Caesar's ""Bellum Britannicum,"" De Bello Gallico, IV. 20-30, V. 8-23: With Introduction, Notes and Vocabulary (Classic Reprint) Hardback -

There can be no doubt that the last century of the toman Republic found the free institutions under which the greatness of Rome had grown, far advanced in decadence. Each of its two factors, the patrician and the plebeian one, had wholly changed its character. The Imperial position which the conquest of Carthage and of the East brought to the Republic, made the Senate a Committee of Satraps the free plebeian yeomanry - half soldiers, half farmers - whose swords had held Pyrrhus and Hannibal at bay, were disap pearing as early as the time of the Gracchi: immense and ever-increasing landed estates were owned all through Italy by a slave-holding noblesse the religion and morality which had given to the world some of its noblest types of manhood and womanhood was a thing of the past to the generation when two minis ters of religion could not look each other in the face without a smile. As Matthew Arnold describes those days: On that high Roman heart disgust And secret loathing fell.

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