preserved for us the letter which he addressed to the Senate on the subject; it is a document sufficiently remarkable to be given in full. “Although, Conscript Fathers, it is perhaps more expedient that on all other occasions I should be asked in your presence my opinion of what is good for the State, and reply in the same way, still on the present occasion it was better that my eyes should be withdrawn, for if you should openly note the faces of anxiety of those who were involved in the charge of infamous luxury, I should myself see them, and as it were catch them in the act. If indeed our energetic Ædiles had taken counsel with me beforehand, I am inclined to think that I should have advised them to abstain from interfering with vices so firmly rooted, so vigorous, rather than make it publicly manifest that we are too weak to contend with these abuses. Well--they have done their duty as I should wish other magistrates also to do theirs; I could neither be silent with honour, nor was it expedient that I should be the first to speak, seeing that I am neither Ædile, nor Prætor, nor Consul. Something more, something higher is demanded of the Prince, and whereas each individual earns the reward of his own good actions, upon the Prince alone is visited the odium incurred by the bad actions of all. “Now what shall I first try to check and to cut down to the ancient measures? The boundless extent of country estates? The numbers of native and alien slaves? The weight of gold and silver plate? The marvellous bronzes and pictures? The rich materials common to male and female dress? Or again those peculiarly feminine forms of luxury owing to which our money is transferred to foreign and even hostile races for the sake of mere stones? I am perfectly well aware that these are things with which fault is found at dinner parties and social entertainments, and that there is a cry for interference; but when a law is passed, penalties are assigned, and those same guardians of the public virtue will not then fail to clamour that the State is being turned upside down, that any magnificent man is threatened with ruin, that every one is liable to prosecution. And yet it is only by severe remedies that long-standing diseases of the body can be checked, and the fever of the mind at once corrupt and corrupting can only be quenched by remedies no less violent than the lusts with which it burns. All the laws which were discovered by our ancestors, all those that were passed by the sainted Augustus, have added confidence to luxury, the former because they have been forgotten, the latter, which is much worse, because they have been abrogated by contempt. For should a man wish to do a thing which has not yet been forbidden, he would be in fear of a prohibition, but if he transgresses a known prohibition, there is no longer any fear, or any sense of shame. Now why did frugal living at one time prevail? Because every man imposed restraint on