marriage and the rearing of children, is shown
by the Gracchan agrarian laws, which first placed a premium on
these.(51) Divorce, formerly in Rome almost unheard of, was now an
everyday occurrence; while in the oldest Roman marriage the husband
had purchased his wife, it might have been proposed to the Romans
of quality in the present times that, with the view of bringing
the name into accordance with the reality, they should introduce
marriage for hire. Even a man like Metellus Macedonicus, who for
his honourable domestic life and his numerous host of children was
the admiration of his contemporaries, when censor in 623 enforced
the obligation of the burgesses to live in a state of matrimony by
describing it as an oppressive public burden, which patriots ought
nevertheless to undertake from a sense of duty.(52)

There were, certainly, exceptions. The circles of the rural towns,
and particularly those of the larger landholders, had preserved
more faithfully the old honourable habits of the Latin nation.
In the capital, however, the Catonian opposition had become a mere
form of words; the modern tendency bore sovereign sway, and though
individuals of firm and refined organization, such as Scipio
Aemilianus, knew the art of combining Roman manners with Attic
culture, Hellenism was among the great multitude synonymous with
intellectual and moral corruption. We must never lose sight of
the reaction exercised by these social evils on political life,
if we would understand the Roman revolution. It was no matter
of indifference, that of the two men of rank, who in 662 acted
as supreme masters of morals to the community, the one publicly
reproached the other with having shed tears over the death of a
-muraena- the pride of his fishpond, and the latter retaliated on
the former that he had buried three wives and had shed tears over
none of them. It was no matter of indifference, that in 593 an
orator could make sport in the open Forum with the following
description of a senatorial civil juryman, whom the time fixed
for the cause finds amidst the circle of his boon-companions.
"They play at hazard, delicately perfumed, surrounded by their
mistresses. As the afternoon advances, they summon the servant
and bid him make enquiries on the Comitium, as to what has occurred
in the Forum, who has spoken in favour of or against the new project
of law, what tribes have voted for and what against it. At length
they go themselves to