n the public places in Rome and offerings brought
there by the people who realized, too late, how greatly both Tiberius
and Caius had served them. Had their work been carried through, Rome
might have been spared the terrible disasters that came upon the city in
the next half-century. As it was, the senators breathed with relief that
Caius had followed his brother to a bloody grave; they did not see that
those who opposed reform were preparing the way for revolution and civil
war.

VI

Cato the Censor

At any time there are always some people who look back and say, 'Ah,
things are not what they were. There are no such men nowadays as there
used to be. The good old days are over. When I was young....' and so on.
Such men see in change nothing but evil. There is, to some minds,
a danger in every change: but there may be greater danger in standing
still.

The evils that men like the Gracchi saw in their own time made them
desire to see the life of Rome move forward to other and better ways.
A new world had opened round them: new ideas, new forces were making
themselves felt. Rome was no longer a small city, whose existence was
closed in by its own walls; it was the centre of a great dominion, and
touched the life of other peoples and nations at innumerable points. The
ways of the old could not be those of the new Rome. They saw the
difficulties and risks, but they saw too the promise of better things to
be won.

[Illustration: THE TOMB OF A ROMAN FAMILY:
to show simplicity of dress]

Very different was the outlook of a man like Marcus Porcius Cato. To him
the ancient ways alone seemed right. He modelled his own life and
actions so far as he could upon the heroes of the past, especially on
those like Cincinnatus, who were noted for their simplicity and
frugality. Cincinnatus, though he had held the highest offices in Rome,
was found driving his own plough by those who came from Rome in an hour
of peril to ask him to take over the highest power in the State. So Cato
kept his dress, the furnishings of his house and table, and everything
about him as plain as those he might have had in the days when every one
was poor. In his own record of his life he reports that he never wore a
garment that cost him more than a hundred drachmae; that even when
praetor or consul he drank the same wine as his slaves; that a dinner
never cost him from the market above thirty pence; and that he was thus
frugal for the sake of