its manners during the period which Sallust describes as the best._
Omitting many things, that I may not exceed the limits of the work
I have proposed to myself, I come to the epoch between the second
and last Punic wars, during which, according to Sallust, the Romans
lived with the greatest virtue and concord. Now, in this period of
virtue and harmony, the great Scipio, the liberator of Rome and
Italy, who had with surprising ability brought to a close the second
Punic war--that horrible, destructive, dangerous contest--who had
defeated Hannibal and subdued Carthage, and whose whole life is
said to have been dedicated to the gods, and cherished in their
temples,--this Scipio, after such a triumph, was obliged to yield to
the accusations of his enemies, and to leave his country, which his
valour had saved and liberated, to spend the remainder of his days in
the town of Liternum, so indifferent to a recall from exile, that he
is said to have given orders that not even his remains should lie in
his ungrateful country. It was at that time also that the proconsul
Cn. Manlius, after subduing the Galatians, introduced into Rome the
luxury of Asia, more destructive than all hostile armies. It was then
that iron bedsteads and expensive carpets were first used; then, too,
that female singers were admitted at banquets, and other licentious
abominations were introduced. But at present I meant to speak, not
of the evils men voluntarily practise, but of those they suffer in
spite of themselves. So that the case of Scipio, who succumbed to
his enemies, and died in exile from the country he had rescued, was
mentioned by me as being pertinent to the present discussion; for
this was the reward he received from those Roman gods whose temples
he saved from Hannibal, and who are worshipped only for the sake of
securing temporal happiness. But since Sallust, as we have seen,
declares that the manners of Rome were never better than at that
time, I therefore judged it right to mention the Asiatic luxury then
introduced, that it might be seen that what he says is true, only
when that period is compared with the others, during which the morals
were certainly worse, and the factions more violent. For at that
time--I mean between the second and third Punic war--that notorious
Lex Voconia was passed, which prohibited a man from making a woman,
even an only daughter, his heir; than which law I am at a loss to
conceive what could be more unjust. It is true that in the interval
between these two Punic wars the misery of Rome was somewhat less.
Abroad, indeed, their forces were consumed by wars, yet also consoled
by victories; while at home there were not such disturbances as at
other times. But when the last Punic war had terminated in the utter
destruction of Rome's rival, which quickly succumbed to the other
Scipio, who thus earned for himself the surname of Africanus, then
the Roman republic was overwhelmed with such a host of ills, which
sprang from the corrupt manners induced by prosperity and security,
that the sudden overthrow of Carthage is seen to have injured
Rome more seriously than her long-continued hostility. During the
whole subsequent period down to the time of Cæsar Augustus, who
seems to have entirely deprived the Romans of liberty,--a liberty,
indeed, which in their own judgment was no longer glorious, but
full of broils and dangers, and which now was quite enervated and
languishing,--and who submitted all things again to the will of a
monarch, and infused as it were a new life into the sickly old age of
the republic, and inaugurated a fresh _régime_;--during this whole
period, I say, many military disasters were sustained on a variety
of occasions, all of which I here pass by. There was specially the
treaty of Numantia, blotted as it was with extreme disgrace; for the
sacred chickens, they say, flew out of the coop, and thus augured
disaster to Mancinus the consul; just as if, during all these years
in which that little city of Numantia had withstood the besieging
army of Rome, and had become a terror to the republic, the other
generals had all marched against it under unfavourable auspices.