THE WIVES OF THE C.ESARS. 139 



national calamity. The republic still was teeming with the sanguinary 

 instruments of Sylla, Marius, and Cinna ; a desperate and odious mul- 

 titude, inured to the depravity, and stained with all the crimes of the 

 proscriptions. By such a mass of unemployed iniquity the recur- 

 rence of domestic discord was looked on as the advent of licentious 

 outrage, violence, and spoliation ; every criminal appetite was to be 

 indulged by the purveyance of the sword. An avenue was opened 

 to the dissolute rapacity of a redundant and demoralized capital 

 which revelled in the vice of sensuality, and spurned at once the im- 

 potence of law and the annihilated bonds of honour, order, and re- 

 ligion. The aristocracy had meanly tampered first, and afterwards had 

 taken the more fatal step of fleeing from the bold usurper of supreme 

 authority ; the subtle policy of Caesar debased the reputation and 

 neutralized the power of the patrician order,* while his persuasive 

 eloquence, and the superior lustre of his military fame, united with 

 the prompt decision of his measures, attached the bold and reckless 

 to his fortunes. Venality, encouraged by the leaders of the hostile 

 parties, was recompensed with prodigality ; patriotism was sacrificed 

 to faction. All was changed ; depravity became the standard of the 

 Roman character ; and, in such a state of wide abandonment, the 

 virtues of the Roman matron perished with the piety and morals of 

 the citizens. 



It was at such a season of prevailing profligacy that the influence 

 of the Roman females was brought into extended operation on the 

 system of society ; and, unfortunately for their character, it is drawn 

 from previous seclusion but to strike us with examples of ambition, 

 cruelty, and prostitution. It is true that there occasionally breaks on 

 us an isolated instance of chastity or heroism ; but so dissociated is 

 it from the vulgar prevalence of vice, that it more forcibly illustrates 

 by its contrast the gross degeneracy which surrounds it. Well might 

 the indignant satiristf of later times advert to the pudicity and fru- 

 gal virtues of the sylvan reign of Saturn and the youthful Jove : well . 

 might he, when he looked upon the sensual usage of his day, in- 

 dulge in fancies of that rural modesty and peace, when the caverns of 

 the wilderness afforded homes and temples to an unsophisticated 

 race ; when a wife, the hardy native of the mountains, spread with 

 rushes, leaves, and skins of beasts her husband's bed. Striking as 

 the contrast is between a state of such primaeval purity and hardi- 

 hood, and the abandoned manners of the time in which he lived, it 

 transcends but little, if at all, the comparison a moralist may draw 

 between the toils and strict economy of infant Rome, and that 



* " Senatum supplevit (Caesar) patricios adlegit ; prsetorum, aedilium, 

 quaestorum, minoruura etiam magistratuum numcrum ampliavit ; nudatos opere 

 censorio, aut sententia judicum de ambitu condemnatos, restituit." Sueton. in 

 Jul. Cces. 



f- " Cum frigida parvas 



Praeberet spelunca domos, ignemq. Lareraq., 

 Et pecus, et dominos communi clauderet umbra ; 

 Silvestrem montana torum cum sterneret uxor 

 Frondibus, et culmo, vicinarumcjue ferarum 

 Pellibus." Juv. Sat. 6. 



