. Every moment was apportioned and occupied; and every
evening he was in the habit of turning over in his mind what he had
heard, said, or done during the day. Thus he found time for his own
affairs as well as for those of his friends and of the state, and time
also for conversation and pleasure; everything was done quickly and
without many words, and his genuine spirit of activity hated nothing
so much as bustle or a great ado about trifles. So lived the man who
was regarded by his contemporaries and by posterity as the true model
of a Roman burgess, and who appeared as it were the living embodiment
of the--certainly somewhat coarse-grained--energy and probity of Rome
in contrast with Greek indolence and Greek immorality; as a later
Roman poet says:

-Sperne mores transmarinos, mille habent offucias.
Cive Romano per orbem nemo vivit rectius.
Quippe malim unum Catonem, quam trecentos Socratas.- (3)

Such judgments will not be absolutely adopted by history; but every
one who carefully considers the revolution which the degenerate
Hellenism of this age accomplished in the modes of life and thought
among the Romans, will be inclined to heighten rather than to lessen
that condemnation of the foreign manners.

New Manners

The ties of family life became relaxed with fearful rapidity. The
evil of grisettes and boy-favourites spread like a pestilence, and, as
matters stood, it was not possible to take any material steps in the
way of legislation against it. The high tax, which Cato as censor
(570) laid on this most abominable species of slaves kept for luxury,
would not be of much moment, and besides fell practically into disuse
a year or two afterwards along with the property-tax generally.
Celibacy--as to which grave complaints were made as early as 520--and
divorces naturally increased in proportion. Horrible crimes were
perpetrated in the bosom of families of the highest rank; for
instance, the consul Gaius Calpurnius Piso was poisoned by his wife
and his stepson, in order to occasion a supplementary election to the
consulship and so to procure the supreme magistracy for the latter
--a plot which was successful (574). Moreover the emancipation of
women began. According to old custom the married woman was subject
in law to the marital power which was parallel with the paternal, and
the unmarried woman to the guardianship of her nearest male -agnati-,
which fell little short of the paternal power; the wife had n