upon which the delight would
know no bounds.

Nor was the evil confined to the corruption of Roman manners by
Hellenic contagion; conversely the scholars began to demoralize their
instructors. Gladiatorial games, which were unknown in Greece, were
first introduced by king Antiochus Epiphanes (579-590), a professed
imitator of the Romans, at the Syrian court, and, although they
excited at first greater horror than pleasure in the Greek public,
which was more humane and had more sense of art than the Romans, yet
they held their ground likewise there, and gradually came more and
more into vogue.

As a matter of course, this revolution in life and manners brought an
economic revolution in its train. Residence in the capital became
more and more coveted as well as more costly. Rents rose to an
unexampled height. Extravagant prices were paid for the new
articles of luxury; a barrel of anchovies from the Black Sea cost
1600 sesterces (16 pounds)--more than the price of a rural slave; a
beautiful boy cost 24,000 sesterces (240 pounds)--more than many a
farmer's homestead. Money therefore, and nothing but money, became
the watchword with high and low. In Greece it had long been the case
that nobody did anything for nothing, as the Greeks themselves with
discreditable candour allowed: after the second Macedonian war the
Romans began in this respect also to imitate the Greeks.
Respectability had to provide itself with legal buttresses; pleaders,
for instance, had to be prohibited by decree of the people from taking
money for their services; the jurisconsults alone formed a noble
exception, and needed no decree of the people to compel their
adherence to the honourable custom of giving good advice gratuitously.
Men did not, if possible, steal outright; but all shifts seemed
allowable in order to attain rapidly to riches--plundering and
begging, cheating on the part of contractors and swindling on the part
of speculators, usurious trading in money and in grain, even the
turning of purely moral relations such as friendship and marriage to
economic account. Marriage especially became on both sides an object
of mercantile speculation; marriages for money were common, and it
appeared necessary to refuse legal validity to the' presents which the
spouses made to each other. That, under such a state of things, plans
for setting fire on all sides to the capital came to the knowledge of
the authorities, need excite no surprise. Wh