gave
to that also a Hellenic colouring. The remark of Cicero, that new
phrases and new fashions first make their appearance in maritime
towns, probably had a primary reference to the semi-Hellenic
character of Ostia, Puteoli, and Brundisium, where with foreign
wares foreign manners also first found admission and became thence
more widely diffused.

Mixture of Peoples

The immediate result of this complete revolution in the relations
of nationality was certainly far from pleasing. Italy swarmed with
Greeks, Syrians, Phoenicians, Jews, Egyptians, while the provinces
swarmed with Romans; sharply defined national peculiarities
everywhere came into mutual contact, and were visibly worn off; it
seemed as if nothing was to be left behind but the general impress
of utilitarianism. What the Latin character gained in diffusion
it lost in freshness; especially in Rome itself, where the middle
class disappeared the soonest and most entirely, and nothing was
left but the grandees and the beggars, both in like measure
cosmopolitan. Cicero assures us that about 660 the general culture
in the Latin towns stood higher than in Rome; and this is confirmed
by the literature of this period, whose most pleasing, healthiest,
and most characteristic products, such as the national comedy and
the Lucilian satire, are with greater justice described as Latin,
than as Roman. That the Italian Hellenism of the lower orders was
in reality nothing but a repulsive cosmopolitanism tainted at once
with all the extravagances of culture and with a superficially
whitewashed barbarism, is self-evident; but even in the case of
the better society the fine taste of the Scipionic circle did not
remain the permanent standard. The more the mass of society began
to take interest in Greek life, the more decidedly it resorted not
to the classical literature, but to the most modern and frivolous
productions of the Greek mind; instead of moulding the Roman
character in the Hellenic spirit, they contented themselves with
borrowing that sort of pastime which set their own intellect to
work as little as possible. In this sense the Arpinate landlord
Marcus Cicero, the father of the orator, said that among the
Romans, just as among Syrian slaves, each was the less worth,
the more he understood Greek.

National Decomposition

This national decomposition is, like the whole age, far from
pleasing, but also like that age significant and momentous.
The circle of pe