Such were the effects of the puritanic, anti-Greek reaction supported by Cato. It doubtless did some harm to the drama by precluding the official recognition that might have encouraged better workmanship; it cast a shadow of disapproval over the more delicate forms of literature which were associated in thought with Greece; it must bear some of the blame for the fact that the century after Cato is a period of prosaic nationalistic literature in which no man of real genius appears. Direct contact with the decadent Greeks of the day soon destroyed the sentimental respect that the great literature of classical Greece had created. Meanwhile, however, a social change was in progress which eventually affected literary production and the literary market at many points, and particularly the drama and prose. I refer especially to the silent movement which before the end of the second century had largely eliminated the free middle classes, substituting for them a slave economy of unusual proportions. When the Second Punic War began, though there were not a few rich nobles who lived in the city enjoying the fruits of country estates, the majority of the citizens were land-owning, working farmers of the type that we have known so well in our central and western states. At that time there was much free farm labor. Slave labor was also used to some extent, but since these slaves were usually of Italic race and thinly distributed they were well treated, indeed they were regarded as members of the family, as was customary with farm hands among the pioneers of our west. Such slaves usually were put in the way of some property with which they could buy their freedom; and with freedom came full citizenship.