establish them in the broad and popular light of recognized customs;[102] yet it is clear to every one of the few students of his pages that the virtues he depicts are the common aim of the people he meets in the streets and houses of Chæronea, and that the failings he corrects are the failings of the good people who are not too good to have to struggle against the temptations incident to humanity. The indications conveyed by Plutarch and Dion respecting the moral progress of obscure families and unknown villagers point to the widespread existence through the Empire of that same strenuous longing after goodness, which had already received emphatic expression in the writings of philosophers and poets whose activities had been confined to Rome. For there can be no doubt that the establishment of the Empire had been accompanied by a strenuous moral earnestness which is in marked contrast to the flippant carelessness of the last days of the Republican Era. The note of despair—despair none the less because its external aspect was gay and _debonnaire_—so frequently raised by Ovid and Propertius and Tibullus; the reckless cry, _Interea, dum fata sinunt, jungamus amores; Iam veniet tenebris Mors adoperta caput_, is the last word of a dying epoch.[103] These three great poets utter the swan song of the moribund Republic. Their beliefs are sceptical, or frankly materialistic; they shut their eyes at the prospect of death to open them on the nearer charms of the sensual life: devoting their days and their genius to the pleasures of a passionately voluptuous love of women. In their higher moods they turn to the Past, but with an antiquarian interest only, like Ovid and Propertius, or, like Tibullus, to delight in the religious customs that still linger in the rural parts of Italy, the relics of a simpler and devouter time. If they turn their thoughts to the Afterworld at all, it is to depict in glowing verses the conventional charms of the classic Elysium, or to find occasion for striking description in the fabled woes of Ixion and Tantalus.[104] Even these descriptions change by a natural gradation into an appeal for more passionate devotion on the part of Corinna, or Delia, or Cynthia.[105] If Propertius thinks of death, it is but to hope that Cynthia will show her regard for his memory by visiting his tomb in her old age; to regret, with infinite pathos, the thousands of “dear dead women” who have become the prey of the Infernal Deities—_sunt apud infernos tot milia formosarum_; to lament that his deserted mistress will call in vain upon his scattered dust; or to postpone all consideration of such matters until age shall have exhausted his capacity for more passionate enjoyment. If he mentions the mighty political events of his time, it is with the air of one who watches a triumphal procession while resting his head on his mistress’s shoulder.[106] But these poets, wrapped in all the physical pleasures