of minor importance—­the games in honour of Flora.  The cost of these new festal amusements was defrayed by the magistrates entrusted with the providing of the respective festivals from their own means:  thus the curule aediles had, over and above the old national festival, those of the Mother of the Gods and of Flora; the plebeian aediles had the plebeian festival and that of Ceres, and the urban praetor the Apollinarian games.  Those who sanctioned the new festivals perhaps excused themselves in their own eyes by the reflection that they were not at any rate a burden on the public purse; but it would have been in reality far less injurious to burden the public budget with a number of useless expenses, than to allow the providing of an amusement for the people to become practically a qualification for holding the highest office in the state.  The future candidates for the consulship soon entered into a mutual rivalry in their expenditure on these games, which incredibly increased their cost; and, as may well be conceived, it did no harm if the consul expectant gave, over and above this as it were legal contribution, a voluntary “performance” (-munus-), a gladiatorial show at his own expense for the public benefit.  The splendour of the games became gradually the standard by which the electors measured the fitness of the candidates for the consulship.  The nobility had, in truth, to pay dear for their honours—­a gladiatorial show on a respectable scale cost 720,000 sesterces (7200 pounds)—­but they paid willingly, since by this means they absolutely precluded men who were not wealthy from a political career.

Squandering of the Spoil

Corruption, however, was not restricted to the Forum; it was transferred even to the camp.  The old burgess militia had reckoned themselves fortunate when they brought home a compensation for the toil of war, and, in the event of success, a trifling gift as a memorial of victory.  The new generals, with Scipio Africanus at their head, lavishly scattered amongst their troops the money of Rome as well as the proceeds of the spoil:  it was on this point, that Cato quarrelled with Scipio during the last campaigns against Hannibal in Africa.  The veterans from the second Macedonian war and that waged in Asia Minor already returned home throughout as wealthy men:  even the better class began to commend a general, who did not appropriate the gifts of the provincials and the gains of war entirely to himself and his immediate followers, and from whose camp not a few men returned with gold, and many with silver, in their pockets:  men began to forget that the moveable spoil was the property of the state.  When Lucius Paullus again dealt with it in the old mode, his own soldiers, especially the volunteers who had been allured in numbers by the prospect of rich plunder, fell little short of refusing to the victor of Pydna by popular decree the honour of a triumph—­an honour which they already threw away on every one who had subjugated three Ligurian villages.