These people derived their stock chiefly from
Cappadocia, Pontus, &c., and the other populous regions of Asia Minor; and
hence the taint of Asiatic luxury and depravity, which was so conspicuous
to all the Romans of the old republican severity. Juvenal is to be
understood more literally than is sometimes supposed, when he complains
that long before his time the Orontes (that river which washed the
infamous capital of Syria) had mingled its impure waters with those of the
Tiber. And a little before him, Lucan speaks with mere historic gravity
when he says--
------"Vivant Galataeque Syrique
Cappadoces, Gallique, extremique orbis Iberi,
Armenii, Cilices: _nam post civilia bella
Hic Populus Romanus erit."
[Footnote: Blackwell, in his Court of Augustus, vol. i. p. 382, when
noticing these lines upon occasion of the murder of Cicero, in the final
proscription under the last triumvirate, comments thus: "Those of the
greatest and truly Roman spirit had been murdered in the field by Julius
Caesar; the rest were now massacred in the city by his son and successors;
in their room came Syrians, Cappadocians, Phrygians, and other
enfranchised slaves from the conquered nations;"--"these in half a century
had sunk so low, that Tiberius pronounced her very senators to be
_homines ad sermtutem natos_, men born to be slaves.
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