INTRODUCTION
on all the current topics of the day. He would accompany his patron to the Law Courts, watch the cases that were being tried, and hear experienced comments upon them, as well as upon the speeches that had been delivered. After this initiation into public affairs, the young man would have to serve his time in the army—a period of 20 years in the infantry, or 10 years in the cavalry, seems to have been originally exacted—after which he was fully qualified to enter upon public life on his own account.
It is little to be wondered at that such a training, pursued in an atmosphere of political freedom, should have achieved great results; and we may say with some confidence, leaving moral considerations aside, that the number of great men who flourished in Rome during the last century of the Republic—the period during which the effects of the above system made themselves felt—whether as warriors, statesmen, orators, historians, or poets—scarcely finds a parallel in the history of the world.
But when Augustus had succeeded in crushing all his rivals, and establishing in place of a free Republic a system of pure though carefully-veiled autocracy, the results soon began to make themselves felt. Virgil and Horace, enamoured of the charms of peace after the horrors of civil war, and persuading themselves that Augustus was the natural successor, representative, and restorer of all
