Of the games, and the panthers to be exhibited at them, about which Caelius is for ever worrying his friend in Cilicia, we shall see something in another chapter.  There is plenty of other gossip in these letters, and gossip often about unsavoury matters which need not be noticed here.  It lets in a flood of light upon the causes of the general incompetence and inefficiency; the life of the Forum was a demoralising one: 

Uni se atque eidem studio omnes dedere et arti uerba dare ut caute possint, pugnare dolose:  blanditia certare, bonum simulare uirum se:  insidias facere, ut si hostes sint omnibus omnes.[204]

From what has been said in this sketch it should be clear that we have in the aristocracy of this period a complicated society, the various aspects of which can hardly be united in a single picture.  It is partly a hereditary aristocracy, with all the pride and exclusiveness of a group of old families accustomed to power and consequence.  It is in the main a society of gentlemen, dignified in manner, and kindly towards each other, and it is also a society of high culture and literary ability, though poor in creative genius, and unimaginative.  On the other hand, it is a class which has lost its interest in the State, and is energetic only when pursuing its own interests:  pleasure-loving, luxurious, gossiping, trifling with serious matters, short-sighted in politics because anxious only for personal advance.  “Rari nantes in gurgite vasto” are the men who are really in earnest, but they are there; we must not forget that in Lucretius and Cicero this society produced one of the greatest poets and one of the most perfect prose writers that the world treasures; in Sulpicius a lawyer of permanent value to humanity, and in Caesar not only an author and a scholar but a man of action unrivalled in capacity and industry.

CHAPTER V

MARRIAGE:  AND THE ROMAN LADY

In order to appreciate the position of women of various types in the society we are examining, it is necessary to make it clear what Roman marriage originally and ideally meant.  In any society, it will be found that the position and influence of woman can be fairly well discerned from the nature of the marriage ceremony and the conditions under which it is carried out.  At Rome, in all periods of her history, a iustum matrimonium, i.e. a marriage sanctioned by law and religion, and therefore entirely legal in all its results, was a matter of great moment, not to be achieved without many forms and ceremonies.  The reason for this elaboration is obvious, at any rate to any one who has some acquaintance with ancient life in Greece or Italy.  As we shall see later on, the house was a residence for the divine members of the family, as well as the human; the entrance, therefore, of a bride into the household,—­of one, that is, who had no part nor lot in that family