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times. For five hundred years the people had been contented with one
festival in a year, and one circus. Flaminius added another festival, and
another circus. In the year 550 of the city, there were five festivals.
The candidates for the consulship spent large sums on these games, the
splendor of which became the standard by which the electoral body measured
the fitness of candidates. A gladiatorial show cost seven hundred and
twenty thousand sesterces, or thirty-six thousand dollars.

(M926) And corruption extended to the army. The old burgess militia were
contented to return home with some trifling gift as a memorial of victory,
but the troops of Scipio, and the veterans of the Macedonian and Asiatic
wars, came back enriched with spoils. A decay of a warlike spirit was
observable from the time the burgesses converted war into a traffic in
plunder. A great passion also arose for titles and insignia, which
appeared under different forms, especially for the honors of a triumph,
originally granted only to the supreme magistrate who had signally
augmented the power of the State. Statues and monuments were often erected
at the expense of the person whom they purported to honor. And finally,
the ring, the robe, and the amulet case distinguished not only the
burgesses from the foreigners and slaves, but also the person who was born
free from one who had been a slave, the son of the free-born from the son
of the manumitted, the son of a knight from a common burgess, the
descendant of a curule house from the common senators. These distinctions
in rank kept pace with the extension of conquests, until, at last, there
was as complete a net work of aristocratic distinctions as in England at
the present day.

(M927) All these distinctions and changes were bitterly deplored by Marcus
Portius Cato--the last great statesman of the older school--a genuine Roman
of the antique stamp. He was also averse to schemes of universal empire.
He was a patrician, brought up at the plow, and in love with his Sabine
farm. Yet he rose to the consulship, and even the censorship. He served in
war under Marcellus, Fabius, and Scipio, and showed great ability as a
soldier. He was as distinguished in the forum as in the camp and
battle-field, having a bold address, pungent wit, and great knowledge of
the Roman laws. He was the most influential political orator of his day.
He was narrow in his political ideas, conservative, austere, and upright;
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