Note 180 — CAELIUS
Adnah David Jones translation
In the time of the Gracchi, the Censor Metellus thus expressed himself in a speech in which he vigorously attacked bachelors: “Citizens, if we could live without wives we should all dispense with that encumbrance (omnes ea molestia careremus); but, as nature has willed it to be as impossible to do without them as it is disagreeable to live with them, let us sacrifice the charms of so short a life to the interests of the republic, which must always endure.” This way of encouraging men to marry seemed apparently very efficacious, since, at the time when men married less than ever, Augustus thought he ought to have the speech of old Metellus read to the people.