A good example of the best type of Roman manners is to be found in Plutarch’s Life of Gaius Gracchus, the younger contemporary of Scipio, who had married his sister.  Plutarch draws a picture of him so vivid that by common consent it is ascribed to the memoirs of some one who knew him.  “In all his dealings with men,” says the biographer, “he was always dignified yet always courteous”; that is, while he inspired respect, men felt also that he would do anything in his power for them.  That this was said of him by a Roman, and not invented for him by Plutarch, seems probable because the combination is one peculiarly Roman; so Livy, when he wishes to describe the finest type of Roman character, says that a certain man was “haud minus libertatis alienae quam suae dignitatis memor."[161] This same combination meets us also in the little pictures of the social life of cultivated men which Cicero has left us in some of his dialogues.  There the speakers are usually of the nobility, often distinguished members of senatorial families, as in the de Oratore, where the chief personae are Crassus, Antonius, and Scaevola, the conservative triumvirate of the day.  They all seem grave, or but seldom gently jocular, respectful to each other, and perhaps a trifle tedious; they never quarrel, however deeply they may differ, and we may guess that they did not hold their opinions strongly enough to urge them to open rupture.  We seem to see the same grave faces, with rather noses and large mouths, which meet us in the sculptures of Augustus’ Ara Pacis,[162]—­full of dignity, but a little wanting in animation.

There is one singular exception to the good manners of the period; but as the result rather of affectation than of nature, it may help to prove our rule.  Again and again in Plutarch’s Life of Cato the younger the mention of his rudeness proves the strength of the tradition about him.  It was said that this lost him the consulship, as he declined to make himself agreeable in the style expected from candidates[163].  Even in a letter to Cicero, an old friend, though not actually rude, he is absurdly patronising and impertinent to a man many years his senior, and writes in very bad taste.  Probably the enmity between him and Caesar arose or was confirmed in this way, as Cato always made a point of being rudest to those whom he most disliked.  He fancied that he was imitating his great ancestor, and asserting the virtue of good old Roman bluntness against modern Greek affectation; he did not in the least see that he was himself a curious example of Roman affectation, shown up by the real amenities of intercourse, for which Romans had largely to thank Greece[164].