the roes of lampreys caught in the
Carpathian Sea.

The nobles squandered money equally on their banquets, their stables,
and their dress; and it was to their crimes, says Juvenal, that they
were indebted for their gardens, their palaces, their tables, and their
fine old plate.

Unbounded pride, insolence, inhumanity, selfishness, and scorn marked
this noble class. Of course there were exceptions, but the historians
and satirists give the saddest pictures of their cold-hearted depravity.
The sole result of friendship with a great man was a meal, at which
flattery and sycophancy were expected; but the best wine was drunk by
the host, instead of by the guest. Provinces were ransacked for fish and
fowl and game for the tables of the great, and sensualism was thought to
be no reproach. They violated the laws of chastity and decorum; they
scourged to death their slaves; they degraded their wives and sisters;
they patronized the most demoralizing sports; they enriched themselves
by usury and monopolies; they practised no generosity, except at their
banquets, when ostentation balanced their avarice; they measured
everything by the money-standard; they had no taste for literature, but
they rewarded sculptors and painters who prostituted art to their vanity
or passions; they had no reverence for religion, and ridiculed the gods.
Their distinguishing vices were meanness and servility, the pursuit of
money by every artifice, the absence of honor, and unblushing
sensuality.

Gibbon has eloquently abridged the remarks of Ammianus Marcellinus
respecting these people:--

"They contend with each other in the empty vanity of titles and
surnames. They affect to multiply their likenesses in statues of bronze
or marble; nor are they satisfied unless these statues are covered with
plates of gold. They boast of the rent-rolls of their estates; they
measure their rank and consequence by the loftiness of their chariots
and the weighty magnificence of their dress; their long robes of silk
and purple float in the wind, and as they are agitated by art or
accident they discover the under garments, the rich tunics embroidered
with the figures of various animals. Followed by a train of fifty
servants, and tearing up the pavement, they move along the streets as if
they travelled with post-horses; and the example of the senators is
boldly imitated by the matrons and ladies, whose covered carriages are
continually driving round the immense space o