sted, because they lacked
the means to squander.

The ancient writers often lament the universal tendency to physical
self-indulgence, but among the facts they cite to prove this dismal
vice, many would seem to us innocent enough. It was judged by them
a scandalous proof of gluttony and as insensate luxury, that at a
certain period there should be fetched from as far as the Pontus,
certain sausages and certain salted fish that were, it appears, very
good; and that there should be introduced into Italy from Greece the
delicate art of fattening fowls. Even to drink Greek wines seemed for
a long time at Rome the caprice of an almost crazy luxury. As late
as 18 B.C., Augustus made a sumptuary law that forbade spending for
banquets on work-days more than two hundred sesterces (ten dollars);
allowed three hundred sesterces (fifteen dollars) for the days of the
Kalends, the Ides, and the Nones; and one thousand sesterces (fifty
dollars) for nuptial banquets. It is clear, then, that the lords
of the world banqueted in state at an expense that to us would seem
modest indeed. And the women of ancient times, accused so sharply by
the men of ruining them by their foolish extravagances, would cut a
poor figure for elegant ostentation in comparison with modern dames
of fashion. For example, silk, even in the most prosperous times, was
considered a stuff, as we should say, for millionaires; only a few
very rich women wore it; and, moreover, moralists detested it, because
it revealed too clearly the form of the body. Lollia Paulina passed
into history because she possessed jewels worth several million
francs: there are to-day too many Lollia Paulinas for any one of them
to hope to buy immortality at so cheap a rate.

I should reach the same conclusions if I could show you what the Roman
writers really meant by corruption in their accounts of the relations
between the sexes. It is not possible here to make critical analyses
of texts and facts concerning this material, for reasons that you
readily divine; but it would be easy to prove that also in this
respect posterity has seen the evil much larger than it was.

Why, then, did the ancient writers bewail luxury, inclination
to pleasure, prodigality--things all comprised in the notorious
"corruption"--in so much the livelier fashion than do moderns,
although they lived in a world which, being poorer and more simple,
could amuse itself, make display, and indulge in dissipation so much