me, or do I
see slaves in arms against their masters?--Formerly every one who
did not present himself for the levy, was sold on the part of
the state into slavery abroad; now the censor who allows cowardice and
everything to pass is called [by the aristocracy, III. XI. Separation
Of the Orders in the Theatre; IV. X. Shelving of the Censorship, V. III.
Renewal of the Censorship; V. VIII. Humiliations of the Republicans]
a great citizen, and earns praise because he does not seek
to make himself a name by annoying his fellow-citizens.--
Formerly the Roman husbandman had his beard shaven once every week;
now the rural slave cannot have it fine enough.--Formerly one saw
on the estates a corn-granary, which held ten harvests, spacious
cellars for the wine-vats and corresponding wine-presses; now
the master keeps flocks of peacocks, and causes his doors to be inlaid
with African cypress-wood.--Formerly the housewife turned
the spindle with the hand and kept at the same time the pot on
the hearth in her eye, that the pottage might not be singed; now," it
is said in another satire, "the daughter begs her father for
a pound of precious stones, and the wife her husband for a bushel of
pearls.--Formerly a newly-married husband was silent and bashful;
now the wife surrenders herself to the first coachman that comes.--
Formerly the blessing of children was woman's pride; now if her
husband desires for himseli children, she replies: Knowest thou not
what Ennius says?

"'-Ter sub armis malim vitam cernere Quam semel modo parere--.--'

"Formerly the wife was quite content, when the husband once or twice
in the year gave her a trip to the country in the uncushioned
waggon;" now, he could add (comp. Cicero, Pro Mil. 21, 55), "the
wife sulks if her husband goes to his country estate without her,
and the travelling lady is attended to the villa by the fashionable
host of Greek menials and the choir." --In a treatise of a graver
kind, "Catus or the Training of Children," Varro not only instructs
the friend who had asked him for advice on that point, regarding
the gods who were according to old usage to be sacrificed to for
the children's welfare, but, referring to the more judicious mode
of rearing children among the Persians and to his own strictly
spent youth, he warns against over-feeding and over-sleeping,
against sweet bread and fine fare--the whelps, the old man thinks,
are now fed more judiciously than the children--and likewise