In the third book of that invaluable work we shall find all we want to know about the real _villa rustica_ of the time,--the working farm-house with its wine-vats and olive-mills, like that recently excavated at Boscoreale near Pompeii.

Yet it would be unfair to such men as Cicero and his friends, the wiser and quieter section of the aristocracy, to call their work altogether unproductive.

True, it left little permanent impress on human modes of thought; it wrought no material change for the better in Italy or the Empire.

We may go so far as to allow that it initiated that habit of dilettantism which we find already exaggerated in the age lately illuminated for us by Professor Dill in his book on _Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius_, and far more exaggerated in the last age of Roman society, which the same author has depicted in his earlier work.

But it may be doubted whether under any circumstances the Romans could have produced a great prophet or a great philosopher; and the most valuable work they did was of another kind.