It is easy to perceive that the cruelty and lust which render the history of the first two centuries of the Christian era so lurid are simply the natural developments from preceding conditions. The proscriptions and massacres of Sylla and the two triumvirates could but produce a society which would witness bloodshed with apathy, if not with delight. The total disregard of the sacredness of matrimonial vows, when political purposes were to be served, necessarily resulted in a generation of women among whom chastity was a matter of indifference and honor a thing unknown. Given a society thus, by heritage and training, predisposed to inhumanity and licentiousness, and it only needed the presence of favorable conditions for the introduction upon the imperial stage of a company of women upon whose actions the world has ever since gazed with profound amazement. Such conditions were then present in Rome in such a degree as they have never been at any other time or among any other people. The age was propitious and the circumstances were ripe for a climax in human depravity. The spoil of the conquered world provided Rome with incalculable riches; the Empire was the prize of him who could win and hold it, and of her who could maintain her position by the side of the ruler; power and the absence of restraint gave free rein to impulses which the existent conditions necessarily rendered evil. This was the _entourage_ of the women of Rome under the first emperors. The ladies of the nobility were trained and urged to cruelty and prostitution by the exigencies of their position; the women of the common class, for whom tributary bread and sanguinary spectacles were freely provided, were impelled in the same direction by example and idleness.