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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1882 Excerpt:...in the second, C. Msenius (Liv. xl. 37, 4; 43, 2). The former condemned about 2,000 persons, the latter 3,000. The two stories are so like each other that one is tempted to conjecture that they are two versions of the same original. XII space of time.--In order to obtain an insight into the interior of The Eoman households, and to comprehend the real character of family life, we should require more minute and accurate information than the ordinary sources of political history supply; we should want details which concern, not the course of great political events, but the doings and transactions of everyday life. Such details would perhaps bo furnished by writers of the drama, especially of a truly national comedy. The Roman comedy, however, of which specimens have been preserved, is an imitation of Greek models; and though a considerable proportion of national material was necessarily mixed up by the writers with their foreign originals, these plays do not reflect in its purity the spirit that animated the Roman family. The fathers, mothers, and sons, the freedmen and slaves who are the dramatis personce in the plays of Plautus and Terence, are not altogether true Romans. If a few of the class of Atellan plays had been preserved, or some specimens of the comcedia togata, we should probably be able to judge far more correctly of the spirit of private and family life in Rome than we are at present. It was in all probability more earnest and pure than we generally suppose, but, compared with the families of modern times, less affectionate and tender. Even Cato agreed with the general view of the Greeks in considering marriage to be an inevitable evil, and in despising women with all his heart. No wonder that by most people marriage was regarded chiefly from a p...