The Romans, very vain and with artistic tastes but slightly developed, had a relish for this species of luxury.  They had but little regard for beauty or for comfort, and had thought for nothing else than display.  They had houses built with immense gardens adorned with statues, sumptuous villas projecting into the sea in the midst of enormous gardens.  They surrounded themselves with troops of slaves.  They and their wives substituted for linen garments those of gauze, silk, and gold.  At their banquets they spread embroidered carpets, purple coverings, gold and silver plate.  Sulla had one hundred and fifty dishes of silver; the plate of Marcus Drusus weighed 10,000 pounds.  While the common people continued to sit at table in accordance with old Italian custom, the rich adopted the oriental usage of reclining on couches at their meals.  At the same time was introduced the affected and costly cookery of the East—­exotic fishes, brains of peacocks, and tongues of birds.

From the second century the extravagance was such that a consul who died in 152 could say in his will:  “As true glory does not consist in vain pomp but in the merits of the dead and of one’s ancestors, I bid my children not to spend on my funeral ceremonies more than a million as” ($10,000).

=Greek Humanity.=—­In Greece the Romans saw the monuments, the statues, and the pictures which had crowded their cities for centuries; they came to know their learned people and the philosophers.  Some of the Romans acquired a taste for the beautiful and for the life of the spirit.  The Scipios surrounded themselves with cultivated Greeks.  AEmilius Paullus asked from all the booty taken by him from Macedon only the library of King Perseus; he had his children taught by Greek preceptors.  It was then the fashion in Rome to speak, and even to write in Greek.[137] The nobles desired to appear connoisseurs in painting and in sculpture; they imported statues by the thousand, the famous bronzes of Corinth, and they heaped these up in their houses.  Thus Verres possessed a whole gallery of objects of art which he had stolen in Sicily.  Gradually the Romans assumed a gloss of Greek art and literature.  This new culture was called “humanity,” as opposed to the “rusticity” of the old Roman peasants.

It was little else than gloss; the Romans had realized but slightly that beauty and truth were to be sought for their own sakes; art and science always remained objects of luxury and parade.  Even in the time of Cicero the soldier, the peasant, the politician, the man of affairs, the advocate were alone regarded as truly occupied.  Writing, composing, contributing to science, philosophy, or criticism—­all this was called “being at leisure."[138] Artists and scholars were never regarded at Rome as the equals of the rich merchant.  Lucian, a Greek writer, said, “If you would be a Pheidias, if you would make a thousand masterpieces, nobody will care to imitate you, for as skilful as you are, you will always pass for an artisan, a man who lives by the work of his hands.”