It is partly a hereditary aristocracy, with all the pride and exclusiveness of a group of old families accustomed to power and consequence.

It is in the main a society of gentlemen, dignified in manner, and kindly towards each other, and it is also a society of high culture and literary ability, though poor in creative genius, and unimaginative.
On the other hand, it is a class which has lost its interest in the State, and is energetic only when pursuing its own interests: pleasure-loving, luxurious, gossiping, trifling with serious matters, short-sighted in politics because anxious only for personal advance.
"Rari nantes in gurgite vasto" are the men who are really in earnest, but they are there; we must not forget that in Lucretius and Cicero this society produced one of the greatest poets and one of the most perfect prose writers that the world treasures; in Sulpicius a lawyer of permanent value to humanity, and in Caesar not only an author and a scholar but a man of action unrivalled in capacity and industry..