The Romans had a difficult relationship with the kind of luxury and excess that we think of as indicators of moral and social decadence. But in many ways they revelled in such luxury. Readily accepting the financial rewards of empire, they spent huge sums on their own benefits. Whether in the colossal public games in the amphitheatre and the circus, in the opulent imperial bath complexes, or in extravagant private villas, Romans of all social levels delighted in the very best that life was thought to offer. Chapter 1 examines how far the evidence supports this somewhat melodramatic view of Rome by looking at the ways in which luxury spread in the Roman world. It also looks at the ways this growth in luxury compelled the Romans to create new concepts to understand the phenomenon. Luxury was almost never seen as a simple index of increased wealth. Rather, it raised all manner of moral issues among Rome’s ruling classes, many of which long outlived the end of the Roman empire itself.

The modern concept of decadence owes its origins not only to ancient Rome but also to Europe and Great Britain during the Enlightenment era, a period notorious for the hedonism and hypocrisy of the aristocracy. The social decadence of the period was reflected in its libertine literature, but there is also a close association between libertine behaviour and enlightenment thought. The term ‘libertine’ can be traced back to such rational, scholarly associations of freethinkers as les libertins érudits, a group whose intellectual and ideological goal was the liberation of society from the strictures of religious dogma and authoritarian rule. By providing a rational basis for immorality, Sade and other libertine authors did much to influence later writers customarily regarded as decadent. Yet despite its comprehensibility and even its power and attractiveness today, Enlightenment decadence thrived within a unique nexus of material wealth, transgressive intellectualism, and politicized eroticism that was very much of its time.