tedious and unwholesome banquets begins, or the distribution of the customary doles, it is debated with anxious deliberation whether it will be suitable to invite a stranger, with the exception of those to whom a return of hospitality is due; and if, after full and mature deliberation, the decision is in the affirmative, the man who is invited is one who watches all night before the house of the charioteers,Referring to a plebeian (cf. xxviii. 4, 29), a partisan of one of the colours. Cf. also Suet., 55, 3. or who is a professional dicer, or who pretends to the knowledge of certain secrets.