Civic institutions took a similar course, certainly in the empire as a whole, but again more especially in Hellas. When great aims and an ambition still existed there, in Hellas, just as in Rome, the pursuit of public offices and public honours had formed the centre of political emulation, and had called forth, along with much that was empty, ridiculous, mischievous, also the ablest and noblest services. Now the kernel had vanished and the husk remained; in Panopeus, in the Phocian territory, the houses were roofless, and the citizens dwelt in huts, but it was still a city, indeed a state, and in the procession of the Phocian communities the Panopeans were not wanting. These towns, with their magistracies and priesthoods, with their laudatory decrees proclaimed by herald and their seats of honour in the public assemblies, with the purple dress and the diadem, with statues on foot and on horseback, drove a trade in vanity and money-jobbing worse than the pettiest paltry prince of modern times with his orders and titles. There would not be wanting even amidst these incidents real merit and honourable gratitude; but generally it was a trade of giving and taking, or, to use Plutarch's language, an affair as between a courtesan and her customers. As at the present day private munificence in the positive degree procures an order, in the superlative a patent of nobility, so it then procured the priestly purple and the statue in the market place; and it is not with impunity that the state issues a spurious coinage of its honours. [Sidenote: Its honours and their evils.]