First, let us look at that family life which formed the essential fibre of the old body politic, and provided the most powerful factor in the Roman character. We have but to think of the immense numbers of citizens killed or captured in war, or carried off by the pestilences that always follow war, to see what paralysis of family life there must have been. Fathers and grown-up sons innumerable never came home at all; and long service far from home would, in any case, deprive the family of the natural influence and authority of its head. Mothers might do much to fill up the gap, and the tradition of the dignified and righteous Roman lady was not as yet wholly weakened; but there are signs that the women in this period were getting steadily more excitable, more self-asserting, more luxurious. It is in this age that divorce begins to make its appearance, a sure sign of the decay of the old family life. There were rumours, too, of the poisoning of husbands by their wives, and on one occasion two noble ladies were put to death for this crime by the verdict of a council of relations. In an extraordinary attempt to introduce into Italy the exciting orgies of the Greek religion of Dionysus, women were among the most prominent offenders. The changing position of women at this time is illustrated by a famous saying of Cato, that “all men rule over women, we Romans rule over all men, and our wives rule over us.” With the decay of the old family life, the wholesome training of the children in manly conduct (_virtus_) and sense of duty (_pietas_) could not but suffer, too. Old-fashioned families would keep it up, but among the lower classes it was hard to do so owing to bad housing and crowding in the city; and in the noble families there was undoubtedly a change for the worse, though we know of one or two great men of this age who took pains with the moral as well as the intellectual training of their boys.[8] For a people controlling the Mediterranean world it was necessary to educate the mental faculties, and more especially to teach a boy to speak and read Greek, which was the language of half the civilised world, and the language of commerce everywhere. Now Rome could not supply teachers for this kind of education; Romans were not competent, nor would they have condescended to such work. The Greeks were the one people who could undertake what we call the higher education, and they were now beginning to swarm in Rome. Some Greek teachers were free men, but the greater number were slaves captured in the wars; and thus the first requisite in a school-master, that he should be looked up to and willingly obeyed, was too often absent in this new education. It is men, not methods, that really tell in education. In his heart, as we know from many striking passages in Roman literature, the grown-up Roman despised the Greek, and we may be sure that the Roman boy did too. Greek literature and rhetoric, now fast