the city, the senate, in spite of its tendency to individual
transgression, generally displayed the possession of a collective
conscience. The men who formulated the standard of purity and
self-restraint might be few in number; but, except they displayed the
irritating activity and the uncompromising methods of a Cato, they
generally secured the support of their peers, and the sterner the
censor, the more gladly was he hailed as an ornament to the order. This
guardian of morals still issued his edicts against delicacies of the
table, foreign perfumes and expensive houses;[76] as late as the year
169 people would hastily put out their lights when it was reported that
Tiberius Sempronius Graccus was coming up the street on his return from
supper, lest they should fall under the suspicion of untimely
revelry,[77] and the sporadic activity of the censorship will find ample
illustration in the future chapters of our work. Degradation from the
various orders of the State was still a consequence of its
animadversions; but a milder, more universal and probably far more
efficacious check on luxury--the system, pursued by Cato, of adopting an
excessive rating for articles of value[78] and thus of shifting the
incidence of taxation from the artisan and farmer to the shoulders of
the richest class[79]--had been taken out of its hands by the complete
cessation of direct imposts after the Third Macedonian War.[80]

Meanwhile sumptuary laws continued to be promulgated from the Rostra and
accepted by the people. All that are known to have been initiated or to
have been considered valid after the close of the great wars have but
one object--an attack on the expenses of the table, a form of sensuous
enjoyment which, on account of the ease and barbaric abundance with
which wealth may vaunt itself in this domain, was particularly in vogue
amongst the upper classes in Rome. Other forms of extravagance seem for
the time to have been left untouched by legislation, for the Oppian law