[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.
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