driven from home
Both wife and husband forth must roam,
Bearing their household gods close pressed,
With squalid babes, upon their breast.
(II, xviii, 23.)
Not thus was it in the good old times. Then rich men lavished marble on the temples of the gods, roofed their own cottages with chance-cut turf (II, xv, 13). And to what end all this splendour? Behind your palace walls lurks the grim architect of a narrower home; the path of glory leads but to the grave (II, xviii, 17). And as on the men, so on the women of Rome his solemn warnings are let fall. Theirs is the task to maintain the sacred family bond, the purity of marriage life. Let them emulate the matrons of the past, severe mothers of gallant sons (III, vi, 37). Let men and women join to stay the degeneracy which has begun to set in, and which, unchecked, will grow deadlier with each generation as it succeeds.
How Time doth in its flight debase
Whate'er it finds? our fathers' race,
More deeply versed in ill
Than were their sires, hath born us yet