as Cicero and his
friends, the wiser and quieter section of the aristocracy, to call
their work altogether unproductive. True, it left little permanent
impress on human modes of thought; it wrought no material change for
the better in Italy or the Empire. We may go so far as to allow
that it initiated that habit of dilettantism which we find already
exaggerated in the age lately illuminated for us by Professor Dill in
his book on _Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius_, and far more
exaggerated in the last age of Roman society, which the same author
has depicted in his earlier work. But it may be doubted whether under
any circumstances the Romans could have produced a great prophet or a
great philosopher; and the most valuable work they did was of
another kind. It lay in the humanisation of society by the rational
development of law, and by the communication of Greek thought and
literature to the western world. This was what occupied the best days
of Cicero and Sulpicius Rufus and many others; and they succeeded at
the same time in creating for its expression one of the most perfect
prose languages that the world has ever known or will know. They did
it too, helping each other by kindly and cheering intercourse,--the
_humanitas_ of daily life. It is exactly this humanitas that the
northern mind of Mommsen, in spite of its vein of passionate romance,
could not understand; all the softer side of that pleasant existence
among the villas and statues and libraries was to him simply
contemptible. Let us hope that he has done no permanent damage to
the credit of Cicero, and of the many lesser men who lived the same
honourable and elegant life.

CHAPTER IX

THE DAILY LIFE OF THE WELL-TO-DO

Before giving some account of the way in which a Roman of
consideration spent his day in the time of Cicero, it seems necessary
to explain briefly how he reckoned the divisions of the day.

The old Latin farmer knew nothing of hours or clocks. He simply went
about his daily work with the sun and the light as guides, rising at
or before sunrise, working till noon, and, after a meal and a rest,
resuming his work till sunset. This simple method of reckoning would
suffice in a sunny climate, even when life and business became more
complicated; and it is a fact that the division of the day into hours
was not known at Rome until the introduction of the sun-dial in 263
B.C.[407] We may well find it hard to understand how such bus