Note 172 — FIRST SECTION.
Reading edition
Read the Speech of Cato in Livy, Hist., bk. XXXIV. 4., where the following passage is found amongst others: Haec ego, quo melior lactiorque in dies fortuna rei publicae est, imperiumque crescit, et iam in Graeciam Asiamque transcendimus, omnibus libidinum illecebris repletas, et regias etiam attrectamus gazas, eo plus horreo, ne illae magis res nos ceperint, quam nos illas. (All these changes, as day by day the fortune of the State is higher and more prosperous and her Empire grows greater, and our conquests extend over Greece and Asia, lands replete with every allurement of the senses, and we appropriate treasures that may well be called royal,—all this I dread the more from my fear that such high fortune may rather master us than we master it). Scarcely 10 years later the same author says (bk. XXXIX. 6.): Luxuriae enim peregrinae origo ab exercitu Asiatico invecta in urbem est. (For the beginnings of foreign luxury were brought into the city by the Asiatic army). Juvenal, Sat. VI. 299.:
Prima peregrinos obscoena pecunia mores Intulit et turpi fregerunt secula luxu Divitiae molles.
(Foul money it was that first brought in foreign manners; wealth weakened and broke down the vigour of the age with base luxury). But pre-eminently applicable are the following words (III. 60 sqq.) of the same poet:
Non possum ferre, Quirites! Graecam urbem, quamvis quota portio faecis Achaeae? Iam pridem Syrus in Tiberim defluxit Orontes, Et linguam et mores et cum tibicine chordas Obliquas, nec non gentilia tympana secum Vexit et ad Circum iustas prostare puellas.
(I cannot bear, Quirites, to see Rome a Greek city,—and yet how mere a fraction of the whole corruption is found in these dregs of Achaea? Long since has the Syrian Orontes flowed into the Tiber, and brought along with it the Syrian tongue and manners and cross-stringed harp—and harper, and exotic timbrels, and girls bidden stand for hire at the Circus).