h
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. When man no longer finds
enjoyment in work, and works merely in order to attain as quickly as
possible to enjoyment, it is a mere accident that he does not become a
criminal. Destiny had lavished all the glories of power and riches
with liberal hand on the Romans; but, in truth, the Pandora's box was
a gift of doubtful value.

Notes for Chapter XIII

1. That --Asiagenus-- was the original title of the hero of Magnesia
and of his descendants, is established by coins and inscriptions; the
fact that the Capitoline Fasti call him -Asiaticus- is one of several
traces indicating that these have undergone a non-contemporary
revision. The former surname can only he a corruption of --Asiagenus--
--the form which later authors substituted for it--which signifies
not the conqueror of Asia, but an Asiatic by birth.

2. II. VIII. Religion

3. [In the first edition of this translation I gave these lines in
English on the basis of Dr. Mommsen's German version, and added in a
note that I had not been able to find the original. Several scholars
whom I consulted were not more successful; and Dr. Mommsen was at the
time absent from Berlin. Shortly after the first edition appeared, I
received a note from Sir George Cornewall Lewis informing me that I
shoul