burden the public budget with a
number of useless expenses, than to allow the providing of an
amusement for the people to become practically a qualification for
holding the highest office in the state. The future candidates for
the consulship soon entered into a mutual rivalry in their expenditure
on these games, which incredibly increased their cost; and, as may
well be conceived, it did no harm if the consul expectant gave,
over and above this as it were legal contribution, a voluntary
"performance" (-munus-), a gladiatorial show at his own expense for
the public benefit. The splendour of the games became gradually the
standard by which the electors measured the fitness of the candidates
for the consulship. The nobility had, in truth, to pay dear for their
honours--a gladiatorial show on a respectable scale cost 720,000
sesterces (7200 pounds)--but they paid willingly, since by this
means they absolutely precluded men who were not wealthy from a
political career.

Squandering of the Spoil

Corruption, however, was not restricted to the Forum; it was
transferred even to the camp. The old burgess militia had reckoned
themselves fortunate when they brought home a compensation for the
toil of war, and, in the event of success, a trifling gift as a
memorial of victory. The new generals, with Scipio Africanus at their
head, lavishly scattered amongst their troops the money of Rome as
well as the proceeds of the spoil: it was on this point, that Cato
quarrelled with Scipio during the last campaigns against Hannibal in
Africa. The veterans from the second Macedonian war and that waged in
Asia Minor already returned home throughout as wealthy men: even the
better class began to commend a general, who did not appropriate the
gifts of the provincials and the gains of war entirely to himself and
his immediate followers, and from whose camp not a few men returned
with gold, and many with silver, in their pockets: men began to forget
that the moveable spoil was the property of the state. When Lucius
Paullus again dealt with it in the old mode, his own soldiers,
especially the volunteers who had been allured in numbers by the
prospect of rich plunder, fell little short of refusing to the
victor of Pydna by popular decree the honour of a triumph--an honour
which they already threw away on every one who had subjugated three
Ligurian villages.

Decline of Warlike Spirit

How much the military discipline and the martial spi