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Decadence at Rome

The dissoluteness of the young men in Rome had
Cato on the growth of luxury.
grown to such a height, and broke out in such extravagances, that there were many instances of men purchasing a jar of Pontic salt-fish for three hundred drachmae.1 In reference to which Marcus Porcius Cato once said to the people in indignation, that no better proof could be shown of the degeneracy of the state than that good-looking slaves2 should fetch more than a farm, and a jar of salt-fish more than a carter. . . .

1 About £12.

2 In his Censorship (B. C. 184) Cato imposed a tax on slaves under twenty sold for more than ten sestertia (about £70.) Livy, 39, 44.

Histories. Polybius. Evelyn S. Shuckburgh. translator. London, New York. Macmillan. 1889. Reprint Bloomington 1962.

Robert B. Strassler provided support for entering this text.

This text was converted to electronic form by professional data entry, Running heads in Walbank's reprint have been converted to chapter titles, and titles have been added, usually from the marginal notes, for chapters without them. Some pages have notes of the form "line X: A should read B," which I believe are Walbank's; they have "resp=fww". Summaries of missing sections are encoded as inline notes with "resp=ess." A very few unidentified quotations are marked in notes with "resp=aem" (the markup editor) Citations are marked using Perseus abbreviations. and has been proofread to a high level of accuracy.

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184 BC (1)
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    • Livy, The History of Rome, Book 39, 44
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