continuous poem. It
lashes the vices and the short-sighted folly of society; with the Sword
of Damocles above his head the rich man sits at a luxurious board
(III, i, 17); sails in his bronzed galley, lolls in his lordly chariot,
with black Care ever at the helm or on the box (III, i, 40). By
hardihood in the field and cheerful poverty at home Rome became great
of yore; such should be the virtues of to-day. Let men be _moral_; it
was immorality that ruined Troy; _heroic_--read the tale of Regulus;
_courageous_, but with courage ordered, disciplined, controlled (III,
iii; v; iv, 65). Brute force without mind, he says almost in Milton's
words, falls by its own strength, as the giants fell encountering the
gods:

For what is strength without a double share
Of wisdom? vast, unwieldy, burdensome;
Proudly secure, yet liable to fall
By weakest subtleties, not made to rule,
But to subserve where wisdom bears command.

("Samson Ag.," 53.)

Self-discipline, he reminds his audience, need not be sullen and
austere; in regenerated Rome the Muses still may rule. Mild thoughts
they plant, and they joy to see mild thoughts take root; refinement
of manners and of mind, and the gladsomeness of literary culture
(III, iv, 41).

He turns to reprove the ostentation of the rich; their adding field to
field, poor families evicted from farmstead and cottage to make way for
spreading parks and ponds and gardens;

driven from home
Both wife and husband forth must roam,
Bearing their household gods close pressed,
With squalid babes, upon their breast.

(II, xviii, 23.)

Not thus was it in the good old times. Then rich men lavished marble on
the temples of the gods, roofed their own cottages with chance-cut turf
(II, xv, 13). And to what end all this splendour? Behind your palace
walls lurks the grim architect of a narrower home; the path of glory
leads but to the grave (II, xviii, 17). And as on the men, so on the
women of Rome his solemn warnings are let fall. Theirs is the task to
maintain the sacred family bond, the purity of marriage life. Let them
emulate the matrons of the past, severe mothers of gallant sons (III,
vi, 37). Let men and women join to stay the degeneracy which has begun
to set in, and which, unchecked, will grow deadlier with each generation
as it succeeds.

How Time doth in its flight debase
Whate'er it finds? our fathers' race,
More deeply versed in ill