rtly in groups, partly en masse at the close--a distinction
which Gaius Gracchus, in this too paving the way for the new monarchy,
is said to have introduced. The interchange of letters of courtesy
was carried to as great an extent as the visits of courtesy;
"friendly" letters flew over land and sea between persons who had
neither personal relations nor business with each other, whereas proper
and formal business-letters scarcely occur except where the letter
is addressed to a corporation. In like manner invitations to dinner,
the customary new year's presents, the domestic festivals, were divested
of their proper character and converted almost into public ceremonials;
even death itself did not release the Roman from these attentions
to his countless "neighbours," but in order to die with due respectability
he had to provide each of them at any rate with a keepsake. Just as
in certain circles of our mercantile world, the genuine intimacy
of family ties and family friendships had so totally vanished
from the Rome of that day that the whole intercourse of business
and acquaintance could be garnished with forms and flourishes
which had lost all meaning, and thus by degrees the reality
came to be superseded by that spectral shadow of "friendship,"
which holds by no means the least place among the various evil spirits
brooding over the proscriptions and civil wars of this age.

Women

An equally characteristic feature in the brilliant decay of this period
was the emancipation of women. In an economic point of view
the women had long since made themselves independent;(57)
in the present epoch we even meet with solicitors acting specially
for women, who officiously lend their aid to solitary rich ladies
in the management of their property and their lawsuits,
make an impression on them by their knowledge of business and law,
and thereby procure for themselves ampler perquisites and legacies
than other loungers on the exchange. But it was not merely
from the economic guardianship of father or husband that women
felt themselves emancipated. Love-intrigues of all sorts were constantly
in progress. The ballet-dancers (-mimae-) were quite a match
for those of the present day in the variety of their pursuits
and the skill with which they followed them out; their primadonnas,
Cytheris and the like, pollute even the pages of history.
But their, as it were, licensed trade was very materially injured
by the free art of the lad