Please note that Mommsen uses the AUC chronology (Ab Urbe Condita), i.e. from the founding of the City of Rome. You can use this reference table to have the B.C. dates
Under such circumstances, as a matter of course, morality
and family life were treated as antiquated things among all ranks
of society. To be poor was not merely the sorest disgrace
and the worst crime, but the only disgrace and the only crime:
for money the statesman sold the state, and the burgess sold his freedom;
the post of the officer and the vote of the juryman were to be had
for money; for money the lady of quality surrendered her person
as well as the common courtesan; falsifying of documents and perjuries
had become so common that in a popular poet of this age an oath
is called "the plaster for debts."
Men had forgotten what honesty was;
a person who refused a bribe was regarded not as an upright man,
but as a personal foe. The criminal statistics of all times
and countries will hardly furnish a parallel to the dreadful picture
of crimes--so varied, so horrible, and so unnatural--which the trial
of Aulus Cluentius unrolls before us in the bosom of one of the most
respected families of an Italian country town.