We are well aware that its simplicity was a thing of the past, and its stability gone The existence of a Verres is proof that it was so; but still the feeling remained--and did remain long after the time of Cicero--that these beautiful things were a sign of decay.

We know how conquering Rome caught the taste for them from conquered Greece.
"Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit, et artes intulit agresti Latio." [286] Cicero submitted himself to this new captivity readily, but with apologies, as shown in his pretended abnegation of all knowledge of art.

Two years afterward, in a letter to Atticus, giving him instructions as to the purchase of statues, he declares that he is altogether carried away by his longing for such things, but not without a feeling of shame.

"Nam in eo genere sic studio efferimur ut abs te adjuvandi, ab aliis propre reprehendi simus"[287]--"Though you will help me, others I know will blame me." The same feeling is expressed beautifully, but no doubt falsely, by Horace when he declares, as Cicero had done, his own indifference to such delicacies: "Gems, marbles, ivory, Tuscan statuettes, Pictures, gold plate, Gaetulian coverlets, There are who have not.

One there is, I trow, Who cares not greatly if he has or no."[288] Many years afterward, in the time of Tiberius, Velleius Paterculus says the same when he is telling how ignorant Mummius was of sculpture, who, when he had taken Corinth, threatened those who had to carry away the statues from their places, that if they broke any they should be made to replace them.