inority in the Senate. The nobiles are predominant: yet in the last generation of the Free State, after the ordinances of Sulla

aw, or masked by secret intrigue. As in its beginning, so in its last generation , the Roman Commonwealth, ‘res publica populi No

antes pro sua quisque potentia certabant. ’ The passage refers to the generation after 70 B.C. Cf., however, no less pessimistic r

tore the patriciate, sadly reduced in political power in the previous generation , not so much through Marius as from internal disa

inance of the Valerii had passed long ago, and the Fabii had missed a generation in the consulate. 2 The Fabii and the main line o

ly of ambition, the vanity of virtue. 1 In the decline of the older generation the sons and heirs of the dominant and interlocki

the past. They had been able to show only one consul in the preceding generation . 3 More spectacular the eclipse of the plebeian C

ved under Pompeius in Spain and in the East:2 five consulates in this generation rewarded their sagacity. 3 With these four fami

ted to the consulate. 3 Old ties were revived and strengthened in the generation of Caesar by Servilia, who worked steadily to res

o far from being the recent gift of Caesar, went back to proconsuls a generation or two earlier. Caesar’s friends Troucillus, Trog

m now taste revenge and requital at last. The Paeligni have to wait a generation yet, it is true, before they can show a senator;

ation now invade and disfigure the Fasti of the Roman People. A new generation of marshals enters the field, almost all non-Lati

(pr. 46 B.C.) and M. Acilius were the sons of consuls of the previous generation , L. Autronius Paetus presumably of the unsuccessf

e development of theme would scarcely have retained their hold upon a generation that had lost leisure and illusions and took no p

ps of private life. The revulsion from politics, marked enough in the generation that had survived the wars of Marius and Sulla, n

written word of Roman statesmen. In little more than twenty years a generation and a school of Roman poets had disappeared almos

e both the archaic Roman classics and the new models of the preceding generation . Fashions had altered rapidly. A truly modern lit

spute of the dynasts, whether legal or personal, were no novelty to a generation that could recall the misrepresentation and invec

e ideals of liberty and concord. Peace was a tangible blessing. For a generation , all parties had triven for peace: once attained,

a victory, but it portended no slackening of martial effort. The next generation was to witness the orderly execution of a program

new powers of Caesar Augustus were modest indeed, unimpeachable to a generation that knew Dictatorship and Triumvirate. By consen

lotted from record. 3 This meant a certain rehabilitation of the last generation of the Republic, which in politics is the Age of

ence of phrases, and even of ideas, that were current in the previous generation will neither evoke surprise nor reveal to a moder

emendous resources, open or secret—all that the principes in the last generation held, but now stolen from them and enhanced to an

legates of recent service like M. Lollius and M. Vinicius; and a new generation of nobiles was growing up, the sons of men who ha

y indignant ‘hoc, hoc tribuno militum’. 6 Horace himself was only one generation better. Here again, no return to Republican preju

ocial, military and political structure of the New State. In the last generation of the Republic the financiers had all too often

. 3060. 3 P. Silius Nerva was the son of a senator of the preceding generation , praetorian in rank (P-W III A, 72). As for M. Lo

a disinterested patriotism. The old families had been decimated by a generation of civil wars: the sons of the slain were found w

s of the nobiles, mercilessly thinned by war and proscriptions, a new generation was growing up, and along with them the sons of n

more favour as a patron than from his own productions. Of the younger generation of the Vinicii, the one was an elegant speaker an

eference to the new rulers of Rome, cannot show consuls now or miss a generation , emerging later. In the Principate of Augustus a

cipiones, the Aemilii Lepidi, the Valerii and the Fabii. As the young generation of nobiles grew up and passed through the avenue

he prize upon which politicians and financiers had cast greedy eyes a generation before; and in Egypt large estates were now owned

of M. Brutus and of Ti. Claudius Nero. PageBook=>384 The next generation was Caesarian. His father’s brother, a senator, s

er a power in politics, had a short time to live. But there was a new generation , the two Claudii, to inherit the role of Agrippa

ached the consulate in his thirty- third year, like his peers in that generation of nobiles. Privilege and patronage, and admitted

conquest were now dead, decrepit or retired, giving place to another generation , but not their own sons the young men inherited n

certainly not Ahenobarbus or Paullus Fabius Maximus. Of the earlier generation of Augustus’ marshals, C. Sentius Saturninus alon

man, but the inherited and cumulative curse would propagate, from one generation of corruption to the next, each worse than the la

, 22, 21 f. 6 Horace, Odes 3, 6, 5 f. PageBook=>450 The last generation saw the Marsian and the Picene leading the legion

he better sort of contemporary literature. As in politics, the last generation was not rich in models to commend or imitate. H

of a Roman Callimachus: he recalls, in spirit and theme, the earlier generation . But even Propertius was not untouched by the pat

riod and claimed it for its own: it could not produce a new crop. The generation that grew to manhood in the happy prime of the re

n and aristocratic pride the families that waned and died in the last generation of the Free State or were abruptly extinguished i

had a better fate than some that prolonged an ignoble existence for a generation or two. Depressed by vice or poverty, lack of ent

Republic. Other names, of recent and ruinous notoriety in the last generation of the Free State, Sulla, Cinna, Crassus and Pomp

edonia, perpetuated the Licinii who merged, by adoption after another generation , with the family of L. Calpurnius Piso (cos. 15 B

d other novi homines disappear utterly or prolong their family by one generation only. 3 Nor are the new families ennobled for l

in ordered government, wrote a history of the civil wars that his own generation had witnessed. He had no illusions about the cont

ot dead long before that. Pollio knew the bitter truth about the last generation of the Free State. The historian Tacitus, comment

hildless matches and does not carry his descendants beyond the second generation . IV. THE AEMILII LEPIDI This is based upon Gr