The pursuit of ease and pleasure, to which the attainment of wealth and political power were too often merely subordinated, is a leading characteristic of the time. It is seen in many different forms, in many different types of character; but at the root of the whole corruption is the spirit of the coarser side of Epicureanism. As with Roman Stoicism, so too with Roman Epicureanism, it is not so much the professed holding of philosophical tenets that affected life; in the case of the latter system, it was the coincidence of its popularity with the decay of the old Roman faith and morality, and with the abnormal opportunities of self-indulgence. Cato as a professed Stoic, Lucretius as an enthusiastic Epicurean, stand quite apart from the mass of men who were actuated one way or the other by these philosophical creeds. The majority simply played with the philosophy, while following the natural bent of their individual character; but such dilettanteism was often quite enough to affect that character permanently for good or evil. "Epicureanism popularised inevitably turns to vice." Was it really popular at Rome? Cicero tells us in a valuable passage[181] that one Amafinius had written on it, and that a great number of copies of his book were sold, partly because the arguments were easy to follow, partly because the doctrine was pleasant, and partly too because men failed to get hold of anything better. The date of this Amafinius is uncertain, but it is probable that Cicero is here speaking of the latter part of the second century B.C.; and he goes on to say that other writers took up the same line of teaching, and established it over the whole of Italy (Italiam totam occupaverunt). If this was in the time of the Social and Civil Wars, of the proscriptions, of increasing crime and self-seeking, we can well understand that the doctrine was popular. We have a remarkable example of it in the life of a public man of Cicero's own time, the object of the most envenomed invective that he ever uttered.[182] We cannot believe a tithe of what he says about this man, Calpurnius Piso, consul in 58; but in this particular matter of the damage done him by Epicurean teaching we have independent evidence which confirms it. Piso, then a young man, made acquaintance with a Greek of this school of thought, learnt from him that pleasure was the sole end of life, and failing to appreciate the true meaning and bearing of the doctrine, fell into the trap. It was a dangerous doctrine, Cicero says, for a youth of no remarkable intelligence; and the tutor, instead of being the young man's guide to virtue, was used by him as an authority for vice.[183] This Greek was a certain Philodemus, a few of whose poems are preserved in the _Greek Anthology_; and a glance at them will show at once how dangerous such a man would be as the companion of a Roman youth. He may not himself have been a bad man--Cicero indeed rather suggests the contrary,