[542] The period which witnessed the greatest inequality of fortunes was the last century of the Republic and the first of the Empire.
[543] It should be borne in mind that the clients of this period were wholly different from the clients of the earlier times. The relations of the early clients to their patrons were those of clansmen to their chief; the relations of these later clients to their patrons were the degrading relations of idle, needy dependents to newly rich men without family traditions and socially and morally wholly unfit for their elevation.
[544] The History of Rome (1888), vol. ii, p. 524.
[545] “The deepest feeling of Tacitus about the early Empire seems to have been that it was fatal to character both in prince and subject.”—Dill, Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius, p. 29.
[546] The Moral Ideal, 3d ed., p. 204.
[547] History of European Morals, 3d ed., vol. i, pp. 332 ff.
[548] Ibid. 3d ed., vol. i, p. 227.
[549] “Men ceased to be adventurous, patriotic, just, magnanimous; but in exchange they became chaste, tender-hearted, loyal, religious, and capable of infinite endurance in a good cause.”—Seeley, Roman Imperialism (1889), p. 33.
[550] The Moral Ideal, 3d ed., p. 187.
[551] About 40–120 A.D.