144 WIVES OF THE CJiSARS. 



Li via was not exempt from the suspicion of lubricity ; the Palatine was 

 the receptacle of living and unprecedented genius. If the almost 

 blameless muse of Virgil had introduced the graceful innocence of 

 foreign pastorals if he had treated husbandry in numbers of ineffable 

 felicity, and piously immortalized the advent, the victorious progress, 

 and consolidation of the Roman power Catullus, Ovid, Propertius, 

 Horace, and Tibullus had sung of passionate indulgence with provok- 

 ing and contagious fire, and by the beauty of their exquisite delinea- 

 tions, they had flattered the abandoned dispositions of the great, 

 while their flagrant immoralities were rendered more seductive by 

 the elegiac veil which gracefully concealed the nakedness, yet win- 

 ningly invested the prurient forms of physical allurements. Horace, 

 who in graver moments, sometimes wrote as a divine philosopher, 

 and often as a moralist or censor, had proffered to the vitiated taste 

 of private intercourse the charms of the Circaean cup. The natural 

 deformities of vice were hidden by the raiment of a splendid and 

 empassioned fancy. The ranks of grandeur gave examples of luxury 

 and vice, and the arts of pleasure stole insidiously through all classes 

 of the predisposed community. 



Various causes conduced to the amorous and gallant spirit which 

 engrossed the court of Caesar. The administration of his government 

 in form, though nominally republican, was purely despotic ; its influ- 

 ence on the people was paternal. The aged, from experience, and 

 the younger generations, from tradition, shrunk from the return of 

 factitious violence. If any turbulent spirit still dissented from the 

 placid acquiescence of the community, the general peace and happi- 

 ness exhibited the gross futility of any scheme, which aimed at the 

 subversion of a beneficient and popular authority. The aspiring 

 genius that, in the recurring tumults of the commonwealth, would 

 possibly have sought in factious violence, the path to glory and dis- 

 tinction, beheld beneath the settled polity of Caesar the great allure- 

 ments of ambition in civil functions and the arts of peace. The 

 females of the court beneath Augustus, acquired a powerful but secret 

 influence, the effects of which were palpable and great. Political 

 and military advancement was procured through their intrigues ; 

 benefactions were repaid with gratitude ; the novel system was replete 

 with accidents that led alike to pleasure and to profit ; great exam- 

 ples seemed to justify the practice, and while worldliness pursued 

 the modern commerce with a cold respect, the votaries of pleasure, 

 under similar pretexts, created and embraced the opportunities of 

 passionate enjoyment. 



The personages who constituted or frequented the imperial court, ex- 

 emplified the elegance and sensuality, which soon became the fatal stand- 

 ard of polite society. Mecaenas; Tiberius; Julius Antony ; Cinna, Pom- 

 pey's grandson ; -Licinius Muraena, the brother of the frail and beau- 

 tiful Terentia ; Julius Florus, the friend and correspondent of Horace ; 

 the illustrious but eventually unfortunate Varus ; Marcus Lollius, 

 celebrated by the muse of Horace; Sestius, the brave and generous 

 friend of Marcus Brutus; Scaeva; Gracchus; Marcus, the son of 

 Cicero ; Asprenas Nonius, and a host of individuals equally distin- 

 ghished by their birth, their quality or exploits. When to these we 



