Nevertheless, however unhealthy its influence may have been--and there
has been much exaggeration on this point--it must be remembered that the
principate found ready to its hand a society with all the seeds of decay
implanted deep within it. Even a succession of sane and virtuous Caesars
might well have failed, with the machinery and material at their
disposal, to put new and vigorous life into the aristocracy and people
of Rome. Even the encroachments of despotism on popular liberty must be
attributed in no small degree to the incapacity of what should have been
the ruling class at Rome. Despotism was in a sense forced upon the
emperors: they were not reluctant, but, had they been so, they would
still have had little choice. The primary causes of the decline of
literature, as of the decay of life and morals, lie much deeper. The
influence of princeps and principate, though not negligible, is
_comparatively_ small.

The really important causes are to be found first in the general decay
of Roman character--far-advanced before the coming of Caesarism,
secondly in the peculiar nature of Roman literature, and thirdly in the
vicious system of Roman education.

It was the first of these factors that produced the lubricity that
defiles and the lack of moral earnestness that weakens such a large
proportion of the literature of this age. It is not necessary to
illustrate this point in any detail.[50] The record of Rome, alike in
home and foreign politics, during the hundred and twenty years preceding
the foundation of the principate forms one of the most fascinating, but
in many respects one of the most profoundly melancholy pages in history.
The poems of Catullus and the speeches of Cicero serve equally to
illustrate the wholesale corruption alike of public and private