-Sperne mores transmarinos, mille habent offucias.  Cive Romano per orbem nemo vivit rectius.  Quippe malim unum Catonem, quam trecentos Socratas.- (3)

Such judgments will not be absolutely adopted by history; but every one who carefully considers the revolution which the degenerate Hellenism of this age accomplished in the modes of life and thought among the Romans, will be inclined to heighten rather than to lessen that condemnation of the foreign manners.

New Manners

The ties of family life became relaxed with fearful rapidity.  The evil of grisettes and boy-favourites spread like a pestilence, and, as matters stood, it was not possible to take any material steps in the way of legislation against it.  The high tax, which Cato as censor (570) laid on this most abominable species of slaves kept for luxury, would not be of much moment, and besides fell practically into disuse a year or two afterwards along with the property-tax generally.  Celibacy—­as to which grave complaints were made as early as 520—­and divorces naturally increased in proportion.  Horrible crimes were perpetrated in the bosom of families of the highest rank; for instance, the consul Gaius Calpurnius Piso was poisoned by his wife and his stepson, in order to occasion a supplementary election to the consulship and so to procure the supreme magistracy for the latter —­a plot which was successful (574).  Moreover the emancipation of women began.  According to old custom the married woman was subject in law to the marital power which was parallel with the paternal, and the unmarried woman to the guardianship of her nearest male -agnati-, which fell little short of the paternal power; the wife had no property of her own, the fatherless virgin and the widow had at any rate no right of management.  But now women began to aspire to independence in respect to property, and, getting quit of the guardianship of their -agnati- by evasive lawyers’ expedients —­particularly through mock marriages—­they took the management of their property into their own hands, or, in the event of being married, sought by means not much better to withdraw themselves from the marital power, which under the strict letter of the law was necessary.  The mass of capital which was collected in the hands of women appeared to the statesmen of the time so dangerous, that they resorted to the extravagant expedient of prohibiting by law the testamentary nomination of women as heirs (585), and even sought by a highly arbitrary practice to deprive women for the most part of the collateral inheritances which fell to them without testament.  In like manner the exercise of family jurisdiction over women, which was connected with that marital and tutorial power, became practically more and more antiquated.  Even in public matters women already began to have a will of their own and occasionally, as Cato thought, “to rule the rulers of the world;” their influence was to be traced in the burgess-assembly, and already statues were erected in the provinces to Roman ladies.