e brass bedsteads,
rich coverlets and curtains, and other things of woven stuff in their
magnificent furniture, and little Oriental tables with one foot, and
decorated sideboards; when people first had singing-girls, and
lute-players, and players on the sharp-strung 'triangle,' and actors, to
amuse them at their feasts; when the feasts themselves began to be
extravagant, and the office of a cook, once mean and despised, rose to
be one of high estimation and rich emolument, so that what had been a
slave's work came to be regarded as an art. It was no wonder that such
changes came about in Rome, when every triumph brought hundreds and
thousands of pounds of gold and silver to the city, when Marcus Fulvius
brought back hundreds of crowns of gold, and two hundred and eighty-five
bronze statues, and two hundred and thirty statues of marble, with other
vast spoils, and when Cnaeus Manlius brought home wealth in bullion and
in coin, which even in these days, when the value of money is far less,
would be worth any nation's having.

And with it all came Greek corruption, Greek worship, Greek vice. For
years the mysteries of Dionysus and the orgies of the Maenads were
celebrated on the slopes of the Aventine and in those deep caves that
riddle its sides, less than a mile from the Forum, from the Capitol,
from the house of the rigid Cato, who found fault with Scipio of Africa
for shaving every day and liking Greek verses. The evil had first come
to Rome from Etruria, and had then turned Greek, as it were, in the days
of the Asian triumphs; and first it was an orgy of drunken women only,
as in most ancient times, but soon men were admitted, and presently a
rule was made that no one should be initiated who was over twenty years
of age, and that those who refused to submit to the horrid rites after
being received should perish in the deepest cave of the hill, while the
noise of drums and clashing cymbals and of shouting drowned their
screams. And many boys and girls were thus done to death; and the
conspiracy of the orgies was widespread in Rome, yet the secret was well
kept.

Now there was a certain youth at that time, whose father had died, and
whose mother was one of the Maenads and had married a man as bad as
herself. He and she were guardians of her son's fortune, and they had
squandered it, and knew that when he came of age they should not be able
to give an account of their guardianship. They therefore determined to
initiate