years before the emperors, we can with difficulty believe that the
descendants of a people so severe in their habits could thus rapidly
degenerate, and that a populace, once so hardy and masculine, should
assume the manners which we might expect in the debauchees of Daphne (the
infamous suburb of Antioch) or of Canopus, into which settled the very
lees and dregs of the vicious Alexandria. Such extreme changes would
falsify all that we know of human nature; we might _a priori_
pronounce them impossible; and in fact, upon searching history, we find
other modes of solving the difficulty. In reality, the citizens of Rome
were at this time a new race, brought together from every quarter of the
world, but especially from Asia. So vast a proportion of the ancient
citizens had been cut off by the sword, and partly to conceal this waste
of population, but much more by way of cheaply requiting services, or of
showing favor, or of acquiring influence, slaves had been emancipated in
such great multitudes, and afterwards invested with all the rights of
citizens, that, in a single generation, Rome became almost transmuted into
a baser metal; the progeny of those whom the last generation had purchased
from the slave merchants. 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