I, Claudius (Claudius, #1)

by Robert Graves

With riches came sloth, greed, cruelty, dishonesty, cowardice, effeminacy and every other un-Roman vice.

Triumphs, by the way, have been a curse to Rome. How many unnecessary wars have been fought because generals wanted the glory of riding crowned through the streets of Rome with enemy captives led in chains behind them, and the spoils of war heaped on carnival wagons?

To recommend a monarchy on account of the prosperity it gives the provinces seems to me like recommending that a man should have liberty to treat his children as slaves, if at the same time he treats his slaves with reasonable consideration.