of Juvenal, we should never forget that he knew nothing personally of Pliny or Tacitus, or of the circle which surrounded Verginius Rufus and Spurinna. He has the same pessimist theory of human declension which was held by Seneca and by Tacitus. Every form of crime and sensuality has been rampant since Rome lost the treasure of poverty, since the days when silver shone only on the Roman’s arms.(382) Juvenal’s ideal lies in that mythical past when a Curius, thrice consul, strode homeward from the hills, mattock on shoulder, to a meal of home-grown herbs and bacon served on earthenware.(383) It is the luxury of the conquered lands which has relaxed the Roman fibre, which has introduced a false standard of life, degraded great houses, and flooded the city with an alien crew of astrologers and grammarians, parasites and pimps. Modern criticism has laboured hard to correct some of the harsher judgments on the luxury and self-indulgence of the period of the early Empire. Perhaps the scholarly reaction against an indictment which had degenerated sometimes into ignorant commonplace, may have been carried here and there too far. The testimony of Tacitus is explicit that the luxury of the table reached its height in the hundred years extending from the battle of Actium to the accession of Vespasian.(384) It was a period of enormous fortunes spent in enormous waste. Seneca or Pallas or Narcissus had accumulated wealth probably three or four times greater than even the fortune of a Crassus or a Lucullus. The long peace, the safety of the seas, and the freedom of trade, had made Rome the entrepôt for the peculiar products and the delicacies of every land from the British Channel to the Ganges. The costly variety of these foreign dainties was vulgarly paraded at every great dinner-party. Palaces, extending almost over the area of a town, were adorned with marbles from the quarries of Paros, Laconia, Phrygia, or Numidia,(385) with gilded ceilings and curious panels changing with the courses of the banquet,(386) with hundreds of tables of citrus-wood, resting on pillars of ivory, each costing a moderate fortune, with priceless bronzes and masterpieces of ancient plate. Nearly a million each year was drained away to the remoter East, to purchase aromatics and jewels for the elaborate toilette of the Roman lady.(387) Hundreds of household slaves, each with his minute special function, anticipated every want, or ministered to every passion of their masters. Every picturesque or sheltered site on the great lakes, on the Anio, or the Alban hills, in the Laurentine pine forests, or on the bays of Campania, was occupied by far-spreading country seats. Lavish expenditure and luxurious state was an imperious duty of rank, even without the precept of an emperor.(388) The senator who paid too low a rent, or rode along the Appian or Flaminian Way with too scanty a train, became a marked man, and immediately lost caste.(389) These are the merest