He would have been here to-night but for his recent marriage and approaching journey to Rome.

I have always asked him to my dinners." "Then how, in the name of Ops Consiva," cried Tanno, "did he come to marry your uncle's freedwoman ?" "This time I agree with you, Opsitius," said Naepor.

"Your tone of scorn is wholly justified.

Marrying freedwomen is getting far too common.

If things go on this way there will be no Roman nobility nor gentry nor even any Roman commonality; just a wish-wash of counterfeit Romans, nine-tenths foreign in ancestry, with just enough of a dash of Roman blood to bequeath them our weaknesses and vices." "On the other hand," said Juventius Muso, "while agreeing with Naepor as to the propriety of the tone, I object to the question.