g. ch. xxiv.) and from fragments of his own writings,
that his view of the conjugal relation was a coarse one,--that he
looked on the wife rather as a necessary agent for providing the State
with children than as a helpmeet to be tended and revered. And this
being so, we are not surprised to find that men are already beginning
to dislike and avoid marriage; a most dangerous symptom, with which a
century later Augustus found it impossible to cope. In the year 131,
just after Tiberius Gracchus had been trying to revive the population
of Italy by his agrarian law, Metellus Macedonicus the censor did what
he could to induce men to marry "liberorum creandorum causa"; and a
fragment of a speech of his on this subject became famous afterwards,
as quoted by Augustus with the same object. It is equally
characteristic of Roman humour and Roman hardness. "If we could do
without wives," he said to the people, "we should be rid of that
nuisance: but since nature has decreed that we can neither live
comfortably with them nor live at all without them, we must e'en look
rather to our permanent interests than to a passing pleasure.
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