THE EXAMPLE OF ROME 203 



tural revival. A little later, almost on the morrow of the sangui- 

 nary struggle of the Social War, B. C. 90 to 89, there was "a 

 marked increase in the general luxury and comfort." By the 

 time when Varro wrote his De Re Rustica in 37 B. C. some of his 

 characters could say that Italy was the best-cultivated land in 

 the world, and had become almost entirely one vast garden. 

 Another states more modestly that Italy was better cultivated in 

 his time than in preceding centuries. Many other indications 

 point to a return of prosperity and also of vigor. The period 

 from 75 B. C. onward was marked by a high degree of luxury and 

 affluence. Though vice and sensuality abounded, they did not 

 play such a part as in earlier times. In their place came more 

 desire for the graces of life, for art and literature, for serious 

 studies in science such as the work of Varro just mentioned and 

 the more poetic Georgics of Virgil. This was the time of Cicero 

 and of the men who made the succeeding Augustan Age the most 

 famous epoch in Roman history. 



Turn again to Figure 24 and see how the climate improved 

 from the end of the second century B. C. to the middle of the first. 

 Then it remained favorable for seventy years after the birth of 

 Christ. This period corresponds closely with what is often called 

 the greatest age of Rome. It was an age when the Roman arms 

 were once more invincible, and the city by the Tiber was the mis- 

 tress of the world. It was an age when the ideas of the earlier 

 Roman Republic flowered and bore fruit in the great system of 

 Roman law which still so largely guides modern jurisprudence. 

 Yet this was not really Rome's greatest period. It was a vast 

 improvement over the second century B. C, but it lacked the 

 idealism and the high moral purpose of the earlier, simpler days. 

 It was like the health which a man enjoys after a deadly illness — 

 something to be devoutly thankful for, something that may enable 

 him to achieve the master stroke of his life, and yet not equal to 

 the young vigor with which he laid the foundations of his career. 



After the time of Augustus the character of the Roman Empire 



