Officially, if we may thus use this very new word to express a very old thing, Cleopatra was well received in Rome. She was the queen of a great country, the ally of the Republic, and she was the guest of Cæsar, then all-powerful; but, beneath the homage offered, lurked contempt and hatred. Not that Roman society took offence at her intrigue with Cæsar; for more than half a century, republican Rome had strangely changed its chaste morals and severe principles. Public morality, private morality,—were utterly transformed. Electors sold their votes, and the elected made use of their offices to re-imburse themselves for their election expenses and to provide means for their reëlection; they sold alliances, prevaricated, plundered, took ransoms, having an understanding with the publicans (tax-gatherers) to grind down the provinces. In the latter times of the Republic in Rome politics became the school of crime; the theater, where, contrary to the custom of the Greeks, women might take part in the comedies and in the obscene games of the mimes and mountebanks, became the school of debauchery. The favorite poet is the licentious Catullus; the mold of fashion, and at the same time the pupil, client, and friend of Cicero is Cœlius, a man of unscrupulous ambition and unbridled libertinism. Assassination became a means of government, poison a way to an inheritance. From the time of the proscriptions of Sylla, the hold on life seemed very precarious; one must make the most of it. “Let us live and love,” says Catullus. “Suns may set and rise again, but we, when our brief day is ended, must sleep a night that has no morrow.” The time was past when the Roman matron lived quietly at home and spun with her maidens. She sought adventures, plotted, gave or sold herself. Greek libertinism and Oriental voluptuousness had reached Rome and been transformed into a gross sensuality. The multiplicity of divorces “annihilated the sacredness of the family”; the love of luxury, ambition, and extravagant passions ruined its honor, and the noblest of the patrician ladies were the foremost in this race of debauchery. Among them were Valeria, the sister of Hortensius; Sempronia, wife of Junius Brutus; Claudia, wife of Lucullus, and the other Claudia, wife of Quintus Metellus Celer. Again there was Junia, the wife of Lepidus; Posthumia, the wife of Sulpicius; Lollia, the wife of Gabinius; Tertullia, the wife of Crassus; Mucia, the wife of the great Pompey; Servilia, the mother of Brutus, and many others.