As a matter of course, this revolution in life and manners brought an economic revolution in its train.  Residence in the capital became more and more coveted as well as more costly.  Rents rose to an unexampled height.  Extravagant prices were paid for the new articles of luxury; a barrel of anchovies from the Black Sea cost 1600 sesterces (16 pounds)—­more than the price of a rural slave; a beautiful boy cost 24,000 sesterces (240 pounds)—­more than many a farmer’s homestead.  Money therefore, and nothing but money, became the watchword with high and low.  In Greece it had long been the case that nobody did anything for nothing, as the Greeks themselves with discreditable candour allowed:  after the second Macedonian war the Romans began in this respect also to imitate the Greeks.  Respectability had to provide itself with legal buttresses; pleaders, for instance, had to be prohibited by decree of the people from taking money for their services; the jurisconsults alone formed a noble exception, and needed no decree of the people to compel their adherence to the honourable custom of giving good advice gratuitously.  Men did not, if possible, steal outright; but all shifts seemed allowable in order to attain rapidly to riches—­plundering and begging, cheating on the part of contractors and swindling on the part of speculators, usurious trading in money and in grain, even the turning of purely moral relations such as friendship and marriage to economic account.  Marriage especially became on both sides an object of mercantile speculation; marriages for money were common, and it appeared necessary to refuse legal validity to the’ presents which the spouses made to each other.  That, under such a state of things, plans for setting fire on all sides to the capital came to the knowledge of the authorities, need excite no surprise.  When man no longer finds enjoyment in work, and works merely in order to attain as quickly as possible to enjoyment, it is a mere accident that he does not become a criminal.  Destiny had lavished all the glories of power and riches with liberal hand on the Romans; but, in truth, the Pandora’s box was a gift of doubtful value.

Notes for Chapter xiii

1.  That —­Asiagenus—­ was the original title of the hero of Magnesia and of his descendants, is established by coins and inscriptions; the fact that the Capitoline Fasti call him -Asiaticus- is one of several traces indicating that these have undergone a non-contemporary revision.  The former surname can only he a corruption of —­Asiagenus—­ —­the form which later authors substituted for it—­which signifies not the conqueror of Asia, but an Asiatic by birth.

2.  II.  VIII.  Religion