his library we have already been introduced; those
who would see him in his banqueting-hall, or rather one of the many
in his palace, may turn to the fortieth chapter of Plutarch's most
interesting _Life_ of him, and read the story there told of the dinner
he gave to Cicero and Pompeius in the "Apollo" dining-room.[184]

The same cynical carelessness about public affairs and neglect of
duty, as compared with private ease or advantage, seems to have been
characteristic of the ordinary senator. Active and busy in his own
interest, he was indifferent to that of the State. There are distinct
signs that the attendance in the senate was not good. When Cicero was
away in Cilicia his correspondent writes of difficulties in getting
together a sufficient number even for such important business as the
settlement of provincial governments.[185] On the other hand, much
private business was done, and many jobs perpetrated, in a thin
senate; in 66 a tribune proposed that no senator should be dispensed
from the action of a law unless two hundred were present.[186] It was
in such a thin senate, we may be sure, that the virtuous Brutus was
dispensed from the law which forbade lending to foreign borrowers in
Rome, and thus was enabled to lend to the miserable Salaminians of
Cyprus at 48 per cent, and to recover his money under the bond.[187]
Writing to his brother in December 57, Cicero speaks of business done
in a senate full for the time of year, which was midwinter, just
before the Saturnalia, when only two hundred were present out of about
six hundred. In February 54, a month when the senate had always much
business to get through, it was so cold one day that the few members
present clamoured for dismissal and obtained it.[188] And when the
senate did meet there was a constant tendency to let things go. No
reform of procedure is mentioned as even thought of, at a time when
it was far more necessary than in our Parliament; business was talked
about, postponed obstructed, and personal animosities and private
interests seem, so far as we can judge from the correspondence of the
time, to have been predominant. With wearisome iteration the letters
speak of nothing done, of business postponed, or of the passing of
some senatus consultum, the utter futility of which is obvious even
now.[189] Even the magistrates seem to have been growing careless; we
hear of a praetor presiding in the court de repetundis who had not
taken the trouble to acqu