The nobles squandered money equally on their banquets, their stables, and their dress; and it was to their crimes, says Juvenal, that they were indebted for their gardens, their palaces, their tables, and their fine old plate.

Unbounded pride, insolence, inhumanity, selfishness, and scorn marked this noble class.  Of course there were exceptions, but the historians and satirists give the saddest pictures of their cold-hearted depravity.  The sole result of friendship with a great man was a meal, at which flattery and sycophancy were expected; but the best wine was drunk by the host, instead of by the guest.  Provinces were ransacked for fish and fowl and game for the tables of the great, and sensualism was thought to be no reproach.  They violated the laws of chastity and decorum; they scourged to death their slaves; they degraded their wives and sisters; they patronized the most demoralizing sports; they enriched themselves by usury and monopolies; they practised no generosity, except at their banquets, when ostentation balanced their avarice; they measured everything by the money-standard; they had no taste for literature, but they rewarded sculptors and painters who prostituted art to their vanity or passions; they had no reverence for religion, and ridiculed the gods.  Their distinguishing vices were meanness and servility, the pursuit of money by every artifice, the absence of honor, and unblushing sensuality.

Gibbon has eloquently abridged the remarks of Ammianus Marcellinus respecting these people:—­

“They contend with each other in the empty vanity of titles and surnames.  They affect to multiply their likenesses in statues of bronze or marble; nor are they satisfied unless these statues are covered with plates of gold.  They boast of the rent-rolls of their estates; they measure their rank and consequence by the loftiness of their chariots and the weighty magnificence of their dress; their long robes of silk and purple float in the wind, and as they are agitated by art or accident they discover the under garments, the rich tunics embroidered with the figures of various animals.  Followed by a train of fifty servants, and tearing up the pavement, they move along the streets as if they travelled with post-horses; and the example of the senators is boldly imitated by the matrons and ladies, whose covered carriages are continually driving round the immense space of the city and suburbs.  Whenever they condescend to enter the public baths, they assume, on their entrance, a tone of loud and insolent command, and maintain a haughty demeanor, which perhaps might have been excused in the great Marcellus after the conquest of Syracuse.  Sometimes these heroes undertake more arduous achievements:  they visit their estates in Italy, and procure themselves, by servile hands, the amusements of the chase.  And if at any time, especially on a hot day, they have the courage to sail in their gilded galleys from the Lucrine Lake to their elegant villas on the sea-coast