had been transported by Scipio from vanquished Carthage. Besides all this removable wealth in the shape of plate, there was, no doubt, a still greater supply in jewels and precious stones, in gold ornaments and in the current metallic coin of the empire. Unlike their poor and invincible ancestors, who were not distinguished from the meanest of the soldiers by the delicacy of their food or the splendour of their apparel, the nobles of Rome, in its latter days, were not merely fond of the most ostentatious display, but magnified the rent rolls of their estates, too frequently living in accordance with their imaginary rather than with their actual incomes. The "Satires" of Juvenal portray but too distinctly the corruption of manners which had in his time (the reign of Domitian) extended to the female portion of the population.[1]
History, it has been truly said, repeats itself; and the reading of the lengthened description Ammianus has given of the extravagance of Rome reminds us of too many of the gay assemblies so frequently met with in our own time. Nor is his description of the manners of the Roman nobility wholly unlike what may too frequently be now seen in the conduct of those persons who measure their importance by their wealth and gay equipages, or who, by their rapid acquisition of large fortunes, and their method of dealing with them, used to be known in England as "Nabobs," but who now bear a less flattering name.
and sufferings of the people. While such was the state of the upper, the middle classes, who derived their subsistence from their skill and industry, and who, in all communities,
- ↑ Juvenal, Sat. iii., and passim.
