In my readings of The Twelve Caesars and Plutarch's Lives for my Topics in Literature: Autobiography, Biography, and Memoir class (English classes always have long titles...) I have come to the conclusion that Rome was dastardly immoral and decadent.  In The Twelve Caesars Suetonius writes he is only mentioning "the tip of the iceberg," so to speak, about sexual immorality and pornographic violence, yet the things he alludes to are fearful---that a human could do that sort of thing.