, furniture of silver, golden plate;
by surrounding themselves with a multitude of useless servants, by
casting money to the people who were assembled to admire them.[136]

The Romans, very vain and with artistic tastes but slightly developed,
had a relish for this species of luxury. They had but little regard
for beauty or for comfort, and had thought for nothing else than
display. They had houses built with immense gardens adorned with
statues, sumptuous villas projecting into the sea in the midst of
enormous gardens. They surrounded themselves with troops of slaves.
They and their wives substituted for linen garments those of gauze,
silk, and gold. At their banquets they spread embroidered carpets,
purple coverings, gold and silver plate. Sulla had one hundred and
fifty dishes of silver; the plate of Marcus Drusus weighed 10,000
pounds. While the common people continued to sit at table in
accordance with old Italian custom, the rich adopted the oriental
usage of reclining on couches at their meals. At the same time was
introduced the affected and costly cookery of the East--exotic fishes,
brains of peacocks, and tongues of birds.

From the second century the extravagance was such that a consul who
died in 152 could say in his will: "As true glory does not consist in
vain pomp but in the merits of the dead and of one's ancestors, I bid
my children not to spend on my funeral ceremonies more than a million
as" ($10,000).

=Greek Humanity.=--In Greece the Romans saw the monuments, the
statues, and the pictures which had crowded their cities for
centuries; they came to know their learned people and the
philosophers. Some of the Romans acquired a taste for the beautiful
and for the life of the spirit. The Scipios surrounded themselves with
cultivated Greeks. AEmilius Paullus asked from all the booty taken by
him from Macedon only the library of King Perseus; he had his children
taught by Greek preceptors. It was then the fashion in Rome to speak,
and even to write in Greek.[137] The nobles desired to appear
connoisseurs in painting and in sculpture; they imported statues by
the thousand, the famous bronzes of Corinth, and they heaped these up
in their houses. Thus Verres possessed a whole gallery of objects of
art which he had stolen in Sicily. Gradually the Romans assumed a
gloss of Greek art and literature. This new culture was called
"humanity," as opposed to the "rusticity" of the old Roman peasants.

It was littl