The result of Roman luxury in the matter of food and drink was a coarse and loathsome gluttony which finds no parallel in modern life. Epicureanism had degenerated from barley-bread and water to the costliest diet ever known. Wealthy Romans of the age of Augustus did not hesitate to pay two hundred and fifty dollars for a single fish--the mullet. And that they might indulge their appetite to the fullest extent, and prolong the pleasures of eating beyond the requirements and even the capacity of nature, they were in the habit of taking an emetic at meal times. We learn from the letters of Cicero that Julius Cæsar did this on one occasion when he went to visit the orator at his country villa. And the degeneracy of Roman life is nowhere more clearly indicated than in the Fourth Satire of Juvenal where he describes the gathering of the great men of the state, at the call of Domitian, to determine how a turbot should be cooked. But the reader must not infer that all Romans were rich and that luxury was indulged in every home. In the Roman capital the extremes of wealth and poverty met. The city was filled with idlers, vagabonds and paupers from all quarters of the globe. In the early days of the Republic, sturdy farmers had tilled the soil of Italy and had filled the legions with brave and hardy warriors. The beginning of the empire witnessed a radical change. Hundreds of thousands of these farmers had been driven from their lands to furnish homes to the disbanded soldiers of conquerors like Sulla, Marius, and Cæsar. Homeless and poverty-stricken, they wandered away to Rome to swell the ranks of mendicants and adventurers that crowded the streets of the imperial city. The soldiers themselves, finding agriculture distasteful and unprofitable, sold their lands to Roman speculators, and returned to the scene of the triumphs of their military masters. The inevitable consequence of this influx of strangers and foreigners, without wealth and without employment, was the degradation and demoralization of Roman social and industrial life. Augustus was compelled to make annual donations of money and provisions to 200,000 persons who wandered helpless about the streets. This state of things--fabulous wealth in the hands of a few, and abject poverty as the lot of millions--was the harbinger sure and swift of the destruction of the state.