vince of Asia,
when a new -stater-, the -cistophorus- as it was called, was prescribed
by the Roman government and was thenceforth struck by the district-
capitals there under Roman superintendence. This essential diversity
between the Occidental and Oriental systems of currency came to be
of the greatest historical importance: the Romanizing of the subject
lands found one of its mightiest levers in the adoption of Roman money,
and it was not through mere accident that what we have designated at
this epoch as the field of the -denarius- became afterwards the Latin,
while the field of the -drachma- became afterwards the Greek, half
of the empire. Still at the present day the former field substantially
represents the sum of Romanic culture, whereas the latter has
severed itself from European civilization.

It is easy to form a general conception of the aspect which under
such economic conditions the social relations must have assumed;
but to follow out in detail the increase of luxury, of prices, of
fastidiousness and frivolity is neither pleasant nor instructive.
Extravagance and sensuous enjoyment formed the main object with
all, among the parvenus as well as among the Licinii and Metelli;
not the polished luxury which is the acme of civilization, but
that sort of luxury which had developed itself amidst the decaying
Hellenic civilization of Asia Minor and Alexandria, which degraded
everything beautiful and significant to the purpose of decoration
and studied enjoyment with a laborious pedantry, a precise
punctiliousness, rendering it equally nauseous to the man of fresh
feeling as to the man of fresh intellect. As to the popular
festivals, the importation of transmarine wild beasts prohibited
in the time of Cato(48) was, apparently about the middle of this
century, formally permitted anew by a decree of the burgesses
proposed by Gnaeus Aufidius; the effect of which was, that animal-
hunts came into enthusiastic favour and formed a chief feature of
the burgess-festivals. Several lions first appeared in the Roman
arena about 651, the first elephants about 655; Sulla when praetor
exhibited a hundred lions in 661. The same holds true of
gladiatorial games. If the forefathers had publicly exhibited
representations of great battles, their grandchildren began to
do the same with their gladiatorial games, and by means of such
leading or state performances of the age to make themselves a
laughing-stock to their descenda